Demolition squad reactivated

Now it seems the money well has been refilled, from which source would be easy to deduce.

When discredited putschist Antonio Trillanes IV recently came out of the woodwork amid the furor about the International Criminal Court, or ICC, surreptitiously sending in probers to investigate the drug war, the lying imps were expected to come out of hiding.

Sure enough, ex-detainee Leila de Lima and self-proclaimed assassin Arturo Lascañas have reprised their roles of throwing out unproven accusations of extrajudicial killings that were pinned on former president Rodrigo Duterte and his men.

The so-called crimes against humanity complaint in the conduct of the war on drugs included the periods when Duterte was president and previously when he was Davao City mayor.

Expect the surfacing of Trillanes’ fellow destabilizers Gary Alejano, Edgar Matobato, Eduardo Acierto and Peter Joemel Advincula or Bikoy in the next few days.

Ringleader Trillanes has been silent for so long, supposedly on a teaching job, but most likely due to the drying up of the yellow financing after the defeat of the Liberal Party candidates and allies in the elections.

Lawyer Jude Sabio, who died suddenly after trying to withdraw the complaint he had filed with the ICC, provided the hint that the once bountiful well of money backing Trillanes and his band of misfits had dried up.

One of the reasons Sabio gave for his decision to withdraw the ICC case targeting the drug war was that Trillanes had reneged on the monthly retainer that he was promised.

Sabio admitted that the charges filed before the ICC were primarily based on made-up stories of Lascañas and Matobato, another confessed member of the imaginary Davao Death Squad or DDS.

Now it seems the money well has been refilled, from which source would be easy to deduce.

The scripts against Duterte and his family are being dusted off.

The storyline of Bikoy, for instance, was repackaged for Lascañas, who is now accusing Duterte and his family of running a drug mafia, which was the reason for the string of killings perpetrated by the DDS up to his presidency.

A Senate committee on justice and human rights investigation had debunked the allegations of Lascañas that are now being repackaged apparently for the ICC’s consumption.

The Senate report concluded that there were no state-sponsored summary killings, and the DDS’ existence was not proven.

Among the findings of the Senate panel was that the primary goal of the exposés was to tag Duterte in the extrajudicial killings — and this was then weaponized by rights groups, foreign media, and the yellow mob to get at the then president.

The report clearly stated that the revelations of Matobato and Lascañas were lies.

It censured Trillanes for allowing Matobato to leave the Senate premises without waiting for the committee hearings to finish and De Lima for her “material concealment” of the kidnapping case filed against the confessed hitman.

When Trillanes and De Lima summoned members of the Davao City police force to the probe, the report said, “the answers given by the witnesses from the Davao City police did not prove the existence of the DDS.”

The report noted that the number of deaths linked to the war on drugs was overblown. It even contrasted the figures with the number of trafficker deaths in the previous administration.

“For the years 2010 to 2016 under the Aquino administration, there were 85,878 recorded killings with an average 14,313 killings per year, 1,913 killings per month, or 40 killings per day,” the report said quoting figures provided by the Philippine National Police.

PNP records showed that 6,229 drug personalities were killed during the entire period of Duterte’s relentless campaign against narcotics.

The report ended with an apt expression on what had caused the international uproar against Duterte in his campaign: “Loose lips sink ships.”

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