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THE growing global trend is not just to subject citizens to human
rights abuse. Even human rights councils and commissions are being
“abused” here and in the United Nations.
The constitutional Commission on Human Rights
now has no commissioners. The seven-year term of office of
Chairwoman Purificacion Quisumbing and Commissioners Elijo Mallari,
Dominador Calamba, Quintin Cueto and Wilhelm Soriano ended last
Monday. Temporarily, the CHR’s Executive Director Jacquiline Mejia
will manage the commission.
President Arroyo is still making up her mind
about who to appoint.
In governance and management science, “no
action” can be an action. I can imagine how hard it is for the
President to find decent people willing to be made HR commissioners
with a brief to side with human rights abusers.
Nepotism exposed
The practice at the CHR to have the
commissioners’ staff made up of relatives has been exposed as
blatant nepotism. But former chairwoman Quisumbing defended her
commissioners and other officials by pointing to their great
performance.
She was saying in effect that she and the other
CHR officials could not find people to trust other than their own
relatives without whose presence the CHR would have done poorly.
She also virtually took back the initial
publicity about her having given the Arroyo administration a rating
of “between 7 and 8” on a scale of 0 to 10, which dismayed HR
lawyers and civil society groups.
She stressed that the Arroyo administration had
to be given high marks for having abolished the death penalty and to
begin doing something about human right abuses by government people.
But she chided the administration for not
properly addressing the extrajudicial killings “until recently.”
Against Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez’s characterization of UN
HR Rapporteur Philip Alston as a mere “muchacho” who does not
deserve to be given any importance, Quisumbing praised Alston and
civil society rights groups for helping the CHR persuade the
administration to address the EJK issue.
UN HR Council farce
Freedom House has told the press that, “Human
rights abusers are poised to take seats on the UN Human Rights
Council.
“A quarter of the countries vying for seats on
the United Nations Human Rights Council have dismal human rights
records that should disqualify them from membership,” a new report
from Freedom House and UN Watch says. “However, at least two of
the five countries in question—Gabon and Zambia—are guaranteed
seats because of a lack of competition from more democratic
countries.
“Democratic countries are squandering a golden
opportunity to promote human rights through this important UN
body,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based
UN Watch. “Instead, they lend international credibility to
repressive governments that routinely violate the rights of their
own citizens.”
The joint UN Watch and Freedom House released
their findings at noon Tuesday (midnight in Manila) at UN
headquarters. The UN General Assembly is preparing to elect 15 new
Human Rights Council members, or one-third of the body’s
membership, on May 21. Each regional group has an allotment of seats
but in two of the five regional groups—Africa and Latin
America—the number of country-candidates does not exceed the
number of open seats.
Questionable record
The UNW-FH study found five countries
unqualified—Gabon, Bahrain, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zambia. All of
these countries but Bahrain are incumbent candidates. The report
also questions the eligibility of Brazil, East Timor and Burkina
Faso, whose human rights records are questionable. UN Watch and
Freedom House based their findings on their own surveys, the
countries’ UN records as HR promoters and the evaluations of
Reporters San Frontières, the Economist Democracy Index and the
Democracy Coalition Project.
Freedom House Advocacy Director Paula Schriefer
pointed out that the UNHRC already includes China, Cuba and Saudi
Arabia, which are all the FH’s Worst of the Worst report.
That makes the UNHRC a big farce doesn’t it?
Executive Secretary Ermita, who presented the Palace’s Human
Rights Committee report last month, got a standing ovation from the
council members.
PGMA on the media
Last Sunday’s Malacañang website posted this
quote of the day: “The media wields a very powerful tool in
Philippine society. It is the shaper of public opinion. It is the
moulder of the heart and mind of the Filipino.-President G.
Arroyo.”
(Note “moulder.” Malacañang is obviously of
two minds about British and American spelling.)
The president here uses “media” with a
singular verb: wields. Does this mean that in her mind all the media
make up one being? A monolithic being wielding a very powerful tool?
Is this why she, her close associates and her police have subjected
many journalists to humiliation and indignities?
Does she think it is the monolithic media, like
a dragon, that wields a powerful tool—like the dragon’s
incendiary breath? Has she forgotten—or never known—that it is
various and differently minded media owners, editors, writers and
columnists who wield media power?
Her time—she claims—is consumed only doing
her top-priority duties. These are keeping the national economy a
great global success, keeping the Filipinos insulated from the rice
and food crises that have hit the whole world but not the
Philippines and keeping her administration spotlessly clean.
rq_bas@yahoo.com and rqb@manilatimes.net
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