More than once, President Rodrigo Duterte has intimated that he does not embrace the term “dictator” as an apt self-description.
Sadly, though he protests, conceding that he uses a dictatorial leadership tenor only so that things may be accomplished for the country’s sake, his and his circle’s actions often constitute unmistakable attacks on liberty.
Two foreign nationals figured recently in a tussle with immigration bureaucrats, allegedly, according to the official line, for participating in activities detrimental to national welfare.
The President said Australian nun Patricia Fox, mother superior of Our Lady of Sion congregation was investigated and detained on his orders for disorderly conduct.
The 71-year-old missionary was eventually released, however, because there is no evidence for the accusation.
According to Mother Patricia’s fellow missionary, Sister Mary Barbuto, immigration officers showed the Australian “pictures of herself joining rallies and present in fact-finding and mercy missions among the indigenous and plundered ecological environment.”
We can only wonder what the President would have done to his own mother and to the nuns who marched against Ferdinand Marcos in the dying days of the dictatorship had he been in a position to act against them.
The damage has been done today.
The current dispensation has begun categorizing as enemy behavior any involvement that entails criticism of parties and persons in power.
It has painted independent, conscientious thought and activism as foes.
More gravely, Malacañang has sent the message that it will not hesitate to use the law as a weapon against the country’s religious sector that has been critical of the Duterte administration.
A European politician met a worse fate than the missionary’s.
After landing at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport supposedly to attend an event with Akbayan, Giacomo Filibeck of the Party of European Socialists was accosted by immigration officers and deported.
Questioning the move, European Union (EU) ambassador Franz Jessen pointed out that the Philippines and EU have an existing agreement for “a very active exchange of ideas and views at all different levels.”
What sort of intellectual distortion will Malacañang use to defend deporting a person on account of his differing thought?
If the President and his advisers think that this will chill the world’s libertarians from involvement in the Philippines, they are mistaken. The Palace has merely signaled freedom advocates to be shrewder in helping Philippine dissidents keep alive democracy’s flame.
In the same way, Fox’s arrest will not silence the church.
It has simply multiplied the number of pulpits, inside and outside churches from which anathemas are pronounced against repression.
President Duterte was once denied a United States visa. We do not know why.
That he is inclined to expel foreigners on account of their thoughts and advocacies shows that a country’s exercise of the right to refuse entry to aliens can be anchored on quite illogical premises.