INTREPID GARY
GARY Alejano Jr., one of the 300 soldiers who staged the failed 2003 Oakwood Mutiny, to force Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to resign as president, was a member of the House of Representatives for two terms (2013-2019), representing the Magdalo Party List Group. A graduate of the Batch 1995 of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), the country’s premier military school, Alejano joined the Philippine Marines Corps, rising to become a captain. As a lawmaker, Alejano gained prominence for his opposition against Duterte. Alejano and Trillanes were batchmates at PMA.
Alejano opposed Duterte’s “pivot” to China, particularly his “soft” enforcement of the 2016 victory of the Philippines in the landmark case it lodged against China before the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) five-man Permanent Arbitration Commission. The arbitral decision dismissed China’s ridiculous claim of sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea. At one point, Alejano exposed Duterte’s prohibition on the Philippine Navy and Philippine Coast Guard to patrol the coastal seas at the time China was building its military bases on islets in the West Philippine Sea. Alejano advocated the creation of the proposed Department of Maritime Oceanic Affairs to set a clear maritime security framework to defend and protect Philippine territory.
As a fearless lawmaker, Alejano voted against TRAIN Law or the oppressive tax reform laws of the Duterte government, the proposed lowering of the minimum age of criminal responsibility, and the reimposition of the death penalty. Although he is fluent in English, Cebuano and Hiligaynon dialects, Alejano gained prominence for his flawless Tagalog. He was one of the few lawmakers, who can make public discourses in Filipino, which is expanded Tagalog.
Alejano was born on January 22, 1973 in Sipalay City, Negros Occidental to GaryAlejano, Sr., a farmer, and his mother, a teacher whom he fondly called “Mamang Lica.” He is married to Minerva Cojuangco of Bamban, Tarlac. He has five children: Martine Gwyneth and Micah Gabrielle, Maxine Gail, Gary Alejano Jr., and Gian Marcus.
Gary went to the University of Cebu (formerly Cebu Central Colleges), taking up electrical engineering for two years from 1989 to 1991. He continued his studies at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) where he finished Bachelor of Science in Naval System Engineering in 1995. He pursued graduate studies at the University of the Philippines completing Masters of Management and a certificate in New Enterprise Planning. In 2016, along with other students from 23 countries, he attended the program for Senior Executives in National and International Security of the Harvard Kennedy School.
Alejano was a bemedalled soldier. As a member of the Philippine Marine Corps, he saw action in the fight against the terrorist Abu Sayyaf Group in Mindanao, including Sulu and Basilan. In 2000, he was part of the campaign to capture Camp Abubakar and was assigned to secure areas in Matanog, Maguindanao. At this time, he was “wounded in action” and for his bravery, he received the Distinguished Conduct Star and other awards.
Unbeknown to many Filipinos, Alejano is a man of integrity as he refused to surrender his principles to the blandishments of power. He did not succumb to temptations to surrender to the forces of evil, which tried to entice him to leave his group and join the ruling coalition. He has stuck his fortunes out with the Magdalo group. His wife Minerva said how she and Alejano’s relatives were subjected to abuses by his jailers at the time he was incarcerated with his co-mutineers. It was very difficult when he was in jail, she said.
As a lawmaker, Alejano filed bills and resolutions, although few became laws mainly because he belonged to the opposition. He initiated over a hundred infrastructure projects such as roads, school buildings, water services, and flood control projects. He was named as one of the “TOP Congressmen of the Philippines” by the Publishers Association of the Philippines (PAPI). Together with Trillanes, his batchmate at PMA, he went to The Hague in the Netherlands to submit supplemental documents in support of the human rights complaint against Duterte and his ilk, a case filed earlier by Magdalo, through Jude Josue Sabio, at the ICC. In 2018, he initiated an impeachment complaint against seven associate justices of the Supreme Court.
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ICC’S TURN
A MONTH after the fateful meeting between Trillanes and the unnamed European lawmaker, it was the turn of the ICC, through Fatou Bensouda, then chief of its Office of the Prosecutor, to speak. Bensouda said:
“My Office is aware of worrying reported extrajudicial killings of alleged drug dealers and users in the Philippines, which may have led to over 3,000 deaths in the past three months. I am deeply concerned about these alleged killings and the fact that public statements of high officials of the Republic of the Philippines seem to condone such killings and further seem to encourage State forces and civilians alike to continue targeting these individuals with lethal force.”
Those EJKs fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC if they are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack, Bensouda said. She added: “Extrajudicial killings may fall against a civilian population pursuant to a State policy to commit such an attack.”
Moreover, Bensouda reminded Duterte that the Philippines was a member of the ICC and that “the Court has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed on the territory or by nationals of the Philippines since 1 November 2011, the date when the Statute entered into force in the Philippines.” She ended her statement with a dire warning: “Let me be clear: any person in the Philippines who incites or engages in acts of mass violence including by ordering, requesting, encouraging or contributing, in any other manner, to the commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC is potentially liable to prosecution before the Court.”
By all means, Bensouda’s statement had far-reaching implications to indicate a changing world. Gone were the days when a leader could do what he liked in the most despotic and brutal ways. The current world order has come out with ways to check leaders, who have criminal tendencies to oppress their citizens. This is now part of the much heralded international criminal justice system, which the world order in the first half of the 20th century did not have to culminate in two successive world wars in a span of twenty years. She flashed the proverbial signal to the democratic opposition in the Philippines to consider the ICC in its fight against Duterte’s war on drugs.
INTRODUCTION. Fatou Bensouda, the feisty and fiery woman from the African state of The Gambia, has cast a long shadow on crimes against humanity charges against Duterte and others at the ICC. As its Chief Prosecutor, Bensouda approved in 2018 the move to conduct a preliminary investigation on Duterte and his subalterns. On June 14, 2021, or a day before she retired and completed her nine-year term at the ICC, Bensouda recommended to the three-man ICC Pre-Trial Chamber the move to conduct official investigation on Duterte and others.13
On September 27, 2021, the ICC, through the Pre-Trial Chamber, formally authorized the official probe into alleged crimes against humanity in then President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. The Court stated that there was reasonable basis to proceed with the probe noting that “specific legal element of the crime against humanity of murder” had been met in the crackdown that left thousands dead.
According to its ICC website, Fatou Bensouda of The Gambia was elected on December 12, 2011 by consensus as Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court by the Assembly of States Parties. Ms. Bensouda was sworn in on 15 June 2012. Bensouda previously held the position of ICC Deputy Prosecutor (Prosecutions), having been elected with an overwhelming majority by the Assembly of States Parties on August 4, 2004 and serving this post until May 2012.
Prior to her work at the ICC, Bensouda worked as Legal Adviser and Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, rising to the position of Senior Legal Advisor and Head of The Legal Advisory Unit. Before joining the ICTR, she was general manager of a leading commercial bank in Gambia. Between 1987 and 2000, she was successively Senior State Counsel, Principal State Counsel, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Solicitor General and Legal Secretary of the Republic, and Attorney General and Minister of Justice, in which capacity she served as Chief Legal Advisor to the President and Cabinet of The Republic of The Gambia.
Bensouda also took part in negotiations on the treaty of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the West African Parliament and the ECOWAS Tribunal. She has served as delegate to United Nations conferences on crime prevention, the Organization of African Unity’s Ministerial Meetings on Human Rights, and as delegate of The Gambia to the meetings of the Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court. Bensouda holds a master’s degree in International Maritime Law and Law of the Sea and as such is the first international maritime law expert of The Gambia.
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EMERGENCE OF DDS ‘HITMAN’
ABOUT this time too, Edgar Matobato, a self-confessed hit man of the so-called “Davao Death Squad” (DDS) hovered on the radar and came out openly to reveal the operations of the DDS, which stands for the Duterte’s Death Squad, or Duterte’s killing machine. His public appearance did not come out easily. It was a complex process that was triggered by his realization in 2013 that his DDS involvement was wrong before the eyes of his God and society. It was a complete but unexpected turnaround for this functionally illiterate murderer. The moment he realized his murderous ways, he neither went back to his old ways nor entered into any compromise with the Duterte’s camp. It was a complete breakaway. Several characters came out to participate in the spine-tingling process.
Seeing clear signals from the European Parliament and the ICC, which incidentally came out with separate public statements to oppose the EJKs under the Duterte government, Trillanes hastened to prepare the crimes against humanity charges against Duterte. The Magdalo Party List Group intended to file the charges immediately before the ICC. But a snag struck him and his legal advisers and staff. They have to present and prove that local remedies had run out; Duterte’s machinations had reached to a point he could do anything that pleased him and kill people with impunity. They had to show to the world they could do nothing within the available domestic legal means to stop Duterte. This is what the Rome Statute provides with ultimate clarity. This is the principle of complementarity.
They brainstormed the issue and agreed with a solution: impeachment of Duterte in Congress. This is a win-win solution. If the impeachment complaint prospered, it could lead to Duterte’s impeachment by the House of Representatives and eventually a trial to remove him from office by the Senate. If it lost, it would prove that the available legal system was not working to provide justice. Because impeachment was a political process, it did not win and lost on the opening salvo. It did not reach the first base, making clear that filing crime against humanity charges against Duterte and his cohorts before the ICC was the final solution. Gary Alejano Jr. was supposed to be the captain of this move to file impeachment charges against Duterte.
By the third week of October, 2016, Trillanes started to prepare the crimes against humanity charges, which Magdalo would bring to the ICC against Duterte and his ilk. They needed a lawyer, who would represent them before a court of law and file the information before the ICC. Sensing the futility of going to his reluctant colleagues, Trillanes consulted with the leaders of the democratic forces, which had stayed at the periphery of Duterte’s authoritarian government to voice out their advocacy for democracy and adherence to clean governance. He consulted the Church and civil society leaders, including liberation theologians, many of whom he came to know in the pro-democratic mass actions. Trillanes approached lawyers, who had established a good reputation in representing for free the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden. But because of the intricacies of the issue and their unfamiliarity, Trillanes did not immediately get a positive response. This is something easy to understand. Filing crime against humanity charges against Duterte before the ICC would be the first in the country’s history. This was an area where even angels fear to tread.
OBSCURE LAWYER. By November, 2016, Trillanes met Fr. Alberto Alejo, a Jesuit priest, who suggested getting an obscure lawyer from Mindanao to represent Matobato, who upon public appearances, went into the care of the Magdalo. Matobato, who reached only Grade 1, needed a lawyer to advise him of his rights. This time, Matobato made public what he knew about Duterte and the DDS in his previous two appearances in the Senate inquiry on EJKs. Trillanes could use the lawyer not only to represent Matobato but file the crime against humanity charges as well, mainly to save on cost. Alejo proposed Jude Josue Sabio, a trial lawyer based in Cagayan de Oro City. Alejo knew Sabio not personally but only from his posts in social media. They have developed online friendship; the Jesuit priest proved pivotal to facilitate his meeting with Trillanes. Meeting Sabio sometime in November, 2016, Trillanes was impressed by Sabio’s uncompromising stance on EJKs. Sabio did not only oppose EJKs along lines of principles based on philosophy and law, but exuded the courage to bring Duterte before a court of law.
Born in 1964 in the idyllic town of Libona in Bukidnon province, Jude Josue Sabio grew up in the quiet town of Tagaloan in the province of Misamis Oriental. He completed his AB Political Science at Ateneo de Manila University. He finished his law degree at the University of the Philippines, where he was an honor student and a member of the reputable Alpha Phi Beta Fraternity. He earned his law degree in 1993, took the Bar examinations the following year, and passed it without hassles. Sabio had a fairly encouraging law practice in Cagayan de Oro City but a marital spat led to his bitter and acrimonious separation from his wife.
Life took a downward spin for Sabio. He momentarily lost verve for life, wandered aimlessly, turned wayward, and became unproductive for a while. It was said he literally slept on street sidewalks. He recovered and picked up the pieces though. Sabio had a knack for writing and he wrote well. He wrote opinion pieces for Mindanao Gold Star, a daily newspaper in Cagayan de Oro City. Many of his opinion pieces were reposted and that was how he was noticed by Alejo, who, after reading his hard-hitting posts, took the initiative to befriend him. Soon, he flew to Manila to assume a new role – as counsel for Matobato.
LIBERATION THEOLOGIAN. For his part, Fr. Alberto Alejo could have led a sedentary lifestyle as a Catholic priest, belonging to the Jesuit order. But this was not something meant to be. Because of Duterte’s frequent attacks on the Church and its clergy and the murders and attempts of murdering priests, including the ones who went publicly to oppose the EJKs, Fr. Albert Alejo, who is known to friends and critics as “Paring Bert,” one of the country’s more than 6,000 members of the clergy, took the cudgels to defend human rights and oppose Duterte’s authoritarian inclination.
Alejo is one of the many Filipino priests, who have been heavily influenced by the teachings of Second Vatican Council, the pivotal gathering of the Roman Catholic clergy worldwide to update the Church on its teachings and doctrines and redefine its role in the postwar era characterized by the emerging secular or pluralistic world. The Second Vatican Council, or “Vatican Two,” has redefined the Church’s role as the “church of the poor,” as indicated by its adoption of the phrase “preferential option for the poor,” which rejects the prewar views that the Roman Catholic Church was the church of the elite, powerful, and influential. There were assertions that it was sort of atonement for – or rectification of – the Church’s “soft stand” on Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship that led to the Second World War, or even the massacre of six million Jews.
Alejo is an activist priest, who has taken a liberationist outlook on the widespread poverty and social injustice that characterizes the Philippines and many Third World countries. Alejo refuses to acquiesce to the powers-that-be. He is among the liberationist theologians, who have assumed and taken activist, albeit critical, views and roles in Duterte’s emergence, particularly his war on drugs. He did not take the spate of EJKs sitting down. He opted to stand and speak, earning the enmity of Duterte and his malleable but unthinking minions. This is not without his personal fears and anxieties. Three priests were murdered in broad daylight under Duterte’s incumbency. Alejo takes their murder seriously in his works as an activist priest. He takes a firm stand against EJKs, believing they are violations of human dignity.
Born on August 25, 1958 in the southern Cagayan de Oro City, Alberto Alejo took biochemistry in college, but shifted to philosophy as he sought answers to many questions that afflicted him in his youth. He finished AB Philosophy at the University of Santo Tomas in 1979. But discovering his priestly vocation, he has joined the Jesuit order, which has many Filipino intellectuals, or the cream of the crop, as key members. Like most Jesuits, Alejo completed his masters’ degrees in philosophy in Ateneo de University in 1988, theology at the same Jesuit-run school in 1991, and social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London in 1994. He earned his doctorate in social anthropology at the University of London in 1999. Hence, Alejo is not only a political activist, but an anthropologist and poet as well.
Over the years, Alejo has developed a reputation for his involvement and advocacy in the issues of corruption, human rights, social inequity, and indigenous people’s rights. In 2003, Alejo led Ehem!, a nationwide Jesuit anti-corruption campaign. Along with other activists, Alejo co-founded the Citizens-Customs Action Network (CITIZCAN), a Bureau of Customs third-party monitoring initiative; served as director of the Archdiocese of Manila Labor Center; he is contributor and editor of Asia Mindanao; the Mindanao Law Journal; and Agham Mindanaw.
As a political activist, Alejo has articulated what he has termed “surplus of violence,” or “surplus of cruelty,” which the country experienced under the Duterte government. He called for dialogues among the various forces in the political spectrum. In 2020, Paring Bert Alejo was arrested and charged with sedition, along with eight others, for an alleged plot to oust Rodrigo Duterte. They had posted bail. Alejo is now writing his book on his experiences of accompanying whistleblowers, witnesses and truth tellers since the middle of the 1980s.
These include comrades of slain activist Edgar Jopson, an unnamed NPA commander with a P3 million bounty on his head, an unidentified young Badjao woman, who was a witness to the Abu Sayaf murder of a missionary priest in Tawi-tawi, a low profile bookkeeper whistleblower to the corruption of a big NGO fighting human trafficking, a faceless Commission on Audit guy, who exposed anomalies in the AFP top echelon, a quiet tribal chief and Babaylan falsely accused by Duterte of massacre of an Ilonggo family in Davao City, plus the more recent ones, when Duterte became president, among others. It would take time, he said, but he was determined to complete it in due time.
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FIRST SALVO
ON March 16, 2017, or nine months after Duterte was sworn into office, then Representative Gary Alejano Jr. of the Magdalo Party List Group, fired the opening salvo against Duterte by submitting an impeachment complaint at the House of Representatives. Alejano accused Duterte of culpably violating the Constitution, engaging in bribery, betraying public trust, committing graft and corruption, and other high crimes. The 1987 Constitution sets specific grounds for impeachment – treason, bribery, graft and corruption, other high crimes or betrayal of public trust.
The impeachment complaint included Duterte’s involvement in the creation of the Davao Death Squad when he was mayor; his war on drugs since he became president, which has led to the summary killing of thousands of Filipinos; and his supposed unexplained wealth in the form of bank deposits and undeclared properties, among others. Overall, it has three main themes and charges. First, it accused Duterte of betrayal of public trust, culpable violation of Constitution, and other high crimes for his war on drugs which, according to the complaint, the President used to “induce” police officers into killing alleged drug dealers and users without regard for the law, and making this as basis for their promotion in the police service.
Second, it accused Duterte of betrayal of public trust, bribery, graft and corruption, and culpable violation of the Constitution for allegedly creating the DDS, when he was mayor of Davao, citing the testimonies of self-confessed DDS members, retired policeman Arturo Lascañas and civilian Edgar Matobato. Third, it accused Duterte of graft and corruption and other high crimes for his alleged unexplained wealth, as revealed previously by Trillanes, and his hiring of contractual employees as mayor.
According to the Constitution, the House has the exclusive power to initiate the impeachment process. Section 2 of the Constitution says: “The President, the Vice President, the members of the Supreme Court, the members of the constitutional commission, and the Ombudsman may be removed from office, on impeachment for and conviction of, culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, graft, and corruption, other higher crimes or betrayal of public trust.” If a third of the House membership affirms the impeachment complaint, it goes to the Senate, which will convene immediately as an impeachment court to try the impeached official. Alejano’s complaint did not reach the first base, as the House of Representatives committee on justice then chaired by the late Rep. Reynaldo Umali, dismissed the complaint on May 14, or nearly two months after it was filed, for “lack of merit.”
The impeachment complaint was bound to fail because Duterte’s coalition had an overwhelming majority in Congress, which made Duterte a demigod of sorts for opportunistic politicians. The shortsighted lawmakers failed to perceive that the impeachment complaint was filed to prove before the world community that the major institutions in the Philippines had failed and were not functioning in consonance with the provisions of the 1987 Constitution. On that basis, Duterte should be punished for his crimes against the Filipino people and his wanton disrespect of human lives. It strengthened the crimes against humanity charges, which the Magdalo Party List and Trillanes’s legislative staff built up and developed and filed by the obscure lawyer in Jude Josue Sabio before the ICC.
