By Recto Mercene & Butch Fernandez
THE Philippine government has stepped up its challenge to the United States to respect its sovereignty, with officials from the Executive and the Senate denouncing the meddling and the “arrogance of some US lawmakers” who inserted a provision in their budget bill mandating the Secretary of State to bar Filipino officials with a role in the prosecution of Sen. Leila de Lima, detained since 2017 on drug-related charges.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. said in a tweet that if Manila were to surrender its “sovereignty on judicial process,” despite the Supreme Court clearance for detained de Lima’s trial to proceed, it “may as well stop asserting its sovereignty against China in the South China Sea.”
Several senators also weighed in on the issues, deploring what they described as misinformed US lawmakers who inserted in the 2020 US budget the provision allowing the Secretary of State to impose the prohibition based on “credible information.”
The Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday issued a statement, saying: “All countries have the sovereign prerogative to allow or ban individuals from entering their borders. We strongly advise the United States to respect our own laws and processes in the same way that we respect theirs.”
US Senators Richard Durbin (Illinois) and Patrick Leahy (Vermont) had pushed for the proposed amendment in the 2020 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill tackled by the US Senate Appropriations Committee.
Durbin was among five US senators who earlier called on the Duterte administration to release de Lima, a fierce critic of Duterte’s anti-narcotics drive.
She has been detained since February 2017, for allegedly pocketing drug payoffs from convicted crime lords when she was still justice secretary—an allegation she described as political persecution.
Sovereignty indivisible—Locsin
tweeted on December 23, that the effort by US lawmakers was “of no moment,” and that the only way de Lima would be free was after undergoing trial.
“Sovereignty is indivisible. Give up one aspect—like a judicial trial—to please the merely elected abroad at the expense of the highly educated and academically accomplished at home, you may as well give up national security to China,” Locsin said. He was referring to US senators in contrast to the Philippine Supreme Court justices.
Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presi-dential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo blasted the US Senate’s move as a “brazen” attempt to intrude into the Philippines’s internal affairs, saying it treats Manila as an “inferior state.”
De Lima’s case does not constitute a wrongful imprisonment, said Panelo, adding that “we have explained that” to foreign lobbyists for the senator’s release even during her trial.
Panelo expressed hope that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “is better informed and educated on the internal judicial process of this country and would necessarily follow his informed judgement.”
He said, “We shall respect their democratic processes, be these in the form of a congressional measure or an immigration policy. We shall leave it to the international community to ascertain which nation values the rule of law in accordance with the principle of state sovereignty,” he said.
The prohibition on entry was part of the general provisions of the 2020 State and foreign operations appropriations bill. It tasks the US secretary of State to prohibit from entering the US those Philippine officials about whom he has “credible information” as having had a hand in injustly jailing de Lima.
“She [de Lima] is being afforded all her rights to due process and has in fact availed of available legal remedies under our procedural rules,” Panelo noted.
De Lima, 60, is not entitled to bail and if found guilty, faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Senators shrug off ban
Philippine senators shrugged off the travel ban.
Asked if the Duterte government should seek reconsideration of the US travel ban, Senate President Vicente Sotto III promptly turned down the idea as “trash.”
Sotto denounced the US ban as “an affront to our Supreme Court,” which had cleared de Lima’s trial in a lower court.
Senator Panfilo Lacson likewise saw no need to seek reconsideration of the ban. “We should recognize that entry or denial into a country’s territory is a sovereign right of the host country,” Lacson said, adding, “What we should call out is the arrogance of some US legislators in encroaching on our country’s justice system and our judicial process by passing the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations resolution calling for the dismissal of the charges against Sen. Leila de Lima and journalist Maria Ressa.”
Senator Koko Pimentel suggested Filipinos can opt to travel to other countries where they are welcome.
“Since the [US travel ban] involves the soverignty of another state, then those banned should just bear it,” Pimentel said. “Since the message to them is ‘you are not welcome to the US,’ then the solution is very simple. Save money and do not go to the US,” he told the BusinessMirror.
In an e-mailed statement to Senate reporters, de Lima deplored Panelo’s remarks on the US travel ban. “Panelo says he hopes the US secretary of State is more properly informed than the US senators who introduced the amendment on the US travel ban, an amendment that was unanimously approved at the Committee level and passed by the whole US Congress,’” de Lima said.
She added that Panelo is “sorely mistaken in his belief that they can ask Pompeo for a reconsideration in the implementation of the federal law. He cannot. Both the US Congress and the US president have already determined the fact of my persecution, and that this determination is already part of the federal law of the US and can only be reversed by repeal or an amendatory law.”
According to her, “what is left for the US State Department to determine is the identity of my persecutors who will be subjected to the US travel ban, not whether or not indeed I was persecuted by these individuals. While the former will be subject to the information the State Department already has in hand and will further obtain from various agency sources, the latter issue is already final, regardless of Panelo’s already exhausting protestations.”