Indefensible rhetoric

Is Sen. Risa Hontiveros being too thin-skinned in seeking redress from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for the “wave of death threats” and “pro-killing” remarks she said she has been receiving following the killing of pro-Marcos vlogger Alicia “Mima Alicia” Lipata on July 17?

That’s the contention of her detractors, mostly from the Duterte camp, who immediately mocked the senator’s move to ask the NBI’s help in identifying those behind the violent social media posts against her. The common refrain was that Hontiveros was a public official and thus fair game for public criticism, many citing the example of the late Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago who famously shrugged off the vitriol thrown her way by saying “I eat death threats for breakfast.”

Defensor Santiago, however, was a creature of a different political age—mostly before social media supercharged the online din, and whatever threats she may have received were likely sent through mail, anonymous phone calls, or actual intermediaries. Compare that situation to the present, when literally thousands of people with an internet connection and a locked Facebook account can casually fling words of menace and intimidation at anyone they deem worthy of such treatment.

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Frightening escalation

That’s the frightening escalation in both the scale and malevolence of the rhetoric that Hontiveros is trying to highlight—how violent language has been all but normalized in the current political environment. As she put it, “Instead of expressing sympathy [for Lipata], some people are celebrating someone’s death and even inciting violence. Now, many are also openly threatening that I will be ‘next.’”

No one—not Hontiveros, or anyone opposed to her politics—deserves to be “next” on the killing block. No one should be threatened or harassed, least of all murdered, for the beliefs and opinions they hold about the state of the country and society. There is criticism of public officials arising from their official duties, and then there is criticism that goes way beyond bounds and begins encouraging violence and criminal intent toward a chosen target.

The country’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression does not extend to such utterances, because the law is clear: Grave threats are a crime under the Revised Penal Code.

Impeachment trial

In May 2020, a public school teacher was arrested and made to beg for forgiveness on his knees in front of TV cameras for a social media post in which he offered a P50-million reward to anyone who would purportedly kill then President Rodrigo Duterte. The teacher tearfully insisted that it was all a “joke”—he had no means at all of raising the hefty bounty. But still he was hauled off to jail and slapped with inciting to sedition charges—raps that were more serious than plain grave threats.

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Years later, the second highest official of the land, who had sworn to uphold the Constitution and the law, would herself utter shocking threats of murder and assassination against the President with whom she had paired up in the last elections. Vice President Sara Duterte’s repeated public invocation of violence—including saying she imagined cutting off the head of President Marcos—has led to her ongoing impeachment trial at the Senate, where it has been a profound, disturbing letdown to see her lawyers contort themselves to defend the Vice President’s indefensible remarks as “freedom of expression” and not a case of, at the very least, grave threats.

What the public sees from such a defense is that the law remains terribly unequal in this country, bearing down harshly on ordinary Filipinos like the public school teacher, but in the case of a powerful Vice President with a mini-army of lawyers, artfully invoked to frame her words as protected speech and shield her from accountability.

Corrupting example

The more dangerous takeaway, however, is the corrupting example it sets. Duterte’s disdain for the civility and proper conduct required for public office ends up empowering her adherents to do the same—to imitate and spew on social media, and eventually on the national consciousness—the behavior of crass cursing, violent language, and sense of impunity that she, and her father before her, have turned into the signature Duterte brand of politics.

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These fired-up supporters gang up on anyone in the public square who expresses opposition to the Dutertes, largely accounting for the torrent of dangerous rhetoric that passes for discourse on social media these days, and that seeks to smear and intimidate the likes of Hontiveros, who has been a consistent—and consistently effective—thorn on the side of the Duterte dispensation for years.

Malign interests who, either individually or through troll armies, practice this kind of behavior online must be held accountable and taught a lesson: that laws remain in force against death threats and similar criminal actions, and that whoever resorts to them must face the grave consequences.