The DDS Gambit: Invoking Human Rights for One Man

By Joey Salgado

The lawyers of former president Rodrigo Duterte fashion themselves as human rights lawyers, invoking principles they once disregarded such as constitutional rights and due process. With visual and rhetorical flamboyance, they raise their voices against abuse of authority, political persecution, and foreign interference. They do so under more tolerant times.

During the Duterte presidency, lawyers, judges, and prosecutors were publicly vilified, tagged as subversives, and targeted by hired killers. The Duterte lawyers today face no overt threats, only stern reminders not to cross the line between free speech and sedition. They invoke human rights, at The Hague where their former boss is detained for crimes against humanity, and in our courts, not out of loyalty to its universality, but in defense of one man.

As of this writing, former Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea is recuperating in a hospital at The Hague. He is expected to return to the country after the former president designated a foreign national as his defense lawyer. Medialdea’s current state is being extolled online by the DDS as proof of loyalty, finding underserved virtue in sacrificing one’s health in order to advance the cause of the detained former president.

Political theater

It was Medialdea who stood as the defense counsel for the former president during the latter’s pre-trial appearance before the International Criminal Court (ICC), a perfunctory proceeding intended to confirm the identity of the accused and appraise him of his rights. But Medialdea, mustering all the strength and bluster of a jet-lagged counsel, moved to postpone the hearing, while questioning Duterte’s illegal transfer to The Hague, which he likened to “pure and simple kidnapping.”

Some say the the former executive secretary may be forgiven for not being familiar with the workings of the ICC, having been accustomed to our more free-wheeling court system where some lawyers often resort to theatrics and borderline unethical practices to defend their clients. Others say he did a great disservice to his client, for despite his fiery rhetoric, Medialdea failed to elicit sympathy or fear from the judges, who coldly reminded him that the pre-trial chamber was not the venue for such motion.

Medialdea is no ordinary lawyer. He grew up inhaling the law, being the son of a former Supreme Court justice. He was a senior partner in prestigious law firms before setting up his own law practice. During his term as Duterte’s executive secretary, he kept a low profile, yielding the spotlight to the media-chasing lawyers in the former president’s team.

Hijacked proceedings?

With his background and experience, Medialdea is not one to enter a court unprepared, or without a cursory understanding of the ICC and its unique character. It is plausible he knew that the proceedings will not provide the venue or the opportunity to make a political statement, so he chose to hijack it. He never intended to convince the judges, for he knew that they were not in a position to act on his motion. He was talking to a domestic audience. He wanted to fire up the DDS. Medialdea chose to transform the benign forum into yet another venue for political theater, a trademark Duterte tactic.

In the coming months, the Duterte lawyers, the enablers in the Senate, and the online troll hordes will continue to press their talking points, of Duterte as hero and martyr, unjustly detained for serving the nation, betrayed by a government in collusion with a foreign power. In their analysis, the protest rallies after Duterte’s arrest are a portent of a restoration, taking form and muscle as we near the midterms until it becomes a powerful force by 2028. They are, however, indulging in magical thinking.

Having acted as the former president’s alter ego, Medialdea exhibited at the ICC the demeanor of an important man, a powerful man whose physical presence and the authority of his former office are enough to intimidate mere mortals. But at the ICC, no privilege is accorded to the powerful or the once powerful. 

Senator Robinhood Padilla, whose continued presence at The Hague remains a mystery, captured the situation in a rare epiphany: “wala tayong power dito.”