QUEZON CITY, March 14 (PIA)—Government officials who were part of the delegation sent to Europe last month, faced the media on Wednesday to share the “fruits” of their official mission.
The Philippine delegation highlighted the fruitful trip to Europe to clarify issues on involuntary disappearances, foreign funding of communist terrorists, among others. The government’s human rights record was also tackled in the meeting with UN representatives.
Presidential Communications Undersecretary Joel Sy Egco said he and other officials went to Europe in compliance with Executive Order (EO) 70, which created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflicts.
Egco, also the executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS), said they were sent to Europe to clarify issues confronting the government, such as involuntary disappearances and anti-communist terrorist groups.
“The PCOO is part of the national task force, under EO 70. And of course, as the information arm, ito po ang naging role niya(this is part of its role). We call that mission as the Truth Caravan… where we met directly engaged with stakeholders, not only in the local scene but also abroad, our Filipino communities. I’d like to assure you na (that it was) very fruitful,” Egco said in a news briefing.
“Everything was transparent, everything was aboveboard. They were very happy, the Filipino communities. We engaged the media. You know it’s not easy to face members of the European Union parliament. We can’t fool them,” he added.
”What we did was actually to preserve the integrity of information on what’s really happening in the Philippines,” he said.
According to Egco, the European Union (EU) is “satisfied” with the Philippine government’s explanation on the Duterte administration’s campaign against illegal drugs amid criticism that it violates human rights.
“There were some questions raised, interaction. But at the end of the meeting, they were satisfied with our explanations and evidence presented to them,” Egco said.
Presidential Human Rights Committee Secretariat executive director, Undersecretary Severo Catura, said EU is beginning to understand how necessary the aggressive crackdown on illegal drugs is, in solving the country’s drug mess.
“That’s why one of the tasks we’ve done is to explain before the chiefs of mission, the different accountability and mechanisms of the country in addressing these problems,” Catura said.
“I would like to believe that there’s already an appreciation of what we are doing in terms of addressing the anti-illegal drugs problem in the country,” he added.
Catura noted the Philippine delegation's "struggle" to explain the drug war since critics have been inflating the number of people killed during buy-bust operations.
However, he said the Philippine delegation was able to successfully clarify this.
“We are seeing an appreciation coming from the global community, and we see it as a very positive development,” Catura said.
“Still there are interested groups who would want to pad the figures, but were able to explain it to them,” he added.
Catura welcomed the EU’s receptiveness to listen, saying it was a good start to changing the international community’s perception of the drug war.
“At least there’s already this large window of openness where we can talk about it,” he said.
Catura said the government’s efforts have been challenged by “false narratives” by terrorist front groups masquerading as non-government organizations and human rights defenders.
“We have seen the extent in which certain mechanisms in the UN and in the EU are being used as platform to advance certain agendas, especially of critics to this administration,” he said.
“The mission was, as I said, was to preserve the integrity of the information, but it is actually to qualify the extent by which the human rights narrative in our country has been so muddled,” he added.
Brigadier General Antonio Parlade, Jr., AFP’s deputy chief-of-staff for operations, also part of the mission said, the recent trip of a government delegation to Europe was no junket as the members even tried to save money on food and hotel during the mission.
Critics have been questioning the Europe trip saying public funds should have been spent on more important projects.
Though Parlade did not say how much public funds were spent for the foreign trip, he bared that they slept in the houses of fellow Filipinos and ate street food to reduce travel costs.
“It’s so wrong to say that it was a junket. We didn’t talk about how much we spent but basically there was airfare, it was not free, and since government’s per diem is small, we did not stay in a hotel, we slept in the houses of our friends. We also ate food along the sidewalk to cut costs,” he said.
Parlade explained that the government has been invited four to five times to explain its position about the case of involuntary disappearances. He said it was only now that the government accepted the invitation to present its case before the international community.
“Now that we went there to explain the issues, it was still a problem, it became an issue,” he said.
He urged government critics to consider the benefit of the recent foreign trip despite the travel cost.
“Let us just look at this way, let’s say we’ve spent 1 or 2 million, but in the process we were able to prevent the EU funding worth 2 billion or 1 billion for left-leaning organizations that are hiding behind legal front organizations. We hope critics should consider this instead,” he added. (PIA InfoComm)
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