As a teacher, I am used to spontaneous, unannounced visits of supervisors to observe me in the classroom. Every teacher is always ready for a visit, any time, any hour, any minute that she is in the classroom. The visit is sometimes welcome, sometimes not; nevertheless, it is a standard operating procedure that teachers have been trained to experience as part of their job.
So, when Agnes Callamard, United Nations Rapporteur visits the Philippines, announced but unwelcomed, all of Malacanang breaks into sweat. Why? Because they have tried to poke Callamard with a ten-foot-pole away from the Philippines and away from its unjustifiable and inexplicable extrajudicial killings since day one. “Now that she’s here, what do we do?” ask the Duterte spin doctors, who have been caught with their pants down, and don’t have an written and polished lie to use as an excuse for being ill-prepared.
Because really, when it comes down to it, if the Duterte administration has nothing to hide regarding the EJKs, why fear the coming of the “big, bad” wolf named Agnes? Even Teddy Locsin, whom I used to admire for his fearless tirade and diatribe of the Marcos administration, has snidely criticized Callamard, and has given this surprise visit a victory for the Duterte government, tweeting that, “she will never be allowed to step foot in (Geneva) it, or have anything to do with it.” What is Locsin thinking? Is he that blind with his power and utang na loob to Duterte not to see that she is at the centre of it?Locsin has had too much of Duterte to drink. He also thanks Callamard for “solidifying the country behind Duterte and his drug war.” Solidifying who? His gang of cohorts who have lied through their teeth defending the random killing of men and women, while the drug lords are free to roam the streets and continue its support to the pockets of the politicians and cabinet members of the Duterte government?
Cayetano was in Geneva screaming it was “fake news” that brought the extrajudicial killings into the light in the local and foreign news papers. He says that it was an exaggeration of the truth. I highly doubt that the New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and other highly respected journalists would create an entire conspiracy surrounding the antics of a delusional president and his cabinet to make a great story, and to risk their reputation and journalistic integrity of many decades for this. I admire Cayetano because he has to defend his boss, as well as his job, but at the same time I pity him for denouncing the truth to save his hide. I can’t ever imagine myself as a teacher to be hiding the truth that I did not prepare a good lesson, by embellishing my presentation with lovely visuals that teach my students nothing at all. That, will be a complete lie, and Cayetano has certainly prepared his visuals very well.
Unfortunately, Malacanang couldn’t prepare their visual aids. They had a visit, their lesson plan was absent, and now they blame the visitor for not allowing them to prepare a fabricated lesson full of nothing. Every teacher knows what it’s like to fail after a day of observations – it feels like we failed our students. Malacanang doesn’t feel they failed anybody – they are simply angry at Callamard because she didn’t give them time to prepare their bogus lesson and prepare their lies for presentation. They really don’t care that people actually died and continue to die – they just want to look good, and without their fake lesson plan, they failed miserably. They will certainly come up with throwbacks, such as Callamard came because Cayetano is in Geneva, and she wouldn’t be able to answer his questions, etc.However, the first strike has been cast, and Malacanang misses the point. Callamard does not get questioned, she questions, so the boys in Malacanang should always be prepared. If they have nothing to hide, why fear anything?
A good teacher is always prepared for a visit, a bad one prepares visual aids. The results of this visit by Callamard gets sent to the Principal’s office for evaluation, and the boys in Malacanang are not going to like the results.