‘Pathetic irony,’ says JPE as alleged wrongdoers ‘gasping for justice’

Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile. (File Photo: Juan Ponce Enrile/Facebook)

By Ruth Abbey Gita-Carlos, Philippine News Agency

MANILA – “What a pathetic and ghastly irony.”

This was what Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile had to say on Tuesday, as he expressed dismay over supposed lawbreakers who are “now drowning and gasping for justice.”

In a Facebook post, Enrile took an oblique swipe at the camp of former president Rodrigo Duterte, saying there is no one to blame but themselves for their “lust, arrogance, hubris, and hunger for power and pelf.”

“What a pathetic and ghastly irony! Those who allegedly committed unwarranted and violent acts of injustice are now drowning and gasping for justice,” Enrile said.

“In their desperate distress, they grasp at straws for help and called for widespread national prayer rallies to a God they called ‘stupid,’” he added.

Duterte, known for his scathing remarks during his presidency, once called God “stupid” in 2018.

He was arrested on March 11 for the crimes against humanity charges he is facing before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in connection with his anti-drug war launched between Nov. 1, 2011 and March 16, 2019 during his time as Davao City mayor and then Philippine president.

He is currently staying at the ICC Detention Center in The Hague, Netherlands.

Enrile lamented that Duterte’s camp “blame nearly everyone else – except themselves – for their miseries which they themselves created.”

“They now claw for whatever support and sympathy and support they could muster to extricate themselves from a tight legal trap that they themselves dug for themselves. Karma!! Abra cadabra!! What a tragic miscalculation,” he said.

The ICC set the next hearing to confirm Duterte’s charges on Sept. 23.