Public servants 'should not be onion-skinned,' Duterte son says after fellow lawmaker sues dad

MANILA — Public servants "should not be onion-skinned" and must refrain from filing complaints to gag critics, Davao City First District Rep. Paolo Duterte said Wednesday after a fellow lawmaker sued his father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, for grave threat.

"We all have the right to file a complaint against anyone in court. But public servants should not be onion-skinned and should not make use of this right as a tool to silence critics," Rep. Duterte said in a statement.

"As public servants, we all are under scrutiny by the Filipino people," he added.

ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro on Tuesday filed a criminal complaint against the former president over his alleged threats against her life, which were aired on national television and livestreamed online.

• Rep. Castro sues Duterte for grave threats over TV statements

The younger Duterte said his father "has received much harsher and humiliating criticism in the past but never filed a case against anyone."

In an Oct. 11 episode of his TV program Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa on the SMNI News Channel, a clip of which was shown to the media by Castro, the Duterte patriarch shared his advice to his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, on how to use her confidential and intelligence funds.

“Pero ang una mong target d’yan [sa] intelligence fund mo, kayo, ikaw France, kayong mga Komunista ang gusto kong patayin,” he was seen saying.

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While the statement only mentioned “France,” Castro said she felt alluded to because her full name was mentioned earlier in the interview.

Castro and 2 other Makabayan bloc representatives have been critical of Vice President Duterte’s confidential and intelligence funds.

She asked for P500 million in surveillance funds for the Office of the Vice President and P150 million for the Department of Education, which she also heads, but House leaders realigned these allocations to intelligence and security forces tasked to address escalating threats in the West Philippine Sea.

In the complaint, Castro said Duterte's threats were "factually baseless and clearly malicious", but she could not dismiss them as "figurative, joking, or otherwise benign".

Castro's lawyer Antonio La Viña told reporters that it was the first criminal complaint filed against Duterte since he left office last year.

Duterte was protected from prosecution when he was president from 2016. But now that he is an ordinary citizen, he can be charged for alleged crimes committed in the Philippines.

Grave threats under the Revised Penal Code punishes “any person who shall threaten another with the infliction upon the person, honor or property of the latter or of his family of any wrong amounting to a crime.”

It carries a penalty of up to 6 months in prison. But since Castro’s complaint alleged that this was done in connection with the Cybercrime Prevention Act (RA 10175), the maximum penalty is up to 6 years in jail plus a fine of P100,000.00.

The 78-year-old former president often threatened to kill people, including drug dealers and rights activists, during his incumbency.

He also frequently labelled critics as communist sympathizers -- a practice known as "red-tagging", which can result in the arrest, detention or even death of the person targeted.

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Duterte's former executive secretary Salvador Medialdea said Tuesday the former president had not yet received the complaint.

His former chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo said the complaint had “no legal basis” and was filed “for propaganda purposes.”

“It’s not a threat. Because a threat is ‘I will kill you.’ But when you say ‘I want to kill you,’ that’s only expressing a desire,” Panelo said in an interview with ANC’s Dateline Philippines on Tuesday.

With reports from Hernel Tocmo and Mike Navallo, ABS-CBN News; Agence France-Presse