(Eagle News) — The National Union of People’s Lawyers on Wednesday, June 27, lashed out at President Rodrigo Duterte for his statement on loiterers.
In a statement, NUPL president Edre Olalia said “vagrancy, as any freshman law student or lawyer who even perfunctorily listens to sedate Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) classes to ensure that their knowledge of the law is updated, is no longer a crime.”
“It was decriminalised in 2012. Any existing ordinance that circumvents or is inconsistent with such repeal can be challenged,” he said.
As for Duterte’s order the police frisk loiterers, Olalia said “frisking anyone for nothing, without probable cause, is intrusively illegal.”
He noted the “president’s word is not the law.”
“He is not even the law,” he said.
Olalia also challenged the authorities to “produce evidence that would prove that the thousands they arrested or ‘accosted’ for allegedly simply loitering were a threat to public health, public safety, and public order.”
In the absence of such evidence, Olalia said “those arrests, and the President’s order to continue arresting ‘tambays,’ are flagrant violations of the Bill of Rights in the 1987 Constitution, which was drawn up precisely to protect ordinary citizens — and most especially the poor — against such heavy-handedness of the State.”
“President Duterte’s most recent order about the arrest of ‘tambays’ shows how dangerous misquoting, misinterpreting or misapplying the law could be,” he said.
The Philippine National Police has said it does not arrest loiterers.
It said it arrested only those who violate national laws and ordinances.