It seems that Atty. Salvador Panelo is serving not only as the spokesman of President Rodrigo Duterte. He is also National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr.’s pet parrot.

In 2006, Esperon attempted to put one over on UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston by submitting “documentary evidence” purportedly showing that the Left was responsible for the rampant extrajudicial killings of activists under the Arroyo regime. Alston dismissed the theory as “strikingly unconvincing” and bearing “hallmarks of a fabrication” which “cannot be taken as evidence of anything other than disinformation.”

Enter 2018, and we hear Panelo claiming that the nine sugar workers massacred on October 20 in Negros Occidental were members of a CPP-NPA legal front deliberately killed by the NPA to discredit the Duterte government.

At least Esperon presented some bogus documents to Professor Alston to pass off as proof of his preposterous lies. Parrot Panelo just manages to be preposterous.

To paraphrase the Chinese writer, Lu Hsun, lies written in ink cannot erase facts written in blood.