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The Current Transcript for November 2, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Nothing would have led us to believe she was not our child. I have a degree in genetics and this is not supposed to happen.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Somewhere in the back of his mind, Dan Dixon always thought his daughter didn't look much like him or her mom, but they were thrilled to have a child, pleased that their visits to an Ottawa fertility specialist had made them parents. But eventually there were enough doubts to lead to blood tests and then online genetic testing and the discovery of a half sibling. Now some 26 years after those fertility treatments, the Dixon family has filed a lawsuit, alleging the doctor who treated them used the wrong sperm—his own. In a moment Alison Motluk brings us that story. Also today, the president of the Philippines makes no apologies for his war on drugs.

SOUNDCLIP

You destroy my country, I’ll kill you. If you destroy our young children, I will kill you. That is a very correct statement.

AMT: But Rodrigo Duterte’s critics say the killings unleashed by his tough talk include innocent children. They say he's enabled vigilante an extra-judicial killings that now number into the thousands. And that's just since the summer. In an hour we will hear the critics concerns and the government's justifications. And let's just stay with leadership and politics and intrigue.

SOUNDCLIP

For the past 100 years, papal elections have been held in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. Cardinals are totally cut off from the outside world. Television, telephones, newspapers, cell phones, computers—all banned.

AMT: Author Robert Harris has spun a tale around the election of a new pope in his latest work of historical fiction. But long before he was a bestselling novelist, he was a political journalist which means that the fact within his fiction offers its own lessons in power and politics, be it pontifical or presidential. Robert Harris shares his political thoughts beyond the page in half an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Ottawa family sues fertility doctor for use of wrong sperm — his own

AMT: Well, after years of trying, Dan and Davina Dixon still didn't have a baby so they sought medical help from an Ottawa fertility specialist. For a year, the couple worked with Dr. Norman Barwin using Dan's sperm to artificially inseminate Davina. In 1990, their child Rebecca was finally born and they were overjoyed. Now, however, the family has learned Dan is not Rebecca's biological father after all. Dr. Barwin is. Just this week, lawyers in Ottawa filed a lawsuit alleging the doctor was reckless in the handling of the Dixons’ case. Journalist Alison Motluk has been following this story. This is her documentary, And That's Why Everything is Different.

DAN DIXON: Dr. Barwin was a kind, gentle, fatherly type. Davina liked him as a gynecologist and I liked him because my background his genetics. And he took me once and showed me exactly what he was doing and you know I spin this and I add that and I spin it again and I do this and that and whatever. And he showed me the tubes. They were labelled with my name and Davina's name and the date the specimen was taken. And I can’t remember what else. So I felt very comfortable.

DAVINA DIXON: He really believed in what he was doing. And you buy into that, that fuels your excitement as well, the possibility that this is going to be the person that gives you success. We had tried so long and not had success, that we didn't even realize it. All of a sudden it's like I haven't got my period. I can remember we went to the market to celebrate and then started telling people.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVINA DIXON: Just trying to see if there’s a picture of Rebecca. This is first birthday.

[Sound: Flipping photographs]

DAN DIXON: People would ask us quite often, when did you adopt Rebecca? Or family members would say, we've seen Dan but we don't remember him being dark.

DAVINA DIXON: There were clues along the way but when you don't think it's a possibility, you don't entertain those thoughts or you justify them or explain them away. I mean Rebecca does not look like us.

DAN DIXON: Rebecca is petite. Davina and I are not. She has eyes that are so dark that you cannot tell where the pupil ends and the iris starts. They are almost black. Davina and I both have blue eyes. Again, I have a degree in genetics and this is not supposed to happen. So I checked it out and there are unusual circumstances where this can happen so I ignored it. But her not being genetically ours never really came into our mind, even though maybe it should have. But it never came into our mind at all.

ALISON MOTLUK: Then there were health problems.

DAVINA DIXON: Rebecca has had low iron for years, and we decided to have her checked out and she has celiac disease. So of course, with the Google, I looked up and it isn't always hereditary but it's mostly hereditary. Dan and I don't have it in our families to the best of our knowledge.

ALISON MOTLUK: They began to wonder if Dan really was Rebecca’s biological father.

DAN DIXON: So I said well, there is a quick way we could find out. And I said well, why don't we get her blood type? Because I'm blood type AB and Davina is blood type O. So if Rebecca were an O, we would know for sure she was not ours.

DAVINA DIXON: It took us a little while to decide when should we broach it with her? Do you leave it in our will?

REBECCA DIXON: My parents scheduled a tea date with me, for me to come over to their apartment.

DAVINA DIXON: Because when do you tell somebody this?

REBECCA DIXON: My dad had been in the hospital the previous day, so when they said they had some news to share with me, I was assuming it was about my dad and his health. And then they told me that there was a possibility that my dad was not my biological father. I remember feeling a wave of shock. It's not what I was expecting that day, or ever.

DAVINA DIXON: I think she was like is this real? Like seriously? But she knows we don't joke. So there were tears. It was a fairly short visit.

ALISON MOTLUK: A blood test confirmed Rebecca could not be the biological child of Dan.

REBECCA DIXON: I think I had come to expect that that would be the case. I think it fit with not having looked like my parents and all of these questions I had had when I was growing up.

DAN DIXON: She called and said I'm type O. And then she was in tears. I was in tears because that meant for sure she was not my child. We had no idea whose child she was but she was not my child. And I just went to bed and cried.

REBECCA DIXON: When I first found out, I sort of felt disassociated with my body and my face. And so when I would look in the mirror, I felt like suddenly it wasn't my face. Features about myself that I had always liked or just always thought of as my own suddenly seemed like they might belong to someone else and I didn't know who that was.

DAVINA DIXON: We had no idea what could have gone wrong. And Dan was going over, well, this was the procedure because obviously he had a different experience when we went to Dr. Barwin. I think quite early on in the process—and I think Dan must have had thoughts over the years himself—that he thought Dr. Barwin had used his own sperm. Because he thinks Rebecca looks like Dr, Barwin.

DAN DIXON: Dr. Barwin was so careful at showing me what he did. Mistakes do happen. But he appeared to be so careful. I guess I thought it was so unlikely, that it had to be him.

REBECCA DIXON: In the first meeting we had with the lawyers, my dad actually brought it up. And at that point, I couldn't handle that discussion and I couldn't handle it there. So we didn't go any further with it in that meeting. I think the lawyers wanted to raise the possibility with me because they also seemed to think it was possible that Dr. Barwin was my biological father, we decided to go ahead and ask for a paternity test. And we were told we would have an answer by a certain date and then they weren't able to give us an answer at that date, so everything was feeling kind of stalled.

ALISON MOTLUK: Rebecca had also decided to do some online genetic testing with the company 23andMe.

REBECCA DIXON: I got my 23andMe results. There were a couple of cousins and there was one half-sibling. That person's profile was anonymous and there wasn't a way, with the way the site was set up, for me to reach out to that person. I was very struck by the idea of having a half-sibling and realizing then that there were probably more.

ALISON MOTLUK: Meanwhile, the family's lawyer had come into contact with another young woman, Kat Palmer, in Vancouver. She had also been conceived through Barwin's clinic. She had important information and might also be a half-sibling.

REBECCA DIXON: And we started emailing back and forth. Kat had tested on another site—I believe it’s Family Tree DNA—but she knew of a site where we could upload the raw data from the two different sites and then compare.

[Sound: Door knock]

ALISON MOTLUK: They matched as half-sisters in September. Full confirmation arrived last week.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hi. Guess who I'm talking to? [laughs] We just got the official DNA test back, so we are officially sisters, which is very exciting. But come in.

VOICE 2: [On phone] Okay, I'll let you go.

VOICE 1: Okay. [laughs]

KAT PALMER: This is what I wanted all along, was to find a half sibling. She's great. We have very similar giggly personalities so we get along really, really well.

KAT PALMER: It's been amazing. I've been raised as an only child and it was just never something I couldn't even contemplate—having siblings.

DAVINA DIXON: Ahh. They email and speak every day. Finding Kat has just some light to come out of the darkness. And that’s exactly what it’s been—a very dark, dirty, rotten place.

ALISON MOTLUK: The DNA test showed that Kat and Rebecca share a biological father. And Kat was confident she knew who that man was: Dr. Barwin.

KAT PALMER: My parents had picked out who they thought would be the perfect person. I knew that my donor was German and Irish and he was a cello player and he was in med school. So to get my DNA back and to see that it was Ashkenazi Jewish, this completely contradicts anything I have known about who this person may be. That's when I went to Barwin asking him to explain how this could happen. I knew there had been situations where he had mixed up samples.

SOUNDCLIP

NEWS ANCHOR: A renowned fertility doctor who inseminated three women with the wrong sperm has been suspended. Dr. Norman Barwin…

KAT PALMER: I thought it wasn't the one my parents picked, it was another anonymous donor. But never in that progression did I ever think it would be him.

ALISON MOTLUK: But Kat's aunt suggested she take a good look at Barwin.

KAT PALMER: “Have you looked at a photo of him recently?” My initial reaction when I saw his photo as an adult was this guy looks like me.

ALISON MOTLUK: Kat made an appointment to speak in person.

KAT PALMER: When I was in the meeting, I desperately, desperately wanted to ask him and I was looking at his face and trying to see if there was any resemblance. I was so confused. He told me that me wanting to know more about who my donor was was obsessive. “You're young. You're in a healthy relationship. Shouldn't that be enough for you?” Did you know? As soon as I walked into your office, did you look at me and say oh, obviously she's my biological daughter so I'm going to make sure that she doesn't want to go looking and doesn't want to ask any more questions about this.

ALISON MOTLUK: Kat's online genetic testing put her in contact with a cousin who turned out to be related to Barwin.

KAT PALMER: This cousin and I sat down and we wrote a letter basically saying I’ve linked your name to my family tree. I'm not looking for anyone to be my father. I have a great dad—I’m very clear about all that—but I would like to speak with you about this. I was expecting that he would either ignore the letter completely or respond to it but sort of deny the whole situation. He instantly responded, saying here's my number, please contact me. I asked him if he'd agree to take a paternity test which he agreed to and offered to pay for. Honestly, what I thought would happen is that we take this test and the results would come back positive but he would deny it. He didn't. He said the test was positive, that he was my biological father and continued to tell me that he had no idea how this could have happened.

SOUNDCLIP

I think she can break glass with her voice. It's interesting because Dr. Barwin's entire family is the same way—music theatre.

[Sound: Kat Palmer singing]

LYON PALMER: When Kat told me that he was the biological dad, I wanted to know what the hell actually happened. It was supposed to be a donor from a menu. What the hell happened here?

ALISON MOTLUK: Lyon Palmer is Kat's father.

LYON PALMER: I sent a letter to the doctor saying we now know that you are Kat's biological dad. That's really wrong, however, I would like to talk to you to see what exactly happened. We eventually went for coffee in the west end. The man was shaking. He was shaking like a leaf. He admitted to me and he told me that his—he used his own sperm to test out a sperm counter. That made absolutely no sense.

KAT PALMER: We emailed back and forth. Mostly I just had general questions: please tell me about your parents and your grandparents and where did they come from and what professions did they have? Are there any things medically that I should know about? You just think what a sweet old man. I feel so bad that I’m burdening him with my problems. And then you walk away and go no, you've created this problem.

REBECCA DIXON: I feel very strongly that secrets feel shameful. And one of the reasons I am relieved every time I tell someone in my life about this and why I'm relieved in a way that it is now becoming public is that it takes away that feeling of shame because there shouldn't be any shame in it.

DAVINA DIXON: And we don't need to feel guilty, embarrassed or anything. But our children need to know as much as they can know about who they are, where they came from. We're also worried that there’s a lot of other children out there that this is true of.

ALISON MOTLUK: This week, the Dixons filed a class action lawsuit against the doctor, alleging that he used the wrong sperm. In their case, his own instead of Dan's. The plaintiffs are asking that Dr. Barwin makes his DNA available so that all concerned parties can come forward and test against it. None of these allegations have been proven in court. Through his lawyer, Barwin declined to comment on the allegations. However, in emails to both Kat and her father Lyon, Barwin said that the mix-up was unintentional.

DAVINA DIXON: I felt that trust issue of going to somebody for that level of care was damaged. I was furious. I felt violated. Dan never fathered a child and Rebecca's not who she thought she was.

DAN DIXON: My world has been turned upside down and the only constant is that we have Rebecca. Everything else is just shaken and tilted and our world is different. Rebecca is our child, but she's not our child. She is, but she's not. And that's why everything is different.

REBECCA DIXON: I think we would all like to understand how this happened and why. But I'm not sure there will ever be a straight explanation for it. For me, none of this is about seeking revenge or trying to humiliate or put him in the spotlight. It really is about the truth and giving other people the opportunity to find out the truth and deal with that in whatever ways that they are able to and want to.

DAVINA DIXON: We're going to court about this, but it has nothing to do with how we feel about her. I mean there is a small part of us that is thankful to him because we got her. And she is incredible.

DAN DIXON: Dr. Barwin is a very, very kind man. Every time we saw him he was kind. Right now, I'm very angry with him. But as I have said, I could give him a big kiss or slap him across the head. I'm happy that we have Rebecca and yet, I'm angry with what he did.

DAVINA DIXON: He fathered these children. And he just had no right to do that. He had no right to do that.

AMT: We have been listening to the documentary, And That's Why Everything is Different. It was produced by Toronto freelancer Alison Motluk and The Current’s documentary editor Joan Webber. To see pictures of some of the people we just heard from in our documentary, go to our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you're joining us partway through, go to our website or go to the app to hear that story: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. The CBC News is next and then if you think the US presidential election has been a nail biter, wait till you hear about what happens behind the scenes in Rome in electing a new pope. Writer and journalist Robert Harris is my guest to talk about his new novel, Conclave. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Robert Harris goes behind the scenes of Papal politics in Conclave

Guests: Robert Harris

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has made quite a few headlines since taking the reins last summer. He's insulted US President Barack Obama and soured a longstanding relationship between those two countries. But it's his war on drugs that has human rights advocates around the world most concerned. Thousands have died and it shows no signs of easing up. We'll hear from someone whose family has been in the crosshairs. And I'll be joined by a Filipino cabinet secretary in half an hour. But first, the peculiar politics of picking a pope.

SOUNDCLIP

That is white smoke. That is so different from what we saw last night. That suggests that after just over 24 hours of deliberations, you can see the cheers, you can see the crowds. This is white smoke rising from above the Sistine Chapel. There is a new pope. There is enormous excitement in St. Peter's Square beneath us. So on the fifth ballot of voting, the Roman Catholic Church has a new pontiff.

AMT: And that new pontiff, whom the world met in March of 2013, was of course, Pope Francis. Exactly what went on inside the Sistine Chapel running up to that famous puff of white smoke will forever be a mystery. Of all the world's great corridors of power, none may be quite as secretive as the papal conclave where the new pope is elected. But now novelist Robert Harris—who knows a thing or two about intrigue and power plays—is taking us behind those closed doors in a new novel, Conclave. Throughout his career, Robert Harris has been a keen observer of politics past and present, with books including Fatherland, Ghost, Selling Hitler, An Officer and A Spy and his trilogy on Cicero. Robert Harris is with me in our Toronto studio. Hi, welcome.

ROBERT HARRIS: Thank you, Anna Maria. Lovely to be here.

AMT: You liked that. You had a little smile for that clip there.

ROBERT HARRIS: Well, it's fantastic, isn't it? I mean you know I love elections but there's no election quite like that of the pope when it's announced.

AMT: And you got deep into this in Conclave.

ROBERT HARRIS: Yeah. Twice in 2005 and then 2013 that you've just played, I watched live on television and what happens is the pope comes out onto the balcony of the new pope, of St. Peter's Square and following him are the 100 or so cardinals who've just elected him and a series of ballots. And I watched them crowd at the windows to watch the new pope appear and the faces, these old men, some cunning, some innocent looking, some worldly, some amused, some obviously disappointed, I thought I'm looking at the Roman senate here. And I think it was that connection that made me think well, it would be just wonderful to write a novel that described what had happened in the preceding two or three days.

AMT: Well, I don't want you to give too much away because there is much intrigue in your book but what's the predicament your main character finds himself in?

ROBERT HARRIS: Well, the book is told from the point of view of Cardinal Lomeli, who's a 75-year-old Italian cardinal. He's the dean of the College of Cardinals and therefore responsible for running the election. And he’s been a Vatican insider for most of his life and he's having a crisis of faith which is not unknown even among cardinals. And just before the pope dies, he actually asks to be relieved of his duties. But the book opens with the death of the pope and he has landed with having to run the election. And so it's all told from his point of view as he wrestles with his own spiritual dilemma and also has to run this extraordinary election, 118 cardinals from all over the world locked into the Vatican, literally not allowed any contact with the outside world. Their mobile phones and computers are taken off them. Even the shutters of their bedrooms welded shut. So they simply can't do anything except concentrate on this supreme act of faith and also politics.

AMT: And of course, the intrigue begins. You talk about what you saw in that window as the cardinals were watching the new pope. And you've replicated some of that. The schemers.

ROBERT HARRIS: Yeah. Yes, exactly. I mean one of them one of the most notorious schemes is indeed a Canadian.

AMT: I noticed that.

ROBERT HARRIS: This is one of the few novels that has a kind of Canadian half villain in it. I was told by cardinal that there was no way there’d ever be an American pope because the general view inside the Vatican is that America has enough power as it is. But the Canadian pope would be a different matter. And so I couldn't resist putting in a Canadian candidate. The other candidates are two Italians, one on the liberal wing of the church, one on the conservative wing of the church. A Nigerian because there's a lot of talk now that we might soon will one day get an African pope, a Canadian and then Lomeli himself starts to emerge to his horror as a contender. And then the surprise mystery cardinal turns up just as they are about to start voting. And that's the cast of characters. And we follow them through this extraordinary series of ballots that they have because to be elected pope, you have to have two-thirds of the votes and they just keep going back and back to the Sistine Chapel and balloting twice in the morning, twice in the afternoon, until eventually a candidate gets two-thirds.

AMT: And you know it doesn't escape me, the pope who dies is very Pope Francis-esque.

ROBERT HARRIS: Yeah. Well, I got a lot of help from the Vatican to my surprise and I went to the Casa Santa Marta, which is the hostel, the hotel where the cardinals are put up. It has 130 or so bedrooms. And the monsignor who’s showing me around stopped the elevator at the second floor and pointed to this door which was identical to all the others. And this is where the pope, the present pope still lives. He's never moved out of this quite humble hostel where he stayed when he was elected. And I knew I had to have the start of the novel in this hostel and indeed it's a central part of the book. And the thought that the dead pope was there, I felt that you know I had to have that and therefore I had to have a pope who was quite like Francis who had tried to take on the church establishment—the Curia, as it's called—and that he'd left the battle half fought, half won. And that's the starting point of the novel.

AMT: You do slide close to real people in your novels and in this case, the French-Canadian, there was actually a French-Canadian cardinal in the running or believed to be in the running when Pope Francis was chosen.

ROBERT HARRIS: Oh, well, I hope he doesn't sue. To be honest with you, everyone in the book is invented. There are some, there are a few obvious—you know you're bound to hit certain similarities because you know cardinals do tend to fall into these particular roles. The nearest that there is, as you point out, to an actual figure is the dead pope, who is quite similar to Francis.

AMT: Do you think Western political parties can learn anything from the way a conclave elects a pope, how they pick their leader?

ROBERT HARRIS: I came to have a lot of respect for the Catholic Church, not least this survival, I mean a 2,000-year-old institution. They've been electing popes in this way for six or seven centuries. And I think it is quite a clever way of picking a leader. I think it's quite good that they all know one another. They're all brought together so they know one another's strengths and weaknesses. You have to have a two- thirds majority which so very often the favourite doesn't go through because they have too many enemies and they tend to fall and the compromise candidate emerges, which tends to unity. It's highly secret what happens in the conclave. So any disputes are sort of left behind closed doors. And all in all, I think that you know I can see why it served the church so well.

AMT: And you are a former political reporter. You are good at getting sources. Did they stay secret? Those cardinals.

ROBERT HARRIS: Well, I got some help from the Vatican and also I did talk to a cardinal who had been involved in a conclave and it was very useful to just sort of you know sit opposite someone who'd actually been through the process. It gives you a certain confidence in what you're writing. And I sent the book to him with some trepidation when it was finished and somewhat to my surprise, he wrote back to say that he really liked it. He liked the character of Cardinal Lomeli in particular. Other parts of it he said well, I just told myself I'm only reading a novel. But he even said that he would be seeing the pope in the next couple of weeks for an hour and he planned to tell him he should read it. [laughs] I don't know whether the pope has.

AMT: That would be a nice picture, the pope with your—

ROBERT HARRIS: That's the ultimate endorsement.

AMT: I think so. You know you just mentioned what a powerful long standing institution it is and that's a recurring theme in your books, how powerful institutions protect themselves. Do you see a common modus operandi in how an institution evolves to hang on to its institutional power?

ROBERT HARRIS: Yes. I think that that is the case. I think that all bureaucracies, not just governments but corporations, the companies, they all try to find some way of survival. And a book of mine, An Officer and a Spy about the Dreyfus affair is almost the ultimate example of how to protect the institution. Even quite decent people are willing to do almost anything, go to any lengths. And in Conclave, you see quite a lot of skullduggery going on but what I try to show is that none of these are bad men necessarily. The Masters which came out in 1951, which is a strange novel. It's all about the struggle to win the mastership of a Cambridge college in the 1930s, an enclosed all male society where you really just see politics up close and personal. Personal ambition, friends betraying one another. And so this idea of something where a group of people are locked up and one of them has to emerge as the winner is almost for me pure politics. I mean that is—and I just knew that it could not simply be 118 men in the Sistine Chapel praying and then voting and then that's all there was. And of course there wasn’t. And the moment I realized I could write the novel, to answer your question is when I came across a secret diary which had been kept in the 2005 conclave. This was published in an Italian ecclesiastical magazine. And it described how on the first ballot. Cardinal Ratzinger got 47 votes. Cardinal Martini, who was the great white hope of the liberals in the Catholic Church, the Archbishop of Milan had got 10. And then this South American, this Argentinean got nine, I think it was. And when they went back to the Casa Santa Marta after the first ballot, black smoke then issues from the Sistine Chapel ceiling to share that they—as they burn the ballot papers to show they haven't reached a conclusion. When they got back to the Casa Santa Marta, the politics began. And over the dinner table, in the bedrooms of the hotel, in the corridors, even out in the courtyard where the Patriarch of Lisbon liked to smoke a cigar, all the politicking went on and when they went back into the Sistine the next morning, Martini’s vote evaporated and suddenly it was a fight between the present Pope and his predecessor. And in the end, the present Pope Francis pleaded with his supporters not to continue voting for him because the church was going to be split and all this is laid out in this secret diary by an anonymous cardinal. And I thought there is a novel. I mean there are three characters immediately: the frontrunner, the finished former favourite and this man who doesn't really want it. And there is the mechanism for telling the story.

AMT: And that's how you see things. I'm just interested in how you see the world unfold because you see it through the prism of what you can do with it in a novel, how you can take it further and look at what's going on in the real world.

ROBERT HARRIS: Yeah. For me, all my writing has to have some link with reality. I either take a real event or real people or real life ritual such as this and I try to get it as accurate as I can because in the end for me at least, fiction is about the suspension of disbelief, both for the reader and for the author. I have to really feel that this is true as I write. So I do a lot of research and for this, for Conclave, I read everything I could lay my hands on about conclaves and how they work.

AMT: And what point in your career where you were a political observer, you were actually doing the journalism, did you realize that you needed to shift into novels?

ROBERT HARRIS: Well, it came about in a strange way because I'd been at the BBC as a reporter for eight years then I went to the Observer in London as a political reporter. But I continued to write nonfiction books. And in ’83, ’84, you may remember the Hitler diaries forgery scandal and I just loved that story. And so I decided to write a nonfiction account of it which I did and as I was working on that, I read Hitler's Table Talk. The monologues that Hitler used to deliver over dinner, they were taken down by stenographers and he outlined the world as it would look if he won the war. And this was a revelation to me. And I thought this would make a fascinating book and I thought I would write a non-fiction book. And then I thought well, there were so many plans and architectural models and photographs that I thought why don't I actually write it as if it's a guidebook to a world that exists? And then I realized that if I was going to do that, I really would have to invent characters to live in the world. And it was at that point that I walked through the looking glass from writing non-fiction to fiction and I wrote Fatherland and I've never come back to be honest. Ever since then, I've found the tools of fiction for me as a writer are more effective to get at what I want to say than reporting.

AMT: And so as you watch the US election play out—

[Crosstalk]

ROBERT HARRIS: With my fingers over my eyes. [laughs]

AMT: --where it is stranger than fiction. [laughs] I'm just like, like I'd love to know what's going on in your head. Like are you taking notes or are you plotting anything or is it—

ROBERT HARRIS: Well, it's just an example that reality is unimprovable upon. I mean in most of my novels, wherever you come across anything that's unbelievable, fantastic, grotesque or bizarre, it's true and all the more boring stuff is the flight of my imagination. I mean who could come up with a character like Trump or come up with a woman like Hillary Clinton who just seems to be surrounded by these errant males? And it's just an extraordinary unfolding story. And I don't think we're done with surprises yet because clearly there is—it seems the Russian involvement in the election and there's still a good possibility for some new surprise to be sprung. And on the other, perhaps the most disturbing thing is that after the ballots have been counted and we have a winner, will that end? I mean the novels that I wrote about Cicero, the Roman Republic, the fall of the Roman Republic, elections didn't solve anything. I mean we've grown up in an era where someone is pronounced the winner, the loser graciously concedes and society goes on. That didn't happen in the Roman Republic towards the end and one starts to wonder whether it will happen in the American republic. I mean if Hillary Clinton wins, there’s clearly going to be an attempt to impeach her almost before she has taken office. And a lot of Trump supporters are violent and they're all roiled up and there's a lot of guns in American society and one, for the first time in my adult life, I feel the ground shifting under me. I've always been fascinated in the 1930s, for instance. And it has a slightly 1930s vibe at the moment, world politics, in Europe of course, with Brexit and the rise of the far right, and in America with this extraordinary election.

AMT: And so you know for someone who writes historical fiction, you're watching it unfold and like you're watching the very things that you have written about unfold in real time.

ROBERT HARRIS: It has been a curious sensation. I mean I often—during the many years it took me to write the three novels about Cicero, the 25 years of the collapse of the Roman Republic, I wondered what on earth had drawn me to this? And I could almost—

AMT: Now you're a Futurist. [laughs]

ROBERT HARRIS: Well, looking back, I can now see that in a funny way, in the air as it were, in the ether was this sense of are our institutions as solid as we think they are? I mean the Romans had had democracy for 500 years. Their form of democracy. You wouldn't have thought that it was all going to smash to pieces. And yet it did. And it just seems to me that we're living in one of those eras where technological changes outpace the ability of our institutions and our leaders and even our writers and thinkers to keep pace with it.

AMT: Well, and one theme that reappears in your books is the corrupting influence and power. Does power corrupt or are ambitious people just more prone to be corrupted by power?

ROBERT HARRIS: I think that power is corrupting. I don't take the view, that kind of house of cards view of politicians, most of whom are people like us and perhaps more so as it were, with more drive and appetite for life in a way. But I think that power, once you get it get it, to keep it demands compromises. And the whole of politics is a sort of myth. It's a myth that things will be solved. The war on terror will be won. Healthcare will be sorted out. The war on drugs will be solved. You know these are not problems which will ever be solved. But there is this kind of fake snake oil salesman patter that comes from politics that they will be. And this leads to disappointment and it leads—and you know our expectations are unrealistic in a way.

AMT: Another subtext of many of your books is tragedy. What's the connection between power and tragedy?

ROBERT HARRIS: I think that power is always lost. You struggle to gain it. You hold on to it for a brief period and then you lose it and almost invariably, to use the famous quote from Enoch Powell, “Political careers end in failure,” for such is the nature of politics and of human affairs. You know you are clawed down by ambitious rivals. You lose an election. You can't hold onto it for very long nor should you incidentally. I mean I think the great tragedies and politics have often been politicians trying to go on, past about eight years I think is about the natural lifespan of a political leader and to go beyond that normally ends only in disaster.

AMT: So the real mark of a good politician is knowing when to step away.

ROBERT HARRIS: Yes but the very qualities that lead you to want to be a leader in the first place are the very qualities—the lack of inner reflection and self-knowledge—that probably mean that you will never know that. I mean you're sort of programmed to get power and hold onto it for as long as possible. And in my experience, the novel that I wrote about the former prime minister and the ghostwriter, that relationship interests me because people in power are different in that sense. They don't stop and think about what they're doing. They just go on each day to the next thing. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to do it, I don’t think.

AMT: But of course what you underline is that they are as human as anyone else with all of the flaws and the little things that make the difference.

ROBERT HARRIS: In the Conclave, in the nature of the cardinals who are seeking power, this is the great thing about writing about that is that they all have to forswear any earthly ambition. I mean everyone who seeks to be pope has to say it's the last thing they wish to be. And that's another common characteristic in politics of course—the protestation that you only want power to do good for other people rather than for the sheer pleasure of being able to tell people what to do.

AMT: Only the ambitious survive and then the ambitious fall. [laughs]

ROBERT HARRIS: Well, it makes for good copy, that's all I can say.

AMT: It makes for wonderful reading. Robert Harris, thank you so much for coming in.

ROBERT HARRIS: A pleasure.

AMT: Robert Harris, the author of Conclave: The Power of God, The Ambition of Men. He was in our Toronto studio. Stay with us. Coming up next, we'll bring you a sneak peek at some of the programming on its way a week from today, the day after the US presidential election, including the story of Shirley Skinner, a 101-year-old voter. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Sting]

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Why 101-year-old Shirley Skinner supports Hillary Clinton

Guests: Shirley Skinner

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current. We are less than a week away from the US presidential election and history will be made either way. If Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate should win the White House, it will be a major milestone for American women. That's a fact that has not been lost on Shirley Skinner. She's been watching the election closely from her home in Schenevus, New York. Shirley Skinner was born in 1915, five years before most women in America got the right to vote. When she was five, she overheard her father bemoaning the 19th amendment that allowed that vote. And at 18, she cast her first ballot for Franklin D. Roosevelt. She says she's already voted in this presidential election for Hillary Clinton and she tells us why.

SOUNDCLIP

I’m officially 101 now. I voted by absentee ballot. I voted straight Democratic.

[Sound: Upbeat music]

I grew up in a family that both sides of the family have been long time Democrats and we always talked politics. I even ran for counsel once because they couldn't find anybody to run. But of course I got defeated. This is solid, solid Republican country. My mother was sick and that so they sent me to the barn with my father and I can remember the men talking and I remember them saying they'd heard it on the radio. It’s going to be the end of the world. Women don't know what they're doing. Women shouldn't vote. And then I couldn't wait when I got a chance to run out to the house and tell my mother who was in bed. Dad says it's going to be a terrible thing if you vote. It’s going to be end of the world almost. And my mother saying to me well, we'll see. There are other women presidents in other countries. And here we are in America, we are so backwards. It's taken us a long time to get a black man in the office. And now why not have a woman? You know when she was secretary of state, she would say human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are American rights. And I'm telling everybody this is the year of the woman and I'm voting for every candidate that’s a woman. Every one. My mother had—she could only drive the car when my father said she could. And my grandmother inherited some money but she had no control of the money, my grandfather squandered it. And when I was making money during the war, I couldn't get a credit card. And then I wanted to buy a piece of land because I'd been brought up. My father was a farmer and I loved the land. My dad took two. And he always said if you could buy a piece of land, he’ll take care of the land. So I was looking for a little place and I couldn't get a mortgage because you had to buy it in your father's name or your husband’s name. I had a husband but I was getting a divorce at that time. It was a bad marriage. So finally, a woman in the post office who heard about me, she loaned me some money so I could then get a mortgage. And look, I had friends who wanted to get jobs. A girl, when she finished school, she could only be a waitress. Well, I worked in the Post Office, little minor jobs, you work in the bank and they paid them less because men got more, much more. They're always underpaid. Everywhere that Hillary [unintelligible], she would bring up the fact that women had a right too and she always got in touch with children in other countries and other women to make contact with them. And the men, that is something the men folks wouldn’t do. They weren’t interested in women's rights or cared children. And I think women are more understanding when it comes to your problems because women listen more carefully than men. I never could tell my father he was going the wrong way on the road. He knew the way and you weren’t going to change him. And I think women will listen to you. I think this will free up women to—I don't know. I think this will open many doors that were never open before.

[Sound: Upbeat music]

AMT: That was 101-year-old voter Shirley Skinner in Schenevus, New York. Tune in the morning after the US presidential election next Wednesday, November 9^th, for analysis and reaction from women and men about the election results and what they mean for America and the world. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti.

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Philippine president's war on drugs leaves thousands dead

Guests: Phelim Kine, Peter Laviña

SOUNDCLIP

You know there is no crime at all when you threaten criminals with death. You destroy my country, I’ll kill you. And it's a legitimate thing. If you destroy our children, I will kill you. That is a very correct statement. There is nothing wrong in trying to preserve the interest of the next generation.

AMT: Well, that is the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte with a message he has repeated often since he took office last July. In his election campaign, Mr. Duterte promised a war on drugs. That is exactly what has happened. But the extent of that war on drugs is causing alarm for human rights advocates around the world. Thousands of suspected drug users and dealers have been killed both by police and armed vigilante groups. Many innocent people including children are being caught in the crossfire. One of the youngest was five-year-old Danica Mae Garcia in Dagupan City. She was killed by a masked gunman in August. I spoke with her aunt, Jelly Ace Valasquez, this week. She said the family was just sitting down to lunch when it all happened.

SOUNDCLIP

JELLY ACE VALASQUEZ: Then suddenly, two men came riding on a black motorcycle. Then they got shoot with my father but accidentally, the gunman hit my niece, Danica Mae. That is the cost of her death.

AMT: Did they come in the house to go after your father? How did they end up shooting her?

JELLY ACE VALASQUEZ: They just shoot my father. We don't know what’s their reasoning. But my father said three days before the shooting incident, he surrendered at the police station because his name was at the drug watch list.

AMT: Well, the drug watch list she's talking about is one of many that have been released by police and community leaders. Ms. Valasquez says her father is not involved with drugs and that he actually turned himself into police to try to clear his name. But many people who have appeared on those lists have become targets. Jelly Ace Valasquez has no idea who shot her father and killed her niece.

SOUNDCLIP

JELLY ACE VALASQUEZ: According to the police, they had a witness who identified the gunman. They gave us the picture of the gunman but we don't have any idea who was the gunman. We don't know him. They have a warrant for the gunman but they cannot find where the gunman is.

AMT: So they can’t find the gunman and your father is still—your father is now recovering from his injuries. How is his health after the shooting?

JELLY ACE VALASQUEZ: My father is okay but still hiding. He’s afraid.

AMT: He's afraid they'll come back and get him.

JELLY ACE VALASQUEZ: Yes. Come back and kill him or what.

AMT: And your niece, Danica Mae, she was just five years old. Your family must be so, so upset.

JELLY ACE VALASQUEZ: Yes, ma'am. We're trying to move on. We’re just thinking that maybe that's part of our life and we are just praying that Danica can have a justice of what happened to her.

AMT: Well, that's Jelly Ace Valasquez speaking to me just a few days ago. We reached her at home in Dagupan City, Philippines. Phelim Kine is the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. He travels regularly to the Philippines. He joins us from New York City today. Hi.

PHELIM KINE: Good morning.

AMT: What are you thinking as you listen to the story of five-year-old Danica Mae?

PHELIM KINE: Well, Anna Maria, the cold blooded killing of Danica Mae Garcia illustrates what is nothing less than an utter human rights catastrophe that's underway in the Philippines as part of the President Rodrigo Duterte’s abusive and ill-conceived “war on drugs” that has killed more than 5,000 people since he took office on June 30^th.

AMT: And how common then, like what's really going on in the Philippines? Who's doing all of this?

PHELIM KINE: Well, you know President Rodrigo Duterte took office on a platform promising Filipinos that he would rid the Philippines of crime, criminality and drugs within six months by whatever means necessary. And he made campaign promises such as promising to fill Manila Bay with the bodies of thousands of executed suspected criminals and he is delivering on his campaign pledges with a vengeance. And what we've seen, is we have seen President Duterte and senior members of his government incite, encourage and praise police to take action against suspected drug users and drug dealers, essentially giving them a license to kill. Let me give you an example. In just over 100 days, the Philippines police have killed almost 1,800 suspected drug users and drug dealers. Now in the first six months of this year, police killed 68 people in these anti-drug operations. There's been more than a 20 fold increase. And what would be a national emergency in any other country, this is something that the president and the senior members of his government are praising as proof of what they call the success of their anti-drug campaign. And you know what? They call some of the many child victims of this campaign, such as Danica Mae, they call them collateral damage. It's absolutely appalling.

AMT: They're not even investigating?

PHELIM KINE: There are what they call deaths under investigation but the Philippines national police is taking no obvious or measurable steps to investigate these killings. And in fact, the head of the Philippines national police has rejected calls for investigations saying that such an investigation would hurt the morale of the Philippines national police.

AMT: Okay. So the police, they have been told they can act with impunity, have they not?

PHELIM KINE: They have been given implicit and explicit assurances by the Philippines national police and by President Duterte that suspected drug users and drug dealers are fair game and they are getting that message because we've seen this huge increase in police killings of suspected drug users, drug dealers and these killings aren't being investigated. Right now in the Philippines under this war on drugs at President Duterte has launched, anybody with a gun and a grudge can kill somebody and get away with it scot free if they say or allege that this person was involved with drugs. That's what's happening.

AMT: And because you make the point that police have killed around 1,800 people, but vigilantes have killed even more.

PHELIM KINE: Yeah, that's even more alarming that we have more than 3,000 people since the beginning of July who have been killed by these unidentified gunmen. Now who are these people? Well, there’s another problem: the police aren't investigating who those people are. Such as you know when you see the fact that Danica Mae was killed by an unidentified gunman and the police aren't breaking a leg to try and find out who killed her. And we know that President Duterte formerly was a mayor of a city called Davao in southern Philippines, where we, Human Rights Watch, documented the existence of a vicious death squad that killed hundreds of “undesirables” and the death squad was organized, financed and directed by elements of his government and his police. And no one's ever been charged in this. There's never been any direct links to President Duterte. But we're seeing the same MO, the same modus operandi in terms of unidentified gunmen targeting people that the government says should be targeted.

AMT: So paint us a picture. What's it like on the streets now?

PHELIM KINE: Well, you know what the Philippines government says is going on is a war on drugs but it's more accurately to describe it as a war on the poor because the vast majority of the people who are being targeted in this campaign are some of the Philippines’ poorest, most marginal, most vulnerable citizens mostly living in urban slums. And Anna Maria, it's fair to say that in those areas, it's a state of fear because people are being killed double digits, in the double digits, every single day. And there's no sense of safety. And guess what? The police aren't the people you call when they’re shooting in the alleyway outside your house.

AMT: So how big of a drug problem is there in the Philippines? Is drug use off the charts? How does it compare with other countries?

PHELIM KINE: You know President Duterte and his government have painted this apocalyptic picture of the Philippines being in the grips of a “drug emergency.” That's absolutely false. The Philippines has a drug problem and drug consumption habits similar to that of the United Kingdom, similar to that of Australia. And the fact is that every country has problems of drugs. You know Canada has a drug problem. United States has a drug problem. You don't address the very complex problems of drugs and criminality by launching a shoot on sight campaign against suspected drug users and drug dealers. And that's exactly what this government in the Philippines is doing.

AMT: Well, is anyone speaking out? Like what about judges? They do have courts there, do they not? Are there not judges? Are there not people who actually believe in the rule of law?

PHELIM KINE: No. Anna Maria, that that state of fear that I described to you also applies to civil society organizations, to judges and what the Philippines government has done and specifically President Rodrigo Duterte, is that he has targeted the one sole courageous voice—a lawmaker, a senator by the name of Leila de Lima, who has called repeatedly for investigations into these killings and she has been victimized and vilified and essentially politically crucified by the government. And it sent a message throughout society that if you oppose President Duterte and his war on drugs, you are going to suffer for it.

AMT: Well, he was elected democratically. He actually campaigned on a mandate to rid the country of drug dealing. And as you point out, he had a similar policy in Davao where he was mayor. Does his mandate allow him to do this?

PHELIM KINE: You know you're right. The Philippines is a democratic country and he was elected democratically but he was elected with a plurality of the vote. Okay? He was elected with 38 per cent of the vote. So that means that 62 per cent of Filipinos who went to the polls voted for someone else. Now that doesn't mean that among that constituency who voted for him that he doesn't have a core of strong support because he is a very charismatic populist politician, who for many Filipinos who are frustrated with the status quo of rampant corruption, of a yawning wealth divide, that he's someone who they think can bring about change in a way that the political elites in the Philippines have consistently failed to do over the last few decades.

AMT: What is Human Rights Watch calling for then?

PHELIM KINE: Well, what we've been calling for is for the Philippines government to immediately stop this campaign of targeting alleged criminals. First thing, to launch an urgent impartial investigation into these killings. We've been hitting a brick wall in terms of those calls so you know we're expanding our advocacy and we're calling on the Philippines’ close bilateral partners and donors, for example the United States, the EU and Canada and saying look, if you are supplying and funding the Philippines police and the Philippines security forces, you have skin in this game. You might be supplying funds, training and weapons to units that are unlawfully killing Filipino citizens.

AMT: Well, in fact the US has just halted, what is it, the shipment of 26,000 assault rifles.

PHELIM KINE: Exactly. You know the state department has declined to continue with that sale and that's exactly the type of message the Philippines government needs. That hits the police where it hurts. They want those weapons. They need those weapons. And if they're not getting them, it's going to cause a rethink in Manila about this abusive war on drugs.

AMT: Is there any accountability for president Duterte and his government ministers who support him down the road, you think?

PHELIM KINE: Well, right now we have United Nations special rapporteurs on summary killings, extra-judicial killings who are about to launch an investigation in the Philippines in the coming months. Also the special prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has expressed concerns about what he sees as potential systematic state-sanctioned killings. So there are international mechanisms which can be called into play to try to bring accountability into this situation.

AMT: Systematic state-sanctioned killings. That's a pretty strong description.

PHELIM KINE: Yeah, and that's illustrative of what's going on. And Danica Mae, who you start out talking about, she is illustrative of this horrific human toll of this abusive war on drugs.

AMT: Phelim Kine, thanks for your time today.

PHELIM KINE: Thank you.

AMT: Phelim Kine is the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. He joined us from New York City. Well, one member of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s cabinet is in Canada this week. Peter Laviña is the deputy cabinet secretary of the Philippines. He is visiting the country at the invitation of a Filipino Canadian expatriate association. And he joins us from our Ottawa studio. Hello, Mr. Laviña.

PETER LAVIÑA: Hello, Anna Maria.

AMT: You've been listening to our previous guest. How do you react to what our last guest has just said?

PETER LAVIÑA: Well, it is truly unfortunate that the picture of the Human Rights Watch is not entirely correct. True, the Philippine President now, Rodrigo Duterte was elected only 38 per cent by plurality, but the latest polling of his base of support has now reached 91 per cent. There are only three per cent of Filipinos that do not agree with the policies that he has been doing in the country.

AMT: And so the policy is to kill drug users and drug dealers.

PETER LAVIÑA: That is not correct. There are legitimate police operations where these criminals are being killed. There are also other non-state armed groups just as mentioned. You have to understand the context of the Philippines. There are many vigilante groups. These are not sanctioned by the government. And the president has already clarified this is not our policy.

AMT: And yet, have there been arrests of these vigilante groups then?

PETER LAVIÑA: Yes, there are continuing investigations not only by the Philippine national police but as well as Congress. It is not correct also that there is a state of fear in the Philippines. You know the Philippines is one of the freest in terms of media. We have a very lively media in the country, social media as well. So everyone who has any complaint, they can reach out not only the media as well as the government.

AMT: Well, in fact, it is the media that does the count, Mr. Lavina. So in four months, 1,800 police killings, 3,000 at least vigilante killings. That's a lot of dead people in four months. You’re good with that? You’re good with that?

PETER LAVIÑA: You have to understand, yes, had the president not undertook this campaign, the Philippines is already sliding into becoming a narco state. It is not only the dreaded Chinese triad that is in control of the drug trade in the Philippines. The drug syndicates as far away as Mexico has already used the Philippines as a base of operation in Asia. They are now in control of many of our local police, local officials, even top national officials.

AMT: Top national officials. Have they been arrested?

PETER LAVIÑA: Yes, there are—

AMT: Have they been killed?

PETER LAVIÑA: They are being investigated. There are cases already being filed. These are continuing—

AMT: Because you know—

PETER LAVIÑA: The new government is just four months into office and the extent of the drug problem was only unravelled when the president has more access to information.

AMT: But we're talking about thousands of people who have been suspected, never arrested, never tried. Do you not have courts in your country?

PETER LAVIÑA: We do have.

AMT: You're not using them. How come you're not using them?

PETER LAVIÑA: We are. We do use. There are cases being field.

AMT: But what about those 4,000 people? Those 4,000 people never got to court.

PETER LAVIÑA: Well, these are victims of not only the vigilante war, there are wars in between drug syndicates.

AMT: It's also 1,800 police killings though.

PETER LAVIÑA: I'm not sure about the number that all those killings were done by the police.

AMT: Well, your media actually provides that, so as you point out, you have a very lively media.

PETER LAVIÑA: Yes, but many of these media are also commercial media. They have been bought by the opposition to destroy the new administration.

AMT: So I just want on the record, you are okay with these extra-judicial killings.

PETER LAVIÑA: No, we are not.

AMT: You think that’s okay.

PETER LAVIÑA: No, we are not and it is not the policy of the government.

AMT: Okay. Well, if it's not the policy of the government, I've got a clip here of the president speaking in September. Let's listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there is three million, what is it, three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have me. You know my victims, I would like to be all criminals, to finish the problem of my country.

AMT: Sounds to me like he just sanctioned it.

PETER LAVIÑA: [laughs] That was taken out of context. With the president, way of saying things is very unique. The only way you deal with the criminal syndicates is to be tough against them.

AMT: So you say that’s just—that's a way of talking? He said and I'm quoting here, “There are three million drug addicts. I'd be happy to slaughter them.”

PETER LAVIÑA: Yes. That's the way we do things in the Philippines. But this literal—it’s not what is the West is taking it as a policy.

AMT: What? So those dead people aren't dead? Like there are dead people. He says I'm happy to slaughter people. There's all these dead people and you're telling me we are misunderstanding?

PETER LAVIÑA: Yes, that’s the way he says it but that is not the policy of the government.

AMT: I don't understand because again, you have extra-judicial killings and your president says, “I'm happy to slaughter people.” So what don't you understand that we don't understand?

PETER LAVIÑA: Well, we say things differently in our own culture and in our own context. That's the way the president says things but that is not the policy of the government.

AMT: Are you not concerned that as a member of this government, you will be held accountable in the future? That you might have to answer to some kind of greater legal authority?

PETER LAVIÑA: Well, we are accountable. Yes, we are responsible and we are transparent. But the changes that we need to undertake in the country is necessary. There are many victims that are not being taken care of. The drug syndicates in the Philippines are not only using drugs, they are also raping our women and children. They are responsible for most of the kidnappings, the thefts. So we are also addressing these human wrongs, not only the human rights.

AMT: Well, you seem to be pointing out that you're saying there are crimes and yet you're not capable of actually prosecuting those crimes. The only way you're capable of dealing with it is slaughtering people.

PETER LAVIÑA: That’s not true.

AMT: Why is that? Why is that a good democratic action to take?

PETER LAVIÑA: That’s not true.

AMT: Why are you justifying the slaughter of people as opposed to going through the rule of law?

PETER LAVIÑA: No, no. We are not justifying.

AMT: But you are, sir. I mean everything you've just told me, you've just justified everything that we know is happening on the ground.

PETER LAVIÑA: No, we are not justifying. These are the real facts that are happening in the country. We understand any war that is going on, we will have casualties. There will be people as you mentioned being caught in the crossfire and Ms. Valasquez has already illustrated that the five-year-old child was accidentally hit in the crossfire. It was not meant to be that way.

AMT: And I just want to confirm again, you're good with this.

PETER LAVIÑA: No, we are concerned, yes. But we have to deal with what's happening in the country.

AMT: And you don't want to go through the courts.

PETER LAVIÑA: We do.

AMT: Well, again, sir, you've got thousands killed by vigilantes, thousands killed by police. They were suspects. They were never charged. Where are your courts? Where are your judges? Where is your rule of law?

PETER LAVIÑA: We have a rule of law and there is a judicial system. But you have to understand the breakdown of these five pillars of the judicial system, the courts, the police have already compromised by the drug syndicates.

AMT: So your judges are compromised and you're the only answer. That's your answer?

PETER LAVIÑA: No.

AMT: We have to leave it there.

PETER LAVIÑA: We are addressing the problem holistically.

AMT: Okay. Well, Mr. Laviña, we’re out of time.

PETER LAVIÑA: We understand that the drug problem is a societal problem but we have to deal with what is on the ground.

AMT: Okay. Mr. Laviña, Peter Laviña, thank you. Peter Laviña is the deputy cabinet secretary of the Philippines. He's in this country at the invitation of a Filipino-Canadian expatriate association. He has just been justifying the slaughter of Filipinos in his country. Peter Laviña, deputy cabinet secretary in the Philippines in our Ottawa studio. We have to leave it there. That's our show for today. Stay with Radio One for q. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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November 2, 2016 full episode transcript

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