The adherence to the rule of law of President Rodrigo Duterte or his partiality to the rule of the gun will be tested and confirmed by his decision to create or not an independent fact-finding commission of retired jurists to investigate the unmitigated incidents of violence and deaths connected with the administration’s war on illegal drugs.

The President’s refusal or failure to form the fact-finding commission is a virtual admission of his approval of the summary killings with collateral damage even to innocent children and his order to shoot human rights advocates who protest the extra-judicial executions of drug suspects.

Appeals from all sectors, including the church hierarchy, to stop the summary killings have been to no avail.

Legislative inquiries on the killings without due process and in violation of human rights have not prevented the mounting toll of dead victims.

Not even memorial rallies for the hapless victims could temporize the killings orchestrated by the police.

The immediate creation of an impartial fact-finding commission may be the answer to halt the escalating slayings of drug suspects.

In the midst of accusations that he was the mastermind of Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos created the Agrava Commission to investigate the assassination.

Former President Gloria Arroyo formed the Feliciano Commission to look into the grievances against her by the Oakwood mutineers and she also formed the Melo Commission to investigate the reported political killings and summary executions during her term.

President Duterte should do no less by creating an independent commission to determine the causes, motives and possible rewards for the extrajudicial killings and recommend the prosecution of the culprits.

EDCEL C. LAGMAN