Kristina Conti and the dangerous elegance of legal insurgency

Editor’s Note: The following is a commentary from the Facebook page, ‘OPTIC Politics’ that appeared last April 13, 2025 and which we are reprinting due to its relevance to our current situation.

SHE speaks in English. She wears the mask of justice. But make no mistake: Attorney Kristina Conti is not just wrong—she is strategically dangerous.

In her recent public remarks, Conti, a lawyer affiliated with the ‘National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers’ (NUPL), declared that Duterte’s anti-drug war was nothing short of a “massacre of the poor” and that the Philippine passport is “only for the rich” (The NUPL is accused of being among the front organizations of the Communist Party of the Philippines, a designated terrorist organization here and abroad—Editor).

These statements, while dressed in the rhetoric of advocacy, are far from benign. They are ideologically loaded, intellectually dishonest, and tactically subversive.

This is not critique. This is legal insurgency, masquerading as human rights work.

1. When Law Becomes a Weapon Not a Shield

Conti, who currently assists counsel in the International Criminal Court, operates under the illusion of neutrality.

Yet her record reveals a clear pattern: she targets state security forces, delegitimizes police operations, and actively pushes narratives that fit the insurgent-leftist model of the Philippines being a failed, oppressive state.

This is not new. It is classic “lawfare”—the use of legal mechanisms and international institutions not to seek justice, but to paralyze government function, demoralize law enforcers, and advance an ideological war by other means.

1. The ‘Massacre of the Poor’ Lie

Let’s unpack the phrase “massacre of the poor.” This is an emotionally loaded, rhetorically effective phrase—but it is not grounded in nuance, data, or context.

What Conti fails to mention is that the same “poor” were the ones most ravaged by the drug epidemic. It is in the poorest barangays that young children were recruited as runners, where mothers cried over sons consumed by shabu, where communities lived under fear of street-level drug lords.

Was the (anti-drug) campaign perfect? No. But to reduce a nationwide enforcement operation, mandated by law and carried out against criminal syndicates, into a blanket accusation of genocide is an intellectual insult and an affront to the victims of the drug menace.

By vilifying the state and sanitizing the criminal element, Conti ends up defending the destroyers of poor communities, while branding the forces who intervened as murderers. That is moral inversion at its most grotesque.

III. The Passport Myth and the Weaponization of Class

Conti’s claim that “the Philippine passport is only for the rich” is not only misleading—it’s deliberately divisive. This is not a critique of bureaucratic inefficiency. This is incendiary class warfare dressed up as policy criticism.

The passport system is open to all qualified citizens. Application fees, while a burden to some, are not wealth-exclusive.

Her claim is meant to inflame resentment, not encourage reform. She offers no proposal, no constructive dialogue—only discontent, distilled and weaponized.

This kind of narrative has one objective: to pit the Filipino against the Filipino, to turn every national institution into an imagined enemy of the people. It is the language of insurgency, not advocacy.

1. The Hague: Her Battlefield, Not Our Court

Conti’s current post at the ICC might impress the uninformed. But it is imperative to ask: Whose justice is she really carrying?

Why is a Filipino lawyer more concerned about prosecuting her own country before foreign tribunals, instead of reinforcing national legal mechanisms?

Why is she silent about the thousands of deaths caused by the CPP-NPA-NDF? Where is her legal sympathy for the soldiers, police officers, and civilians killed in ambushes, bombings, and assassinations by leftist armed groups?

Because the narrative only goes one way: vilify the state, glorify the resistance.

1. The Real Strategy: Legally Crippling the Republic

This is not about Duterte. This is about discrediting state authority in the eyes of the people, using the language of law to dismantle order, and manipulating foreign sympathy to undermine local sovereignty.

Let’s be brutally honest: Conti is part of a broader ideological campaign that doesn’t want to fix the system—it wants to burn it down and replace it with a vision rooted in the radical left’s dream of revolution.

The legal field has always been sacred ground in democratic societies. But when lawyers become political weapons—when truth becomes secondary to narrative—we must resist. Not with fear. Not with censorship. But with cold, critical exposure.

Call It What It Is

Conti’s work is not human rights advocacy. It is ideological insurgency in legal robes. It is the subtle art of subversion, layered in well-rehearsed outrage, designed to weaken the Republic’s resolve, and to erase the difference between criminals and enforcers, justice and vengeance, truth and manipulation.

We are not obliged to remain silent when lies are spoken in legalese. We are not bound to respect every narrative wrapped in the flag of advocacy. And we are certainly not blind to those who aim to dismantle the Republic from within.

It is time we call this narrative by its real name: radical propaganda, masked as justice.