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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Thursday, January 5, 2017
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WITHOUT batting an eyelash on a TV interview, President Rodrigo Duterte lamented the “collateral damage” – referring to people wounded or killed in the crossfire – arising from his war on drugs, but justified the same “in the best interest of my country.”
I wished he had not said that. How could the President wax so apathetic to the plight of innocent victims of his drive to annihilate illegal drug pushers and users? In time, the conscience-stricken others who still admire Duterte would also shake their heads in disagreement. Why has “kill or be killed” become the guideline that today’s law enforcers hew to?
If it’s true that most of 60,000 fatalities in the drug war were mere suspects who had not passed through due process, imagine the hundreds of thousands of their children going hungry due to loss of family breadwinner.
It’s a complete reversal of what the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) used to propagate: “Jail the pusher; save the user.” That motto made sense simply because while drug dealing is a crime under the law, drug addiction is not. It’s just like cigarette and alcohol addictions that are not beyond quitting.
The war on drugs has polarized Christian politicians. It looks like the majority of them in Congress have forgotten the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” in their earnest desire to revive the death penalty law.
They must be joking. Who needs that law when the day-to-day extra-judicial killings no longer stir public indignation? When a composite armed squad could walk into jail and shoot in his cell a municipal mayor who happened to be a father of a suspected drug lord, invoking self-defense? When the President shrugs that crime off, saying, “I believe in the police version”?
Alas, a telephone survey made by Manila-based radio station DzRH showed all respondents, including “Dutertards,” disbelieving the police version.
Supposing – repeat, just supposing – certain followers of the President recover from an illusion and now see him as a threat to democracy who has to be stopped in his tracks?
That question reminds us of Shakespeare’s famous play Julius Caesar, specifically the scene where Cassius, a Roman nobleman, said to his friend Brutus, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.” Cassius was persuading Brutus to kill Caesar in order to stop him from becoming a monarch, thinking it was in the best interest of their country. He was arguing that it was not fate but their lowly status that was forcing them to be blind followers.
Back to base, fear of Duterte could be positive if we follow the line of Health secretary Pauline Ubial in relation to the reduction of firecrackers exploded nationwide during the celebration of New Year’s eve. It is no secret that while he was mayor of Davao City, Duterte had successfully imposed ban on New Year explosions thereat.
But we have yet to see the President succeed in banning the entry of shabu from China despite his earlier assertion that most of the illegal drugs in the Philippines originated from China; and that many Chinese had been arrested for smuggling drugs into the country.
“Where is the big fish? If you want them, go to China. Look for them there,” Duterte had told soldiers and police during a visit to a military camp.
China appeased the President with the visit of Chinese ambassador Zhao Jianhua to Malacañang last Dec. 19. There he relayed China’s offer of a $14.4-million grant and a $500-million soft loan as assistance for the government’s war on drugs.
Then there’s a China-based businessman who funded a 10,000-bed rehabilitation center in Mount Arayat. If that’s a tacit admission that they had somehow caused the problem, is that in the best interest of our country? Or an insult added to injury?/PN
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