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BY HERBERT VEGO
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A comfortable life for all?
DAYS before President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his second State of the Nation Address (SONA), Malacañang announced that its theme would be “Comfortable life for all.”
After watching that SONA on TV, however, I wondered how his open-ended (no longer “three to six months”) war would evolve into “comfortable life for all.”
“The fight will not stop,” he said, “until those who deal in it understand that they have to cease, they have to stop because the alternatives are either jail or hell.”
If that threat – already said in different words in last year’s SONA – were effective, the drug lords, pushers and users who have not been extrajudicially killed yet should have “retired.”
“I will kill you” has ceased to be scary; it’s just like telling a smoker, “Stop, or lung cancer will stop you.” Another addict who craves shabu would likewise look for steady supply.
Consequently, shabu suppliers gamble their lives in pursuit of “most comfortable life.” It could be theirs on hitting the top of the hierarchy – as “drug lords” who can afford to buy “protection.” On the national level, there’s suspected drug lord Peter Lim, who paid a courtesy call to his kumpare Digong in July 2016. On the regional level, there’s Richard Prevendido of Iloilo City.
If it’s true that 7,000 Filipinos have already lost their lives in the war on drugs, what comfort would that bring their destitute dependents who cry for due process?
Duterte’s style is a deadlier but poor imitation of failed techniques done in Colombia, Mexico and Thailand.
Rather than repeat the same strategy that has only emboldened shoot-to-kill policemen, Duterte should have drawn a lesson from Thailand during the era of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who had launched a similar anti-drug operation in 2003 at the height of his popularity. After three months and 2,500 deaths, Thaksin declared “victory.” But with more “small fish” piling up dead, the Thais realized that the drug lords were even multiplying, resulting in a military coup that toppled the Thaksin rule.
The incumbent Thai prime minister and military junta head, General Prayut Chan-o-Cha, has shifted to “medical approach” in rehabilitating drug addicts with the support of rehabilitation centers run by the government, private institutions and Buddhist monks. The more addicts cured, Prayut believes, the lesser the demand for illegal drugs.
Thaksin’s fall should also stop Duterte from believing in his so-called approval rating, now said to have hit 84 percent. It is as artificial as the “alleluiahs” that trolls in the social media shout out.
For admitting that he had spent P10 million for “trolls” to promote him on social media during the campaign for the 2016 presidential election, the President confirmed a study at the University of Oxford (Oxford, United Kingdom) specifying that he had spent so much for online machinery composed of his party Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan, his campaign’s paid social media networks and volunteer groups.
The luckiest of ‘em bloggers, former sexy dancer Mocha Uson, has been rewarded with the post of assistant secretary of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), where she receives a monthly salary of P106,454, plus allowances and bonuses. Yes, that’s comfortable life for her.
Most people are not that comfortable, unfortunately. According to the Asian Development Bank, 21.6 percent of Filipinos today live below poverty level – including minimum wage earners with multiple, jobless dependents.
We are not comfortable with the government that is evolving into a dictatorship, where the Supreme Court and Congress duet “yes” to the President’s extension of martial law in Mindanao until the end of the year despite the military’s boast that Maute terrorism had shrunk to only three Marawi City barangays. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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