Benipayo, Ramces Paul B.
BSECE 5
EDITORIAL
I am against Dutertes war on Drugs
President Dutertes war on drugsa shameless, class-discriminatory state policy that
has used the poor as disposable political capital to immediately fulfill an impossible
campaign promiseis a war on human rights, a war on democratic institutions, and a
war whose destructive logic threatens, among others, to tear apart the moral and
institutional compass of Filipinos.
This war based on the Davao City model of extrajudicial killings was explicitly
promised during the election campaign and is being eagerly anticipated by the
millions who voted him to victory.
In order to meet his self-imposed deadlinestopping the trade in illegal drugs in three
to six monthsan invisible army of death squads and the all-too-visible Mafia-like
police have gone on a national rampage to show everyone that Mr. Duterte means
business.
But in this war, it is the poor who must do the dying. Without recourse to lawyers,
without media savvy, without the mobilization of the national democratic Left now
cozy with Mr. Duterte, without the sympathy of the upper classes, without the stronger
intercession of the Catholic Church, without the humanity snatched from them by the
simplistic demonization of the drug problem, and without the resources to fight the
police, many of whom, by the admission of the police chief himself, were their
protectors, hundreds of small-time pushers and users have been reduced to body bags,
packing tape, and torn cardboard signs. Their corpses are the showcase of the new
murderous power that now calls the shots for the state.
The publics strong support for these extrajudicial killings is partly borne by its
frustration at seeing the ordeal that crime victims and their families undergo to extract
justice from the flawed criminal justice system. But ironically, the publics embrace of
Mr. Dutertes summary justice, where petty drug pushers have become both cipher
and scapegoat for the level of criminality in this country, exchanges one injustice for
another, and one set of families for another; it also seriously undercuts key
institutional reforms needed by our laws, police, courts, prisons, local governments,
and support services to make the criminal justice system more effective and more just.
An aspect of this dilemma is illustrated in the case of the police, the states allimportant frontline service for combating crime. Because of the combination of close
contact with criminals and of the states coercive power that they wield, the police are
prone to similar regulatory capture problems (e.g., corruption, predatory behavior, and
collusion with criminals) as other regulatory institutions of the state. Hence, to make
them more effectively assume their crime-fighting functions, the police need similar
institutional design reforms (e.g., professionalization, capacity-building, transparency,
accountability, and rule of law measures).
But the police are unique because their coercive power can be physical and even
lethal. This problem is salient in countries like the Philippines that went through
democratic transitions from authoritarian regimes, where the police were part of the
repressive apparatus that preyed on their own citizens, arbitrarily arresting, routinely
torturing, and summarily executing them. Thus, there is need for democratic
policing reforms where the police are retrained to respect human rights and to be
accountable to democratic institutions, such as legislative and constitutional bodies, as
well as the communities they serve.
The resurgence of extrajudicial killings by the police under Mr. Duterte, at a scale not
seen since the Marcos dictatorship, has rolled back the limited gains of democratic
policing since Edsa I. Following the rhetoric of the President, the police now boldly
speak of human rights as if these were another enemy to be eliminated, and of
congressional inquiries on police abuse as harassment of police operations.
The same lethal shortcuts in the drug war have resulted in the deinstitutionalization of
the police in key aspects. Mr. Dutertes constant exhortations to the police to ignore
Congress and the Commission on Human Rights, his repeated assurances that he will
protect them from these institutions, even promising to pardon them if convicted by
the courts because of his drug war, and his carrot of doubling police salaries have
veered dangerously close to the repersonalization of the police force akin to an
authoritarian regime. In this drug war, they have become his quasiprivate army that is
accountable only to him and his minions.
Critics have correctly pointed out the incongruity of Mr. Dutertes hardline approach
to illegal drugs, citing the experience of other countries that tried ironfisted
approaches and that have realized their folly and shifted to holistic, humane
approaches. The latter have been more successful in lowering crime rates associated
with drug addiction and, equally important, are less injurious to human rights and
democratic institutions.
But in the final analysis, the drug war is not really about winning the war on drugs but
about controlling the Filipinos political soul through it. This strategy relies on the
bleak argument that the country desperately needs Mr. Duterte and his unorthodox
methods more than its democratic institutions and its human rights, to save it from the
supposed existential threat of narco-politics. The constant spectacle of bodies in the
streets is but a necessary confirmation and visual reminder of this argument that was
first brewed during his election campaign.
