What’s tricky about the war on drugs that Pres. Rody Duterte has delivered as promised to the Filipino people is that each death can be either due to the usual nanlaban narrative or some other totally unrelated reason ranging from political vendetta to love-triangle marital infidelity, or from silencing of critics to failure to settle debts.
The war on drugs appears to now be an all-sweeping umbrella term for speedy justice and the general cleansing of Philippine society of scumbags. Duterte has legalized pulling the trigger by police officers in the line of duty on the basis of the slightest nebulous feeling of a threat to their lives or limbs/fingers. So if an arresting officer felt that the subject at hand looked like he had a gun from how his eyeballs turned, it’s over for the guy.
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Traditional rules of engagement no longer apply. If your arm just twitches in the wrong direction during a Tokhang operation to make uniformed public servants have even the slightest thought you were pulling out a water gun (when in fact you were only about to scratch your nervous balls), you are dead meat.
So are Filipinos still in favor of this type of clean-up and speedy justice? Well, Duterte’s ever high approval ratings are all you need as a sign of validation.
What the UN-HRC can’t see is that Filipinos WANT this kind of war on drugs, and that there isn’t any real need to save Filipinos from it. The entire picture of the UN stepping in to investigate the killings is like a well-groomed horse trying to save a carabao from infectious diseases by attempting to pull it out of the mud hole it’s happily wallowing in.
Call it good intentions on the UN side, but the general Filipino public with their resounding “No Thanks” is simply too desensitized to these lowlife flies falling all around to even care about asking for external help. Filipinos have now embraced the fact that this war on drugs (like Eat Bulaga) is now a part of the Pinoy reality and is here to stay.
You will just hear of a neighbor getting 2 bullet shots to the chest by not-even-hooded assailants or the police; and all is just business as usual for everyone in the community. People will just dismiss it to must have happened for a valid reason. Besides nobody gets shot for nothing these days. Even journalists have grown tired of showing off these gruesome scenes as the more they highlight them, the more public shock and empathy wane the way too much of Andok’s special roasted chicken can end up unappealing if placed on the dinner table too often.
Even with the hordes of lawyers Philippine universities produce, there are just not enough to process all the criminal and legal cases filed in courts on a daily basis. So when another “shit happens” collateral damage tragedy occurs, don’t even bother to file the case in court.
There are bigger chances of getting settlement on a civil/barangay case demanding compensation from a neighbor for cutting down your guava tree than for these “killings under investigation” seeing the light of day in court, much more finding closure through the turtle-paced criminal justice process. Like a living adapting organic creature, Philippine society needs a Duterte to bring into the country’s immunity system a new mechanism to cope up with neck deep criminality and unwanted elements of society.
It may not be the ideal justice we want that abides by the general rule book of civilized humans, but it works and serves the purpose for now (likely even fitting pretty well into story line of the bigger Karmic Cinematic Universe). Let’s just hope that when all the cleaning up is done, those who did the necessary-evil dirty work will be content to use Nintendo or Xbox consoles to vent their itching trigger-happy urges.
Why the war on drugs works effectively is quite simple from a logical perspective. Involvement in drugs is just a symptom and not the disease itself. If you happen to be an addict, you are also most likely dysfunctional enough to be involved in criminal activity or too messed up to be a good parent or responsible student. Therefore narcotics is one of the best indicators of one’s lowlife “sub-human” status – thereby giving junkies top priority for elimination in Philippine society, which has more than enough warm bodies to take their place in EDSA’s already congested “virtual parking” lanes.
With the world population nearing 8 billion (in just a few decades), do you really think the demise of a lowly Pinoy alleged addict wearing a sando and tsinelas found lying on an dark iskinita will even matter anymore? As economic laws dictate, the greater the quantity on the open market the lower the selling price/value.
This brings us to the topic of how we can add more value per head in Filipino society. Raising up an army of young talented makers, code warriors, and robotics engineers might just do the trick. Coming soon at a foggy city near you…
Zealous revolutionary advocate of bringing back common sense for the common good in a land of dysfunctional and delusional zombies.
The United Nation investigation on the Extra Judicial Killings on the War on Drug, is just another political tactic of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis, to remove Pres. Duterte, and replace him, with the fake Vice Pres. Lugaw Robredo.
They lost the 2018 election; their “otso diretso candidates”, are now swimming in the “septic tank”, after they were “flushed” by the Filipino voters into the “inodoro”. So time is running out for them. There must be way way to do another EDSA . So, this UN investigation, might do the trick…
The War on Drug, can be nasty and vicious. The Philippines is turning to another Mexico, where the Mexican War on Drug; made the country , under the control of very rich drug dealers. The Mexican politicians, are mostly under the power of these drug dealers….The Mexican Police is too corrupt to perform their duties, that the Mexican Army, has taken over to do the Mexican Police duties.
It is good that the drug dealer and nymphomaniac, Leila de Lima, and her amorous lover, Dayan are now in jail. And the Bilibid National Prison, as their command center is now a true prison.
Until, we put death penalty, on all drug dealing cases…this War on Drug will never be won !
Okay… take my words with a gain of salt if you want.
But the War on Drugs isn’t as bloody as the media makes it out to be. It isn’t ignoring due process as much as the media makes it to be.
I have friends in the Public Attorneys office. They deal with dozens of drug-related cases a week. And from what they say, the people connected with drugs are, most often than not, able to dodge prosecution because of either strong connections or they just have one hell of a lawyer who gets them out because of some stupid technicality (e.g. the public attorney in charge of the case was not able to fill up the necessary paper works on time).
You can see the numbers if you try hard enough. Go to the Public Attorney’s office, I encourage you.
As much as they want to catch the bigger fishes, it’s proving to be more difficult especially what with the opposition, the media, and foreign parties drilling down on them like they’re some sort of opportunistic and evil entity.
The number of drug personalities that were killed is just a very small fraction of the number that surrendered, were charged, or were convicted.
That’s what the UN people need to do, go to PAOs.
The role of the United Nations is to set the mental clocks of the world leaders from past problems to the present opportunities and from local power mindset to global welfare mindset.
Pilipino’s drug addiction problem mostly stems form vices(mga bisyo) and not by medication(rarely), it is mostly the poor emulating the rich to look cool like a big shot but they can’t afford the habit so they steal and extort, they go out into the street and make big scene and become an annoyance and then become a burden to society.
If you are taking drug, it is either you are rich or you are sick, if you are sick then you should be staying in your room where someone is watching you, if you go outside and you are UID there’s no guarantee it’ll be good for your health.