Unleashed

Corazon Aquino unleashed the freedom fighter in the Pinoy. Fidel Ramos unleashed the team spirit.

Rodrigo Duterte is unleashing… our inner homicidal maniac?

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I can’t help wondering if this “killing time” under Dirty Rody emboldened Army reservist Von Tanto to shoot that biker with whom he had a vehicular altercation Monday night.

CCTV footage showed Tanto not just shooting to kill rather than wound, but finishing off Mark Vincent Geralde as the biker lay dying on the pavement. A stray bullet apparently hit and critically wounded a teenage girl standing in front of her house nearby.

Lethal road rage run-ins are not unusual in this country. But in this age of CCTV and high-resolution smartphone cameras, one has to be confident of getting away with murder to do what Tanto is accused of doing in Manila’s Quiapo district, which is crowded and busy even at night.

Even if the CCTV footage showed Tanto getting whupped and held in a headlock by Geralde, someone who fears he might get caught and suffer “retribution” would think twice before aiming a loaded gun at a foe’s head and then pulling the trigger. 

Since Tanto’s car still has no license plates (probably stuck, like a lot of other plates, at the Land Transportation Office), did he think witnesses would fail to ID his car, and Geralde’s death would be written off as just another vigilante killing? 

The suspect handles a gun like a shooting aficionado, which has raised the question: is he one of the vigilantes responsible for several of the unexplained killings in the past weeks in Manila?

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Filipinos desperate for swift justice and frustrated over the weakness of the criminal justice system are looking the other way if not cheering outright the “neutralization” of drug suspects – or at least people described by police as drug suspects.

People don’t even wonder why drug suspects in this killing season have their hands cuffed in front of them rather than behind their back, which is what sensible cops do if they want to avoid having suspects grab police guns and resisting arrest.

In the past weeks in our newsroom, we have been keeping track of the daily body count in this war on drugs and crime. The count includes both the drug suspects killed in supposed police encounters or while trying to escape as well as victims of summary executions whose bodies bear placards declaring they are drug pushers.

Last Wednesday the death toll was 17 in Luzon alone, plus two in Negros. Yesterday it was 14 in Luzon. In previous days the body count ranged from 10 to 12 outside Metro Manila. Since May 10 when it became clear that Rodrigo Duterte had won the presidency, the drug war must have claimed nearly 300 casualties.

If 300 Filipinos were killed in a single incident – whether a natural calamity or a ship sinking or armed conflict – we would declare a period of national mourning. If it resulted from an armed encounter, it would be called a massacre and there would be strong calls for justice.

Instead here we are, getting inured to 10, 12 people being shot dead in one day, seeing the numbers merely as statistics rather than a human toll.

 We are jolted by the violence only when there’s video footage or photograph of the killing – as in the case of Tanto and Geralde. Or that woman who wept as she hugged her slain partner. The man, emaciated by drugs and poverty, was a drug user but not a pusher, the woman wailed. How did bystanders react to the killing? Photos showed a large crowd surrounding the woman and the victim, their phone cameras clicking away.

 A foreign diplomat expressed to me his appalled disbelief at such a brazen invasion of privacy in a moment of deep personal grief. Such incidents, unfortunately, are rapidly becoming the new normal in our country under Dirty Rody.

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 With President Duterte in office for less than a month, I guess the international community thinks it’s too early for criticism or even an expression of concern.

 Which begs the question: when is a good time to voice concern? I know there are diplomats who are pondering precisely this issue. Especially because if we Filipinos ourselves aren’t protesting, why should they?

 There have been many moments in world history when the worst atrocities were committed because ordinary people looked the other way and did nothing to stop them. German-born Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt, writing about the trial in Jerusalem of Nazi commander Adolf Eichmann for the Holocaust, famously coined the phrase “the banality of evil” – the perpetration of ghastly crimes by normal, ordinary people who believe they are just following orders and doing a job, with no thought about the consequences. 

The United Nations supports the idea that the international community has “a responsibility to protect” people from crimes committed by the state. Bernard Kouchner, cofounder of Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors Without Borders who served as French foreign minister, espoused the idea of “the right to interfere” when governments behave as if they can do anything with their citizens.

 Foreign observers have also told me that if a country commits to the international community that it is abolishing the death penalty – which is what Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did in behalf of the Philippines during her presidency – that country is expected to be bound by the commitment and can no longer get out.  

A common Pinoy reaction to that is we don’t even need to revive the death penalty anyway when people are getting killed literally by the dozen all over the country. But I guess President Rody believes not all troublemakers can be shot dead outright. Others, such as corrupt public officials, may have to be hanged in public (twice, to make sure they’re dead) to make sure everyone understands that in this country, if you break the law, there will be hell to pay. There will be retribution, meaning you may end up not just dead but double dead.

I know sane, normal, ordinary Filipinos who are actually looking forward to the double hanging. Seriously.

 A leader should unleash the best in every Filipino. Instead what we’re seeing is the worst in us unleashed. The failure of the criminal justice system has made the killings enjoy mass support. But it’s a humanitarian abyss from which we may never be able to crawl back up.