The firefighters

When the late Rafael Salas became the first head of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) in 1969, among his young recruits was Cecile Joaquin.

Cecile was still working in New York in what was renamed the UN Population Fund when she met a Filipino lawyer some years later. The lawyer, Perfecto Yasay Jr., traveled the world after being named vice president of the international YMCA when he was just in his early 20s. Romance bloomed between the two, which led to marriage.

During the Ramos administration, Yasay was named chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission while Cecile headed the Population Commission. A common quip about the couple was that Yasay controlled the SEC while his wife controlled the sex.

The pair never forgot the international environment that brought them together. Now the nation’s top diplomat, Yasay would not say if their jaws dropped when President Duterte warned that the Philippines would withdraw from the UN amid criticism of the drug-related killings. But Yasay stressed that the Philippines did not intend to leave the UN, of which the country is a founding member.

Instead Yasay told Asian journalists the other day that the President was merely “frustrated” with the UN. Among the frustrations and “disappointments,” Yasay told participants in the Japan-ASEAN Media Forum in Manila, was that the UN simply paid “lip service” to its avowed commitment to fight the drug menace. And the fight is often stymied, Yasay told us, by those defending the rights of drug dealers.

While the Duterte administration understood the UN’s role in keeping the peace and balancing conflicting interests, Yasay said people must also express their frustration over the lack of progress in the world body’s campaign against illegal drugs.

President Rody is fulminating against the UN’s condemnation of the drug-related deaths in the Philippines, now approaching 2,000. Yasay said the President “stands firm against extrajudicial killings… he’s very firm on this.”

There is also no legal basis, Yasay said, to hale his boss before a UN tribunal for crimes against humanity. This is merely opposition “propaganda” with “malicious and unfounded basis,” Yasay told over 20 senior journalists from Southeast Asia, Japan, China and India who participated in the media forum sponsored by the Japan Foundation Asia Center. The forum at the Shangri-La EDSA ended yesterday.

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As we know, Yasay’s principal had a more succinct comment on crimes against humanity: drug suspects aren’t human.

Yasay, one of the officials who find themselves regularly putting out fires set off by Dirty Rody, was not asked for comment on that. But the foreign affairs chief, like another “firefighter” of the administration, Communications Secretary Martin Andanar, seems to have gotten used to his role. Yasay gamely fielded questions on foreign policy throughout a two-hour dinner, just like Andanar did over a working lunch the other day on a wide range of issues, with no answer off the record or on background.

Fielding questions from us probably prepped them for Dirty Rody’s first foreign trip as president – to Brunei and then Laos for his first ASEAN summit, and then on to Jakarta where he and Indonesian President Joko Widodo may exchange notes on their support for capital punishment and a tough stance on drugs. It’s uncertain if President Rody will plead with “Jokowi” for the life of Mary Jane Veloso, the Filipina migrant worker who remains on death row in Indonesia for heroin trafficking.

Yasay pointed out to us that not a single ASEAN member has issued a statement condemning the Philippines’ relentless drug war. But then this region is not known for adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Dirty Rody isn’t the first ASEAN leader to launch a bloody war on drugs in the recent past. About 3,000 drug suspects were killed in Thailand in three months before the government of Thaksin Shinawatra eased up on the campaign amid international condemnation. Myanmar, part of the opium-producing Golden Triangle together with Laos and Thailand, is said to be interested in duplicating the harsh Duterte campaign against drug traffickers.

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Both Yasay and Andanar give the polite versions of Dirty Rody’s rationales for the brutal drug war.

The drug menace, Andanar told the media forum, has become “a pandemic” – an extraordinary problem calling for extraordinary solutions.

He said the government has identified three major concerns of the masses: shelter, food and safety. The first two are being addressed, and “clearly what is lacking is security.” The crime rate was down 40 percent last month, he said, compared to July 2015.

Dirty Rody is simply doing what voters expect him to do, both officials stressed; he had warned of a bloody war on drugs during the campaign, and he won by a landslide.

When someone pointed out that Duterte’s harsh statements were damaging the country, Andanar urged the foreign media to look at the other policies of the government.

A journalist asked: why doesn’t someone try to “control” Dirty Rody? “You cannot change the President,” Andanar replied.

Andanar, a former news anchor himself, tossed to the foreign journalists a favorite question of the President: given a choice between protecting 700,000 families and over 100 million other people, who would you save? None of the forum participants offered to comment.

“Our President is now the most popular president in the world,” Andanar told the forum, apparently referring to Duterte’s 92 percent national trust ratings, and citing comparisons with Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew.

Asked when the vicious drug war might stop, Andanar replied, “Until our streets are given back to our children.”

Even before that happens, he invited the critical foreign media to go around the country and see for themselves the impact of the drug war.

As for the presidential mouth that needs washing with soap, Andanar commented, “The President speaks his own mind. He got to where he is because he’s a tactician.”

Can the foul mouth be tempered? “You cannot manage the President,” Andanar replied.