Dangerous tendencies

The war against prohibited drugs is indeed necessary for our safety and welfare as well as that of our children and the future generation. President Rodrigo R. Duterte must really be supported and commended for focusing on this problem. He is the only President so far who has given priority and attention to this menace that is bringing so much harm to the Filipinos. Time and again he has vowed that “patayin ko ang droga pati na ang tao.” His resoluteness and single minded determination to eliminate this problem must indeed be commended and appreciated.

He seems so aware of the many evils caused on our society by these dangerous substances as to impel him to turn his ire and hurl invectives at any person or groups and organizations both here and abroad who seem to be obstructing and opposing him in this fight. His recent outburst is against the European Parliament which criticized him for the incessant rising of the death toll on his war against illegal drugs where he once more used the F-word and pointed a dirty finger at the European Union.

Duterte’s stance and tactics in this war has been criticized and defended. Whether he is right or not, current happenings in our country do not really look so good. The investigations in Congress, both in the upper and lower house in connection with the on-going drug war have been tainted with politics. Apparently members of Congress are no longer searching for the truth about the alleged extra-judicial killings (EJKs) of drug suspects and determining whether these are in accordance with the rule of law that protects human life and the citizens’ right to due process under the basic principle that “everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.”

In the Upper House, the chairman of the committee on justice Leila de Lima has been ousted as panel chair after she presented a surprise witness, Edgar Matobato, who is allegedly a member and a self-confessed “executioner” in the Davao Death Squad (DDS) supposedly created by Duterte when he was Mayor of Davao City. The questions propounded by the Senators on Matobato clearly indicate that they are not trying to find out the truth of his revelations about the EJKs supposedly undertaken in Davao City during Duterte’s term which are quite similar to the EJK’s now being conducted all over the country. Obviously, these Senators led by Alan Peter Cayetano only wanted to show that Matobato was brought to the investigation in order to destroy Duterte’s image and destabilize his administration. These Pro Duterte Senators were trying to show that De Lima initiated and utilized the investigation in the Senate merely as a tool to get back at Duterte who has repeatedly exposed De Lima’s immoral affair with her driver and her drug connection with the convicted inmates at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).

Thus in the lower house, our Congressmen have also started the investigation on De Lima’s involvement in protecting convicted drug lords now serving sentence in the NBP. Convicted criminals and drug lords have been used as witnesses during the investigation to show that drug lords were able to freely conduct their drug trafficking even inside NBP when De Lima was the Secretary of the Department of Justice which controls and supervises the NBP. As payoffs, these witnesses revealed that De Lima received millions of pesos from these convicts particularly to finance her campaign when she ran for Senator in the last election.

It now appears that Congress is being used as a venue for the on-going feud between Duterte and De Lima in connection with the drug war even if it is supposed to be simply conducting investigations in aid of legislation. And more saddening and disgusting in these investigations is that the witnesses used as resource persons are self-confessed killer and convicted criminals whose credibility are completely shattered by their criminal activities. How Congress can enact the appropriate laws using these resource persons is really beyond the stretch of any kind of imagination. Obviously these investigations are merely tools used by the main protagonists embroiled in the war on drugs. Whether or not Congress can craft laws that will prevent extrajudicial killings and/or solving the drug problem and the involvement of some government officials in the proliferation of the drug business in this country remains a big question mark.

But the more serious consequences in the on-going drug war is the hatred and division among our countrymen now. In fact the fight between Duterte and De Lima has become too personal. Invectives and insulting words are being used especially in social media by the “Diehard Duterte Supporters” (another kind of DDS) against those who are opposing and attacking their Tatay Digong.” Archbishop Soc Villegas, the president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippine correctly observe that: “we are now a nation wounded and torn by socio-cultural and political issues divided by opposing, bickering, quarreling and even hating factions.” Hopefully, Tatay Digong will realize that these are among the harmful effects of his single minded determination to fight criminality and the drug menace in our country. He should start looking into and initiate the proper steps to correct the current harmful situation.

Initially, he should not set any deadline to end the war. In an attempt to meet the deadline in solving the drug problem, there will always be a dangerous tendency to rush everything. And one of the dangers here is precisely the EJKs. The rising death toll now happening in this war may be averted if no deadline is set. There is even no need to extend it for another six months. After all he has six years within which to accomplish his purpose. And with this in mind he may be able to see more clearly that the “end does not justify the means,” and that “two wrongs do not a right make.”

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