Blood politics and death penalty

You know you have a problem when senators and mayors alike openly talk about their fear or concern of getting shot or assassinated. Last week, I wrote about how Lipa City mayor Maynard Sabili admitted increasing his security detail, having a bulletproof vest nearby, and riding a level 6 armored vehicle. Last Wednesday, I caught an interview of Senator JV Ejercito attending the wake of a murdered Cavite vice mayor. Senator Ejercito candidly shared his concerns for personal safety in the midst of today’s political violence.

In general not everyone is a target, but what many politicians are probably concerned with is how these murders and assassinations if not dealt with quickly and firmly, can easily become the business model of how to get rid of political rivals or other candidates for the same public office. Putting out a hit or a contract on a potential rival candidate may certainly be risky but financially cheaper than a tight race and expensive campaign. There is no doubt in my mind that such hits or assassinations will still take place come election time, but if we don’t want this to become S.O.P or the business model, the authorities need to make arrests quickly and make sure that masterminds as well as hitmen are put to jail or six feet under. It’s not a very Christian thing to say but only when people believe that there is a heavy price to pay, only then will they have second thoughts about the line: “Isang bala ka lang.”

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As determined and as ruthless as the Philippine government can be in the drug war, it is evident that drug dealers have not been discouraged or frightened enough to get out of the business. On one hand, there is just too much money to make for the drug lords, and on the other, there are millions of addicts and poverty driven pushers who’ve made petty drug dealing their livelihood. With half cooked brains and grumbling stomachs, we cannot expect people to kick the habit just because of Oplan Tokhang. That may sound sick, but it is today’s reality. In addition to all that, lawmakers in the past thought that the answer to the problem was to get tough on drug users and drug pushers. That simply made things worse as we now have thousands of users and petty drug dealers overcrowding jails and clogging up the justice system.

Ironically, while politicians and activists argue and accuse government of extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses, no one has taken the time to check or remember what our neighbors in ASEAN have done to successfully curb the drug menace. The one thing that almost all of them have is the DEATH PENALTY for drug dealers and it’s not just a law for those countries, it is both a threat and a promise they keep. Even China imposes the death penalty on drug dealers in such a matter-of-fact way by simply putting one bullet to the criminal’s head. What makes it all extremely effective is in the speed by which they all put drug dealers or mules on trial and execution. The difference in approach is that our neighbors work on “killing” the source, the real drug dealers and not the users and petty dealers.

Whether we like it or not, the death penalty is sometimes the only deterrent and final justice for heinous crimes, serious drug dealers as well as terrorists. Even the very civilized nation of Japan recently hanged seven cult leaders – “terrorists” who exposed thousands of commuters to a deadly nerve gas in a Tokyo subway. The case was unusually long by Japanese standards but that was because there were so many respondents etc. But in the end all the cult members involved paid the price by hanging.

Many people who oppose the Philippine government’s drug war often claim that only the poor are caught and suffer unjustly. They regularly say that the death penalty would be the ultimate injustice to the poor who can’t defend themselves in our justice system. I totally agree in relation to small time, petty drug users, which is why I would point to how our Asian neighbors impose the extreme penalty of death only on real and undeniable “drug dealers” of the commercial quantity. People who sell kilos or large volumes of really dangerous, highly addictive and deadly drugs such as shabu, heroin, date rape drugs. For the rest of the recreational stuff such as marijuana, hashish and party stuff jail time would be more appropriate because that is equivalent to spending time in hell by itself. All the law enforcers I’ve talked to recognize that our current laws are punishing the millions of petty pusher/users selling “sachet quantity” but not stopping the real drug lords.

I hate to bring up a past example but we did have a serious drug problem in the Philippines in the ’70s until Ferdinand Marcos had a guy named Lim Seng executed by musketry in Fort Bonifacio. That single event put a cold chill on every druggie’s spine and somehow helped slow down or deter the drug problem then. The only drawback was in the fact that Filipino politicians and authorities don’t have the sense of justice or the stomach to send any and all drug dealers, rapists or terrorists to their grave. Compassion, pity and political correctness in this area have always been our curse. There was a time when Filipinos witnessed or were conscious when someone was going to be executed in the electric chair. Radio reporters gave on the spot, step by step account of those executions up to the minute when the clock would strike the hour and city dwellers would check if their light bulbs would flicker as the electric chair sucked power from the grid. Those moments made it crystal clear that the law will punish you, even take your life if you defy it.

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