Strong rule without martial law; The wisdom of age

This is classic Duterte. He is not bothered by name or words if it blocks action to keep peace and order. That is Duterte’s character. ‘No martial law, but strongest tools to impose law, order’ he said. That follows the Constitution which says that the civil government is supreme but the military can be called on to protect the people and the State. The massive smuggling of shabu is a danger to the people and the state.

Duterte as head of the civil government remains supreme and does not turn over the prerogatives of that authority when he appoints the military to stop the danger both to the people and the state.

The constitutional provision  on the military’s role in nation building is clear.

“Section 3. Civilian authority is, at all times, supreme over the military. The Armed Forces of the Philippines is the protector of the people and the State. Its goal is to secure the sovereignty of the State and the integrity of the national territory.”

President Duterte had to move fast to curb the smuggling of huge shabu shipments or his entire program against drugs and criminality will be severely threatened and ultimately fail.

He had no choice but to designate the military to stem the violence and the threats. He need not apologize for doing so but he was careful not to offend do-gooders who will use such a move as leading to martial law.  With Filipinos still smarting from the military’s role during the Marcos regime he is careful with both the words and the actions he used. Short of military rule he called his actions as  the “strongest” political tools to promote law and order and counter security threats. That is supported by the Constitution.

“I will not declare martial law but just like what I’m doing, I will go for the strongest tools – political tools in my hand,” the President said.

Duterte also included groups that would sow anarchy in the face of his threat of strong rule. The threat of foreign invasion may not be imminent but a combination of foreign interests and their connivance with local criminals are tantamount to invasion.

He referred also to communist fronts who encourage lawlessness to seize idle lands and unoccupied houses.

“Once you begin to resist violently he can do his thing. If the police or the soldier – I’m addressing now the nation... if you resist violently, you pick a fight, then my order to my soldiers and policemen is just simply to shoot. And if they are in danger, shoot them dead,” Duterte said.

Huwag ninyong sobrahan (Don’t go too far). Do not force me to do something,” he added.

He pointed to Kadamay’s occupation of Bulacan houses for soldiers and the supposed takeover of land in Sagay, Negros Occidental that resulted in the death of nine farmers.

MISCELLANY: Duterte always refers to his old age and says that he would like to finish his work before he dies. This is a fitting column for our elders and attitudes of death. This is borne of a misconception about old age. We had a young president before him and he was the worse president we ever had. Stanley Hall’s book “Senescence, The Last Half of Life” which was published in 1922.

He writes this is a wrong attitude. He studied both old age and death by interviewing hundreds of elders and citing examples of “old people” who managed to live even more fruitful lives than others much younger than they are would ever have. To him, the challenge was what made the difference and why we should change negative attitudes we have about aging and death.

I am sure that many readers will disagree with this column and ask “what has that got to do with our desire for better politics and governance?”

He thinks we have failed to make use of our experienced and wise elders. We need them because some of them are troves of wisdom but instead we have cast them aside because we think they would not be in step with the times.

“Humanity would not progress until we understand what old age is about and what human beings should use it for. There have been in the past such older men whose contributions to humanity have been invaluable precisely because of their age. (Mahathir’s return is a good example.) “Others look for salvation in the prolongation of human life that man may have a longer apprenticeship he now needs in order to wisely direct the ever more complex affairs of civilization.

If man could live and learn not 70 but two or three times 70 years and could begin to be at his best when he now declines and retires, he might know enough to guide the world in its true course. He must absorb more knowledge and of a different kind and assimilate it better in order to secrete the wisdom now needed.

As the adolescent decade prepares for maturity, so the senescent decades must prepare for old age and look forward to it with all the anticipation with which youth now looks forward to maturity.

The wise old can do more than advise. Indeed if they read Hall he will tell them that it is an attitude of the mind that must be changed. So we must not give up. We must continue to ask elders  not to merely advise but to steer discussions when the debate takes place.

It is time to change our attitudes about old age that is tantamount to making them useless.

“An Indian summer should be both expected and utilized to the uttermost for this is a precious bud of vast potentialities. It brings a new poise and a new perspective of values and hence a new orientation and new and deeper insights into essentials,” Hall reasons.

It will be a pity if we do not make use of the old who give up and die prematurely. Most of them are victims “of a tradition that forces them to believe it is time for them to retire.”

Here is a final word from Hall, “We need not be faith curers but must be vitalists and believe in some kind of ‘elan vital or creative evolution as opposed to materialistic or mechanistic interpretations of life.” Hear that President Duterte.