At the conclusion of his recent official visit to the United States, at a forum organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. was asked about the war on drugs in the Philippines.
The question may have been unexpected, coming as it did from a research institution, but apparently they wanted a categorical answer to concerns by some American lawmakers and human rights groups, such as the New York-based Human Rights Watch, over the bloody war on drugs by the Duterte administration.
Mr. Marcos acknowledged that there had been abuses committed during the “previous administration” in the war on illegal drugs.
Here’s what he said: “In my view what had happened in the previous administration is that we focused very much on enforcement. And because of that, it could be said that there (were) abuses by certain elements in the government and that has caused some concern … in many quarters about the human rights situation in the Philippines. ”
And further: “Well, I cannot speak (about) what my predecessor had in mind and what his idea was. But what I can speak (of) is the policy that we have undertaken…the drug war continues to be the source of much criminality in the Philippines.”
The drug syndicates in the country, he added, had grown “stronger, wealthier, more influential, worryingly so”, adding “instead of going after everyone, I tried to identify the key areas that we have to tackle, attend to, so that we can see a diminution of the activities of the drug syndicates.”
While declining to assess Duterte’s drug campaign: “I’m in no position to assess the administration of anybody else. That is not proper for me—that’s not a proper role for me to take,” he said his administration would focus on dismantling the drug syndicates while rehabilitating those hooked on illegal drugs.
Having said the “previous administration” committed abuses in the war on drugs—the official death toll is more than 6,200, but human rights groups here and abroad claim the figure is much, much higher, at between 20,000 and 30,000—the question now is what the Marcos administration will do about it.
The President already said earlier that he would not allow the International Criminal Court to come in and conduct its own probe of the war on drugs.
But if abuses had indeed been committed, what’s the proper thing to do?
The proper thing to do is to have an independent fact-finding body or a Truth Commission to investigate the cases and verify if the more than 6,200 victims actually fought back or were summarily executed without benefit of due process of law.
Recall that our own Supreme Court had already ordered the Philippine National Police to submit its findings on what it called “deaths under investigation.”
But the PNP submitted records of only a handful of cases with the cookie-cutter claim the victims all fought back, or ‘nanlaban.’
So what course of action will the administration now take to probe the acknowledged abuses so that justice can at last be served?