Before his six-year term is over on June 30, 2022, Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s is on track to become one of the most violent, if not the most violent presidency in Philippine history.
The tough-as-nails commander-in-chief of both the armed forces and the Philippine National Police will exceed this year the 10,000 or so alleged human rights violations under the 20-year presidency (1965-February 1986) of Ferdinand Edralin Marcos. While campaigning for president, Duterte vowed to drown as many as 100,000 drug addicts and drug lords in already-polluted Manila Bay.
To his credit, Duterte enjoys enormous popularity and public approval ratings which translate into an almost inexhaustible political capital to wage the ethnic cleansing equivalent of the drug-using community (four million Filipinos in his count, with one million of them having surrendered voluntarily, he says).
It seems the public will not mind the unprecedented scale of killings because it has produced one benefit people have been yearning for—a dramatic drop in the crime rate, by 49 percent in one notable month.
His economic team, however, is pushing through a pliant Congress a menu of taxes many of them onerous—like the proposed P10-per-liter tax on diesel (diesel is supposed to be the fuel of choice of the rich for their SUVs, but it is also the staple fuel of jeepney drivers, fishermen, farmers using irrigation pumps; in other words by the poorest of the poor), the P10 per liter tax on soft drinks and juices (disguised as anti-diabetes measure; but it is the money, stupid), and a hefty increase in the taxes paid by the country’s businessmen—our biggest employers.
If the taxes are not accompanied by a dramatic improvement in public services (like mass transport and better traffic management) and a sharp reduction in corruption, then the populist Duterte risks facing public fury no president has ever encountered.
Marcos was never formally convicted, in a competent Philippine court, for the alleged violations of the rights of the alleged 10,000 victims (a Hawaii court wanted a detailed tally; the count did not exceed 8,000, meaning a good number of the alleged violations were speculation). Yet, the charge appears to have tarnished Marcos’s otherwise unblemished sterling record as one of the country’s best presidents. A figure often cited is 3,257 deaths under Marcos.
The 3,257 figure appears in two major books authored by an American historian, Alfred McCoy—“A Question of Torture” (2006), and “Policing America’s Empire” (2009).
In the 2009 book, McCoy describes in detail how martial law enabled Philippine police and military forces to operate with impunity and engage in systemic human rights abuses. On page 403, he claimed: “Under Marcos military murder was the apex of a pyramid of terror with 3,257 killed, an estimated 35,000 tortured, and some 70,000 arrested.”
During his presidency, Benigno Simeon (BS) Aquino III formed a commission to hand out bounty or reward money to anyone who claimed his/her human rights were violated in some form of another—like loss of job, torture, injury, or outright murder. The scheme, of course, unwittingly raised the number of alleged human rights victims – to an astronomical 75,730!
Under the American Declaration of Independence, the basic rights are three—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness could mean property, wealth or even a job. Sometimes, it could mean the right to have more than one wife. Duterte says he has two wives. He claims some bishops have also two each.
Under Duterte’s no-quarters drugs war, from July 1, 2016 to Jan. 22, 2017, media reports claim over 7,000 deaths linked to the “war on drugs.” More than half of the victims were killings under investigation – meaning the police didn’t own up to them. The police trace the blame to vigilantes or an internecine war among the drug lords. But most of the unexplained killings were perpetrated by so-called riding in tandem killers. They are so efficient and merciless one cannot but suspect the riders had formal training to kill and were under guidance, if not protection, by the police.
Per the Philippine National Police (PNP), the toll at this writing (July 1, 2016 to Jan. 22, 2017) under Duterte’s Drugs War: 7,028 killed, of which 2, 503 were killed in police operations, 3,603 killed in cases under investigation, and 922 in cases where investigation had been concluded as of Jan. 9, 2017.
The PNP calls its drive against illegal drugs “Oplan Double Barrel.” More insidious though is Project “TokHang” —a contraction of “toktok” and “hangyo” (Visayan words for “knock” and “request” respectively). Tokhang enables the police to make house-to-house calls in search of drug users, users and lords and their cache of illegal drugs.
Usually, houses visited take their aggravation meekly, while praying to God that nothing more serious than a violation of one’s right against unreasonable searches and seizures befall them. Sometimes, such operations go awry, resulting in deaths to victims who were invariably trying to shoot it out with the authorities (usually, the victims, said to be hardened criminals, were so incompetent they could not even fire their guns or hurt or kill their police assailants).
Per averages so far, raids on poor men’s houses end up in killings; visits in upscale villages of the rich result in nothing more than a newsletter or appeal. No deaths reported so far in rich subdivisions, except for a certain friendly subdivision in Angeles, Pampanga where Koreans and other nationals keep residence and who have become a favorite prey for the lucrative kidnap for ransom racket by the police.