Juan Parades is a long time UW administrator who lso has a law degree form the Philippines. “JP” has been a major leader of the Seattle Philippino community, leading civil rights efforts here as well as the annual Phillipino festival at Seattle Center.
Let me state up front that, like it or not, Rodrigo Roa Duterte is the President of the Philippines and Filipinos have a stake in his success. His success should be for the whole country and critics should premise their views upon this fact. That said, let me point out a few things.
By many accounts about 3,000 bodies have piled up, half from police operations, since President Duterte’s drug war started in July. Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Rolando “Bato” de la Rosa is on record that success shows in low crime statistics.
There is a contradiction in terms. If crime has in fact been reduced, what about the mounting number of homicides? It may be true that killings are due to several reasons – syndicates eliminating each other, policemen silencing their cohorts, vigilantes, etc. – but these are just speculations. They don’t excuse police incompetence or complicity. Unless the killings are solved and perpetrators brought to justice, it would be premature to claim success too early in the day.
Without a death penalty in the books, who decides that drug use and drug pushing should be penalized with death? Everybody agrees that drugs are a societal scourge but Duterte – and political leaders by their silence or active support – cannot kill the country’s way out of it.
There is no coincidence in politics. More than 700 killings occurred when Duterte was mayor of Davao City. While his involvement could not be proven, he did say, allegedly in jest, that the number is actually 1,700. He said that there’s no such thing as a Davao Death Squad (DDS); perhaps critics were referring to the Davao Development System.
Duplication of the methods of the “Davao Development System” on a national scale is just too convenient for domestic and international critics to ignore. The cliché “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” seems apt when we read about the killings in foreign media and news aggregators.
Duterte retorts by citing current and past US history of human rights violations. He may be right but the issue is not about US hypocrisy but about Philippine events. Duterte was once a Fiscal or public prosecutor who is presumed to know how to collate a chain of evidence into a strong, if not airtight, case. How many cases has Fiscal Duterte won? Maybe not many and one sign is his style as mayor and now as President.
The President draws from a vast resource that provides “validated intelligence,” a much-abused term that does not often rise to the level of evidence in a legal case. When extra-legal means are used, it is an admission of insufficient evidence to prosecute or convict. Since intelligence information provides a belief in guilt, the only remedy is a shortcut.
Killing as a handy solution to the drug problem exposes a lack of imagination. In a democratic country, shortcuts violate the laws. Will violations of law be used to solve other problems too?
To what extent and who decides what laws to obey or to disregard pursuant to an admittedly noble purpose?
When Duterte says that a drug addict’s brain is so addled that he no longer serves any purpose, the message is that the addict’s death is no loss to society. Addicts also have families. Who determines that killing their loved ones justifies the ends of justice?
Duterte’s advance assurance of blanket protection was a clear message to police – and citizens – that killing is OK. As long as killings remain unsolved, the President enables lawlessness. Bato de la Rosa was on record that his men should kill pushers if the latter fight back; if they don’t fight back, then make them fight back. He claims it was in jest but it doesn’t sound like a joke when houses are raided and people are arrested without warrants or killed without due process.
The intractability of the problem is due to its complexity that needs complex solutions. All branches of government must cooperate within their own jurisdictional spheres towards a common purpose. Killing people creates an atmosphere of impunity, no matter who commits the killings. Officials cannot just say that half of the killings were not due to police operations and leave it at that.
Rodrigo Duterte is known for his sex jokes and promise to end corruption within six months.
Anyone who gets in the way of the war on drugs – Chief Justice Maria Sereno or Senator Leila de Lima, etc. – are personally attacked. De Lima is not exactly clean; as Justice Secretary she was chief implementor of selective justice against President BS Aquino’s enemies. Her sex life with her driver is a circumstance intended to connect her to drug syndicates in the national penitentiary. The salacious material and ad hominem attacks, however, indicate weak evidence. Shaming might do what intelligence reports cannot establish but filing a case is the only option because killing her will be too messy.
Words matter. Words have consequences. They need to be precise to convey the intended meaning. Duterte cannot backtrack every imprudent utterance as just a joke. He is no longer mayor but President of 102 million people. The “endearing” qualities of an expletives-prone straight talker are no longer acceptable in governing and in international relations.
The Philippines is economically and militarily vulnerable. A hotheaded leader with his foot in his mouth will make a bad situation worse. In diplomatic language the cancellation of a meeting between heads of state is a big deal and the aborted Obama-Duterte meeting is a warning. Missing high-level meetings during the Asean meeting in Laos sends out a message as well and it doesn’t reflect well on a new head of state.
The unintended consequence of Duterte’s tough-love law and order program might, ironically, be economically and politically destabilizing Philippine global relations or, heaven forbid, spawn an event that may put his Vice President and the corrupt Yellow horde in power.
Duterte has been President for 3 months. He has 5.75 years to succeed but it has to be done the right way, without convenient time and money-saving shortcuts.
This and other news like it are exactly what I meant when I said that words have consequences and it seems that Duterte just couldn’t keep his mouth shut without spewing profanities. Comparing him to Donald Trump, however, seems to be inappropriate because Duterte didn’t express any position on the campaign trail that he has not followed through, especially the drug war and has been consistently anti-crime since he was Mayor. Trump, meanwhile, changes his positions day to day or even within the same day. Trump is a congenital liar while Duterte simply expresses what he feels, though his feelings are oftentimes the source of misunderstandings as statements of national policy.
He has also been consistent in lacing his statements with profanity. This is where trouble starts because Duterte has not, obviously, learned the finer details of statecraft where every statement he releases are misinterpreted as national policy when he is actually expressing frustration – through profanities. As a lawyer, Duterte knows the principle of separation of powers although it is not practiced in the same concept as in the US. Hence, while the Legislature may be independent and co-equal with the Executive, it is no secret that whoever wins the presidency almost automatically ensures control of Congress whose members immediately jump to the President’s party.
As I mentioned in my article, Duterte’s imprudent statements will have consequences economically and politically. For example, while it has been spun that the depreciation of the peso or the loss of FDI (foreign direct investments) are actually effects of economic forces beyond the control of the President (whether or not he spits out his expletives), my view is that Duterte’s digs against everyone (the US, UN, EU, Jews, etc.), in fact, have an effect on investments.
The question is whether or not these investments can be recouped from China and Russia. And even if FDI cannot be recouped, it is of such an amount that Duterte can feel confident the Philippines will go unscathed. I’m confident that the Philippines will not be officially sanctioned by the West (US, EU etc.) in the manner and to the extent that Russia, Iran, North Korea etc. have been economically punished. For another, overseas remittance payments from Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) form the bulk of the money coming in from abroad that FDIs appear inconsequential to the economy.
One issue where Duterte is playing wth fire is his pivot to China and Russia because it appears that his statements imply that military-economic alliances with the two countries are being considered. At this point, that appears to be an impossibility because there is the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States, as well as the Supreme Court’s pronouncement of the constitutionality of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) where US forces can rotate their forces in several bases within the Philippines. Perhaps more telling is the fact that Filipinos are overwhelmingly pro-US than pro-China or pro-Russia. I would interpret this so-called pivot as simply diversifying the Philippine investment portfolio.
Perhaps it would do well for Duterte to learn from the Marcos experience when Marcos played the Russia card some time mid to late 70’s when he announced the export of sugar to Russia. The US responded by lowering the so-called Sugar Quota from the Philippines. Russia did not pull through by covering the shortfall despite assurances to do so. The result – as exacerbated by corruption within the sugar industry controlled by a Marcos crony – was the destruction of the industry as it was known then, the spiraling of sugar prices etc. The oligarchies that Marcos fought were simply replaced with Marcos oligarchs to the detriment of the people and the economy and the downgrading of the once-mighty sugar industry.
Duterte is playing a game of chicken and it remains to be seen if his gamble will work.
JP Paredes
PS: Perhaps one thing to give a closer look at are the decisions of the Secretary of Natural Resources who has suspended several mining firms for violation of environmental laws. In particular, a closer look at the effect of such closures/suspensions of mining firms that produce nickel. Nickel is the main ingredient for stainless steel and the Philippines is the largest producer of this metal, accounting for 25% of world production. Already nickel prices have gone up…
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In a related development, another news bit about Duterte essentially confirms what I mentioned above that the Philippines relies less on Foreign investments (that includes foreign aid).
http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/10/07/1631154/rody-philippines-will-survive-without-foreign-aid