“Rodrigo Duterte threatens return to Philippine
politics if daughter impeached” (South China Morning Post)
Amid lots of the same headlines, I chose the one above
due to the word “threatens.” It spotlighted Duterte’s forewarning “Mapipilitan
akong lumabas sa retirement… talagang magkababuyan tayo” aimed at the House of
Representatives which he called the “most rotten institution” after it had stripped his daughter VP Sara of confidential and intelligence funds.
Looking at a greater height, so as not to miss the
forest for the trees, have you ever wondered how Duterte’s threat is psyching out and
frightening the Filipino people? Such a terror-stricken threat jumpstarts ghastly
memories of his direful regime.
THE PIETA PHOTO
“I knew this night was different. A police cordon
blocked off journalists and bystanders, as Jennilyn Olayres grieved over the
lifeless body of her partner Michael Siaron. The murderers left a sign that
read ‘I am a drug pusher, do not copy,’ as a crowd, mostly composed of Manila
castaways, mingled…
“As a news photographer, it was my job to document
what was happening, but a part of me that heard Olayres’s pleas for help also
died a little. It was raw and gut-wrenching, but I could do nothing but press
the shutter button.
“’That’s enough! And help us!’ she cried out to media
workers, authorities, and onlookers.
“’What are you waiting for?’ I asked a policeman who shrugged before retorting, 'We can’t do anything as he is already dead.'” (Raffy Lerma)
THE KIAN STORY
Kian was a 17-year-old boy in a poor family of four siblings. His mother worked as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia, while his father operated a sari-sari store that Kian minded from 5:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon every day before he went to school. After closing the store at night, he would usually walk around the block for some small talk with neighborhood friends.
Perhaps
it was during one of those walks when he was shot by the police operatives –
one of the thousands (6,000+ per gov’t to 30,000 per CHR/ICC figure) killed in
the drug war.
“Tama
na po! May exam pa ako bukas!” Kian begged for mercy before he was killed.
What
passing that test could have meant to Kian? A handful of kid stuff could have
meant a promising future for his whole family.
A step
closer to his dream of no longer using cooking oil when giving a massage to his
father.
A step
closer to his dream of uniting his family with his mother giving up her
overseas work as a domestic helper.
A step
closer to his dream of having a bed for each of his family’s siblings.
A step
closer to his dream of expanding the sari-sari store that has supported his
whole family.
A step
closer to his dream of being a policeman. What an irony.
THE JOURNALIST MEMOIR
“Every day, for a period of a little more than seven
months beginning in 2016, the Philippine Daily Inquirer maintained what
it called Kill List. It was a public record of the dead, fed by reports from
correspondents across the country. The circumstances of death were brief. The entries
were numbered and chronological. The locations were limited to towns, cities,
and provinces, without the specificity of street addresses. Names were recorded
when they were available, numbers were used when they were not.
“The first ‘unidentified suspected drug pusher,’ for
example, was killed on July 1, the first day of Rodrigo Duterte’s administration,
the same morning that Jimmy Reformado, fifth most wanted drug pusher in the
city of Tiaong was shot by ‘unknown hitmen’ …
“’Unknown hitmen’ was a common phrase, but it was the
nature of their victims – suspected drug pusher, suspected drug dealer, at
large on drug charges, on the drug list, most wanted – that demonstrated that
what was occurring was far from random. These were targeted killings, as
President Duterte had promised, directed against ‘people who would threaten to
destroy my country.’
“The methods were limited only by the killers’
imaginations. There was the man ‘found dead after being abducted from his
house.’ There were the three ’found dead in a canal, blinded and hogtied.’
There was the man ‘shot in the head in his bedroom’ and the man killed at seven
in the morning ‘in front of his daughter’s elementary school.’
“The constancy and sheer velocity required its own
nomenclature. They were drug-related deaths. They were illegal killings. They
were targeted assassinations, salvaging, body dumps, drive-by shootings…
“There is language for this phenomenon. The term is ‘extrajudicial
killings’… The repetition forced a shorthand – EJK. The press used it as a
qualifier. The victims’ families used it as a verb. The critics used it as an
accusation…
“This is a book about the dead, and the people who are
left behind. It is also a personal story, written in my own voice, as a citizen
of a nation I cannot recognize as my own. The thousands who died were killed
with the permission of my people. I am writing this book because I refuse to
offer mine.”
(Excerpted from Prologue of Patricia Evangelista’s book Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder In My Country)
WHAT DO I SEE?
Eight months before the 2022 Presidential election, I
wrote in my ATABAY article What Do I See? the following insight:
Question: Why did God give PH, the “Light of Asia” (Pope
John Paul II prayer) a ruler who insulted Pope Francis and called God stupid?
Answer: “[God] PUNISHED [His people] by delivering
them to their attackers…” (2 Kings 17:20, emphasis mine); “When God wants to
judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers.” (John Calvin). Cardinal Sin
affirmed Calvin’s assertion with Marcos [Sr.] and his Martial Law as Exhibit A.
Thus, to punish, God has given PH such kind of ruler today.
Why? 1 in 4 Pinoys is below the poverty line. PH, for
being the “Light of Asia” has angered God as He was with Sodom that “DID NOT
HELP THE POOR.” (Ezekiel 16:49, emphasis mine).
[Jesus’ words in this Sunday Gospel are serendipitous:
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you
did not do for me.” Mt 25:45]
[“Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ is a war on the poor” –
Amnesty International]
ARE WE STILL BEING PUNISHED?
Randy David in his Inquirer’s column unveiled the “sinfulness”
of our nation.
“The damage that [Duterte’s] presidency did to the
country’s legal and political institutions is incalculable. It exposed the
opportunism and servility of the political class. It showed the susceptibility
of the legal system to manipulation and use as a weapon against the president’s
political enemies. It uncovered the brittleness of the mass media and the
business community in the face of presidential intimidation. It revealed the limits
of the judiciary as a check to the abuse of presidential prerogative.”
David gave an inkling of the answer to the question:
Are we still being punished?
“I hesitate to use the past tense in describing these
forms of institutional damage. For we cannot be certain that the political climate
that catapulted Duterte to the presidency in 2016 has passed. The Duterte brand
lingers in the air and remains popular – if surveys are to be believed.”
MOMENT OF TRUTH
Question: Are we still being punished? The answer to such
a question will turn out to be as easy as ABC – if former president Duterte
returns to politics.
Patricia Evangelista asserts, “The thousands who died
were killed with the permission of my people.”
Would you offer yours all over again?
Head collage photos courtesy of iStock, it is writtendotcom, & The Manila Times
Video clips courtesy of YouTube
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