Keeping the fire burning
IF TODAY or in the future, you will find your self finally turning your back against this ad ministration, you will have to thank first, the hundreds, and then the thousands, who have stood up courageously to make themselves counted. Their conviction did not come easy and was borne out of a painful witnessing.
Many shored up their courage after seeing loved ones gutted down in the streets in the name of a costly drug war that targeted the small and the powerless while exempting the strong and the well-placed. Others saw comrades, men of the faith, public servants and journalists fell in successive assassinations that seemed commonplace and normal beside the rhetoric of death and partisanship straight out of the president's mouth. Scores have been also incarcerated under trumped up pretexts. The old kings such as the police and military have been given blanket authority anew to impose their will on the populace with very little oversight.
The excesses of this new order can be found in the crowded jails that are now teeming with criminals, the wrongfully accused, the curfew violator, the tambay, who are now incarcerated side-by-side with political prisoners who are also placed behind bars for their dangerous political convictions as determined by government. Evidences of this new reign of terror are the evacuations undertaken by many indigenous communities displaced by the intensified counterinsurgency operations. Thousands of Lumad have descended from their hinterland communities that have now been the site of government clearing operations - counterinsurgency double-speak for removing organized resistance, armed or otherwise, for the entry of mining operations. This reign of violence is deliberate and purposive.
Government did not just fail to squash the climate of impunity by not going after perpetrators through the police and justice system. The State, instead encouraged it, so that it can use the same social atmosphere as cover for its own dirty war against its declared enemies of the state. The battle-cry of this administration during the elections was to bring about change especially for the country's poor. But this promise has turned out to be a sick joke as revealed by this government's undeclared but insidious anti-poverty program - the complete physical eradication of the poor and their organized advocates.
If this government is not busy using the monopoly of violence of the State against the poor and its enemies, it has created an economic reality for them that is harsh and difficult. Government, in the name of a supposed inclusive tax law, that is designed to pimp prime the economy, has effectively taken away one meal from hand-to-mouth poor families by raising taxes on basic goods and oil while providing substantive tax cuts to corporations. Duterte has reneged on his promise of ending contractualization for the army of temporary workers that create profit for the economic zones.
Like you, they also placed their hopes on the maverick president who promised change. But two years into his administration, things have gone further south. Thus, instead of being a renaissance for governance of sorts where the poor are prioritized and uplifted, it has been a slow waking nightmare.
It has not been easy to wake up to this painful reality. But for many, the conditions have worsened so much that what was once read about or seen in the news have become realities that have entered our homes and doorsteps. It is now the case that we now know a direct victim of the thousands of dead in the drug war, a relative or a friend of a friend. We know of friends who are now behind bars for standing up for convictions we all share. It has come to the point that the worsening climate of impunity spares no one actually. We all know that anyone of us could be next.