The president who’s getting away with murder
It’s truly alarming how quickly the Philippines is returning to its “dark past”, said Lisandro Claudio in Die Zeit (Hamburg). The country has been hard hit by the crystal meth epidemic sweeping Southeast Asia, and Filipinos, nostalgic for their former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, have elected a new strongman to sort out the problem. His solution is the slaughter of drug addicts and dealers. “Do it yourself if you have the gun,” President Rodrigo Duterte has advised voters. Since June, as many as 3,000 people are thought to have been killed as a result. The international press has rightly expressed horror, but the campaign is supported by around 90% of the Filipino population, and Duterte is unrepentant. He has called President Obama a “son of a whore” for daring to criticise the slaughter, has said “f*** you” to the European Union, and is now threatening to pull the country out of the UN if the organisation carries out its threat to investigate his bloody crackdown.
Recent victims include Aurora Moynihan, daughter of the notorious “drug-smuggling, brothel-keeping” British aristocrat the 3rd Baron Moynihan, who died in Manila in 1991, said Marnie O’neill on News.com.au (Sydney). She had been on a police watch list after being arrested three years ago during a raid on a meth den. Her bullet-riddled body was found on a street corner last week, with a cardboard sign reading: “Celebrity drug pusher, you’re next.” It’s not just vigilantes who are killing in cold blood, said Joseph Hincks on Al Jazeera English (Doha). There are numerous cases in which the police, too, have been implicated.
Duterte well knows that the entrenched “culture of impunity” in my country will ensure that he’s never held to account, said Filipino novelist Miguel Syjuco in Time (New York). Former president Joseph Estrada was sentenced to life in prison for plundering more than $80m, yet was quickly pardoned by his successor, Gloria Arroyo – who herself, mired in corruption scandals, was re-elected to Congress while under house arrest, and is now deputy speaker. Members of her clan have been charged with the massacre of 58 political opponents and journalists, yet seven years later there has not been a single conviction. To outsiders it all seems “outrageous”; to Filipinos, it’s “politics as usual”. But they’ll come to regret giving Duterte a free pass. History shows how easily a persecution campaign against alleged “degenerates” can easily swell to target anyone who voices unpopular opinions. And as the Roman satirist Juvenal asked: “Who will guard the guards themselves?”