Fear of the living on the Day of the Dead
HOUSANDS among the millions of Filipinos who will be trooping to the cemeteries in these last few the death of a loved one that came as recently as the war in Marawi, or the latest wave of killings now under investigation.
More than a thousand lives have been lost in the Marawi related killings and other violent crimes.
On the occasion of the Feast of the Dead, each of us in our private moment must have tried to make sense of the wars and deaths we see around us. Oftentimes we feel helpless when the answers to the big “WHYs?” don’t come.
It is most disturbing to watch post-war TV interviews with some small children of Marawi talking about wanting to - nessed the gruesome deaths of the armed rebels near them.
What might not be easy for those on the side of the law to accept is the devotion shown by the Filipino militants to the cause of the foreign Islamic State ideology, joining the larger scale war in the main IS capital in Raqqa itself against the forces backing the Syrian government. When the government has regained control of Raqqa, soldiers found peso notes from their pockets when the militants’ bodies were recovered, giving away their Filipino identity. Was that extremist devotion driven by ideology? their backs on the oath they once made to serve and protect the citizens of the land against criminals, by forming themselves into a kidnap-for-ransom gang? The other day, Friday, in a shootout with the police. Earlier they killed the kidnap victim, Filipino-Chinese junket operator Carlos Tan, whose family failed to deliver the multi-million peso ransom.
Such are the kinds of supposed law enforcers who destroy the image of the police force and the armed forces of this country. They have abandoned their noble duty of upholding the law and the sovereignty of the State and have chosen to destroy lives and give the nation a bad name.
They and others like them who betray their call of duty and commit atrocities give the human rights groups the ammunition to slam our nation and our government.
The most grueling conundrum for the President must have been the drug war. The criticisms and condemnation of the acts of those who strayed from the rightful call of duty in the war on drugs must have led to the transfer of the antidrug campaign from the Philippine National Police to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
Certainly, President Duterte has faced and dealt with these issues in his private moment. Speaking before lawyers and judges from the Asean in Malacañang on Wednesday, he said: “I am a President. I am not a soldier. I am not a policeman. I build a nation. But you know, it has to be a nation run by the rule of law.
“Tell me now, what is my sanctuary in the face of all this onslaught against the people? Do I kill innocent people? What will I get (from it)?
“What I’m afraid of is the wrath of God... not the wrath of man.”
In the face of these violent deaths, the moment comes to those who look inward and make a deliberate choice to fear, not him who can cause death to the body, but him who can give and take away life.