Duterte and the peace and order question

FORMER senator Joker Arroyo is dead. He died last Oct. 5 while undergoing a heart operation, which apparently wasn't successful, in the United States. He was 88 years old.

Arroyo was one of my idols in my early years as a student activist. When I think of him, I remember first his affiliation with the Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines (CLUP) during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. It was that period in our history when defending civil liberties could cost a lawyer his or her life.

After Marcos was deposed, Joker went on to become the executive secretary of then president Corazon Aquino. He was among the members of the Cory Cabinet that the rightists labeled as “leftists,” a claim used by members of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) as one of the reasons for attempting to topple the Cory government through a coup.

Aquino eventually succumbed to the pressure and let go of Arroyo and other “leftists” in his Cabinet. Years later, he entered politics as a congressman and was a politician a few years until his death. He was catapulted to the Senate after he helped prosecute then president Joseph Estrada during his high-profile impeachment trial.

Joker became unpopular in his waning years because of his defense of former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whose government was rocked by scandals and widespread corruption. But I would like to remember him for the good things that he did, especially during Marcos's rule.

*** With the campaign period for the 2016 elections set to start a few weeks from now, it is good to remind voters to be discerning. By this I mean to possess the ability to sift through the issues that will be thrown their way by the candidates both at the national and local levels and to be objective in assessing these. Emotions should take the backseat.

With that said, I have this question: Isn't the issue on peace and order being over-emphasized in the current political discourse? I am asking this in light of efforts by some sectors to portray Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte as this country's savior based on his supposed ability to curb the supposed rise in criminality in the country. Indeed, the appeal of Duterte is his tough stance against criminals—in Davao.

I don't have the statistics but it would be good to have the numbers to back up the claim that criminality has so risen nationwide it has hampered the pursuit of our development goals. Sensational crimes do grab the headlines from time to time, but are these enough to make us so desperate to think that somebody who once allowed the illegal acts of summary execution to flourish in his city should rule this country?

I say some people are overstressing our problem with criminality in order to prop up the Duterte candidacy and the myths that have been woven around his governance in Davao. I say myths because the things that are currently being said about Duterte are either imaginary or are difficult to duplicate in the national scene.

But I am digressing. I say that the rise in criminality, if it indeed has risen, in this country has not reached a level that requires us to be desperate and to resort to extreme measures. For me, the more pressing problem for the country is still corruption in the government bureaucracy and how to sustain economic growth.

Those are problems that are so complicated these cannot be solved by simplistic methods like summarily executing those suspected of corruption or allowing “death squads” to maintain order so foreign entities will not fear investing in our country.