As former president Rodrigo Duterte remains incarcerated in The Hague, Netherlands, awaiting trial for allegations he committed crimes against humanity, one wonders whether he would now have sufficient opportunity to ponder the ramifications of his actions both as mayor of Davao City (2013-2016) and president of the Philippine republic (2016-2022) when his so-called war on drugs was at its height.
“Tatay Digong,” as he is fondly called in his bailiwick in Davao, must be given credit for at least trying to stem the flow of illegal drugs in the Philippines. A crusade that was both brutal and bloody that resulted in the deaths and murder of thousands of Filipinos. In his hubris, he even bragged that he will end the drug menace in just a couple of months once he became the president, only to backtrack a little later and admit, after the passage of a few years, that the drug problem is still around, which obviously means that he was not able to get rid of illegal drugs in the country.
So, now that he is alone in his cell in The Hague, the former president can finally come to the realization that, for all his best efforts, he actually failed in his mission to stamp out illegal drugs in the Philippines. But what his drug war produced as a result is that his nine-year campaign successfully terminated the lives of thousands of people—criminals, addicts and pushers, and even innocent bystanders—who were killed extrajudicially, meaning without due process as provided by law.
In other words, for several years as a mayor and president, this country had a leader that organized and directed the largest vigilante group that executed Filipino people without the benefit of the courts of the law. That is why all the killings attributed to the war on drugs of the former president were called “extrajudicial” because they never underwent the process of law.
The majority of the Filipinos, then, who might have initially felt sick about the drug situation in the country wholeheartedly voted for a leader whose mantra was “kill, kill, kill,” and who cursed and hurled expletives as he encouraged authorities to exterminate with extreme prejudice those suspected to be involved in drugs and other criminal activities.
If Duterte, then, was hell bent on ending the spread of illegal drugs, such as shabu, then he should have started with all of those Chinese drug lords already in jail during his administration
But, as a point of reflection, those who voted for Duterte and who have now become his ardent supporters, should ask themselves how in the world, during the entirety of the drug war, the majority of those killed were Filipinos and not some foreigner, say, Chinese nationals who are involved in the illegal drug trade?
Aren’t there a lot of Chinese nationals imprisoned with lengthy sentences and who are convicted because they were deemed as drug lords? If reports are true, these Chinese drug lords, even while languishing in prison, were able to continue their nefarious drug trade.
If Duterte, then, was hell bent on ending the spread of illegal drugs, such as shabu, then he should have started with all of those Chinese drug lords already in jail during his administration or were operating in society peddling their illegal wares.
During his presidency he could even have re-instituted the death penalty through Congress, with particular focus on electrocuting convicted big time drug lords to once and for all end their criminal lives.
These are drug personalities who are already in jail after being convicted by the courts for drug crimes. These drug convicts are usually big time peddlers and distributors of illegal drugs. Why, then, did former president Duterte hesitate to wipe out these drug convicts and their whole lot from the face of the earth while allowing his vigilante groups to kill suspected low or street level drug addicts and pushers by the thousands.
If former president Duterte began his war on drugs inside the jails and prisons around the country and directed the authorities to silently and systematically put an end to the lives of all those incarcerated drug lords and members of drug syndicates, would he be charged now with having committed crimes against humanity?
Sure, some heads will roll for the deaths of these convicted drug prisoners, hypothetically speaking, and the infidelity they caused while in the custody of the law, but overall and in hindsight, it would have been better if they were the ones on the receiving end of the war on drugs instead of those killed just because they were suspected of using or selling drugs.
For Tatay Digong who already confessed to having personally killed a suspected criminal, subscribing to such methods mentioned above would have been too easy and might not fully reflect his avowed personality as an exterminator.
Well, he had done his best and obviously his best was not good enough, and so now he must face the music and be made to answer for taking the law into his own hands.
