Monday, 19 December 2016
It is hardly surprising that 78% of Filipinos worried about being victimized in the government's war on drugs, regardless whether they are actual drug users. Given President Duterte's confession of personally killing suspects, commitment to kill drug suspects until the end of his term, promising pardon for police who kill during operations, enforcing death penalty on 6 convicts daily and considering children as collateral damage, Filipinos see no legal shelter in this environment of relentless violence.
There are now more than 6,000 killed and counting. When the police have turned into the most effective killing machine of the State, when no one is resolving vigilante killings, when people no longer trust law enforcers to protect them, when the President continues to enjoy popular support despite admitting to murder, terror strikes our communities who fall silent, but not crimeless.
With a confessed murderer for president whose killing program is supported by "death bills" in Congress and a judiciary which exculpates plunderers and tyrants, it is therefore beholden on the people to act to return some sense of the rule of law in the land, to remind our government of the Constitution and to end the slaughter.