Scary
It’s just another day in the life of Davao City. Cops have just gunned down suspected kidnappers.
The rubout was captured on video, which was shown on ABS-CBN. The grainy footage showed a uniformed policeman aiming a rifle at a man and shooting him. The man had his hands clasped behind his head and was behind the wheel of an SUV. The execution was witnessed by five other cops who had surrounded the vehicle. After the shooting, a man in civilian clothes put an object near the vehicle.
“That’s clear murder,” said Etta Rosales, human rights chair, upon seeing the video. It could be the understatement of the month. A year would be too long given the number of things that lend themselves to understatements in Rodrigo Duterte’s city.
Earlier, the Davao City police department reported killing three kidnappers in a gunfight while rescuing their captive. The kidnappers had apparently kidnapped the victim, a businesswoman, in Manila and brought her to the south. The video refuted their claims.
Duterte himself was unfazed and defended his force, daring critics to go to court. “Don’t crucify the police for doing their duty,” he said on radio. Some days earlier, he had warned kidnappers: “You will leave Davao City vertically or horizontally—that is your choice.”
Saying, and doing, these things are not new to him. In October last year, pissed off by the fact that carjacking suspect Ryan Yu alias “Baktin” had refused to surrender to him, he issued this offer to prospective bounty hunters: “Two million ako kapag buhay si Ryan. Kapag pinatay ninyo, four million yan. Pag dinala ninyo ang ulo, balutin lang ninyo sa dry ice, dagdagan ko ng one million sa campaign funds … so it’s five million.” (I’m good for P2 million if you capture Ryan alive, P4 million if you kill him. You bring me his head in—just wrap it in dry ice—I’ll throw in another million from my campaign funds.)
When Rosales, and a shocked public, remonstrated with him for the barbarism, he replied: “Do not castrate the government. That will make us impotent to fight crime. Do not do that to my city.”
This is the quality of mind of the person who proposes to rid this world, or Davao City, of crime. Duterte’s murderous antics have gone on long enough and it’s time we stopped it. Hell, it’s time we brought him to court. That is stopping crime.
Let us be clear: We know kidnapping and robbery, rape and pillage, murder and mayhem run riot in this country and have created a culture of impunity, criminals being free to ply their vicious trade in broad daylight. We know the law is often not just powerless to stop them but powerful enough to aid them in what they do, or allow them to go free once they are caught. We know we need to do something about this, our levels of desperation increasing each time we see a cut-and-dried case like the 2009 massacre in Maguindanao wreaked by the Ampatuans managing to befuddle the courts.
None of these justifies Duterte’s methods. None of these excuses Duterte’s own crimes. “Excesses” is far too pale, or benign, a word to describe what he does. This is a way of stopping crime that is worse than the original crimes. Hell, this is a way of stopping crime that is worse than crime itself.
At the very least, that is so because it reposes the discernment of guilt among a group of people whose capacity to discern is as suspect as the guilt of their suspects. It reposes the determination of punishment among a group of people who have only one punishment for various crimes, for various levels of participation in a crime, which is death. Are you willing to put your life in the hands of a man who regards any protest against soliciting the aid of bounty hunters to deliver suspects dead or alive, whole or headless, as castrating the government? Are you willing to put your life in the hands of a man who regards public outrage over the cold-blooded execution of suspects as crucifying the police?
If you’re innocent, they tell you, you have nothing to fear. Well, the fact that whoever took the video of the rubout is unknown, prefers to remain unknown, and must remain unknown or relocate elsewhere if he plans to linger a little longer on this earth, belies that proposition. The innocent have as much to fear as the guilty, if not more so.
Arguably, there are places in this country that God and government forgot, that resemble the Wild West. Arguably, there are places in this country where violence and lawlessness run riot, where you’ve got to be tough as nails to survive. But tough as nails is not murderous. Lawlessness is not solved by making things more lawless. You tell people to bring you the head of Alfredo Garcia (the title of Sam Peckinpah’s movie), or that of Baktin, and mean it in the most literal sense, you add to lawlessness. You gun down suspects you presume to be halang ang kaluluwa, you join the ranks of the halang ang kaluluwa.
You do these things, you do not stop crime, you commit crime. You do these things, you do not stop crime, you foment crime.
In the end, you insist that in your turf there is only one law, and that is your law, you cease to represent law and represent lawlessness. You become a law unto yourself. That is worse than any crime that can happen in your turf. That is worse than crime itself. Despotism is worse than crime, fascism is worse than crime. Even a crime as horrific as the slaughter in Maguindanao. It’s another order of foulness altogether, it’s another order of viciousness altogether. We’ve had 14 years of martial law to drive home that point. We’ve had Marcos to drive home that point.
And now we have Duterte to drive home that point. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely: Let us never forget that. Look at Duterte and be scared.
Be very, very scared.
