Bloody campaign bluster

It is better that 10 guilty people go free than one innocent person should suffer.

Thus said English jurist, judge, and politician William Blackstone in the 1700s in his treatise “Commentaries on the Laws of England.”

This pillar of legal thought, which has since become known as “Blackstone’s ratio,” is what has been discarded by the wayside in President Duterte’s bloody and controversial war against drugs.

Unfortunately, abandoning this principle has cost the lives of thousands of Filipinos before they could argue their cases before a court of law and the facts weighed by an impartial judge.

To hear Mr. Duterte admit last week that his campaign promise to end the drug menace “in six months” was mere “bluster” uttered during a heated campaign for the top office of the land six years ago is revolting.

And it is revolting not only because it turned out to be an empty promise made to win the favor of voters. In this country and elsewhere, lying politicians and election seasons tend to go hand in hand.

It is revolting because empty rhetoric resulted in the death of thousands of our impoverished, vulnerable countrymen, many of them by the barrel of the gun of our law enforcers who have sworn to uphold the law and protect the innocent and defenseless.

Perhaps many of those who were summarily executed were guilty. And it’s equally likely that many of them were innocent. We shall never know for certain because none of them had the chance to face the courts, and certainly none of them were found guilty beyond reasonable doubt under the law.

More importantly, these deaths happened following — by his own admission — exaggerated and empty promises made during a campaign to win the presidency. His exact words were: “Maybe it’s hubris. It was campaign time, we were all full of bluster during the campaign.’’

And upon winning, he did nothing to rein in law enforcers eager to execute his vision of a crime-free Philippines “in three to six months” but even doubled down on his bluster by encouraging and reassuring them that they were doing their brutal campaign under the ambit of his protection.

Just how many Filipinos suffered this fate is also unclear, but a report by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency says over 6,000 have lost their lives during police antidrug operations, while local and foreign human rights advocates say the number could run as high as 30,000.

Mercifully, the President is substantially off his other infamous prediction made in 2015 that as many as 50,000 Filipinos will die due to his crackdown on criminality.

In the absence of proper records and transparency from this administration, the true number of Filipinos who died due to Mr. Duterte’s bloody campaign bluster remains a subject of speculation. But it is clear that even the death of one innocent person is one death too many.

Human lives are not leverage to be used casually to win the presidency.

Thankfully, the President’s admission comes at a time when Filipinos still have a few days before deciding on the country’s next set of leaders in this year’s national and local elections.

His admission that one of his key campaign promises six years ago—  so effective in enticing millions of citizens to vote for him — was nothing more than campaign bluster should serve as an eye-opener and reminder for our countrymen today that politicians have all too often taken voters for a ride with their empty promises.

And in the case of Mr. Duterte, not only was his key campaign platform based on something that ultimately proved to be unachievable, it also proved to be costly to the nation. How costly? By the estimated 30,000 Filipinos who paid the ultimate price.

In this last leg of the heated 2022 election campaign, it bears remembering that, even though politicians have devalued rhetoric in their bid to woo voters, some words retain their power to spell the difference between life and death.

In this context, and for the sake of this country’s future, one should look far beyond the flowery campaign promises of one’s preferred candidate and try to discern whether his or her words are something that can be translated into concrete positive action once they no longer have need for one’s approval at the ballot box.

Words have meaning. And in a few days, Filipino voters will empower a new president and his or her campaign rhetoric to shape the country for the next six years.

Let’s make sure that we choose a leader whose promises are deserving of that empowerment. Let the deaths of thousands of Filipinos weigh on our collective conscience as we make this decision.