Prosecutor, judge and executioner

For the first time in our nation’s history, we have a President and a Vice President who both started out as reluctant candidates. Rodrigo Roa Duterte and Maria Leonor Gerona Robredo took their respective oaths of office as the 16th President and 14th Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines last June 30.

Former presidents Corazon Aquino and Benigno Aquino III were also both reluctant candidates, but not the respective vice presidents who served with them.

Whether the electorate voted with a subconscious dislike of candidates who were clearly salivating for the country’s two highest public posts, let us leave political analysts to do the probing.  Whether their initial reluctance to run for the posts to which they have been elected is proof of lack of conceit and absence of desire for personal fame or to accumulate fortune at the expense of the government, let us leave the President and Vice President to prove with their actions in the next six years.

In his inaugural address, President Duterte indicated that his unorthodox method of fighting criminality will continue. With conviction he confided that he has “seen how illegal drugs destroyed individuals and ruined family relationships.” He then called on Congress and the Commission on Human Rights to allow him a level of governance that is consistent with his mandate because the fight he will wage against criminals will be “relentless” and “sustained.”

He followed up his fighting words with assurances that are refreshing when contrasted with his recent provocative pronouncements. He said: “As a lawyer and a former prosecutor, I know the limits of the power and authority of the president. I know what is legal and what is not. My adherence to due process and the rule of law is uncompromising.”

It remains to be seen if these assurances of “adherence to due process and the rule of law” were merely made to pacify a worried public at the start of his presidency.

But prior to his inaugural address, Mr. Duterte made incendiary statements exhorting all policemen to kill suspected drug dealers if they persist in trading in illegal drugs.

As though on cue, there was a sudden increase in the killing of suspected drug dealers even before Mr. Duterte assumed the presidency. Not less than 25 drug suspects were killed in just five days of police operations throughout the country, from June 16 to 20. “This means five drug suspects killed in police operations each day,” the Inquirer reported. This is on top of the 29 suspects killed from May 10 to June 15.

A large sector of our society rendered weary by the growing drug menace views these killings of suspected drug dealers as swift delivery of justice. Even among those who did not vote for Mr. Duterte, there is a fervent hope that he will succeed in stamping out the traffic in illegal drugs.

But the President should not give all policemen the impression that they can go gung ho with sweeping powers to act as prosecutor, judge and executioner. The last time the military and police forces were privileged with this mindset was during martial law, when they went on to commit horrific violations of human rights: extrajudicial killings, torture, rape and forced disappearances.

Even if he has qualified that policemen must kill only in the course of defending themselves, the narrative of whether the killing was done in self-defense or not will be made by these same policemen. The imperative step is to first root out the scalawags in the police force.

Mayor Duterte of Davao City controlled a few hundred policemen; President Duterte of the Philippines now controls over 160,000 policemen. Mayor Duterte looked after 1.6 million  people living within 2,400 square kilometers; President Duterte now has to look after more than 100 million people scattered on 300,000 square kilometers.

If police scalawags are not weeded out first, the danger increases that a police killing in Abra, Northern Samar or Lanao del Sur is not an act of self-defense but a summary execution of a framed person.

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that 92 percent of barangays in Metro Manila are drug-affected, and that 21 percent (or 8,629) of the 42,065 barangays nationwide have drug-related cases. Many believe that the figures are actually higher.

The number of barangays with drug problems is a reflection of the number of policemen who are in cahoots with drug syndicates. The trade in illegal drugs will not prosper in our barangays without the conspiracy of the policemen assigned there.

Show me a barangay openly afflicted with a drug problem, and I will show you a police force that is eating out of the hands of a drug syndicate.

These crime-tainted policemen will be predisposed to implement Mr. Duterte’s marching orders by liquidating witnesses against them or blackmailing innocent civilians to generate unlawful income to substitute for the income lost from the discontinued traffic in illegal drugs. Mr. Duterte must first identify and root out these crime-tainted policemen.

The day after his inauguration, the President spoke at the installation of the new chief of the Philippine National Police, Director General Ronald dela Rosa, in Camp Crame. He warned that he will maintain an electronic tracking record of all policemen suspected of involvement in criminal activities, and that he will use the full force of the law against them if charges are proven.

It should be fast and easy for him to fill up his tracking record. He only has to gather the names of policemen walking in leisurely strides in our drug-infested communities.

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