Rationalizing evil

It is becoming clearer that the success of the Duterte administration depends on a Faustian bargain; all the exhilarating headway made in the peace negotiations with the longest-running communist insurgency in this part of the world, all the bold ambition to implement the peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in partnership with others, all the newfound consensus on the need to finally get started on railways in Mindanao, all the debate on the emergency powers to resolve the traffic crisis in Metro Manila, all the sense of possibility that President Duterte inspired with his resonant  inaugural address—all this is premised on a bloody war on  illegal drugs, with the lives of innocent victims and  suspected criminals, none of them convicted by a  rule of court, making a holocaust on the altar of political  purpose.

The President himself speaks as if there is no choice: Human rights is the price we pay, he says, for cleaning the country of the illegal drugs menace. The implication is that he has looked at the matter squarely, and come away with only one decision, the resolve to do what must be done to meet the objective.

But this way of thinking is in fact a false choice: It is possible to eradicate the drug menace without committing human rights violations—all we have to do is look at the examples, both negative and instructive, of other countries.

What is disturbing is that his own Cabinet officials, even those we would usually expect more from, have learned to rationalize the uncommonly high kill rate as necessary.

Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia should have expected the question when he made an economic presentation the other day. He seemed surprised, and finally tried the following answer: Maybe “it is a necessary evil,” he said, “a by-product of you know … [a] self-defense thing.” Self-defense is “legitimate,” he stressed—and of course, it is. But coming in the same week that the chief of the Philippine National Police admitted that over 700 of the killings involved suspected criminals fighting back against the police, it only reinforced the creeping suspicion: Just how much of these killings are in fact justified by self-defense?

He also offered a perspective that seemed to pivot on the same argument the President and his spokespersons used, that international observers were exaggerating the killings because they were viewing them from far away. “When you are from a distance, then you see the thing… more serious than what it really is because it’s localized.” This is really unfortunate, because Pernia, an internationally recognized economist, knows better than most Duterte Cabinet officials that the international community is in fact very much present in the Philippines. There are literally thousands of Filipinos and expatriates working in the Philippines for international institutions; surely they serve as sources of information, too.

Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno, addressing a forum where government officials and members of the international institutions present in the Philippines took part, offered a blanket denial. “Ang mga nangyayari ngayon na mga extrajudicial killings, hindi ‘yan kagagawan ng gobyerno,” Sueno said. These extrajudicial killings that are happening, these are not the work of the government. Why? Because “The President adheres to the rule of law; he wants due process. He does not want extrajudicial killings.”

And yet even just the number of killings committed by the PNP, as admitted by PNP Director General Ronald dela Rosa, is a cause for great concern; are these 700-odd kills not problematic killings, too, subject to internal investigation? The President notoriously promised to kill 100,000 criminals to fatten the fish of Manila Bay with; we take him at his word. How curious that his own men, by legal definition his alter egos, think he didn’t really mean what he said.