THE Los Angeles Times has called the 100 days of President Duterte as being marked by more a war on the poor as a war on drugs. “The drug war’s statistics are staggering,” the LA Times’s Jonathan Kaiman wrote. “Yet, many observers have called Duterte’s drug crackdown a ‘war on the poor.’”
Indeed, there is yet to be reported that a scion was slain as Mr. Duterte waged his war on drugs on Day One of his presidency.
According to Kaiman, “Most victims of police and vigilante killings occupy the country’s lowest socioeconomic rungs, where drug use is the most prevalent.”
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority reveal that the subsistence incidence among Filipino families, or the proportion of Filipino families in extreme poverty, was estimated at 9.2 percent during the first semester of last year.
“They subsist on a few dollars a day, living cheek-to-jowl in sprawling, garbage-strewn slums. They see drugs as an escape, however brief, from reality,” Kaiman wrote. “Now, they’re turning up dead in dark alleyways, often next to signs reading ‘pusher’, their hands bound and their faces wrapped in tape.”
And the 16th President of the Philippines appears unflinching, even saying “he wants to slaughter drug dealers like Hitler slaughtered the Jews.”
Peace, order
SOME drug users and pushers who survived the 100 days of Mr. Duterte surrendered (about 0.7 million) to authorities whose ranks are also suspected to have been harboring criminals—called “Ninja” cops—in the illegal-drugs trade.
San Juan City Mayor Guia Gomez said in her locale, the number of those who surrendered reached almost 600.
“I was really surprised,” Gomez told the BusinessMirror, noting this could be due to “Duterte’s chilling effect.”
Nonetheless, Gomez acknowledges the chill has brought to her city “good peace and order”. And because of that, the city remains to have an attractive business environment, she said.
“So far so good,” Gomez said. “On a positive [note], I can personally say that the crime rate went down. There is really an improvement when it comes to peace and order when Mayor Duterte became the President.”
Shirtless men
GOMEZ admitted that before Mr. Duterte became president, it was very difficult for city officials to implement an ordinance making illegal for a person to be seen half-naked in public.
“Now, there are no longer men who are walking topless or staying on the streets,” she said. Gomez added the implementation of curfew on minors also led to streets absent of young hangers-on.
To help further boost the city government’s anticriminality campaign, Gomez said her son with former President Joseph Estrada and now Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito has donated high-powered firearms to San Juan City police.
Ejercito, a former local chief executive of San Juan, donated a total of 24 Israeli-made assault rifles for the local police’s mobile patrol units and Tavor for members of its Special Weapons and Tactics team.
The mayor added that more investments have poured into the city because of what she says is a “conducive business climate”.
When asked what she plans for those who surrendered, Gomez said she would give them livelihood training.
Personal support
TAGUIG City Mayor Lani Cayetano told the BusinessMirror she personally felt the support of the community for Mr. Duterte, especially in his campaign against illegal drugs and criminality.
“I can see the support of the community is very solid,” Cayetano said. “I also challenged myself, like I go to each barangay and each household and ask them of their personal opinion about President Duterte, they said that it is much peaceful now.”
Cayetano, to note, is the wife of Mr. Duterte’s vice-presidential candidate and Sen. Allan Peter Cayetano.
The mayor boasted of her “good experience” in dealing with the business community. She noted that even before Mr. Duterte became president, the city’s business climate is already doing good.
“Taguig is the Philippines’s partner in investment,” Cayetano said. “We have solid support from businessmen.”
She claims that every week, every month and every quarter, buildings rise up and shops open.
“And we are very happy at the moment [about these],” Cayetano added.
She stressed that the role of the local executives is to translate to their constituents the goals of the city. “And that is what we are striving for.”
Furthermore, Cayetano said she was impressed by Duterte because, despite of criticisms, he is still focused on serving the people.
“Iba itong panahon na ito, walang honeymoon period. Ito lang ang halal na walang pahinga, considering na maraming oposisyon sa kanya [These are different times, since there was no honeymoon period for the President. This is the only elected official who has not rested, considering the multitude of oppositions against him],” she added.
Impressive
MANDALUYONG City Mayor Carmelita Abalos said she is impressed with Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs.
However, she said that if there is one thing she is very grateful for, it is the completion of the P609-million flood-control project at the Maysilo Circle, a road encircling the local government unit’s offices, after three years.
Abalos, who replaced her spouse Benhur as mayor, said she is very thankful to the President and to Public Works Secretary Mark Villar, “for the city will be business as usual.”
She also said that before, they still doubt which side the police are on when it comes to a drive against illegal drugs.
“Pero ngayon kampante na kami sa mga pulis [Now we are at ease with the police],” Abalos said.
Response time
IN Marikina City Mayor Marcelino Teodoro also assured its citizens of a faster response and proactive services from the local police.
Comparing himself to Mr. Duterte, Teodoro said the citizen’s safety and security are two of his top priorities.
The city government of Marikina, located on the eastern side of the capital, has Rescue 161 and a traffic-management group to implement these priorities. Teodoro said the personnel in these groups have 16 police cars, 10 ambulances and four traffic patrol vehicles.
Newly dressed up and finetuned to suit the needs of the police, rescuers and traffic patrollers, these refurbished service vehicles have been publicly launched and turned over during the city’s flag-raising ceremony on October 3 at the Freedom Park.
With city police mobiles, every barangay in Marikina now has its own police mobile, according to Teodoro. He also reiterated his commitment to establish a police precinct in every barangay.
“We will make sure that every barangay will have its [police] precincts ready in the following days and weeks,” Teodoro said.
Furthermore, the 10 ambulances will provide Marikina Rescue 161 with the power to ensure a five-minute response time in any health-related emergency, he added.
Food security
WHILE these politicians heap praises on Mr. Duterte, activists reminded the administration there are other important concerns aside from the illegal-substance abuse and trade.
On October 5 environmental advocates and civil-society groups reminded Mr. Duterte to fulfill the promises he made to farmers and fishermen during the election season. Officials of the group also expressed urgency over the lack of an integrated framework to address poverty and hunger in the country, even as the President’s first 100 days in office have almost ended.
The Green Thumb Coalition, the widest network of environmental groups in the Philippines,
reiterated the need for Mr. Duterte to focus his efforts on rehabilitating the food system, which is greatly dependent on the health of the environment.
Virginia Benosa-Llorin, Greenpeace Philippines food and ecological agriculture campaigner, noted that the country’s failing food system has created a double burden of malnutrition, with 20 percent of Filipino children below 5 years old, underweight and with 31 percent of Filipinos aged 20 and above suffering from overweight and obesity.
“The Philippines’s broken food system is failing the Filipinos; our current agriculture and fisheries systems fall short in responding to the country’s food and nutritional needs,” Benosa-Llorin said. “We call on the Duterte government to adopt a People’s Food policy. We need a holistic policy framework that links food and agriculture with ecological public health, nutrition and environment security.”
Lacking coherence
IZA Gonzales said her group, the National Movement for Food Sovereignty (NMFS), is looking forward to the President’s campaign promise for free irrigation services.
“Yet, until now, we haven’t seen any massive irrigation program that will truly help alleviate the poor conditions of farmers,” said Gonzales, NMFS national coordinator.
The group NGOs for Fisheries Reform (NFR) believes the programs the Duterte administration has carried out, thus far, to help Filipino fishermen prove to be inadequate.
“The current administration still lacks a coherent solution to address the complex problem of fishers, such as ecosystems degradation and overfishing,” said Mayette Rodriguez of NFR. “We strongly feel that the current program of dispersing boats to different communities is misplaced, as this contributes to further overfishing and will push people to spend more in running after disappearing fish.”
Norie Garcia, advocacy and partnership director of ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation Inc., said agriculture and food security are primary considerations behind the environmental advocacy of the Green Thumb Coalition.
“This is the reason we support policies that will protect our ecosystems and promote the sustainable use of our natural resources,” Garcia said. “We also want to reinforce the initiatives of the government to review and audit the extractive industries and other industries with adverse environmental impacts.”
Garcia said the alliance is “waiting for integrated and coherent policies and programs that will address the root causes, and not just the symptoms, of food insecurity.”
Allies chided
AFTER unsheathing the sword of war against drug syndicates, Mr. Duterte has rattled the saber on allies, especially the United States.
An Associated Press story said that, aside from the US, Mr. Duterte also picked a fight with “the United Nations, the European Union and others who have criticized his brutal crackdown against drugs, which has left more than 3,600 people dead.”
“In another defining aspect of his unorthodox rule, the 71-year-old Duterte has pushed back his country’s 65-year treaty alliance with the United States, while reaching out to China and Russia,” the story written by AP’s Jim Gomez said.
Mr. Duterte’s call for a foreign policy independent from the control of transnational and multi-national corporations, as well as financial institutions, has been welcomed by activists like Gonzales and the NMFS.
However, she said more should be done.
“The Duterte government must break away from all the unequal trade agreements his predecessors entered into,” she was quoted in a statement as saying. “Since he assumed presidency, there hasn’t been any written policy about this; only mere pronouncements.”
Unilateral ending
RESEARCH group Ibon Foundation Inc. said the government should not just be open to US withdrawal of its assistance to the Philippines.
“The Philippines can unilaterally end so-called programs [that] interfere in the country’s economic policy-making,” Ibon said in a statement.
The group said the programs include the US’s so-called Partnership for Growth (PFG), which is pushing to change the 1987 Constitution to fit with American foreign-policy interests at the expense of sovereign Philippine development.
Ibon fingered the Aquino administration for bringing the Philippines to the US’s PFG in 2011. The group pointed out that the program, costing $739 million (P33 billion), is the most comprehensive US intervention in economic policy-making today.
“The PFG is designing Philippine trade and investment, intellectual property rights, fiscal and other policies to make these compliant with the requirements of the US’s Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Ibon said. “It is even targeting the legal and courts system.”
Ibon said unilaterally withdrawing from the PFG will send an unequivocal signal that the country is adopting an independent foreign economic policy.
Ibon said economic sovereignty is vital for protecting the country’s economic and development interests.
“To this day, even advanced capitalist powers, such as the US, still protect their economy against foreign competition when their economic interests are threatened,” Ibon said in a statement. “Ending the US-directed PFG would be a significant concrete measure showing that the Philippines is neither a mendicant country nor foolishly adopting economic policies dictated on it by self-serving foreign powers.”
Image credits: AP/Aaron Favila, AP/Bullit Marquez