What happens when people can't distinguish Hollywood movies from reality?
You may get a movie star or self-styled movie star running for president.
Enter Rodrigo Duterte, front-running Philippine presidential candidate.
Duterte has built up an image for himself as being a Dirty Harry-style macho death squad superhero (nicknamed "the punisher") who can cut through the BS of the law, courts, trials and due process and just shoot the criminals dead, no questions asked, trailing behind a brilliant record of law enforcement (see here)
"When I said I’ll stop criminality, I’ll stop criminality. If I have to kill you, I’ll kill you. Personally,” is his signature line.
FOR REAL ECONOMIC PROGRESS, KILL SOME PEOPLE
Killing is how to make a model city too.
Silicon Valley may be famous for Steve Jobs and computers, New York and Singapore for high finance, but killing people is what has made Davao a model city:
"Davao has been touted to be one of the safest cities of the world because its mayor has been able to enforce the rule of law... Davao City is indeed impressive. Traffic is managed well. People feel safe walking the streets at night. Only in Davao City will one see motorists abiding by a 30-km/hr speed limit. Only in Davao City will one experience not having to pay parking fees in malls. Everyone follows the executive ordinances of the Office of the City Mayor. Everyone seems to be disciplined: residents, businesses, politicians and the police."
And what about educational reform that could potentially make Filipinos as rich as people in Singapore or Silicon Valley in the future.
"Duterte said learning unnecessary numbers and signs in Mathematics does not serve any useful purpose.... He said students should not be pressured in school with “sine, cosine” as these are not applicable when they go job-hunting." (see here).
Little does Duterte know, the Philippines has had a comprehensive educational reform program in place since 2011 (see here & here).
Duterte wants to give police a five-fold increase in salary (see here), but what about low-paid hardworking teachers who are educating the future of the Philippines? Is their work less valuable?
BACK TO THE REAL WORLD
Slow down for a moment.
Who exactly was killed? Who did the killing? How many were killed? How many of them were children? How many of them were not even criminals at all?
For this, we have to turn to human rights organizations and the UN to try to piece together the puzzle of death squads and extrajudicial killing years after they happen.
"According to Amnesty International and local human rights groups, there were over 300 people killed in Davao City by death squads between 1998 and 2005. The rate of killing accelerated after this so that between 2005 and 2008 death squads were responsible for between 700 and 720 murders... the victims were selected because they were suspected of being drug dealers, petty criminals and street children aged as young as 14.... It was reported that local officials in some areas advocated a “shoot to kill” policy with respect to criminal suspects resisting arrest. ... the death squads later began to offer 'guns for hire' services targeting individuals for reasons unrelated to crime." (see here & here).
In one body disposal area, "pieces of long bones, skulls and other remains .... belong to at least six persons, including a female child ... Some of the skeletal remains were also found to have torture marks. Last month, four persons, including a 12-year old boy, were killed by motor-cycle riding gun-men." (see here)
1. Criminal suspects were killed, some of them likely innocent.
2. Some of them children.
3. Some of them were petty criminals and street children undeserving of a death sentence.
4. The killers, feeling empowered, began to offer murder as a service to anyone who would pay the price.
When UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions in 2007, Philip Alston, submitted his final report he found that military death squads had "eliminated civil society leaders, including human rights defenders, trade unionists and land reform advocates, intimidated a vast number of civil society actors, and narrowed the country’s political discourse.... Alston, on February, 2007 stated that the military made alibis or denials on its role about 800 deaths of activists and journalists since 2001."
The very untransparent nature of death squads and extrajudicial killings means we cannot be sure of how many of the killings were of this sort, politically motivated killings of people who were not criminals at all.
JUDGE, JURY & EXECUTIONER
So who exactly was judge, jury and executioner?
"Members of the death squad were managed by either currently serving or ex-police officers, according to Human Rights Watch. These officers provided the assailants with training, weapons and ammunition, motorcycles, and information on the targets. Lists of targets were drawn up by police or barangay (village or district) officials. Information might include a name, address and a photograph and local police stations were allegedly pre-warned to facilitate the murders and escape of the assailants. Witnesses reported that police officers took a surprisingly long time to respond to incidents even where these occurred in the vicinity of police stations and officers neglected to follow basic investigative procedures, such as collecting bullet casings from the street. Human Rights Watch reported that the standard tactics of the killers was to arrive in small groups of two or three on unlicensed motorbikes. Victims would be stabbed or shot without warning during daytime in public areas such as bars, cafes, markets, shopping areas, jeepneys or tricycles and in the presence of numerous witnesses. Assailants were generally paid between 5,000 and 50,000 pesos (US$114 - US$1,147) for an assassination, depending on individual involved."
In other words, the whole law enforcement system was subverted. And we are supposed to be confident because these are good cops fighting bad cops, just like in the movies.
The trouble is that the "rotten apple" theory of police reform has long been discredited. Police misconduct is an organizational problem that requires an organizational solution (see here).
The Philippines has been riddled by police corruption and misconduct for a long time.
According to best practice that has worked in police forces from Hong Kong to Singapore, cultivating police integrity is the path away from police misconduct to police reform (read prior posting here).
THIS IS REALITY, NOT A MOVIE
From pictures of Duterte on the front of Time magazine parading through town on a chopper or posing with M-16s to declaring that if he is elected president of the Philippines he will make himself dictator and if congress tries to remove him, he will personally remove congress, Duterte entertains the viewer and voter with a movie script of epic proportions of his own construction (see here & here).
Like political rhetoric run amuck, Duterte specializes in machismo bragadoccio aimed at entertaining and winning votes.
He will bring back the death penalty Duterte declares, never mind that the Catholic church itself has declared that voters "cannot, in good conscience, support a candidate" who is working for the return of the death penalty (see here).
CONSTITUTION? WHAT CONSTITUTION?
Running on a platform of dictatorship is essentially running on a platform to overthrow the constitution and the state as it is currently exists. As one commentator observes:
"He ought to see that his envisioned dictatorship will be an aberration of the Constitution because nowhere in our fundamental law does it say that one is allowed to use force without legitimate ends and due process. Police power is an inherent power of the state and includes the power to make and implement laws and to regulate behavior and enforce order. This power also comes with limits: (i) only the Legislative branch can determine laws including the scope of police power, (ii) everyone should be accorded due process, and (iii) everyone is equal before the law."
Like many other politicians in the past, Duterte is running on a "law & order" platform that actually shrinks the "rule of law" the legal concept it opposes: "There will be no rules, just arbitrary decisions. Thus, even if Duterte wins the elections, his exercise of power will be illegitimate" (see here on rule of law vs. law & order).
Perhaps in the end, it really does not matter what a candidate says but rather what the candidate does. Perhaps if Duterte is elected, he will make Manila and the country of Philippines like his safe Davao and rather than becoming a dictator, listen to and cooperate with the other two branches of government, the legislative and judicial which according to the logic of constitutions hold the executive branch in check.
Or maybe it will all boil down to the perfect excuse for a coup and military takeover of the government or perhaps yet another EDSA protest movement (EDSA IV) followed by coup. Before the last election in 2010 there were widespread worries of a coup.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Neistat, Anna, and Kay Seok. "You Can Die Any Time": Death Squad Killings in Mindanao. New York, NY: Human Rights Watch, 2009. Print.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davao_death_squads
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_killings_and_forced_disappearances_in_the_Philippines
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/philippines0607/index.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20080709051731/http://www.extrajudicialexecutions.org/reports/A_HRC_4_20_Add_3.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment