Duterte and the Road to Hell

Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte
Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte” by Keith Bacongco is licensed under CC BY 2.0

While the “Million March” for Rodrigo Duterte fizzled out and failed to convince the Davao City Mayor to run for president, his grassroots campaign online is still hoping for him to change his mind.

For a politician who has repeatedly shot down any speculation of a presidential campaign, Duterte’s pseudo-campaign sure is a strange one. It is even stranger that his supporters go so far as to say that Duterte is “morally obligated” to run. We are led to wonder, what other moral obligations does Duterte have?

Duterte’s claim to fame is that he “cleaned up” Davao City, which was once a cesspool of crime. Purportedly, Davao has become safe due to the strict enforcement of the law. One popular story was that the mayor himself would patrol the city in a taxi, striking fear in the hearts of evildoers.

But, in more candid conversations, people attribute the safety of Davao to the Davao Death Squads. The vigilante group has been credited with hundreds of extra-judicial killings. Answering allegations of his ties to the group, Duterte himself confirms it, saying, “They say I am the death squad? True, that is true.”  He also said that 1,000 deaths under his command would be a “cheap” estimate.

Though his supporters have dismissed any such admission from Duterte as him ‘joking,’ Duterte has, at the very least, condoned extra-judicial killings as a method of combatting crime, saying, “Summary execution of criminals remains the most effective way to crush kidnapping and illegal drugs.”

 

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Also, don’t be poor.

Today, Davao claims to be among the safest cities in the world, all the while sweeping hundreds of unsolved murders under the rug. It sure helps a city’s crime stats to ignore one whole category of crime: extra-judicial killings.

Duterte supporters see death squad victims as riffraff who deserved to be executed. I’ve been in exchanges with supporters who say that death squad victims had already been convicted in a court of law. But they had been released. The death squads only ever kill criminals, so only criminals should worry! And since they went back to a life of crime, it was only right to have them executed. Supporters fail to realize that even if they were tried and convicted, they were never sentenced to death, since capital punishment has been suspended in the Philippines.

Advocates of death squads have bought into the short-sighted idea that criminality is always simply a failure of character, rather than the result of a complex and systemic problem involving socioeconomic pressures outside of a person’s control. Restorative justice recognizes this fact. And yet, Duterte himself mocked the New York-based Human Rights Watch because “They want to rehabilitate instead of just killing the idiots.” He also said that rehabilitation is an idea imported from the West and is rooted in being “soft.”

It has been easy to write off death squad victims. They’re mostly poor. They’d been largely invisible to the Internet tough guys who have been advocating for their deaths. What hasn’t been easy is to see them as victims— victims of a failed war on drugs and victims of failed socioeconomic policies. After all, nobody grows up wanting to be a drug dealer or a rice smuggler. It’s hard to see all this when when we’ve never seen our own hunger as an existential threat.

Even under the threat of death squads, these people went into a life of crime because our society prevented them from finding stable opportunities to earn a living wage. That’s how bad it is out there right now. It should say a lot about Davao and the Philippines that people are risking being murdered because they can’t earn a decent living.

And so, Duterte supporters are sated by the blood of poor victims, including children, who are hardly to blame for the systemic rot of Philippine society. We never hear about elites being murdered in cold blood for bad labor practices or anti-competitive behavior.

 

The Philippines is magic bullet-proof

Duterte has been made up to be the messiah the Philippines needs. All we need is discipline, his supporters claim. If everybody just followed the rules, we’d all be better off! And here we have an icon dripping in machismo to make sure we’re all on our best behavior.

It would be nice to live in such a comic book fantasy where killing all the bad people solves everything. It’s not surprising that people who see the world in such black-and-white terms of good and evil also support solving things with magic bullets. (And I do mean bullets.)

But, let us accept this premise. Let’s believe that Duterte would be a benevolent dictator—that he would only use his powers for good. After all, it worked for Singapore. Why wouldn’t it work for the Philippines?

Then, let’s also ignore the fact that Lee Kuan Yew never advocated for extra-judicial killings and that Singapore is a city-state with half the population of Metro Manila.

The benevolent dictator theory does not work because of one little problem: people die. Even if Duterte had the omniscience and benevolence he is believed to have, he will leave office someday. Even if he extends his presidency indefinitely, he will eventually leave behind all the additional power his supporters want to grant him: the power to rule while ignoring human rights. Duterte’s successor will have license to act as Duterte did. Then, where would we be? (And some supporters want that successor to be Bongbong Marcos.)

 

The road to hell

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and Duterte supporters seem to have nothing but good intentions. They have grown tired of watching others cheat the system and get rewarded for it. They just want everyone to play by the rules. They want to see a Philippines where nice guys don’t always finish last.

These are ideals many Duterte critics must share, too. Life in the Philippines is unending frustration. But the solution is not in enforcing discipline under the gun, but in adjusting incentives. If following the rules rewards rule breakers, we have to change the rules, not break them ourselves.

We are never going to intimidate the Philippines into becoming a prosperous nation. The time has passed when empires could be built by people who kept their head down for fear of looking at the king the wrong way. We, as a people, have to freely decide that we want the country to be a better place. We can’t just hand off this responsibility to one man, however many guns he poses with.

A Filipino tourist was once caught smoking in Davao, where smoking is illegal, and Duterte forced him to eat his cigarette. Witnesses say that Duterte also told the tourist never to challenge the law. And yet, isn’t it also illegal to force anybody to eat anything against their will?

Duterte is a man of contradiction. He claims to enforce lawfulness, all the while endorsing unlawful vigilantism (if we believe that he isn’t outright complicit). It is exactly this kind of thinking— taking shortcuts and defying the rules—that led us to where we are now. He is more of the same thing, just louder and angrier.

43 comments

  1. I agree entirely with your views on the road to hell with Duterte. I see him as an organized crime boss. There is something suspicious about the intensity of his convictions to clean the drug trade and completely disregarding the real issues: 1) poverty, 2) corruption, 3) sub-standard education. The Philippines has so much potential an yet it has been stalled by its own undoing.

    What will happen to all those families and relatives who have been benefiting from the generosities of a well off dealer? Will they just substitute one criminal activity for another? Why couldn’t Duterte understand the logic behind the fact that a well educated, busy and industrious society, unaffected by preying government officials and workers, where rules are followed and moneys flow in and out to serve the people, not it’s elected nominees, does a lot better?

    It reminds me a my practical joker father who, when I complained about say sore legs or injured foot, slap me behind the head. I would say: “whats was that for?” and he would reply “so that you think about something else!!!” That’s what Duterte makes me think of, he has another agenda.

  2. The Philippines is modeled after a form of democracy that doesn’t work. Duterte isn’t oblivious to this. One can argue that the Philippines is built on a feudal structure but just more-so contemporary. People die, that’s inevitable. They have died for years and years – but I agree that extra-cirricular justice, while unpleasant, really does keep the riff raff in fear. It makes those who are prone to crime, those in poverty – second guess and forces them to find other ways to earn a living because of the fear.

    • If all he can do is kill just to prove a point, he is not bright and should not be a president. And besides, it didn’t stop satan knowing there is punishment or god.

      We need to understand more addiction. If your premise is that most or if not all heinous crimes were due to drug addiction, you are wrong, why? 4 million addicts according to them, shouldn’t you be hearing more heinous crimes daily? But NO. You kill because your beliefs, and not because of what you introduce to your body. And with beliefs you have a free ticket to ‘repentance’ — you are no longer guilty after you have asked for forgiveness.

      Life is but once, NOBOBY has the right to take a life!

  3. Dah! execute them criminals so that the will fear the Law! Period! Human rights2x! What about the rights and the huamn they killed? No more rights because they are already dead! And no more that kind of human being or person! Duterte All IN!

  4. Since I am a democratic centrist socialist I’d vote for PDP-laban but I can not and would not dare to vote for Duterte. So I’m lost as to who I should support as president.

  5. Try be the Mayor of your own city and protect your own people.

    “Sometimes the world doesn’t need another hero, sometimes what it needs is a monster.” -quote from Dracula Untold

    “Sometimes, the only way to stop Evil is not with Good. You must confront it with another kind of Evil.” — Aereon, The Chronicles of Riddick

    BEST EVIL vs LESSER EVIL

    Why not choose the BEST EVIL rather than be contented with the LESSER EVIL to fight against the EVILS of Philippine Society?

    Best Evil=Mayor Duterte

    Lesser Evil=Mar/Binay/Poe/Miriam/Seneres

    A non-corrupt Iron Fist (with Vision) is what our nation badly need before it too late.

    EVILS in Philippine Society

    1. Graft & Corruption in Government

    (Congress, Judiaciary, Executive BIR, Customs, DOTC, et. al.)

    2. Drug Lords/Pushers/Abuse

    3. Gambling Lords, Jueteng King

    4. Human Trafficking, Prostitution, Rape & Violence against Women

    5. Carnapping, Kidnapping, Theft & Robbery, Swindling

    6. War Lords, Private Arm Groups, Insurgencies, Rebellion, Military Coup

    7. Poverty, unemployment, under employed

    8. Ignorance, Mediocrity, Lazy and Lack of Discipline

    9. Exploitation, Child Labor/Abuse.

  6. Rehabilitation of criminals is a grandfather law when the west needs human resource to propel their economy which now is an obsolete idea. The world is already over-populated and criminals are no longer fit on the program.

    • If you just let the crime free, do you think that they will forgive and follow ? No they’re Not !. They’re going to do that all over again . So it’s necessary for them to execute rather than letting them do it again to others. Bitch!.

      • Only if they are guilty, but you don’t kill people for smoking do you? They too will kill themselves and others (2nd hand smoking).

        Don’t be a hypocrite.

  7. This is the kind of commentary we should have more of. The statement is written in simple, sharp, sober and candid language. There are an estimate of at least twenty human rights laws from the EDSA People power Revolt to the present that struck systemic and structural flaws in the system of governance we have inherited from the past, especially martial law period which has spilled to the present. These laws were passed through the combination of highly motivated and informed NGOs and People’s organizations. The latest is RA 10368 that is now documenting 75,737 human rights violations ca.ses against the people during martial law. Ka Pepe Diokno, first Human Rights Chair of the Phil’s. gathered 1,568 cases which reflected the courage of people to dare come out in the open. Now with the new human rights law approved and signed in 2013, RA 10368 has inspired more than 75,000 victims of Marcos’ dictatorship to claim their basic right to reparation and justice. This in creative detail should be brought up to the aspiring presidential bet who glamorizes summary killings and one-man rule! May his tribe diminish, but only through the popular will of an informed and courageous people who respect the integrity of the universal law where humankind must not live in fear and in want.

  8. You said a lot without researching more about your society. The people your defending are criminals that robbed, raped and killed innocent people. People who live life fair and square yet the government is toothless enough in terms of protecting them. So you’re saying giving justice to their victims is inhumane? I hope you can still say that when someone from your family gets killed or raped.. and by the way he won’t kill anybody without giving them a lot of warnings. You should research for that..

  9. Even under the threat of death squads, these people went into a life of crime because our society prevented them from finding stable opportunities to earn a living wage. That’s how bad it is out there right now. It should say a lot about Davao and the Philippines that people are risking being murdered because they can’t earn a decent living.

    Oh my sweetheart, I don’t think you have first hand experience with drugs and drug dealing.

    • He aims to be a human rights violator. What right is of Duterte to go into family homes and tell them only 3 kids. If more than 3 kids, I guess your supporter of abortion Mr Durterte. Playing GOD without respect for GOD.

      Your a thug….good luck Philippines with your dictator and his cozying up to Communists, China, and declaring Marcos a hero with burial in hero’s cemetery.

  10. DUTERTE, DEMOCRACY, AND HUMAN RIGHTS

    Many of my friends have questioned my sense of justice, fairness, decency, and propriety because I have been a vocal supporter of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and his presidential run. Like them, I used to regard the good mayor as the enemy of democracy and human rights, but that was before when I was still naive in my youthful idealism that considered humans to be inherently good. I am no Duterte expert, but I will try to answer my friends, those who question the human rights record of the mayor, and those who are still apprehensive and ambivalent when it comes to supporting him. In the absence of evidence, I can only surmise, and the intent of this post is to intellectualize not to incite.

    Yes, there have been “motorcycle” killings in Davao City since I was a kid. Killers on motorcycles shoot their targets. There is a word for that Davaoeños use nonchalantly or in glee: “salvage”. The dictionary definition of “salvage” is not really related to killing. It is about saving or rescuing. So, does “salvaging” in Davao City rescue or save? I like to think so. If the victims are incorrigible drug peddlers, robbers, and rapists who enjoy impunity and protection and do not want to change their criminal ways, their demise saves innocent people and rescue society. Again, it is not my intent to incite people to go out and kill boneheaded criminals.

    Is Mayor Duterte involved in those benevolent killings? I have no idea, and I have no evidence. If he is, I will be more supportive and appreciative, and I will admire him more. Simply, he has balls to think outside the box. By the way, “motorcycle” killings also happen in Davao del Norte and Davao Oriental. Mayor Duterte has nothing to do with those provinces. As widely known, the killing of notorious criminals in Davao City is fair and just, and has a semblance of being democratic. Even if the mayor is involved, most Davaoeños have indirectly supported it. Their overwhelming political support to Mayor Duterte election after election has shown that killing criminals who do not listen and do not want to change are acceptable to the voters. I have friends and relatives in Davao City, and they do not feel oppressed and tyrannized but safe and secure. Indeed, the voice of the people is the voice of God (vox populi vox Dei), and I cannot question that because it is about the essence of democracy.

    Also, the killings do not happen just like that. The targets are warned multiple times and given ample time to change. In my book, that is fair. Now, is killing stubborn criminals who enjoy impunity and protection just? I think so. Is it against human rights? That is not an issue to me. Those criminals disregard human rights when they make their innocent victims suffer. Why should they enjoy those same rights they do not respect? Why should society be just to unjust people? Of course, some of you will say that we have laws to follow. This is the thing about an inefficient, toothless judicial and legal system: when it does not work, people resort to doing something outside the system. I do not think that is wrong.

    Not long ago, a drug dealer was shot in a town very far from Davao City by someone who was riding a motorcycle. He was the son of a retired policeman. It was a clear case of “salvaging” that rescues and saves. The people in that town did not care about the dead man and did not bother to sympathize with him and his family. I could sense their relief and gratefulness. I asked why there was such a feeling. I found out that shabu has been a pressing issue in that town. Is poisoning the youth with illicit drugs not a human rights violation? See, the issue I am looking at involves numbers. Between killing him and allowing him to live and continue poisoning the youth, I will pick the former. It is really about one who victimizes versus many who are victimized.

    I will only change my stance or position if we have an efficient, fair, clean, and just government–executive, legislative, and judiciary–that really protects the people. Rice smugglers have been poisoning people with fake, synthetic rice, and they have been doing it with impunity because some government and court officials are protecting them. If those motorcycle-riding killers will shoot those smugglers, I cannot really force myself to invoke human rights abuse. If rapists are still outside raping because of their political connections, I also cannot raise human rights violation if they are shot. If robbers continue to operate after being warned several times, I just cannot say it is human rights infringement if they are killed. They are no saints. All their innocent victims have human rights too, and I choose to side with them.

    Cicero, in the “De Legibus”, wrote, “Ollis salus populi suprema lex esto”–“the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law”, and if that is not the case, then those same people must do something to protect themselves so they can live in safety, security, normalcy, and prosperity. Again, I intellectualize. I do not incite people to engage in violence, break laws, and denounce the Government. I am only using my head as a pragmatist, realist thinker. Yes, humans are not inherently good, particularly those hardened, wicked criminals.

    • You have a warped sense of justice you want to “save” children from drugs yet you also want them to see murder as right? You don’t even know the truth behind these drug syndicates. Favoring an abusive kind of justice will only get you deeper into more injustice and no regard for human life. Even if death sentence were implemented it should only be reserved for serial killers. You stand together with psychopaths who have sadistic murderous tendencies.

    • He may not be the one who commit the crime but he advocates for it. This is the problem with this destructive brand of government that he wanted for the Philippines. The Philippines problem on corruption is complex that can’t be solve by killing drug Lords and rapist. This Michavellian style of leadership is not an answer. It will rather promote a cycle of violence in the future.

    • The country needs to be overhauled. I think no one would argue that. But it cannot be done overnight in a country with 7,100 islands of 102 million people. Duterte says if he cannot accomplish the reforms in 6 months to 1 year, he will abolish Congress and shut down the Supreme Court. Yes, this two branches of government, which at present are composed of corrupt men and women, who caters to personal interests to enrich themselves, pose roadblocks to reform. These roadblocks are the simple reason, why the PNoy administration becomes inutile in the implementation of most reforms that PNoy is trying hard to push. But even with that, under a democracy, Pnoy has been successful in jailing a number of the most powerful men and politicians this country ever had, like the evil Enrile. Now, if Duterte is really an effective leader, why would he need to abolish the other branches of government to achieve his reforms. He should prove his worth under the present form of

      government. Otherwise, I would rather have dictatorial form of government under an honest president like PNoy, not under an uncouth, badmouthed, philanderer and plunderer Duterte.

    • Not saying punishment of crimes should not be harsh. But they should be harsh but fair. And question is how many of those that were killed deserved death as a punishment? Heck there could have been victims that could have been ruled innocent if proper investigations were done.

      Also the other problem is that Duterte seems to feel that he is above the law. Means do not justify the end that’s not how a civilized society works.

      Also I had a family member that was killed. I was asked if we were willing to hire an assassin to kill the person. It wasn’t my call but I suggested against it. Does the killer deserve do die? In my view yes, but we have to let law and order dictate justice and not some gunman for hire to carry out the execution.

  11. The writer of this article believes too much in the capacity of hopelessly depraved people to be rehabilitated, and is so full of his own sense of sanctimonious righteousness and moral superiority, it’s sickening. It think it also smacks of religious absolutism.

    I am not a supporter of Mayor Duterte, and I am not from Davao. I am however, a fan of the 1980’s TV series called Dark Justice. As a public servant, I’ve seen way too much injustice – way too many small people languish in prison, taking the fall for their untouchable crime bosses – many of them women, and way too many people in government posts stealing from us all in broad daylight – and there is no hope of exposing them, because doing so will implicate many, many others who are also involved in institutionalized corruption. Many people – at least 4% of the population – are sociopathic and beyond rehabilitation. Many more are nearly hopelessly narcissistic and low-empathy. That is science.

    I am now of the opinion that in this country, the “legal” course of action is not always and not necessarily the “moral” course of action. Why? Because the Philippine justice system is seriously fucked up, and it will take a a million reforms and a terribly long time to incrementally unfuck it. Adjust incentives you say? Not in a million years. If you don’t believe it, try working in the Philippine government and asking for a goddamn raise. Otherwise, huwag magbanal-banalan. The author condemns “shortcuts” as if all shortcuts are evil. Bullshit.

    “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”? What a fucking terrible cliche.

    The road to heaven accomplishes nothing.

    Macchiavelli wasn’t always wrong. Good and moral governance sometimes calls for the unpleasant but necessary. I say fuck the human rights of proven criminals. Lynch and kill them all.

    • Then, why is it that only “small” criminals get killed. Duterte is now our president. Why don’t we see big time plunderers sprawled in our streets? Where is his balls when it comes to these people. Or maybe he could not kill them because it is like killing himself.

  12. I fail to see the contradiction. He’s an amoral dictator and his words and actions confirm that fact. Are you sure you’re using the word right, or is it just for literary flourish?

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