There are people who say this country is at the crossroads. Some say we are past the crossroads having taken a fork in the road leading to the precipice. At the extent of painting a pessimistic picture, the Philippines in reality is a country in crisis. To be fair, one’s assessment depends on which side of the political divide one is on.
Toxic politics, for one, is the main factor dragging the country down to the abyss. The leadership and major players in the political landscape are too preoccupied with protecting their turf that they don’t realize that they themselves are the ones digging the ground from under them and the rest of us with them. This observation is not mine alone. It is culled from more discerning political analysts whose overriding concern like mine is the welfare and well-being of the citizenry. Is that too much to ask and expect from our leaders?
Unfortunately it is the people who put the present leadership into power. But it’s not yet too late for the captain of the ship of state to change course before it runs aground and hit the rocks in shallow water.
The current controversy over President Rodrigo Duterte’s fulmination against the European Union is a case in point of the government’s slash-and-burn foreign policy. It is no longer a presidential outburst; it has been elevated into official policy when Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alan Peter Cayetano stated the Philippines will no longer accept foreign grants from the EU. As the country’s top diplomat, Cayetano enunciated the government policy vis a vis Europe. Earlier, the former senator from Taguig in an interview with Al Jazeera defended the government’s war on drugs and dismissing the alleged extrajudicial killings of suspects during police operations as collateral damage.
Collateral damage and the death of civilians caught in the crossfire is what happens during aerial bombing of houses and buildings as in the battle of Marawi. But the war zone in Marawi was more or less defined. Not so in the war on drugs where suspects are allegedly killed even in kneeling position, according to witnesses. Young people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with suspects become part of police statistics. There is an estimated 3,000 people killed in the government’s drive against drugs. This fatalities are much more than the death toll combined on both sides in the five- month old war to liberate Marawi from the clutches of the Maute/ISIS terrorists.
Our soldiers deserved to be extolled as heroes. They persevered and carried on to free beleaguered Marawi. The two leaders of the terror group— Omar Maute and Isnilon Hapiloni—were killed in the military’s final push to victory. President Duterte should also be commended for his resolve to free Marawi.
But we beg to differ in the government’s disengagement with the EU because a small, little known European parliamentary group criticized the extra judicial killings in the war on drugs. The EU itself has disowned and disclaimed the splinter group was an EU bloc mission.
There was no need in a moment of anger to tell the EU ambassadors in the country to get out and leave within 24 hours This is a declaration of severing diplomatic ties with 28 member countries in the EU. The United Kingdom at least asked its people whether they like to leave the European Union in what is known as Brexit. The people spoke and manifested their decision in a referendum. Britain’s landmark exit from the EU was the voice of the people, not just the decision of one man.
The false pride of one man could affect 100 million Filipinos, many of whom are jobless, homeless and eating less, if they are eating at all. Any financial help, not just from the EU but from all sources, is not a policy of mendicancy. It is the interdependence of nations with another.
But it’s not a misguided foreign policy that is the bane of the nation. Terrorism, separatism, communist insurgency, crime, corruption, unmanageable traffic plus the rising prices of basic and essential commodities add to the heady brew of social unrest. Lifestyle checks have been ordered by the President on officials and personnel of the Bureaus of Customs, Internal Revenue and Immigration. This is not my own assessment of the serious situation alone. The ongoing public inquiries being conducted by the Senate into the spate of corruption speak volumes of the malfeasance in these bureaus.
The equilibrium or check and balance among the executive, judiciary and legislative branches is in peril of being upset with the three impeachment moves against the heads of the Commission on Elections, Office of the Ombudsman and the Supreme Court. Whether there’s basis or not in any of these impeachment moves, the fact is the credibility of these constitutional bodies has been undermined.
I do not wish the ouster of the President. Like other citizens of this country, I would like him to succeed. We cannot afford another uprising either by the people or the military, the very guardians of stability. We can no longer be a country whose government is still a work in progress despite decades of so-called democratic institutions.