We knew from the start what he was like because he said so.
When he campaigned for president, he said he would reduce crime in six months by killing criminals and drug addicts. This would be done in the name of peace and order.
He won the election because people were tired of being jerked this way and that by elites and oligarchs; sick of being lied to, misled, fooled, ignored, unserved; frustrated of life under regimes that were by turns dictatorial, drunken, inept.
The people thought, those are just words coming out of his mouth, he isn’t really going to perpetrate those exaggerations. And we want a change.
But remember, we knew what he was like from the start.
Once he was chieftain of that jewel of a city in the south, bursting with pomelo sweetness shot through with placer gold, royal purple of mountains, and green of trees and farms.
There his death squads enforced his idea of the law, and red blood of those slain without due process stained the vibrant fabric of the community.
He brought the rituals of those killing fields to the nation, and the people said, yes, we are willing for our fellow Filipinos to be killed because we want a new order, we want a change.
He said police could kill suspected drug addicts without fear of retribution from the law. He said to frame them for their own deaths. He said that he would sponsor a bill that lowers the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 9.
He said that children killed in the drug war are “collateral damage;”
He said he would kill human rights advocates next if they don’t shut up.
And many are now silent out of fear. Fear for their lives, fear for their property, fear for their place in society.
Others stay silent out of fatigue, worn out by the argumentum ad infinitum with his fanatical supporters and ground down by the incessant shrieking and harrying of trolls.
But we must not keep silent any longer because our children are dying.
We should not stay silent, because Kian was killed, and Althea, Hideyoshi, Joshua, Jefferson, Danica, Frances, and two dozen more, or even more than that.
Say their names. Say their names and remember their senseless deaths, they who were the future of our country, the heirs to our patrimony.
We cannot remain silent any more because silence is approval.
Silence is consent.
Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” and in the nothing we do and the silence we keep, our children fear to walk the streets of their neighborhoods, fear to face the warm Philippine nights blessed by the moon and stars, fear to be a part of community life lest they be caught in the crossfire of the killings.
How many unjust deaths have torn men, women, and children from their families? How much longer will human rights to due process be violated and the Constitution and other laws of the land flouted? How can we face our children and grandchildren when they ask us, “Why didn’t you stop the slaughter of the innocents?”
Recall that we knew what he was like from the start.
What we knew and we know are heard in his words and seen in his actions. He will not change; as he is, so he will go on. As he brought death to the southern city, he makes blood flood in the capital.
And we cower in silence and inaction born of fear, even as our children are taken from us by those sworn to protect.
But it is time to take a stand, as it was time when the first shot was fired in this ugly reign of terror.
We condemn those who kill without respect for human life and without due process in flagrant violation of law and the Constitution.
We hold complicit those who aid, abet, and otherwise encourage the drug war to continue and escalate, particularly those in positions of power and influence who have it in their authority to curb these abuses, but do not.
We denounce the state-sanctioned murder that has killed many thousands of Filipinos since July 2016.
We are no longer silent. And we do not consent.
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Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. FB: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, IG: @jensdecember, @artuoste