“Was the anti-drugs campaign worth it?”
Slowly but surely, change is in the air. It may be a little late and should have happened much earlier instead of outright stonewalling. It would not have worked anyway.
What am I talking about? It is the International Criminal Court investigation of our government’s five-year-old anti-illegal drug war that has claimed about 6,000 lives according to the police but more than 25,000 by other estimates. Whether it is because of it or otherwise, things are opening up.
The change is not only in the government’s attitude toward the ICC investigation but in other areas as well. Politics for instance is returning to the old freewheeling days and the administration is now being loudly attacked the likes of which we have not seen in the last five years.
All these, I would say, are positive developments. Whether of course, the government initiated this shift freely or was forced by circumstances is another matter. We are now learning more about the 52 cases being reviewed by the Department of Justice. Sources from the DOJ point to abuses committed by the police during the implementation of OPLAN Tokhang. If the government is now accepting that there were indeed irregularities committed by police personnel in the conduct of the operation, then it must agree to investigate more cases that will be brought out.
Even the Palace is now saying that those police personnel who committed abuses must answer for their actions. The downside of this is that those police personnel involved might start suspecting that they are being made the sacrificial lambs.
This is the reason why the government must see to it that in opening up, it will not be perceived as doing so to save its own skin. This ICC investigation is complicated and will take some time to complete before arrest warrants can be issued.
As I wrote in an early piece, we would not be in this predicament had certain protocols been followed by the Philippine National Police. The most important of which is the conduct of investigation every time a police operation results in the death of suspects or police operating personnel. That way, all those involved in the shootout can either be charged or cleared as the case may be before being allowed back to regular duty.
This was never done. Instead, all that we read in the newspapers was about suspects getting killed for fighting back or resisting arrest. It’s only now that the DOJ is releasing to the public these details. This may be because in the early days of the campaign, polls indicated widespread support for the drug campaign. Even up to now, there are still a lot of people in our midst who believe in this kind of solution to the illegal drug problem which is an attitude that is shocking even to me.
This is not to minimize the kind of problems that illegal drugs are doing to our society. It destroys families and corrupts public officials. Killing, however, cannot be the best solution. The recent news is that presidential candidate Senator Bato de la Rosa is getting jittery about the ICC investigation that President Duterte had to calm him down by telling the senator to simply point to him.
As we all know, it is not as simple as that. I would think that in addition to the 52 cases being reviewed by the DOJ, the ICC will also look into the many individual complaints brought to its attention. There are some in the government who think that if the DOJ makes the reviewed 52 cases public and files cases against those police personnel who went beyond their duties, it will prove that the judicial processes in this country are functioning and the investigation will no longer progress. I doubt whether this will stop the proceedings but the government can certainly use this as a defense during the investigation.
There are lessons to be learned in this sordid ICC investigation. One is that law enforcement personnel and other public officials must keep within the bounds of law. They must be able to control their exuberance and resist letting their personal interests take control of their official functions.
One former uniformed official is spending the rest of his life in jail for going overboard. This anti-drug campaign has exacted such a heavy price on Filipino lives and has attracted worldwide attention and condemnation from many quarters. The sad thing about it is that the problem has not gone away.
Was it all worth it? Could we have done it differently? I do not know how long this experience will linger in our national consciousness but I hope it’s long enough to trigger a change in public attitude toward the problem.
