With the daily killings of alleged pushers and users, local executives, judges, prosecutors and even clergymen, our country is being ushered into an era of violence and culture of impunity.
I thus wonder what the President will say at his State of the Nation Address later this month.
I have been a journalist for almost seven decades but I have never seen so many killings happening under an administration as I am seeing in this one.
True, there were atrocities committed during the dictatorship of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, but most of them were directed at the communists and their allies. This conflict prompted the declaration of martial law in 1972.
I was in my teens during the Japanese occupation, and in Northern Luzon Filipinos killed their fellow Filipinos, accusing them of collaborating with the enemy.
But going back to the President —what will the President say during the Sona, given all the deaths that have so far marred his administration?
Will he tell us that all these are part of the change that he promised when he was campaigning?
The silent majority, I believe, has its own questions for the President, even as there does not seem to be much outrage in what Mr. Duterte has been saying. My gulay, have we sunk this low in our values?
I think the reason he remains popular is that people are still giving him the opportunity to redeem himself.
I am disappointed, but I am not giving up. I really am an optimist.
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I have been urging the Duterte administration to make decongesting jails a priority. This includes the National Bilibid Prison. This has become a vicious cycle. Those detained cannot make bail because of poverty, so they suffer sub-human conditions in the jail. They live among hardened criminals and so they become hardened criminals themselves in the long run.
Now comes the Commission on Audit report that jail congestion nationwide has increased by staggering 612 percent because of the war on drugs,
The CoA found that as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology’s total jail population is 146, 302, when the capacity is only for 20,653.
Santa Banana, no previous administration has had that problem! The sad part is that the Duterte administration is not doing anything about the problem.
The BJMPO is supposed to be under the Department of Justice, and yet it the DoJ turns a blind eye to the congestion problem. The inmates live worse than animals do. They are given a food ration of P50 a day—I cannot think of a worse punishment, my gulay!
I don’t know if the CoA report also includes the New Bilibid Prison and the Correctional Institute for Women.
Santa Banana, there are now over 24,000 jail inmates at the NBP when it was built only for 2,400! With convicted drug lords among them, no wonder the nefarious trade continues, with the connivance of corrupt guards, I wonder—what is former PNP Chief Ronald dela Rosa doing?
I wonder too why former Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II did not push through with the bidding for the jail relocation project.
Something smells here. And the current Secretary Menardo Guevarra sees, hears and says nothing about it.
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It is good that Senator Grace Poe is pushing for the investigation of defective Indian-made patrol cars worth P1.8 billion. The probe will include former Interior secretary Manuel Roxas II and PNP Chief Alan Purisima.
The amount is not small!
The appearance of Roxas and Purisima before a Senate investigation should reveal a lot, Even the police who use the cars say they are useless. Why settle for Indian cars when there are better brands in the market?
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My memoirs’ title is “Periodista—the Road Never Ends.” It is now printing under the auspices of Manila Times chairman emeritus Dante Arevalo Ang. It has a special chapter on three business tycoons whom I believe represent the country’s nation builders. I consider them my heroes.
They are Henry Sy, Ramon Ang, and Roberto Ongpin. All of them are a cut above the rest.
I also have other chapters on other nation-builders. Watch out for my book. Meanwhile, visit my website www.emiljurado.weebly.com