DAVAO mayor and presidential hopeful Rodrigo Duterte has announced that part of his platform of government is the extermination of criminals and corrupt public officials within six months from assuming the presidency.
“Extermination,” as in kill them dead, like Flit Insect Spray.
The enthusiastic approval by Duterte’s supporters are reminiscent of movie audiences lustily cheering on Rambo as he exterminates the bad guys. Some of these Duterte fans are intelligent and knowledgeable. Thus, their endorsement of a policy considered illegal and unacceptable in civilized societies makes you wonder if Duterte may be justified after all.
There is a saying in Tagalog, “Kung hindi mo makuha sa santong dasalan, kunin mo sa santong paspasan.” (Loosely translated: If you can’t do it the nice way, do it the violent way.)
Perhaps the Dutertans (a term akin to Noranians and Vilmanians, to describe fans of Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos) have already given up on santong dasalan as a means to clean up our government and society and have decided that santong paspasan is the only way.
It could also be conceded that Duterte has the best and noblest of intentions – a vision of a Philippines cured of the cancer that Dr. Jose Rizal exposed in Noli Me Tangere. Without considering the gory means for achieving such an end, who would object to a country where there are no criminals in the streets and no thieves and extortionists in government?
And here is this presidential candidate who vows to deliver Utopia in six months! Hallelujah!
But the problem lies in the murderous means Duterte intends to use to achieve his ends. In a previous column, I suggested that Duterte’s way is not the best way. I listed several instances of successful reforms and civil discipline being achieved without spilling blood, such as those in Lee Kwan Yew’s Singapore, Dick Gordon’s Olongapo and Jesse Robredo’s Naga City.
Apparently, the Dutertans were not impressed. I would, therefore, like to present the opposite scenario immortalized by such icons of mass extermination as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and the death squads of El Salvador.
Some may protest that Duterte isn’t in that class and “will never be.” But where does he differ? Like them, Duterte sees himself as a Redeemer whose bloody means are justified by his noble ends. Does he differ in magnitude? Well, what do you think will happen if he becomes president and institutes extra-judicial killings as a policy of the state?
Of course, I don’t believe we will ever see that gruesome fate befall our hapless country. In the first place, I doubt that Duterte actually believes his own bluster. If his supporters are hanging on to his every utterance, they should recall his admonition that the media should not take seriously everything he says. This was after he backtracked on his claim that he had presided over the extermination of 1,700 criminals – not just 700 – in Davao. Joke only, he seemed to say, in not so many words.
In the second place, Duterte will not win the presidency, assuming that he is not disqualified by the Comelec.
If there are a few million fanatic Dutertans, there are millions more who know better than to elect a self-appointed judge, jury and executioner to lead the country. To use an American cliché, the Filipino people need a Duterte presidency like a hole in the head – or a bullet in the head.
Nonetheless, I think it serves a good purpose to go over the bloody history of those who pursued the transformation of their respective countries according to Duterte’s gory template.
Like Duterte, they must all have set out – in their own minds – with a vision of a country cleansed of every kind of social, political, economic and religious vermin, leaving only a happy and contented citizenry under a wise and benevolent leader.
Hitler believed in an Aryan super race, rid of the infestation of Jews whom he considered sub-human. His solution was the holocaust. Stalin staged a brutal purge of those he branded enemies of the working class, among the intelligentsia and within the Communist party, the military and the bureaucracy. Millions were forced to work in the Gulag labor camps, imprisoned, exiled or executed without due process.
As prime minister of Kampuchea and leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot liquidated intellectuals and relocated urban dwellers to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects. Those he considered enemies of the state were summarily executed. Millions died in Pol Pot’s killing fields, immortalized in the Hollywood film of the same title.
As president of Uganda and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Idi Amin mounted a campaign of ethnic cleansing which saw thousands killed (the estimates range from 80,000 to 300,000) and Asians expelled from the country.
The El Salvador experience may be easier for Dutertans to relate to their idol’s proclivity for extra-judicial killings.
In a paper in the Foreign Policy Journal, Steve Dobransky wrote:
“The civil war that raged in El Salvador from 1980 to 1992 is often described as a successful model for counterinsurgencies, which included the use of death squads. The Salvadoran model involved large numbers of paramilitary units that were privately funded or were officially and unofficially government forces (often just a change of clothes).The death squads were guided by military, political, and economic elites. They sought to eliminate not only the armed insurgents but anyone who may have been supportive or sympathetic to the insurgent cause. Their goal was to kill many and intimidate the millions of others into submission. The Salvadoran civil war waged viciously, as the right-wing government and economic elite contended with the left-wing forces led by the FMLN. An estimated 75,000 civilians died during the war, many attributed to death squads…The Salvadoran model quickly reached international dimensions when four American missionaries were brutally raped and murdered in December 1980 by Salvadoran military forces.”
The international spotlight suddenly focused on El Salvador and the involvement of the CIA in training and funding the death squads. When six Jesuit priests were murdered by the death squads, the US government was forced to threaten to cut off aid to the Salvadoran government unless the death squads were dismantled.
But the most shocking victim of the death squads was the Archbishop of San Salvador, Monsignor Oscar Romero, who was shot and killed while saying mass. According to a media report, Monsignor Romero was “felled by a single bullet as he prepared Communion, his blood soaking the holy bread in his hands at the altar.” He was assassinated shortly after he had made a public appeal to members of the death squads to stop the killings and to defy the unlawful orders of their superiors.
To go back to Duterte, how sure are his adoring supporters that all of the victims of his death squads were drug dealers and criminals? How about those killed on mere suspicion. And how many street children, disadvantaged by poverty, could have been led away from a life of vagrancy and could have gone on to become responsible members of Philippine society – even become candidates for president like the foundling Grace Poe and the orphan Jejomar Binay?
The horrible part of Duterte’s cure for the cancer afflicting our country is that he himself is morally sick. Anyone with a demented understanding of right and wrong has no right to pass judgement on the life or death of fellow human beings. Whatever his protestations of noble intentions might be, Duterte’s way is no better than that of other mass murderers like Pol Pot, Idi Amin and the killers of Monsignor Oscar Romero.
Just a few words of caution to the Dutertans. If your idol should ever become president, who will protect those of you who may happen to annoy members of the death squads? You may end up pining for the “good old days” when one could freely criticize Noynoy Aquino and his Tuwad na Daan without fear of being exterminated. ([email protected])
