Columnist Jessica Zafra’s “Obituary to the Formerly Brilliant” written in reference to her former mentor, current Philippine ambassador to the United Nations Teddy Boy Locsin, was a sad yet telling reminder to all and sundry that anyone, no matter how brilliant he or she may be, also have feet of clay.
Zafra’s online article surfaced in the wake of Locsin’s tweet war with netizens over the controversial remarks he made that supported President Rodrigo Duterte’s Hitler analogy in terms of the war against illegal drugs.
Locsin’s tweet, to sum it up, stated that the Nazis were “not all wrong, give or take killing millions of the wrong people” and he urged his followers to keep “an open mind.”
Anyone with a passing knowledge of world history would know about the “Final Solution” carried by the German despot Adolf Hitler that claimed the lives of six million Jews.
A lot had been said about Duterte’s offensive analogy of the “Final Solution” with his own relentless, bloody war against drug lords and users, and he already apologized for it.
But the ramifications and the collateral damage caused by his statements, which he worsens by attacking everyone who dares criticize him, will continue to feed debates and questions on whether he is doing right in his war on illegal drugs.
Along with the debates comes the polarizing and oftentimes inflammatory dialogue used by the President’s supporters, allies and apologists on those who raise valid points in the conduct of the war on drugs.
Locsin is one such example as he traded insults using F words to those who criticized and roundly condemned his own “Hitler/Nazi” Final Solution analogy to Duterte’s pet war, by reasoning that the only fate awaiting drug users is death, not rehab.
The way he pictures it, and how I and maybe others see it, Locsin shares Duterte’s belief — and it had been reported that he did give the idea to President Duterte to use the “Hitler” analogy to illustrate the relentless nature of his war on drugs — that drug addicts or at least shabu users are reduced to mindless zombies who are beyond treatment and that, like vermin, they should be exterminated from the face of the earth.
Wasn’t it President Duterte who kept on repeating in his “sermons” that the brains of shabu users had shrunk so small due to constant drug use that he or she has lost the ability to reason and think straight and are thus beyond rehab?
So what about his plans to open rehab centers in military camps? I hope they are used to actually rehabilitate drug users and not underground operatives of the communists who are now enjoying the President’s favor.
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Watching these Senate and Congressional hearings on the illegal drug trade in the National Bilibid Prison (NBP) and the alleged links it has with Sen. Leila De Lima on national TV can be quite taxing on anyone with a fleeting interest in the news, and that’s probably what the Duterte administration and its allies are counting on even as they continue to drill into the public mind-set the supposed righteousness of their campaign against the illegal drug trade.
That’s why Vice President Leni Robredo’s announcement of a National Anti-Poverty summit that her office is spearheading with support from the US and European officials is a welcome respite from the President’s constant sermonizing and pontificating on the drug menace.
There’s more than one war going on in the country, and it doesn’t involve bloodshed and violence but hunger and ignorance. And these wars require a different kind of leader or general to wage it.
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