RAYMUND FERNANDEZ
We have to wonder how we brought ourselves — or how we were brought — to this dark and dangerous place. Who herded us here? It was not too long ago when the choice was ours to come or not come here. And we chose one way or another. Who can look at all these and not feel a measure of regret?
We stood by and allowed them to experiment with murder as policy to solve a pressing problem. After roughly 12,000 deaths, the problem is farther and farther away from being solved. It has spawned more problems than the original one. Used to be, we walked the streets in fear of drug addicts.
Now, we have to fear the police as well. They can kill anyone they like with impunity. We have seen it. And see it over and over again. Our own children are not safe. Unless one is, of course, very rich and powerful, then one would have nothing to fear. Even so, we have turned our country into a dark and dangerous place.
The darkness is defined by how little we know of what is really going on.
That we have come to a dangerous place is defined by how unsafe our own rights as citizens have become. So that we may all soon have to be silent to be safe. Despite this, now more than ever before, do we feel the need to ask certain questions.
Would that their answers bring us out of darkness. And if ever we wonder just how far we are from finding the solution to our drug problem, we need simply to ask: How do you smuggle more than P6.4 billion worth of drugs into the country and not get caught? Where are the drugs now? Are they on their way back to China? How can the drugs disappear, as it were, into thin air?
It is possible that there will be even more killings from hereon, if only to turn our attention away from these questions. P6.4 billion is a lot of money. P6.4 billion is money enough to acquire the critical mass required so that the money acquires a life of its own. P6.4 billion is money enough to put quite a number of politicians back into office. It is more than enough the buy the Philippine presidency.
But P6.4 billion is worth nothing if it is in the form of drugs, unless one were an addict. P6.4 billion worth of drugs will have to become legal tender — money — before it can acquire political usefulness.
The problem is, how? After we have asked that question, there is nothing much else to do but guess and wait. The truth will reveal itself in due time according to the nature of history.
P6.4 billion is much too much to hide from the prying eyes and the judgement of history, just like the Marcos loot.
And because we have to wait for answers to all these, we might as well dwell on something that can have answers — such as the death of one Kian delos Santos who was a Duterte supporter, born of a family that helped vote Duterte into power, and who is dead now, execution style: one bullet in the back and two bullets into the head.
And if they arrested him, he could not even be jailed for another year according to established Philippine laws. He was only 17 years of age. He was, for all intents and purposes, a child and technically, a son of the Duterte regime.
And those of us who are not the children of Duterte will have to adopt him now, as if he were our own. For if this is what befalls a child of Duterte, what could happen to us and our own children?
And thus, we cannot let his death be forgotten. We must draw lessons from it.
And we should not let these lessons pass.
We have walked into a dark and dangerous place.
We have walked too far away from the safety of the rule of law.
We have walked too far away from moral clarity.
Murder is evil. It is unacceptable.
Twelve thousand deaths and hardly any investigation of the correctness and legality of those deaths.
That is not acceptable. Kian’s mother is exactly right: “We are not dogs! We are not pigs!”
We are worse than dogs and pigs if we let this pass and do nothing.