The latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey taken on the period September 23 to 27 shows just how exactly uncertain Filipinos are with the government’s war on drugs.
Connect that with a statement from Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Chairman Dionisio Santiago that the P1.5-billion mega drug rehab center in Nueva Ecija was a costly, impractical mistake and we have a picture of an administration that had been waging this war on drugs based on and fueled only by President Rodrigo Duterte’s rage and populist politics.
The latest SWS survey showed that while nearly half or 46 percent of Filipinos believe that casualties, including those killed in the crossfire, in the drug war are unavoidable, 42 percent are against the killing of drug suspects.
This contrasts sharply with the 35 percent who don’t believe that casualties are unavoidable and the 39 percent who believe that drug users and dealers should be killed.
Based on these figures, there are still a lot of Filipinos who believe that justice served means having to literally snuff out the drug suspects even if there are people caught in the crossfire.
This is a classic half-empty, half-full scenario. One can also look at these survey results to mean that a growing number of Filipinos are thinking that drug suspects should be jailed, not killed, and that there are more unnecessary deaths due to the relentless, often-unchecked campaign waged by the police.
What the survey says though is that while Filipinos are an understanding lot, they can spot when the law enforcement agencies have been sloppy and dangerously neglectful in their job to protect us from these drug syndicates and users.
It is to be expected that unfavorable survey results will be dismissed by the Duterte administration. But these can influence them to change course, if only by a few significant degrees, not just to appease the public but the international community that had taken notice of the mounting death toll.
We have yet to see the cumulative total of deaths of drug suspects in Cebu and Central Visayas, but based on the statements of the police chiefs, they have been careful not to set off alarms of summary execution-style killings despite the vocal statements of local officials wanting to ingratiate themselves into the Duterte administration.
And thankfully, the police had been at least publicly cooperating with stakeholders on focusing on rehabilitation though local officials stirred up controversy with their shame campaigns cloaked in the pretense of separating the community from the homes suspected of being drug dens or hideouts of drug dealers.
But to go back, these surveys may show small yet significant changes in public sentiment on the war on drugs which should be used as a barometer by the administration to further calibrate, professionalize and fine-tune their campaign against illegal drugs.