PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte’s third State of the Nation Address (Sona), sans his usual profanity, may have seemed boring, or a pleasant surprise, depending on where you stand.
But his address was by no means tame.
If anything, in fact, it was probably the most, in his own words, “chilling” Sona of all. The sober tone may have even made it more so.
I am referring, of course, to his primary obsession, the “war on drugs” that, by many accounts, has claimed well over 27,000 lives since he assumed office, with the killings recently picking up the pace again and spreading to more places.
Free of expletives or not, Duterte’s third Sona started off with a headlong plunge into this favorite subject of his, declaring that “the war against illegal drugs is far from over” and would be “as relentless and chilling, if you will, as on the day it began.”
No, this time, he didn’t even have to utter one of his most familiar phrases – “Papatayin kita” – to get the message across and effectively make death, or killing if you will, official government policy.
He even employs false dichotomy to justify this murderous policy and, at the same time, smear those who rail against the killings: “Your concern is human rights, mine is human lives.”
The fact is – and there is no way Duterte cannot know this – HUMAN LIFE IS THE FIRST AND ULTIMATE HUMAN RIGHT.
He just doesn’t – or refuses to – care. To him, the fastest and most efficient way of getting rid of a problem, real or imaginary – and his statistics on the drug problem are mostly fiction, numbers plucked out of thin air and casually upsized against all logic – is extermination, literally. Collateral damage and innocence or guilt be damned.
It does not even occur to him that, two years and thousands of deaths later, the fact he continues to rail against how pervasive the drug menace is meant he is nowhere near winning it or that he is aiming at the wrong target.
His single gauge of success seems to be how close he is to fulfill his twisted wish of fattening the fish in Manila Bay.
How many suspected drug lords – especially the ones he himself publicly named – are among the perished or, at least, even in jail?
And why, except for a lowly bodegero, is no one behind bars for the smuggling of P6.4 billion worth of shabu under the noses of Customs, with the former head of agency merely shunted to another job? Never mind someone who may or may not have a dragon tattoo.
With his third Sona, Duterte has effectively made the total disregard for human rights – and life – official state policy.
We can expect the rivers of blood already drenching our land to grow into an ocean of death. Unless that is, we the people refuse to see our nation turn into a graveyard on account of a madman’s delusions.
Judging by recent events, I can safely say this is increasingly becoming more than one just one man’s opinion.