A FEW days after the bombing of a Roman Catholic cathedral in Jolo, a mosque in Zamboanga was also bombed. That the bombings still happened despite Mindanao being placed under martial law for several months now – is a big slap on the face of the Duterte administration.
Such atrocities have put into question the effectiveness of his macho positioning, cowboy language, and bravado.
Obviously, the lawless elements in this country are getting stronger and harder to identify. Sadly, the expected response of the administration especially the military is the extension of martial law and its imposition in the whole of Mindanao.
Crude as it may be, some people cannot avoid speculating on the possibility of political orchestrations behind the sporadic strikes. For a country that has experienced so much drama and deceptions under a dictator who did everything just for him to perpetuate in power, things are now difficult to believe or not to believe. There is a high degree of suspicion among Filipinos who have trust issues with an administration that has propensity towards tyranny or dictatorship.
Sometimes there really are no monsters to fight. But because of the need to stay in power, not to mention the need to sustain relevance – the state has to weave narratives and even sacrifice a fraction of itself if only to legitimize its agenda. Enemies have to be invented to justify the very reason for controlling people’s lives.
There is another thing that is more worrisome though, and that is the increasing “banality” of violence. After the bombing, social media posts revealed a significant loss in the people’s sensitivity. It’s as if nothing was shocking with what was basically a terroristic attack; it’s as if things were almost unfelt. Instead of empathy for those who lost their families, people were more concerned with the extension of martial law. Others even simply said that Duterte must be happy now that the cathedral was bombed. After all, wasn’t that destruction of a Roman Catholic church a dream come true for a president who wished bishops dead if not beheaded?
Violence has a thousand forms and its victims have a million faces. When it hits, it hits, and no one would be spared from its damage, not even religion.
Second, violence can and will happen if evil people so desire it to happen. This further means that military presence in the form of martial law is in no way a guarantee that crimes and acts of terrorism would not happen.
The people’s reactions to ongoing proliferation of violence is worrisome. These are the consequences we get from compounded violent actions and verbalizations of the government no less. How can violence still strike or shock us if it has been the glorified reason for being of the state’s existence? If the state itself is the chief sponsor of violence then how can the same political agency claim to be in a better position to criticize actions that are similar to its own making?
Obviously it is still very difficult to convince people that from the outset the Duterte administration has courted failure by making use of violence in various ways and strategies as part of its political tactic.
Now that killing is becoming rather common, chances are getting slimmer in terms of determining the criminals behind the many murderous activities that continue to happen. Given that almost everything is interpreted in the light of the anti-drug campaign, the word “drug related” has become the easiest justification or rationalization whenever someone is shot dead at any time of the day.
Sadly, amidst the increasing number of deaths, still many express trust and confidence in a government which in one way or another promotes violence. These people are trying to act “as if” there is nothing horrible and objectionable with our present condition. For them there is nothing evil with the current administration. In their hearts, there is so much to praise, and nothing to criticize. Indeed, Hannah Arendt was right: “most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”