REMEMBER the police chief in 2016 urging the public to burn the drug lords. “Sunogin ninyo!” was his battlecry.
He said his call for cops to be more aggressive in the drive against illegal drugs was for their safety. Any hint of danger in the act of apprehending suspects should be enough grounds to fire first. He did not want his men and women to die in the line of fire.
His call roused a wide public flak, and he’d later apologize. “I am sorry if I said something undesirable. I am only human who gets angry,” he said.
But that was 2016. For a couple of years now, then Philippine National Police chief and now senator of the land, Ronaldo Bato dela Rosa is far from apologetic. Every now and then, he’d figure in the news, and oftentimes with the most aggressive pronouncements and most primitive of ideas.
Last Wednesday, June 26, the incoming senator said his legislative agenda includes a law on public executions of drug trafficking convicts.
He said he’d put a cap to spare small-time drug peddlers. The law that he wants targets the big-time drug traffickers, those who would be found in possession of over, say, a kilo of shabu.
As to the public execution, he said: “Yung gawing public na maging katakot-takot sa mga tao na gumawa, para hindi pamarisan. Kung gusto mo ‘yung firing squad sa plaza covered live by media para makita ng taumbayan na hindi tayo dapat gumawa ng ganito para maging deterrent yan.”
The executions must be as terrifying and as public as they can get, by firing squad in the park, in full media coverage.
So there goes Dela Rosa again, throwing us back into the Dark Ages. While fury against the drug menace and its perpetrators is comprehensible, any suggestion towards that kind of primitivism suggests we have at least one hatchet in the august halls of the Senate. It’s dangerous especially in the season of benighted loyalties; we might just wake up with a terrible law with wide public support.
Basic decency and education dictate that Dela Rosa’s suggestion should not even have a place for public debate. His primal instincts have no place in a civilized world.
But there should be public vigilance, or a more pronounced antidote against ignorance and bloodthirst.