The nation needs healing

President Duterte no less admitted he may not succeed in his goal of liberating the country from the drug menace within his term.

While campaigning for the presidency in the 2016 national elections, he vowed to resign if he fails to lick the drug problem in six months after assuming office. A little over two years since becoming President he is now admitting the naked truth he may lose in his war on drugs.

His honesty is commendable — no doubt about it. But his defeatist attitude is alarming. He is the President who captured the nation’s imagination because of his vow to eradicate illegal drugs. Forget about the timeline he set for himself. Let’s focus on the desired objective that he imposed upon himself.

No Filipino in his right mind will ever oppose the desired objective of eradicating the illegal drugs problem. Except perhaps those who are benefitting from the illegal drug trade, the rest of the nation silently backed Duterte up in his war on drugs.

It was only when the methodology that saw many drug suspects killed in legitimate police operations and in what the police said deaths under investigation that achieving the desired objective became a hot issue — a big question not only to human rights advocates but also to ordinary citizens. While the objective was worth supporting, many questioned the methodology in achieving it.

Here and abroad, the furor that the Duterte administration’s war on drugs generated was for sure unexpected. But when suspects ended up shot dead without due process, either by the police or by unidentified assailants that even the police could not identify, the silent majority — the critical mass — got awakened to the bizarreness of the situation.

The killings associated with the war on drugs have somehow gone berserk. They reached alarming proportions where no one appeared in control anymore. And the war itself was used by unscrupulous cops as excuse in committing crimes such as when a Korean was abducted by men identifying themselves as policemen who raided his house for illegal drugs but later on ended up killed right inside Camp Crame, the headquarters of the national police.

Abuses by men in uniform marred the administration’s war on drugs. Impunity became the rule rather than the exception. Policemen accused of violating the law as they carried out their task in the war on drugs instead of being meted out with corresponding punishments ended up either being promoted or transferred to juicier assignments.

The case of the policemen who shot dead Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa for allegedly shooting it out with them while serving a warrant for his arrest ironically in his prison cell in Baybay, Leyte is a good case in point. After the internal investigation conducted by the police on the warrant servers, they were exonerated and reinstated into the service.

While the outcome of the case benefitted the policemen concerned, the blow it dealt on the administration’s war on drugs was incalculable. That case emboldened the police to be more aggressive, if not ruthless, in performing its task in this war, but it likewise emboldened the awakened citizenry to stand up against the administration’s way of carrying out its war on drugs.

Similar incidents where the police appeared engaged in illegal shortcuts in running after drug suspects started to be exposed by an agitated citizenry made more vigilant by such shortcuts. Its end result? The declining citizens’ support for the war on drugs, making it harder to push.

The deaths of collateral victims in this war such as that teenager in Caloocan who, after being picked up by the police as witnessed by his neighbors, ended up dead with gunshot wounds only exacerbated the situation. The war on drugs became a bane instead of being a boon to the community, thus the diminishing support it was getting later from the worried citizenry.

Apparently it was where Duterte was coming from when he, exasperated, told the nation he may not be successful in putting an end to the drug menace within his term. I commiserate with the President for it is indeed hard to accept failure given the enormity of the powers of his office in fighting against illegal drugs.

But indeed it is very hard to push a program about which the people have become skeptical.