Dumb and Dumber’s death toll

The most common accusation that critics of President Rodrigo R. Duterte take to his doorstep has to do with the violence that seems to attend his anti-illegal drug advocacy — his so-called “war” on drugs he promised and one he has been carrying out since taking office.

While admittedly there have been fatalities where an illegal industry has both a medical and a health aspect running alongside a criminal and violent strain, the number of fatalities cannot be ascertained. As such accountabilities cannot be fully blamed on specific identifiable entities unless we unravel layer upon layer of a deeply syndicated criminal super-hierarchy.

As in any “war” the count will always remain in dispute. Critics brandish a range from 15,000 to 20,000 killed in the drug war. The official count is approximately 5,000, where the 67 percent inaccuracy, a difference of from 5,000 to 10,000, remains unsubstantiated, unverifiable and unrecorded.

The arithmetic is worsened by partisan politics and by recalcitrants unwilling to accept an administration that has blamed its predecessor for having not only dropped the ball on peace and order issues related to the illegal drug epidemic but had actually catalyzed the menace through very specific local government party officials acting as drug lords, plus one Aquino Cabinet secretary now being prosecuted for using her high office to traffic drugs.

It was a toxic chemistry of proactively trafficking and spreading the menace and a brew comprised of bungling buffoonery and incompetents derelict of their charge to address the drug problem.

Against an official fatality count of 5,000 from the administration’s advocacy on illegal drugs, deliberately discounting the distorting effects of partisan passions and hyperbole, allow us to present the official number of fatalities racked up under the elitist administration of Benigno Aquino III and his Interior Secretary who recently resurrected his political ambitions.

We are focusing on Aquino’s presidency and the various portfolios held by former Secretary Manuel Roxas as their greater number of deaths relative to Duterte’s “war” casualties were under programs in which both were complicit and accountable.

In August 2010, hardly a quarter into the Aquino presidency in what is now called the Luneta Massacre, nine lay dead a few meters from where Aquino took his oath of office, there spilling unnecessary blood and guts due to the colossal bungling of ill-equipped and uncoordinated police forces.

In September 2013, in a fiasco to be known as the Zamboanga Siege, 38 casualties and over 110,000 innocent civilians were left despondent and homeless, some even injured, as totally avoidable hostilities under the direct command of Aquino as he “played Patton” were unnecessarily extended to as long as three weeks. When reassessments were conducted, the number of official casualties rose to 120 dead.

Today, certain quarters suspect hostilities were deliberately prolonged as a “tail-that-wags-the-dog” gambit to bury issues surrounding Aquino’s Priority Development Assistance Fund scam.

Later in November 2013, in connection with the “Yolanda” tragedy, notorious for serial fiascos, publicity stunts, incompetent crisis management, and partisan politics, the official count of the dead and missing was pegged at 7,361.

It was ironic that as more dead were found, more funds were also either squandered or lost.

In January 2015, in a brazen violation of a punitive suspension order imposed on a four-star general accused of graft, Aquino effectively sent as many as 70 to certain death in a botched operation originally planned to simply serve a warrant of arrest. The casualties counted 44 police officers heinously massacred, 21 rebels killed and five bystanders caught in a clandestine operation now labeled the Mamasapano Massacre.

In April 2016 the Aquino government recklessly launched a mass-based Dengvaxia vaccination program in three vote-rich provinces. The program not only bypassed critical testing, approval and funding protocols but it also coincided with an uphill political campaign to have Roxas succeed Aquino. As 13 January 2019, the Public Attorney’s Office recorded 111 official autopsies related to Dengvaxia.

Based on officially reported numbers sans 600 suspected Dengvaxia deaths, Dumb and Dumber’s deaths total 7,671. Products of criminal negligence and sloth, match that against the official toll of the war on drugs.