On the President’s Order

Governing through Killing: The War on Drugs in the Philippines

I. SEE
“Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun — you
have my support. Shoot [the drug dealer] and I’ll give you a medal.” (President elect
Rodrigo Duterte, 6 June 2016).
“Hitler massacred three million Jews …. There are three million drug addicts.
There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” (President Rodrigo Duterte, 30 September
2016).
a. STATE KILLING IN THE PHILIPPINES BEFORE DUTERTE
 The Philippines has abolished the death penalty twice: in 1987, after
dictator Ferdinand Marcos fell from power, and then again (after the death
penalty was reinstated in 1993) in 2006, following a push by the Roman
Catholic Church and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
 Under President Duterte in 2016–17, there was an effort in the Philippine
Congress to resurrect the death penalty again.

b. EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLING IN DUTERTE’S WAR ON DRUGS

 According to the Philippine National Police, as of 30 June 2017 (one year
after Duterte took office), nearly 5,000 drug suspects had been killed,
including 3,151 in reported gun battles with the police, and 1,847 others
had been killed in drug-related attacks by masked gunmen on motorcycles
and other vigilante assailants.
 Non-governmental sources report much higher death tolls. According to
one, in the first two months after Duterte became president, over 7,000
people were killed by police or by vigilantes encouraged to prosecute the
war on drugs.30 That would be more than 1,000 times the number of
people judicially executed in the 13 years (1993–2006) that the Philippines
had capital punishment before it abolished it the second time.
 Ten months into Duterte’s six-year presidency, the New York Times
published an editorial reporting the number of dead at more than 9,400—
an average of 32 per day.
 After Duterte became president, he began gathering the names of drug
suspects from local police and elected officials. This is called a “watch
list” and there are (in Duterte’s various tellings) anywhere from 600,000 to
1 million names on it, including at least 6,000 police officers, 5,000 local
village leaders, and 23 mayors. Most of the people on the list have been
targeted by “Operation Knock & Plead” (Oplan Tokhang), which resulted
 in surrendering of 687,000 people across the country to police, further
burdening an already overburdened criminal justice system. People who
do not surrender are more likely to be targeted for extra-judicial execution,
and many of the people who do surrender are made to sign a form
pledging to stay off drugs. As reported by one man who was addicted to
methamphetamines (shabu) and who surrendered on the day Duterte took
office, the form he signed said: “If you’re caught the first, second, and
third time, there are warnings and conditions. If you’re caught a fourth
time, we’ll have nothing to do with whatever happens to you.”

c. STAKEHOLDERS AFFECTED
 Filipino Citizens
 Philippines/The Country
 Other Countries the Philippines is affiliated with (eg. USA, China, Russia)

II. JUDGE
 The Supremacy of the 1987 Constitutiom
- Article III Section 1
“No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process
of law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.”

- Article III Section 12 Paragraph 1

“Any person under investigation for the commission of an offense shall have
the right to be informed of his right to remain silent and to have competent
and independent counsel preferably of his own choice. If the person cannot
afford the services of counsel, he must be provided with one. These rights
cannot be waived except in writing and in the presence of counsel.”

- Article III Section 12 Paragraph 2

“No torture, force, violence, threat, intimidation, or any other means which
vitiate the free will shall be used against him. Secret detention places,
solitary, incommunicado, or other similar forms of detention are prohibited.”

- Article III Section 14 Paragraph 1

“No person shall be held to answer for a criminal offense without due process
of law.”

- Article III Section 14 Paragraph 2

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall be presumed innocent until
the contrary is proved, and shall enjoy the right to be heard by himself and
 counsel, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him,
to have a speedy, impartial, and public trial, to meet the witnesses face to
face, and to have compulsory process to secure the attendance of witnesses
and the production of evidence in his behalf. However, after arraignment,
trial may proceed notwithstanding the absence of the accused provided that
he has been duly notified and his failure to appear is unjustifiable.”

 Penal Populism
- The country cannot kill its way out of its drug and crime crisis, but Duterte
and associates can exploit it for their own ends and in ways that serve the
interests of many Filipinos. They have been doing just that in a display of
penal populism that is both familiar and unique.
- At its core, “penal populism” consists of the pursuit of punishment
policies based primarily on their anticipated popularity rather than their
effectiveness.
- Penal populism tends to see the rights of offenders as favored over those
of victims and the law-abiding public. In the Philippines, criminal justice
routinely fails to hold offenders accountable for their conduct.

 Utilitarianism
- Applying this principle in a crime, we could say that one would not
commit an offense likely to mean one suffered more pain for committing
the act, than the possible pleasure one might derive from it. To secure
desirable behavior and to deter undesirable, society might respond to this
theory by imposing the most stringent set of laws and punishments
possible. But this would not be a Benthamite solution. The object of
legislation, according to Bentham, should be to secure the greatest
happiness of the greatest number of people. The pain of punishment
should, therefore, be proportional to the happiness that it secured. To set
everything clearly, laws are created not to confer pain to the people but to
secure the greatest happiness of everyone from experiencing more pain.

III. ACT
 Conclusion
a. Slow Justice System
- A death sentence requires final affirmation by the Supreme Court before it
can be carried out. President Duterte’s super majority in Congress can
railroad the restoration of capital punishment all they want. But given the
sorry state of the Philippine judicial system, with the expected slew of
appeals and restraining orders for every case calling for capital
 punishment, we could all be dead including the President himself before
any convict is executed by the state. In fact, extremely slow Philippine
justice is one of the main factors behind the strong public support for the
extreme opposite – the law enforcement shortcuts offered by President
Duterte Oplan Tokhang and Double Barrel. The unequivocal message is
that there’s no problem big enough that you can’t shoot it to death.
Tokhang and Double Barrel produce instant, irreversible results – unlike
the wheels of Philippine justice, which turn so slowly it’s an injustice.

b. Justice For the Poor

- You can tell from the failure to send to prison any of the obscenely
wealthy, notorious or both that if you’re going to steal in this country, you
have to steal big so that if ever you are caught and prosecuted, you can
afford the best justice money can buy. Even drug traffickers can buy their
way to a court acquittal, or to illegal deportation by the Bureau of
Immigration. High-value suspects have even walked away from detention
at the PNP headquarters at Camp Crame. Because of such incidents,
Pinoys are willing to give President Duterte a free hand in exterminating
drug suspects. Even if, as he himself admitted, what he has against those
in his so-called narco list is just “probable cause” instead of proof beyond
reasonable doubt, which is the requirement for conviction and sentencing.

c. Abuse of Authority
- People have also been frustrated for a long time over the abuses of public
officials, and are happy to see a president including in his drug hit list
local political warlords, ranking police officers and barangay officials.
Filipinos who see no hope in the criminal justice system see the drug war
in a positive light. President Duterte realizes this and seems to take pride
in what he’s doing. In remembering his campaign, he continues to take
potshots at his closest rival in the presidential race, asking if the rival
could have waged this kind of war on drugs and criminality.

d. Executive is the One in Charge of other pillars of Justice

- Among these problems is the weak criminal justice system. The judiciary
is an independent and co-equal branch, and the Supreme Court must
improve the administration of justice if its members want to help put an
end to the ongoing killing spree. But the executive is in charge of other
pillars of justice: the prosecution service, the police, jails and penal
facilities. The prosecution service also needs to speed up its work and
improve its credibility. And the PNP must do more than shoot to kill. The
 number of cases indicating abuse of police power in the guise of the drug
war keeps rising. The inability or unwillingness of the PNP to investigate
the continuing killings, especially questionable deaths traced to the police,
is breeding impunity and creating an atmosphere of fear even among law-
abiding citizens – as indicated in the latest Social Weather Stations survey.

e. Jails Prosper Drugs

- Our jails are porous and the national penitentiary has been turned into the
command center for large-scale drug trafficking. The President can also
wield some influence over the courts through his power to appoint and
promote members of the judiciary. Duterte must pick individuals with
known integrity and competence especially for the Supreme Court and
must avoid compromising the independence of his appointees.

 Recommendations
a. To the President of the Philippines
 Publicly denounce extrajudicial killings and other abuses in the anti-drug
campaign, and press for the investigation and appropriate prosecution of
government officials at all levels and government agents implicated in such
abuses;
 Cease public statements that instigate or incite state security forces and the
general public to commit unlawful killings and other abuses against suspected
drug dealers and users;

b. To the Philippine Congress

 Conduct public hearings into allegations of extrajudicial killings by the police and
other government officials in the anti-drug campaign;

c. To the Philippine National Police

 Indefinitely suspend “buy-bust” drug operations until significant measures are put
into place to prevent unlawful killings and other abuses;
 Preserve all evidence, including handguns and ammunition, recovered during all
anti-drug operations including those resulting in the death of criminal suspects,
and so-called vigilante killings, and allow for the independent inspection of such
evidence;
SOURCES:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/asian-journal-of-law-and-society/article/governing-
through-killing-the-war-on-drugs-in-the-
philippines/878BFFB53E2705BEFD2373CDAC3E84F4/core-reader
https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/constitutions/1987-constitution/
https://www.academia.edu/35191739/Political_and_Ethical_issues_in_the_Philippine_War_on_
Drugs
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/philippines0317_web_1.pdf
https://www.sanbeda-
alabang.edu.ph/bede/images/researchpublication/BedanReview/16._Kill_Them_All_The_Gover
nments_War_on_Drugs_-_Bedan_Review_Vol._V.pdf
https://www.academia.edu/35534911/WAR_ON_DRUGS_IN_THE_PHILIPPINES