When a populist street leader becomes president, very often there’s little that needs to be said or done to sully his or her tough image. In the case of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, he positively seems to revel in sinking as low as he can go. The topper came on Monday night when he said he had personally carried out the murders of suspected street criminals, killing them as an example to his security forces that if he could do that, then so could they. Duterte’s aides were quick to interpret his words by saying no, he didn’t actually kill but was simply inspiring others to do so. Legalities notwithstanding, it’s not acceptable either way.
Since he became president on June 30, more than 5,000 people have been killed as part of his crackdown on illegal drugs and narcotics’ peddlers. These are people who have appeared on some secret list of one sort or another, are adjudged to be guilty by anonymous security officers or others who are simply settling vendettas and are taken from their homes and summarily executed and left in the streets.
This policy is nothing more than state-sanctioned murder. It is the institutionalisation of kangaroo courts and Mafia-style justice. There simply can be no excuse for such a policy and it must end now.
If the President of the Republic of the Philippines believes that his nation is so deeply in the clutches of narcotics gangs, then he is by all means obliged to take the necessary legal action to stop it. Suspend bail, impose detention without trial, increase sentences, impose consecutive sentences for multiple offences, impose reverse onus conditions on the accused, impose curfews ... But the state-sanctioned murders have to stop.
