Despite international criticism of the Philippines’ deadly anti-drug war, the majority of Filipinos continue to support President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign that has ruthlessly killed thousands of mostly poor drug suspects.
Although the net satisfaction rating for the Duterte administration’s war on drugs fell earlier this year on a non-commissioned survey by local polling firm Social Weather Stations (SWS), most Filipinos still gave the government a thumbs up for cracking the whip on illegal drugs.
The SWS survey, involving 1,200 adult respondents across the country, found in March that 78% were satisfied with the administration’s performance in its campaign against illegal drugs, with 43% ‘very satisfied’ and 35% ‘somewhat satisfied.’ Ten percent were undecided, while only 12% were dissatisfied.
This gave Duterte’s campaign a net satisfaction rating of +66, which SWS classifies as “very good.” A previous survey conducted in December gave a rating of +77, or “excellent” by SWS’ metrics. The polling agency has not conducted a more recent poll to reflect recent uproar over alleged extrajudicial killings.
Over a year after Duterte ordered the war against drugs—with funeral parlors piling up with corpses found in the streets or under bridges, and as the attacks became more brazen with masked killers barging into homes to shoot point-blank their targets – many Filipinos do not want the government to stop the anti-drug campaign.
“President Duterte’s anti-drug campaign remains popular despite international lambasting because it is what the people would have wanted to do by themselves had they been given the power to do so. Since there is someone who can do it for them, they support that someone,” Aveen Acuña-Gulo, a popular local commentator, told Asia Times.
“Filipinos continue to support President Duterte because they are the ones who are directly affected by the drug menace, and they are the ones who also directly feel the effects of the surroundings being cleared of drug characters,” she added.
Acuña-Gulo is a long-time resident of Cotabato City, a locality in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao where illegal drugs, particularly methamphetamine, or shabu, is a deep-rooted problem. Cotabato is a known source of shabu in the Central Mindanao region.
The mayor of the city, Frances Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, a lawyer who supported another presidential candidate in the 2016 polls, has nonetheless fully supported Duterte’s war on drugs, mobilizing the city government’s machineries and personally leading anti-drug raids.
“We need the full cooperation of all our communities or else all these efforts will go to waste. The fight against illegal drugs is not just of the government but it is everybody’s,” she said.
The mayor believes that illegal drugs, if not contained, will destroy the youth generation’s future and will contribute to rising criminality, citing cases of drug addicts involved in rape and murder.
For Acuña-Gulo, Duterte’s no-nonsense war on illegal drugs helps make communities safer from street-level criminals, She has defended police officers in drug operations that turned bloody after the suspects resisted arrest, as law enforcers often claim.
“I feel safer walking in the streets. For as long as one is not involved in drugs, there is nothing to fear,” the mother of three noted.
Respondents on the latest SWS survey were split about police claims that drug suspects often resist arrest. However, 70% believed that the Duterte administration is serious about solving the extra-judicial killings problem, which the European Union, the New York-based Human Rights Watch and UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Agnes Callamard have cited to criticize the drug war.
Apart from vigilante-style attacks, some of the killed drug suspects’ bodies have shown signs of torture. Many have been left dead in the streets with cardboard signs bearing the words “Drug pusher ako, wag tularan” (I’m a drug pusher, don’t emulate me).
The SWS survey also noted that 73% of adult Filipinos are worried that they, or someone they know, will be a victim of extrajudicial killing, underlining the campaign’s climate of fear. Still, many gave the Duterte administration a “very good” satisfaction rating, according to the survey.
Duterte’s rise to power in June 2016 was fueled by his tough stance against criminality and the drug menace, among other campaign pledges. A trained lawyer and mayor of Davao City for over two decades, Duterte has tried but failed to eliminate the drug trade in three to six months, as he promised on the campaign trail.
During the “Philippine Development Forum: Sulong Pilipinas 2017” on August 9 in Manila, the President admitted before economic and trade leaders the difficulty of eliminating the narcotics trade, which he said was sustained by the protection of crooked politicians and law enforcers and may not be uprooted in his six-year term.
“Look, this shabu and illegal drugs cannot be solved by one man, for a president, for one term. It has bogged nations. How can we stop it if even America can’t?” Duterte said.
In other public appearances, Duterte has waved a thick folder he claims contains names of over 1,000 personalities, including politicians and law enforcers, suspected of drug links.
The government has claimed to confiscate 2,455.80 kilograms of shabu with an estimated street value of P12.66 billion (US$248 million) in the campaign’s first year, including a recent massive shipment from China that slipped through customs to a private warehouse worth P6.4 million (US$125 million), according to data from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).
PDEA data showed that 327 government workers have been arrested on drug-related charges as of July 26, 2017, of whom 159 are government employees, 142 elected officials and 26 uniformed or law enforcement personnel. At least three of the mayors the president implicated in the drug trade have been killed in the crackdown.
“The police and the military should make sure that their enemies are dead. Otherwise, if the other guy can still pull the trigger, you will end up with a dead police or a dead military soldier,” the Philippine Inquirer quoted Duterte as saying days after the bloody raid that killed a provincial mayor.
Over the same one-year period, the agency reported that 3,451 drug suspects died during anti-drug operations. Human rights groups, which have strongly criticized the brutal war drug, have low end estimated the campaign’s death toll at over 7,000 when including state-backed vigilante attacks.
Human Rights Watch recently referred to Duterte’s drug war as an “unlawful killing campaign” that has retaliated “against those fearless enough to challenge his assault on human rights.”
Duterte has publicly defended the law enforcers behind the lethal anti-drug operations, noting that the government has also lost operatives in raids. In the 68,214 narcotics operations from July 1, 2016 to July 26 this year, 68 law enforcers were killed and 184 others were wounded, PDEA data showed.
During the same nearly 13-month period, 96,703 drug suspects were arrested and at least 1.3 million surrendered after being accused. Law enforcers also dismantled 154 drug dens and nine clandestine drug laboratories during the period, according to PDEA.
While the Duterte administration has made progress in tackling the illegal drug problem, it has come at a high social and human cost. While the drug menace will undoubtedly outlast Duterte’s tenure, the popular president has made clear he will not relent in a controversial campaign that surveys show still has strong popular backing.
The following are comments I made in the main article by a guy called Palmer. I feel it is just as relevant as comments and observations in this article for the readers.
"What crap are you spouting? And where do you come from, Mars? Look at the US, presumably thats where you are based? 400 years of slavery, wanton killing of the blacks by the white slave owners, to this day the white racists(KKK, alt-right) would if they have a chance kill a black without batting an eye, and thats exactly what the white police have been doing(Black lives matter is the cry, don’t you hear tis cry). Of course if you are white, you are naturally deaf to it, and the killings by your own kind is taken as quite natural. The scourge of drugs and what it does to the Philippino society, the country is horrendous. Without resorting to extreme measures which those with vested interests( the drug suppliers, the manufacturers of the stuff, the pushers, the smugglers, etc, etc), and with the the problem having grown to such a totally unmanageable size now, the Philippines can then be re-tagged as a nation of "Walking Dead!" as definitely more appropriate, The previous tag as the "Sick man of Asia" by comparison would be very kind. These problems that previous administrations did not have the balls to tackle, kicking it down from one administration to the next, and spending their 6 years in office feathering(stealing from the public) their own nest and enabling those it favors to rape the wealth of the country, while the extreme poverty of the ordinary masses which they see and stared at them in the face every day and everywhere they go all over the Philippines, are ignored, The same accusation can be levelled at the catholic church too, mandating that the ignorant peasant masses not to use birth control thus causing the Filippino population growth to surge to a 100 million now, and fast increasing. One can’t help feeling that apart from those Filippinos who still have the strength and courage to venture out to earn a decent living all over the world, too many of the rest who stayed knows only how to screw and get high. And this is happily helped along and participated in by old retired whites from Australia, NZ, the UK AND the US as the worst of the lot.Mr. Palmer, didn’t you ask the question : "People who don’t believe that the Primary Fundamental Right exists should ask themselves this question; can you do anything you want to your body and not have the possibility of going to jail for doing so?" What primary fundamental right? You whites know how to preach to others, but you defintely don’t practice them too well, especially to people of different colors. When Magdelene Albright was asked whether she thought the US killing half a million men, women and children in the US invasion of Irag was worth it, her reply was a categorical "Yes". The USs’ illegal and fake war and rape against Vietnam caused the lives of 3 million vietnamese peolple, not counting those who are still alive and suffering slow painful deaths from agent orange, kids born with hideous defects. And for the half a century of the US domination of the Phillipines, Duterte has very openly accused the US of the crimes/atrocities she committed against the Fippino people. Did you say, "Primary fundamental right"? Two-face , double-standard bloody hypocrites!. Go back ot stay put in your own country. Don’t tell others what to do. They know precisely what they are doing.
Interesting. But how do all those things relate to this article? You’re just using whataboutism to draw the attention away from the issue. Duterte is an incompetent Butcher and Chinese lapdog and no amount of violence or tragedy in other places of the world will change that fact.
Zeros Saber Looks like you would be a excellent candidate for the Filipino drug squad. I will pass your name on.