Batas Mauricio
THIS call for compensating the so-called collateral victims in the Duterte government’s campaign against illegal drugs made by Sen. Panfilo Lacson, and the formation of a task force to investigate the cases of collateral victims made by the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (Vacc), will only stymie President Duterte’s efforts to rid our country of the scourge of drugs.
Yes, there is a need to find out if some or all of those who have been killed in the past several months after Duterte was installed president were erroneously murdered, or were rubbed out to silence and prevent them from disclosing who their cohorts were in pushing drugs among our people, to make those responsible for these killings accountable for their misdeeds.
Yet, this will surely slow down sincere and genuine police efforts to track down addicts, pushers, and drug syndicates. The thought of being held answerable somehow, some time, will freeze many a policeman’s heart, so to speak, who will now be compelled to think what will happen to them once Duterte’s support for them is removed, either because his term has expired, or he has been ousted earlier, as some are hoping.
It is clear this problem is like the case of a man who is made to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, as a popular song intones. Many Filipinos would not want the fierce illegal drugs campaign being waged by the Duterte government to slacken or slow down now.
Indeed, one shudders to think where would the Philippines be at this point of its history if Duterte did not win the presidency, or was prevented, by one subterfuge or another, from assuming the highest position in the country. The drugs menace is simply too overwhelming and has become so pervasive with the collaboration of many high officials in government.
My suggestion is that, let us take Duterte on his word that he himself will personally answer for any collateral death or damage in his campaign against drugs. He has repeatedly announced he will hold himself personally liable for any such collateral death or damage, if only to save the future generations of Filipinos from drugs. It wouldn’t be foolishness to take him on his word, would it?
•
Let me raise this question: which is worse, martial law or revolutionary government? Certainly, martial law would be a lot better because it is governed by the Constitution and existing rules. Revolutionary government is worse because it is a government where all the powers are concentrated in just one person.
And revolutionary government was what the first President Aquino imposed after she took her oath in 1986. She threw out the 1973 Constitution and then installed a government by one person, for one person, and of one person. I remember that those who are objecting to martial law today were all deafeningly silent when Aquino installed a government of one man--or, one woman, to be exact.
Many apologists would justify Aquino’s revolutionary government as a necessary evil at that time, an imperative to rebuild democracy and propel Filipinos to an economic life better than what they supposedly underwent under the Marcos regime. And this leads me to my point: whatever kind of government that maybe installed here, it is the best government if it helps our people to overcome poverty and suffering.
The question is, did the Aquino revolutionary government improve the lives of Filipinos? We all know the answer to this. With power outages, coups, and corruption among favored friends and relatives running wild during the six years following 1986, life became worse for millions of us. Economic prosperity came only to allies.
So let us stop quibbling about martial law “not being a laughable matter,” or is a danger to democracy. The Philippines have had democracy for the last three decades or so after 1986 and yet many of our countrymen continue to be impoverished, and are willing to brave misery and death in other countries just to earn a living.
What we need at this point is a sincere government, one whose leaders are motivated with nothing but a desire to exterminate crime and criminality, corruption in both the private and public sectors, and true economic prosperity that is felt not only by the oligarchs and the powerful, but by all Filipinos. If martial law---or even a revolutionary government---can bring these about, then so be it.
•
There is a prevailing notion that Dr. Jose P. Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, had to have his second novel, El Filibusterismo, published in the City of Ghent in Belgium, because printing cost in Ghent was greatly lesser at that time in 1891 when compared to printing costs in Brussels, then the premier city of Belgium where the Fili was originally intended to be published.
A closer look at available literature, however, might be able to tell us that the real reason why Rizal had to print his second novel against Spanish rule in the Philippines at that time in Ghent was not economics, but more of religious persecution which was then prevailing in Brussels even if Belgium was already under the kingship of a Protestant believer, Leopold I.
My reading is that there were not too many printers or publishers in Belgium when Rizal was trying to publish the Fili who were willing to print it, because the Catholic Spaniards, who were the subject of that novel, still held so much power and influence despite Leopold I, and no one wanted to cross them by printing a literary work that portrayed them as oppressors and abusive.
One Internet material on religious freedom in the 1890s in Belgium could be read at http://www.museeprotestant.org/en/notice/protestantism-in-belgium/. Let me quote to you a part of that article to show my point: “Although the first Belgian sovereign, Leopold Ist (1790-1865) was a Lutheran, the Catholic clergy continued to prevent the development of Protestantism throughout the century…”
So, Rizal had to find a place whose printers and publishers were more sympathetic to the contents of Fili, and Brussels’ neighboring city, Ghent, was exactly that place. Now, why was Rizal so bent on publishing the Fili, even if he had already come out earlier with his first novel, the Noli Me Tangere?
The great man that he was, Rizal knew that the real fight to free the Filipinos of his time from Spain’s tyrannical rule was in setting free their minds from ignorance of what was being done to them. Rizal believed that the only way to mobilize his countrymen to fight Spain was to change their minds first, before any armed revolution could take place.
