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In the Aftermath of Duterte's In the aftermath of Duterte’s war A public policy perspective Angelita Bombarda Master of Public Administration, Class of 2018 Central European University ©Martin San Diego Photo modified to black and white ABSTRACT Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, who was ushered into power on July 1, 2016, promised an iron fist, which has manifested in an all-out war on drugs (Iyengar, 2016). As of January 2017, a mere six months since Duterte began his term, his bloody war had already resulted in 7,080 casualties. To date 932,237 drug users and 74,916 low-level dealers have surrendered out of fear of being executed. However, with fewer than 50 accredited rehabilitation facilities in the Philippines, the government was not prepared for the deluge of drug users and pushers who have turned themselves in. Rehabilitation has clearly been absent from Duterte’s anti-drug campaign. His drug war has escalated into a highly divisive huma rights issue, with potentially damaging political implications to those who may oppose it. At the same time, it brings to light the glaring inability of the international community to meaningfully respond to the absurdity that is happening in the Philippines amidst very strong calls from organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. While the goal of this paper is to provide policy recommendations with a human rights- based approach, the author acknowledges that these recommendations will only be seriously considered by a government that is open to seeing the drug problem as a holistic public policy issue and not a purely criminal issue. [In the aftermath of Duterte’s war] INTRODUCTION Duterte’s war on drugs Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, upon beginning his term on July 1, 2016, wasted no time in waging the all-out war on drugs that was an integral part of his campaign (Iyengar, 2016). He has emboldened the police and vigilante groups to kill drug users and those involved in the drug trade, without regard for due process (Chan, 2016). He has sanctioned a bloody and ruthless war on drugs that has resulted in the death of 7,080 Filipinos (Bueza, 2017). Based on Philippine National Police (PNP) data, which was also referred to by Human Rights Watch in their rule of law report on the Philippines (Kine, 2017), this number includes “2,555 sus- pected drug personalities killed in police operations as of January 31, 2017; and 3,603 victims in cases of death under investigation and 922 victims in cases where investigation has concluded as of January 9, 2017” (Bueza, 2017). This all-out war is a grim picture attracting the attention of the international community. Experts predict that similar to oth- er wars on drugs, the Philippines’ war against drugs will also fail. John Collins, executive director of the London School of Econom- ics IDEAS International Drug Policy Project, explained that the war the Philippines has declared is similar to those that took place in the United States and Latin America, which only resulted in ar- rests and casualties but did not significantly reduce drug presence in these areas (Diola, 2016). 205 THE PUBLIC SPHERE | 2018 ISSUE FIGURE 1 PHILIPPINE NATIONAL POLICE (PNP): WAR ON DRUGS DEATH TOLL AS OF JANUARY 2017 Source: Author. How Bad is the Drug Problem in the Philippines? According to the Philippines’ Dangerous Drug Board (DDB) 2015 Nationwide Survey, an estimated 1.8 million Filipinos be- tween ages 10-69 are drug users (Gavilan, 2016). According to gov- ernment sources, 1.8 million Filipinos were either currently using or used illegal drugs more than once from the period of January 1, 2015 to February 5, 2016. Seventy-five percent of the Philippines’ total population (100.98 million) is within the 10-69 age range and according to the DDB, 2.4 percent of those who fall within this age bracket are drug users (Gavilan, 2016). This is roughly only half of the global average, which was at 5.3 percent in 2015 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2017). According to a 2015 report by the Philippines Drug Enforce- ment Agency (PDEA), around 20.51 percent of the 42,065 ba- 206 [In the aftermath of Duterte’s war] rangays (local communities) in the Philippines had drug-related cases (Carcamo, 2015). However, this must be taken with a grain of salt. According to PDEA Director General Arturo Cacdac Jr., a barangay is tagged as “drug-affected when there is a drug user, pusher, manufacturer, marijuana cultivator, or other personality FIGURE 2 PHILIPPINE DANGEROUS DRUG BOARD (DDB): DRUG USE DATA (JAN. 1, 2015-FEB. 5, 2016) Out of this, 75%, only 2.4% (1.8 million) are drug users 75% of the total population of the Philippines (100.98 million) is within the 10-69 age range Source: Author. regardless of the number in the area” which could be artificially inflating this number without contextualising the real situation (Carcamo, 2015). Furthermore, the rate of being drug-affected is heavily concentrated in the capital, Manila, which does not justify drug prevalence as a matter of national priority in the way that the Duterte administration has painted it (Carcamo, 2015). Duterte himself has been giving inconsistent figures. In his first State of the Nation Address in 2016, he claimed that according to another Philippine drug agency, there were about “3 million drug addicts” in the country “two or three years ago” and possibly 3.7 million now (Rappler, 2016). This is significantly higher than the recent numbers from the DDB. 207 THE PUBLIC SPHERE | 2018 ISSUE FIGURE 3 PHILIPPINES DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY (PDEA): DRUG- RELATED CASES IN LOCAL COMMUNITIES IN THE PHILIPPINES (2015) 20.51% of the local commu- nities in the Philippines have drug-related cases Source: Author. Is the War on Drugs Working? First, the Duterte administration has been using the rhetoric that the war has made the streets safer. The PNP reported that the decline in index crime rate in July 2016, after Duterte’s first month in office (down by 31 percent from 17,105 incidents in July 2015 to 11,800 in July 2016) is a direct result of the war on drugs (Pun- zalan, 2016). Police reports and public perception significantly differ. Ac- cording to an April 2017 report of Social Weather Stations (SWS), a major pollster in the Philippines, “respondents reported a 6.3 percent rise in street robberies and break-ins [and] more than half of those polled said they were afraid to venture out at night” (Baldwin and Marshall, 2016). Leo Laroza, a senior SWS research- er, explained that, “People still have this fear when it comes to their neighbourhoods. It has not gone down” (Baldwin and Marshall, 2016). 208 [In the aftermath of Duterte’s war] In addition, if the war on drugs was working, crystal meth (shabu), a common highly addictive substance in the Philippines, should be getting more expensive as less of it becomes available (Baldwin and Marshall, 2016). However, PDEA’s own data shows that it has actually become cheaper in certain areas. In July 2016, a gram of shabu costs between 1,200-11,000 Philippine pesos (USD24-220), and in May 2017, PDEA’s last records showed that one gram costs between 1,000-15,000 Philippine pesos (USD20- 300) (Baldwin and Marshall, 2016). The very wide price range reflects the variations in the availability of the drug in different re- gions of the Philippines but according to PDEA officials, the lowest end of the range applies to Manila, the capital, where the price has indeed come down (from USD 24 to 20) (Baldwin and Marshall, 2016). “If the prices have fallen in certain areas, it’s an indication that enforcement actions have not been effective” according to Gloria Lai of the International Drug Policy Consortium, an international network of NGOs working on narcotics (Baldwin and Marshall, 2016). For PDEA spokesperson Derrick Carreon, one reason could be that gaps caused by local drug busts were filled by drugs smug- gled from abroad (Baldwin and Marshall, 2016). This is the “uncomfortable truth” about Duterte’s war (Chalm- ers, 2016). According to PDEA, of the 77 foreign nationals arrested for shabu-related drug offences during the period of January 2015 to mid-August 2016, almost two-thirds were Chinese, Taiwanese or from Hong Kong (Chalmers, 2016). “[China is] the biggest source of [shabu] and of the precursor chemicals used to produce the synthetic drug that [is] being smuggled into the Philippines, according to local drug enforcement officials” (Chalmers, 2016). PDEA spokesman Derrick Carreon admitted that it is safe to say that most of the shabu in the Philippines is actually from China (Chalmers, 2016). 209 THE PUBLIC SPHERE | 2018 ISSUE War on Drugs: War on the Poor Human Rights Watch released an alarming report in March 2017 that found that “the Philippine police are falsifying evidence to justify [extrajudicial] killings, and that Duterte and other sen- ior officials in government instigated and incited killings of mostly urban poor in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity”. As asserted in a February 2017 Amnesty International report, the urban poor have been paying the price in this unfair war: “The police and paid killers have built an economy off extrajudicial exe- cutions…An industry of murder is thriving, at the expense of the urban poor” (Wells, 2017). The police were “summarily executing drug suspects with im- punity, terrorising poorer communities, and exacerbating the very lawlessness they are tasked with resolving” (Baldwin and Marshall, 2016). For Duterte, the poor are only collateral damage. “People who have addictions are like monkeys clinging to your back” he said.
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