The new desaparecidos

This being the actual Day of the Dead, we remember our dearly departed, and think of the nearly 4,000 who have died in just the past four months in an unprecedented brutal war on drugs.

A man who used to work for one of our departed colleagues was shot dead last week near our office in Port Area, Manila – an apparent casualty of the drug war.

The hit, we were told, was suspected to be in retaliation for the killing by the police of a drug suspect in the same area several weeks ago.

I remember the fatality mostly for his two daughters, both not yet 10, who often visited our colleague at the office. Plump and cute, the girls were like daughters to our colleague; they were his adopted family.

At least the relatives of the fatality are known and can claim his remains.

On the same day that he was killed, a 15-year-old girl in a pink dress was shot dead while carrying a bag of pan de sal that she had bought near our office. Both the girl and her assailant remain unidentified.

The girl could end up among the hundreds of corpses that have not been claimed from funeral parlors mostly in Metro Manila. Surely each dead person had relatives who would mourn the demise: parents for sure; a partner and children, possibly; siblings and friends. But without DNA tests, and with no one to pay for formalin, the corpses are rotting away beyond recognition and may soon become the new desaparecidos – the disappeared.

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Life has become cheap in the time of Rodrigo Duterte. Filipinos have come to regard taking human life as the simplistic final solution to complex problems. We should remember the sycophants who ask without flinching: what’s a few thousand Filipinos dead compared with the magnitude of the drug problem?

And it’s not just the sycophants. Ordinary people now think that killing is the quickest and most efficient way to deal with problems. Apart from child rapists, who are usually shot dead ostensibly when they try to grab the arresting officer’s gun, people now want swindlers, illegal recruiters, and even the vandals who insist on washing windshields with murky water while motorists are stopped at a red light to be killed by Du30’s shock troops. Kids sniffing rugby? Kill them, they will pick pockets to support their habit.

In just four months, these are what we have enshrined in our culture: it’s OK to kill people, it’s OK to curse in public, and it doesn’t matter if you nearly flunk college (or drop out, as in the case of one ousted president). If God wills it, the academic underachiever gets to become president, with the honor students as his gofers.

The window of popular support that every Philippine president enjoys at the start of his or her term is soon over. During this brief window of goodwill, President Duterte should be using his enormous political capital to accomplish something more than killing Filipinos and fighting allies rather than winning friends.

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From his pronouncements, the President seems to be feeling his mortality. This should give more urgency to his tasks. Having been thrust by fate into the presidency, he should not waste this precious gift of power.

Just four months into his administration, Duterte seems to be losing several of his original supporters.

On Sunday the man he had publicly thanked for “making me President” quit as special envoy to China. Former president Fidel Ramos said his job of “breaking the ice” with Beijing was done. But FVR’s resignation, which Malacañang was unaware of until he announced it, was made after he criticized Du30’s foreign policy pronouncements.

Yesterday the story from the political front was that Du30’s original party the PDP-Laban, whose ranks were decimated when Jejomar Binay broke away from it, was headed for a split over ideological differences.

At the same time, PDP-Laban stalwart former senator Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr., father of Senate President Koko, also issued statements yesterday that might rile Du30, who’s showing a growing intolerance for criticism or opposing views. Nene Pimentel reminded Du30 that the US is no enemy but a trusted ally, and that China’s decision to allow Filipinos to fish again in Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal is “an act of ownership.”

Pimentel’s statement was bolstered by a pronouncement from Beijing yesterday that the situation in Panatag “has not changed and will not change” even if Filipinos are again fishing in the shoal – meaning the Chinese are standing firm on their territorial claim over nearly the entire South China Sea.

As of yesterday, the President had yet to act on FVR’s letter of resignation. At least a letter was given, unlike Du30, whose foreign policy pronouncements are not backed by anything in black and white, confounding not just foreign capitals but even our Department of Foreign Affairs.

Now there’s trouble brewing even in the economy, which was one of the strong suits of the Aquino administration despite the failure to achieve inclusive growth. Moody’s Investors Service has reportedly warned that Du30’s foreign policy shift could cut economic growth.

Last September, Standard and Poor’s also warned that the vicious drug war could undermine respect for the rule of law and human rights, leading to a credit rating downgrade for the country – a move that can adversely affect financial and business transactions including remittances of Filipino migrant workers.

In a related development, human rights concerns reportedly prompted the US State Department to stop the planned sale of 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippine National Police. The PNP can always buy Kalashnikovs from the Russians or Uzis from the Israelis. (No, our cops don’t want guns made in China or paltik from Danao.) But the gun deal can herald more derailed trade and business transactions with certain other countries.

President Duterte is said to be recalibrating his foreign policy. He should be recalibrating his priorities and his style of governance. Six years can pass like the blink of an eye. He can’t possibly want as his legacy a long list of desaparecidos.