Editorial: War against illegal drugs, year 1 Thursday, June 29, 2017 Editorial Cartoon by John Gilbert

Manantan TODAY marks President Rodrigo Duterte’s full first year in office, and people traditionally use
the day to assess a president’s work. That the assessment varies from person to person means the
method used is different and the aspect of governance assessed is not the same. Reminds us of the
poem by John Godfrey Saxe titled “Blind Men and the Elephant.” Remember the “six men of Industan”
who “went to see the elephant (though all of them were blind)”? Each of them ended up creating their
own version of reality based on their limited perspectives. One thought the elephant was a wall, the
other that it was a spear, still another that it was a snake and so on, depending on what part of the body
a blind man happened to touch. Anyway, allow us to consider the aspect of governance the Duterte
administration mainly focused on in its first year, the fight against illegal drugs. One can actually
consider it its biggest failure, mainly because the President set the bar too high, but it is also the one
where it has made the biggest dent on. That’s how wide the assessment swings on the anti-drugs drive.
The President promised during the campaign for last year’s presidential elections and in the first few
weeks of his presidency to fully end the illegal drugs problem in the country in three months. He would
later ask for an extension of three months more and eventually ended up with six years (or his entire
term). The initially aggressive drive resulted in the naming of people allegedly linked to the trade and
the killing of thousands of suspected drug peddlers and users. It is this effort that has caught the
attention of local and international media and human rights groups in the country and abroad because
of its bloody nature and the supposed widespread violations of human rights. To be fair, the campaign
did make a dent partly on the illegal drugs trade and in a big way to the crime incidents statistics. The
“shock and awe” nature of the campaign did work but only on the peripheral aspect. A year after, it is
obvious that the illegal drug traders are no longer shocked and awed by the anti-drugs campaign. Sadly,
the Duterte administration seems like it is already bereft of novel ideas to rekindle the campaign’s fire.

Read more: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/opinion/2017/06/29/editorial-war-against-illegal-drugs-

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EDITORIAL - War on drugs slipping away

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Since the Duterte government launched its aggressive war against illegal drugs, more than 6,000 people have
already been killed. Thousands more have surrendered and are in the process of being rehabilitated. Others
have gone back to their old ways, only to join the ranks of those killed, or spend the rest of their lives on the
run.

And yet the trade in illegal drugs continues, so briskly in fact that it is as if no crackdown has ever been
launched against it. In Cebu alone over the weekend, more than P120 million worth of shabu got confiscated in
raids in Cebu City and Lapu-Lapu City. There are 145 cities in the Philippines. Just considering the amount
from two cities, it is pretty scary to consider what amounts must be out there that have successfully eluded the
arms of the law.

And this brings us to the question why, given the aggressiveness of the government in cracking down on the
illegal drug trade, the illegal drug trade continues as if there is no crackdown at all. In fact, it may even be
flourishing, given its continued strength despite the inroads government must have made by way of seizures of
shabu and the neutra-lization of so many people.

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A partial answer may be that the loss of people, despite numbering in the thousands, is easy to replace. The
overwhelming majority of the people killed were either very low level drug runners or pushers. Some were just
plain users. In other words, and with all due respect to the dead, they were the expendable types, easy to
replace.

The more significant and weighty answer might be that the real manipulators of the illegal drugs game, the so-
called drug lords of the trade, have all yet to be captured or arrested. To be sure, no less than President
Duterte has made a big show, at every opportunity he gets, to name several personalities he describes as
being drug lords. He even carries around a thick sheaf of papers containing the names of his supposed real
targets.

But the more he talks about them, complete with curses and obscenities, the more the Filipino people begin to
suspect that this is all just for show. He has not arrested even one of those he has named. His war seems to
consist merely of running after the small fry. And that is not going to win him his war. On the other hand, the
police that he uses in his war are increasingly getting distracted by criminal opportunities that arise from his
being too trusting with them.

EDITORIAL - Fake news no threat to

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There seems to be so much noise about fake news, and how it supposedly threatens mainstream media, that
the impression it gives is that of an enemy already knocking down the door, if it has not done so already. But it
has not. And it will not. The media is just the messenger. The message is ultimately what matters. And it is the
public that will eventually see through the news and judge it for what it is.

The media, or in this case mainstream media, has far greater challenges than the veracity and reliability of the
information that it sells. The advent of new technologies has made mainstream media not only better; it has
made it more accountable. There is little room, if at all, for some hanky-panky to go undetected. Fake news, to
whatever extent it may threaten, threatens not mainstream media but the other means by which passing it on
seems to thrive.

Besides, fake news, again to the extent that it actually poses a threat, and in the context by which it has made
many people all agog over it, is largely all here in the Philippines. From what may be readily observed of
discussions on the matter, there is hardly a ripple on the subject elsewhere, other than probably in the
academic sectors.

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But in the larger public, it is only the Philippines that seems to have provided the ripe environment for fake
news to flourish. And it is no big mystery why that is so. It is because the Philippines is a highly politicized
country whose extremely charged partisan atmosphere almost beckons for the introduction of fake news as a
sordid but potent weapon to sow intrigue and carry out character assassination.
Fake news is generated for a specific and deliberate purpose. It is vastly different from the random errors that
may threaten and challenge mainstream media. To say, therefore, that fake news is a threat to mainstream
media is, at the very least allowing a false argument to gain traction and have a life of its own. At its very worst,
it mistakenly and unfairly assumes, on a large scale, the inability of the public to determine by itself what is true
and what is fake.

And that is the most unfortunate cut of all. Because the very reason why mainstream media has thrived all
these years is its discovery and long-held belief in the capacity of its public to make wise decisions when
demanded. Mainstream media has not been proven wrong in that regard even up to this day. And that is true
even in such a tenuous environment as the Philippines. Even in the Philippines, the lines are very clear.