Following on from the first piece about the sad reality of the drug battles in the Philippines there is a much wider and deeper issue which is clearly not comprehended by a lot of people who are posting and making comments on the subject on line. Why it is so complicated in the Philippines and as a consequence so different to what has happened almost anywhere else is that the issue is one that has been created deliberately by the previous elected administrations over the past 30 years. When there is evidence pointing at all levels of government and the elected politicians having a hand in it, it is no simple task to deal with it.
With impunity available for all and sundry in government due to the corruption and dishonesty and the failure of rule of law, getting the police to move on the problem as one would normally expect is not that simple because even within the police from top to bottom are members engaged in it. Furthermore it is rife right through the political arena as well with fingers being pointed at Senators and Congress members and Mayors and Governors names appearing in list of possible drug lords pushers or suppliers. The issue is so complex because who do you trust, the answer is clear; you can trust no one! Impunity is further compounded by virtue of the reality that the DOJ has the same levels of dishonesty in its ranks, as an example the Secretary of the Department of Justice in the previous administration has been named as a party to extremely serious drug supply issues from the nation’s primary imprisonment facility at Bilibid.
Where does it end, there are political characters at practically every level involved. Recently the son of a Mayor who had been killed inside a prison while on remand for drug offense charges by police officers, is before a Senate hearing where expose’ after expose’ is being revealed about the depth and breadth of the problem and it is little short of breath taking. The complexity of it is putting those who are seeking to right the wrongs of the past 30 years into a paradox, damned if they do, damned if they do not.
To add further fuel to the fire, the past administration is backed by big business and they are vocal in opposing the clean up using any means they can as with the pressure coming on the drug dealing sales are falling, profits are following it and they are feeling the financial pain. This is not petty cash we are discussing here with the drug trade running to hundreds of billions of pesos a year. There is a lot at stake, so they fight back with biased unbalanced news media articles and because of their place as the countries owners of the mass media they can channel these news items into the world media networks where they are reproduced as being the real deal when nothing is further from the truth. The many people who comment and lay claim to being expert in the problems using overseas experience as their platform need to understand what they are seeing here is not like anything ever seen anywhere else before on a scale like this.
This is not just a few drug dealers supplying drugs, it is an entire system of government that has been over taken by corruption, dishonesty and fraud and the President is practically alone in his fight to bring this to an end. He needs the support or the people. This could very well be you, dear reader. So if you are going to criticize, make sure it is constructive. Otherwise, I would suggest you keep your opinions to yourself.
~ Trevor Bailey
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