MANILA, Philippines—Senator Leila de Lima lashed out at some mayors who, she said, “offered” their constituents to appease President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs that have killed thousands since his presidency started in 2016.
A U.S. study titled “Deadly Populism: How Local Political Outsiders Drive Duterte’s War on Drugs in the Philippines” revealed that independent and minority mayors implemented a more aggressive form of the drug war to curry political support from the administration.
“According to the study, some mayors not only have left their constituents defenseless and without protection but also completely abandoned them at the hands of the Duterte death squads,” said De lima in a dispatch from Camp Crame Saturday. “The war on drugs is a machine of unjust deaths.
“Parang ipinain lang ng ilang mayor ang buhay ng mga constituents nila sa war on drugs bilang political offering kay Duterte. Ang ginamit na perfume ng mga nagpabango kay Duterte sa war on drugs ay dugo ng kanilang mga inosenteng kababayan at biktima ng EJKs (extrajudicial killings) at walang habas na pagpatay sa mahihirap!”
(It seems these mayors used their constituents’ lives in the war on drugs as a political offering to Duterte. They used the blood of their innocent countrymen and the victims of EJKs as a perfume to gain the favor of Duterte.)
The study was made by political scientists Nico Ravanilla, Renard Sexton, and Dotan Haim who pored over a million police records and news reports through Bantay Krimen of the Philippine National Police and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project databases, as well as public procurement and 2016-2019 election data.
Ravanilla, Sexton, and Haim are all assistant professors in the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, Emory University, and Florida State University, respectively.
Their research showed higher drug-related crimes in outsider-led municipalities, and that outsider incumbent mayors, most of whom had shifted to the President’s PDP-Laban party by 2019, performed better in the midterm elections by 5 percentage points than establishment incumbent mayors.
De Lima said human lives were made as mere pawns just to gain the approval of Duterte, whom the detained senator described as a demon.
“Dahil ibang klase ang bituka sa politika nitong si Duterte—bitukang diyablo. Basta lang makapatay, inosente man o hindi,” said de Lima.
(Because Duterte, who has the guts of a demon, operates on a different kind of politics, there’s an unabashed desire to kill.)
De Lima also pointed out the murder of Los Baños Mayor Caesar Perez, who is included in the government’s narco list, as an indication of how much the war on drugs has evolved into a murderous machine.
“Mr. Duterte’s distancing himself from his own narco list following the assassination of Mayor Perez is an indication that his tyrannical project is now already getting out of hand even by his estimation,” said de Lima, who herself is detained because of yet to be proven drug charges.
“The war on drugs is an all-devouring destruction and is now proving to be an unmitigated political disaster.”