Do we really feel safer now?
Senator Leila De Lima yesterday cast doubt on this, saying President Duterte’s single-minded focus on his war on drugs was creating jitters in other important areas of governance.
“Change is supposed to be coming but what’s happened in the last 100 days? All focus is on the war on drugs, there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but that there are a lot of killings,” de Lima said.
“The President is only focused on one issue in the same manner he was a one-issue candidate. He is now a single-issue President,” De Lima told reporters in a chance interview on her way to the Senate’s finance sub-committee hearing on the proposed budget of the Department of Justice and its attached agencies.
“He’s only focused on the war on drugs and, there’s a second issue, war on Leila De Lima. So his resources are being distracted instead of his attention being concentrated on pressing matters like the economy, poverty, and traffic,” the senator said.
Wait-and-see
She cited the status of the economy which is currently facing a weakening peso and an apparent “wait-and-see” stance taken by foreign investors.
“Now the question is, do we really feel safer now?” De Lima said, adding that while President’s men would answer in the affirmative. But “when we say safe, it’s not just physical safety but also psychological, the mental well-being of our society,” she added.
The senator further said that the country’s foreign relations were “jittery,” citing President Duterte’s radical shift in policy from being pro-US to being pro-Russia and pro-China.
As for the plunge in the President’s net satisfaction rating, De Lima said that there was an apparent “erosion” in Mr. Duterte’s popularity in such a short period that should get the President and his men worried.
She proposed that the President change the way he talks as well as his attitude towards the international community and the media before it’s too late.
“He should really think of changing himself as a Filipino. He should really think about that. His advisers should really consider that,” the senator stressed.