Marcos cites decrease in crimes, human rights violations

President Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr.  (INQUIRER.net file photo / Ryan Leagogo)

MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Monday touted the lower crime compared to the previous administration while also noting a decrease in human rights violations. 

“We have done it without resorting to legal shortcuts or short-circuiting the process or acts that subvert the rule of law,” Marcos said in his speech during the oath-taking of star rank officers of the Philippine National Police (PNP) at Malacañan Palace.

Marcos said there were only 198,617 crimes recorded in 2023, or the first full year of his administration.

This was significantly less than the 295,382 crimes logged in 2017 or during the first full year of the administration of Rodrigo Duterte.

Marcos also noted that the index crimes have also been slashed threefold from 107,899 in 2017 to 38,436 last year.

Index crimes, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, are crimes that the PNP deemed “serious in nature” as they frequently occur to the extent of these being a tell-tale sign of how crime-ridden an area is.

Among those considered as index crimes are murder, homicide, physical injury, car theft, robbery, theft, and rape.

Meanwhile, Marcos noted that “incidents of human rights violations were down by half in 2023 as compared to 2022” without further elaboration.

“It proves that rules that strengthen the fabric of our democracy, rules that our heroes had died for, rules that [are] enshrined in our Constitution, are not inconveniences in policing but are in fact integral and indispensable in serving up justice,” Marcos said.

Marcos, in his recent trip Germany,  told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the anti-narcotics campaign of the country “changed significantly” during his term, adding that he is “diametrically opposed” in dealing the drug problem with violence.

The war on drugs of the Duterte administration claimed at least 6,000 lives, according to official government data.

Human rights watchdogs and the International Criminal Court,  which currently investigates human rights violations under Duterte’s term estimated the death toll to be between 12,000 and 30,000 from 2016 to 2019 alone.

International watchdog Human Rights Watch noted that as of Nov. 15, 2023, a total of 471 people have been killed in drug-related violence.