[Newsstand] Misremembering Duterte’s war on drugs

To the genuine shock of many, that someone as powerful as Rodrigo Duterte could be arrested and then flown to a jail cell in The Hague, influence operations have added layers of disinformation.

Our Gaby Baizas and Pauline Macaraeg reported that, on the day of the arrest, Duterte’s “supporter networks” were already “exploiting the platform (Facebook) with paid ads and coordinated behavior to manipulate online discourse.”

Two weeks later, journalist Regine Cabato identified four “emerging disinformation narratives” favoring Duterte (all of which had already surfaced in the Rappler report): painting the former president as the victim, creating the illusion of majority public support, discrediting the victims of extrajudicial killings, and smearing institutions like the media and the International Criminal Court itself.

I would like to add one more narrative, which emerged well before the arrest but now seems to have been accepted, or simply assumed, even by some of the critics of Duterte and his brutal war on drugs: that the EJKs made the public feel safe.

This is a terrible mistake, and compounds the tragedy of the violence with the silent violence of forgetting.

Rightward shift

I first became aware of this new forgetting in February, while listening to an engrossing lecture on the Edsa Revolution by the sociologist Leland de la Cruz. He cited a finding in a WR Numero Research survey, conducted a year and a half after Duterte left office, that showed massive public support, about 80%, for the war on drugs. De la Cruz used the survey finding, rightly in my view, as an indication that public attitudes in the Philippines were shifting rightward, like elsewhere in the world. (We later discussed his lecture, about the need to reimagine Edsa, on my program.)

I was familiar with the finding. It was one of five “select Philippine historical events” that WR Numero Research included in its first-ever survey; adding a set of historical events to gauge contemporary public opinion on was a nice touch, I thought, when I had the chance to study the survey results. (I discussed this survey on the program too, with the political scientist Cleve Arguelles.)

But hearing it mentioned in a public lecture, a bare fact that floated fleetingly in the air, forced me to see the finding differently; I distinctly felt uncomfortable, because public opinion about the war on drugs, as measured during the six years of Duterte’s presidency, was in fact much more nuanced than the finding suggested.

Yes, all of the surveys conducted during Duterte’s term found a majority of respondents supporting the administration’s campaign against illegal drugs. The question in Social Weather Stations (SWS) polls was straightforward: “Maaari po bang pakisabi ninyo kung gaano kayo nasisiyahan o hindi nasisiyahan sa kasalukuyang kampanya ng administrasyon laban sa ilegal na droga (Can you say how satisfied or not satisfied you are about the ongoing administration campaign against illegal drugs)?” This is essentially a commonplace question. Who doesn’t want to support a campaign to stop the spread of illegal drugs? 

But, as I have argued over the years, public opinion about the war on drugs was never only and uniformly favorable. Public sentiment was in fact split. Behind the high levels of public support and lower levels of what SWS called “public insecurity” (which measures the fear factor, such as when walking home at night), the same surveys found an anxious and fearful public. 

Two moments:

In August 2017, in the wake of the killing of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos, I looked at the available data and concluded that the resulting public outrage (Kian had been seen on closed-circuit TV, and was heard by witnesses pleading for his life) “reflects persistent public concerns” over the drug war. A poll conducted in March 2017 found that 73% of Filipinos 18 years old and above were worried (“nangangamba,” in the language of the survey questionnaire) that they or someone they know (“kayo o sino mang kilala ninyo”) would be the next victim. 

In July 2019, I referenced the December 2018 SWS survey, which found that, while 74% of voting-age Filipinos were satisfied with Duterte’s performance as president, 78% said they feared they or someone they know would be the next victim of an extrajudicial killing. 

I wrote then: “That is an extraordinary index of anxiety: Three-fourths of adult Filipinos say they worry that they or someone they know might be killed as the next victim of the President’s rampaging war on drugs. When we consider that, even using the President’s most risibly inflated estimates of the number of drug users, not more than 7 percent of the population is on drugs; when we consider further that, according to the December 2018 SWS survey, only 12 percent of adult Filipinos personally know an EJK victim — then the fact that 78 percent of survey respondents say they or someone they know might be the next EJK victim is an indictment of the fundamental unfairness of the President’s personal war. It is proof that the war on drugs that claims thousands of lives is perceived by the people as essentially unjust, almost random, and a sign that the public labors under cover of fear. The people themselves say so.”

Consistently unfavorable

I thought public opinion was always split about Duterte’s war. But SWS co-founder and chair emeritus Mahar Mangahas never subscribed to the split-opinion view. For him, the results of the SWS surveys taken during Duterte’s term were unequivocal. As he wrote earlier in March, “public opinion about Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs was consistently unfavorable to him.” (I discussed his column and its implications on the program too.)

Over the years, Mangahas has pointed to the same indicators of anxiety. 

February 2019: “The administration’s success in reducing drug usage should be qualified by the universal public disapproval of the lethal means used to enforce the President’s will. The December 2018 survey also found 95 percent calling it important that the police capture the drug suspects alive.”

June 2019: “Two-thirds believe that the police themselves are involved in the illegal drug trade. Two-thirds believe that the police are the ones doing the EJKs. Over half believe that the police plant evidence against the suspects they arrest.”

January 2020: “Eight SWS surveys from December 2016 to September 2019 all show strong rejection of the ‘nanlaban’ excuse,” referring to the usual police explanation that the victims were killed because they fought back.

In the polling pioneer’s perspective, the right way to understand the survey numbers is to see through the top-line results and get at the bottom line. And the bottom is truly dark: The great majority of voting-age Filipinos did not feel safe during the war on drugs. – Rappler.com

Veteran journalist John Nery is a Rappler columnist and program host. In the Public Square with John Nery airs on Rappler platforms every Wednesday at 8 pm.