Article Archive

BY ALL indications, the May 2016 elections are no different from previous polls in which those donating to the campaign coffers of candidates and political parties turn out to be the same business owners and executives yet again. In past elections, the names of the prohibited corporations themselves were listed in the Statement of Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE) that the partisans have filed with the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

ON TOP of Bayani Arago’s desk at the Commission on Human Rights National Capital Region (CHR NCR) is a pile of clippings now about an inch thick. The news reports, which Arago began collecting last July 1, tell stories of various police encounters that almost always end up with the same outcome: a drug suspect dead.


BANGKAY SA BANGKETA… kasi nga drug pusher ako.

This is the sad refrain in a sardonic poem that a young Filipina wrote and read in a video she posted last week on her Facebook page. It does not matter, she averred, that the so-called drug pushers falling by the dozens of late had not been read their rights or tried in court. Or even, that they had been killed by those who are supposed to protect them and enforce the law. Perhaps, she wrote, those who kill are drug pushers, too.

BEFORE Rodrigo R. Duterte became President on June 30, 2016, the Philippine National Police (PNP) had hauled a fairly bountiful harvest from its anti-drug war from January 2010 to June 2016.