Perhaps readers feel that their correspondent is dwelling overly on the Philippines, given that he lives there a good part of the time. The fact is that the Philippines is at once both the most successful Asean country, and the one hell-bent on self-destruction.
A reminder of the facts: the Philippines is the second fastest-growing economy in the world, following only India. It is difficult for a nation of islands to knit together but the Philippines has been doing it.
There is a growing nationwide consciousness of being Filipino, despite the stupid decision by president Quezon to make his language, Tagalog, the national language, standing in marked contrast to Sukarno’s 1928 decision to build a national language out of little Melayu in Sumatra.
But, that was becoming the lingua franca of the region, and of course, today it is also virtually the same language you speak in Malaysia.
In contrast, in the Filipino Visayas, as a result, citizens stubbornly stick to Cebuano and other regional Malay dialects. But, one must know Tagalog to succeed in Manila, to which all roads and sea paths merge.
It now emerges that there is a fatal cancer in the archipelago, vastly larger than anyone feared possible — drugs, and in particular syabu, a cheap chemical that can be smuggled in by various means. A little of the pure stuff goes a long way. The rewards to the drug mules are cosmic: millions, nay billions, of pesos in profit for a big haul.
Everyone thought mayor, now president, Rodrigo Duterte, was transposing the drug problem he solved in Davao, on the southern tip of Mindanao, to the republic as a whole.
It turned out that his instincts were appallingly right. It seems that his “invitation” to drug sellers to turn themselves in, or face certain death at some point, revealed the countrywide scope of the catastrophe in the making.
As many as 50,000, it is reported, have done so. The problem, is where to put them, how to rehabilitate so many, how to move on.
This beautiful placid and welcoming republic was committing a faster suicide than anyone dared dread.
In these circumstances, it is small wonder that Duterte instilled fear everywhere. Not because he has “legitimised” a sub-judicial system — it is no longer an extra-judicial system — where one is bopped off by goons on the third offence, but because everyone knows that Duterte was spot-on.
The problem is everywhere. In my municipality, numbers 47-49 were knocked off since my last writing, in this case, handsome young men who might be thought to be the nation’s future.
I knew all three by site; their bodies lie deep in adjacent Lake Taal, arguably the most beautiful view in the world (or so I chose to live on its shores, looking at volcanoes, mountains, the caldera surrounding us, and fast-moving trimarine bancas skimming its surface).
The fact that the killings are not protested (contrast the building violence in the United States, where white cops tend to kill black suspects without evidence) leads one to conclude that everyone knew what was happening, and felt helpless to react.
My own kampung is lucky and has been drug-free since the start of the epidemic. Our kapitan, a Muslim married to a local woman, and a highly successful businessman, and I talked all morning yesterday.
We are only about 1,000, and Kapitan Youssef told how he dealt with every nascent case as an individual problem. One of my own employees, a hard-working six-footer, who is a bit happy-go-lucky, got a talking-to. He was going to be knocked off, but allegedly for sleeping with the wife of one of the killer goons.
The kapitan told him he had to be, like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. My katiwala, or manager, is a tough well-spoken man with four children, and plays a role in the barangay beyond my territory.
He had warned me that another of my employees was drugging and heading for knock-off. I didn’t get it, but the katiwala arranged for the guy to be arrested rather than executed.
He, no doubt, will eventually spend five years in prison, because the national police videotaped his third offence, but at least this 24-year-old otherwise exemplary guy isn’t at the lake’s bottom.
These events are being replicated throughout the archipelago. Duterte believes that an addict is too damaged for rehab, and so thousands more will probably “go”.
The nightly news keeps a national tally on the executions. Duterte promises to have “solved” the problem in three to six months of his inauguration.
That’s optimistic, but I think in that period, the horror will have stopped metastasising. For certain, the worst of the suppliers will be knocked off; how many thousand remains to be seen. Then, the long national rehab can begin.
It will remain for Duterte’s successor to begin the healing. Once people realise “how close we came” to national suicide, they will appreciate that the healing will take a long time.
W. Scott Thompson is professor emeritus of international politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the US