There is a reason why the government has chosen to adopt stern measures in resolving problems that confront the nation particularly if it concerns the peace and stability in our society. This we assume because every time the government enunciates a specific policy, the opposition, as usual, would justify its position that it violates the individual freedom, and often, would attempt to hold high the banner of democracy to validate that indeed they constitute the majority.
However, many of us overlooked that democracy is not about the rights of the people but more of a process to make the exercise of our rights operational, which is to validate the rule of the majority. Such is designed to maintain order.
Prior to the existence of governments in what Thomas Hobbes called the “state of nature,” men were absolutely free. The concept of government came about because of the need to mediate the overlapping exercise of individual freedom that each seeks to be accommodated in a given society.
Thus, when people instituted the concept of government, they consequently placed limitations to their own freedom. Henceforth, the original concept of democracy came into being as a form of limitations that must undergo the process of being approved by the majority. The institutionalization of that process then came to be known as the “rule of law.”
When men began to recognize the necessity of installing a process, it was an acknowledgment that they can no longer exercise their freedom as they wish. From thereon we now recognize that the freedom of the individual has no value if it is not approximated with the rights of others. Let alone, no individual would voluntarily surrender a part of his freedom to an abstract State without a guarantee that the government upon which he surrendered his freedom could secure his existence. In other words, democracy or the rule of the majority is a condition sine qua non to make that system work.
To make ourselves clear, when the opposition insists in questioning the campaign against illegal drugs to justify their cry for human rights violation, they in truth wanted to derail the principal program of the administration. In that they want to make President Duterte unpopular, hoping it could trigger his ouster. They surmised that the campaign could result in the violation of human rights, and they expected that to happen.
The campaign at times is harsh and violent but one has to take a balanced perspective of resolving the problem and accept whatever price it will take to save a large portion of our population from being hooked into illegal drugs. How governments will be able to confront this problem of such magnitude is one that undoubtedly requires a strong political will.
In their attempt to stop this, the Liberal Party through Senator Leila de Lima sought the intervention of the UN and the US. But the senator with such a questionable reputation failed to anticipate that what she did was to induce other countries to intervene and violate our sovereignty and independence. This explains why President Duterte sharply reacted because her brokers in Washington are just eager to intervene on the pretext that the issue is about the extrajudicial killings and not on enforcement of the campaign against illegal drugs. In that, one could clearly see the motive of the opposition.
Notably, safeguarding human rights today has given way to the demands for stricter security in countries plagued by terrorist threats and against the cartel of illegal drug syndicates. Nobody wants to come out and question the limitations to their freedom for verily they could be mistaken as one of them. The added power given to the State is now recognized because of the greater danger of terrorism than the inconvenience in going through the meticulous process of observing the rights of the individual.
Sadly enough, the opposition has consistently failed to delineate their role in questioning the government forgetting that they have their duty of contributing positively to our people. They cannot be classified as belonging to the opposition, but obstructionists for clearly their aim is to regain political power. They refuse to accept that the election of Duterte as President includes the giving to him the mandate to solve the problem of illegal drugs which many see as uncontrollably proliferating.
This explains why the campaign against illegal drugs has partly influenced the administration to reintroduce death penalty. On this score, the opposition and the Church failed to understand that our abolition of death penalty is an admission of our failure to deter criminality. It is even illogical to say that as Christians we should stop the practice of executing convicts who committed heinous crimes.
They could not even recall that executions of criminals preceded the advent of Christianity. Rather, various forms of torture, punishments and execution related to religious beliefs such as heresy, blasphemy, paganism, idolatry, witchcraft, etc. were conceived by the evil mind of those pretending to be holier-than-thou exemplified by the new crimes were added into the penal code.
If we look back, we can say that those crimes are remnants of the old medieval practice when people began to question the infallibility of the dogma and of the Papacy. Religious bigotry reached our shores much that the friars also dominated the secular functions of the State. Many Filipinos were executed as heretics for practicing their old religion. It was a deadly combination because crimes against religion were equated as crimes against the State.
Today, the local hypocrites are influenced by the European Union requiring states to abolish death penalty. Again, the opposition by sheer ignorance or duplicity wants to adopt this policy ignoring the truth that most European states today, either as member of NATO or by unilaterally action to preserve their economic interest in their former colonies, continue to wage war and commit widespread genocide, plunder, and wanton destruction of properties in Africa, which reason why Europe is experiencing an unprecedented deluge of immigrants.
The Liberal Party and their kingmakers made up of the oligarchy, the clerics and the imperialists continue follow this line of wanting to abrogate death penalty, and see it as more important than in giving priority to the more pressing problem of hunger and poverty. By abolishing death penalty they hope to present themselves as Christians and compassion in contrast to what they depict as one engaged in the systematic execution of drug suspects.
