Weak candidates are disposed to make extravagant promises in order to get the voters’ attention, and the weaker the candidate, the more extravagant the promises. Of the numerous extravagant promises made by the candidate of the PDP-Laban Party, Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte, undoubtedly the most attention-getting was his promise to rid this country of illegal drug use, criminality and corruption within three months of his inauguration as president of the Philippines. “I can do it in three months,” Rodrigo Duterte said with emphatic confidence.
The thought of their country being rid of illegal drug use, criminality and corruption was so powerful that many voters who had contemplated voting for one of Mr. Duterte’s opponents—Manuel Roxas II, Grace Poe, Miriam Defensor-Santiago or Jejomar Binay—changed their minds and voted for the mayor of Davao City. They had reason to believe that they were making the right choice, for the mayor had come to the hustings with the reputation of a man who delivered on his promises one way or another. Rodrigo Duterte looked like a man who produced results, and so they voted him in as the nation’s 17th Chief Executive.
It was not long before the former mayor of Davao City realized that he had made an extravagant campaign promise. A few weeks after his inauguration as president, Rodrigo Duterte told the not unexpectant Filipino people that he would not be able to stick to his three-month DCC (drugs, criminality and corruption) schedule. The job was more difficult than he thought. He would need six months to do it.
Six months—that would be the first half of 2016—came and went and Mr. Duterte still had not made significant progress against criminality and corruption and was still deep into the extra-judicial campaign waged against illegal drug users and pushers by the Philippine National Police. Faced with a situation of little or zero accomplishment, Davao City’s former mayor decided to admit to the Filipino people that combatting DCC was at best a medium-term proposition. As the end of Rodrigo Duterte’s second year in office approaches, hardly anything is said or written about his extravagant campaign promise.
The situation with regard to the illegal-drugs part of DCC is very clear. The number of extra-judicial killings (EJK)—estimates of these range from 8,000 to 13,000—and the tens of thousands of “surrendering” drug users by no means suggest that Mr. Duterte’s war on illegal drugs is close to being won. US, Colombian and Mexican government officials and other experts on the narcotics trade have told Davao City’s former chief executive that the drug problem is an intractable and highly complicated matter. Apparently bowing to domestic and international outrage against his administration’s EJK campaign, Rodrigo Duterte has retreated and has shifted the leadership of his anti-illegal-drugs campaign from the PNP to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Administration (PDEA), where it should have been in the first place.
The PNP has been claiming that criminality, as represented by the so-called index crimes, has been on a downward trend since the start of the Duterte administration. The obvious intended implication is that index crimes —particularly homicide, murder, robbery and rape—are usually committed by drug-crazed perpetrators and that the decline in the number of reported index crimes is the direct result of the alleged success of the war against illegal drugs. But, considering that it is the collector and repository of data on crime, the PNP’s claim of a downward trend in the incidence of criminality can hardly be accepted without a large dose of skepticism.
But it is in the corruption part of DCC that Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign promise has fared most badly. Since its earliest days in office the Duterte administration has been beset by corruption scandals across the length and breadth of the bureaucracy. The individuals removed or suspended from their offices have ranged from Cabinet secretaries and undersecretaries to commission members and bureau directors. The number of bureaucratic heads that have been chopped for corruption since July 1, 2016 is too long to be considered unembarrassing.
Mr. Duterte clearly came into office believing that by blustering and threatening and cussing he would put the fear of the Lord in the corrupt elements of the bureaucracy. But from the number of dismissals, suspensions and Ombudsman complaint filings, it is clear that the Chief Executive has not succeeded in making the corrupt bureaucrats—old as well as recently appointed—cower in fear. They have shown that they are not deathly scared of him.
Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign promise that he would rid the nation of illegal drug use, criminality and corruption within three months of his inauguration clearly was an exercise in extravagance. Like all extravagances, it has had to undergo adjustment toward reality. First, the three-months timetable became six months. The six months have long since gone and there is no talk about a new timetable for the attainment of Mr. Duterte’s DCC campaign promise.
In future elections this country’s voters will know what to do with candidates who promise things that clearly cannot be achieved within three months or six months. On Dec. 31, 2017 Rodrigo Duterte will have been in office eighteen months.
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