EDITORIAL - Rule of law

Visiting Singapore, President Duterte reportedly found a sympathetic ear in his push for capital punishment. The city-state, known for its tough stance on criminality, has carried out the death penalty numerous times, with a Filipina maid among those executed.

If Singapore is a role model, President Duterte should also bear in mind that Southeast Asia’s most advanced economy attained that status by focusing on strengthening its institutions and the rule of law.

When Singapore decides to execute a criminal, it makes sure due process has taken its course and its laws have been applied with fairness and clarity so that there is no doubt about justice being rendered. Because it is no mere rhetoric in Singapore that justice delayed is justice denied, adjudication is typically swift.

Last September, an opinion piece in Singapore’s main newspaper The Straits Times noted that unlike Duterte, the city-state’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew “was not a man to have a person’s life taken away without absolute attention to due process.”

Right-to-life advocates have criticized Singapore for its state executions but not for extrajudicial killings. If the city-state saw so-called deaths under investigation of its citizens on the same scale as in the Philippines per capita, with the police seemingly uninterested or helpless in bringing the murderers to justice, it could bring down the Singapore government.

What is raising concern about the Philippines in many foreign capitals is the brazen disregard for the law and the most basic of human rights in the continuing brutal war against the drug menace. Few people will argue with the need to combat drug trafficking and the ruinous impact of drug addiction on the abusers and society. But waging a war with guns blazing, with little disregard for the niceties of the law and the right to life can only undermine even the most laudable objective. Restoring capital punishment is unlikely to put an end to this cavalier attitude toward the law and human life.