Now the shoe is on the other foot
Tomorrow morning at nine, a brand new and complete community center will be inaugurated and turned over to the Talamban Elementary School in Cebu City by brothers Francisco and Enrique Benedicto. The center is named after the late Benedicto patriarch, Don Bernardo, whose philanthropic acts spanning decades are being continued all over Cebu by the succeeding generations of Benedictos.
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So, Vice President Leni Robredo, after blinking hard many times the past several days to see what hit her, has finally accepted the task of leading the country's fight against illegal drugs. She has apparently concluded that her appointment by President Duterte really left her with no choice. Had she refused, she would have been exposed as merely all talk in her constant sniping of the drug war then led by the president.
What Robredo and the political opposition failed to reckon in their incessant criticisms of the president, from his policies to his health, was the ability and the willingness of Duterte to turn the tables on anyone, to fight everyone, even women. And so, quick to anger, Duterte made good his threat to let Robredo lead the drug war if she would not stop finding fault in the way he was doing it.
Duterte led the drug war from the other extreme. His was a war that left little wiggle room. In Duterte's view, either you are clean or you are not. If you are not clean, you are given the chance to surrender and be cleaned, i.e., rehabilitated. This is the meaning of "tokhang" or "toktok hangyo" which in English is roughly "knock and appeal." Just because it sounds different to Tagalogs doesn't mean it meant shoot and kill. The media did that.
Duterte's order to the police had been specific: Protect yourself all the time. If they (suspects) fight back and your lives are endangered, then shoot to kill. Again the media truncated the order and reported only the "shoot to kill" part. And the whole world believed that. Finally, the media refused to report the millions of guns in the hands of drug suspects and other criminals, thereby ensuring the demonization of Duterte and his war.
But the silent majority of Filipinos know exactly what they are up against. They fully understand what it has to take to wage this war. That is exactly why in survey after survey, the approval and trust ratings of Duterte continues to remain high. Yet, despite what most Filipinos truly feel about the drug war, Robredo and the rest of the opposition continue to stay detached from the hard realities gripping the country.
But then again, things being equal as they always turn out to be, it is entirely possible, although not likely, that it is Duterte and the majority of Filipinos who are completely wrong about the conduct of the drug war and it is Robredo and her opposition sorority of like-minded sisters who are in fact completely correct.
So now Robredo has her chance to put into effect what she thinks is the right way to approach this terrible problem. And since her appointment leaves the rest of us with no choice either, let us all pray that she succeeds in whatever the hell she thinks she is doing. Because if she fails, the consequences will be far worse than Duterte's war. If Robredo fails, the Philippines sliding into a narco state is no longer remote.
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