PUBLIC LIVESThe Duterte methodBy: Randy David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
April 22, 2018
Nearly two years after Rodrigo Duterte was elected to the presidency, his signature approach to power has become all-too-familiar. It is one based on the methodical use of the coercive power of the state in order to intimidate dissenters, critics, skeptics, deviants, and noncooperative individuals who, in his perception, are not taking him seriously.
It is this approach that has basically defined his antidrug campaign, in which a few thousand drug suspects have been brazenly killed in police operations. This brutal show of force has been enough to frighten and compel hundreds of thousands of others to “surrender,” have themselves detained, or simply listed down for monitoring and rehabilitation. In their minds, to be included in the list of drug surrenderers serves as an insurance that they won’t be targeted for killing. This deadly assumption has been proven wrong countless times.
But the use of the fear factor has not been confined to the drug campaign alone. Mr. Duterte has silenced most of the political opposition by jailing the outspoken Sen. Leila de Lima on the incredible charges of conspiring with detained drug lords to trade in illegal drugs when she was justice secretary. By going after the Chief Justice herself, he has likewise warned the judiciary not to question or strike down any of his decisions. He has tamed mainstream media by attacking the “biased” reporting of the newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer, the ABS-CBN media broadcast network, and the digital news portal Rappler. But, he doesn’t stop there. He pursues his case against the owners by pointing to their various liabilities as business entities, rather than as professional news organizations.
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