President Duterte loves talking tough. Although he has rejected being called a “strongman” by Time Magazine, he talks and acts like a “strongman.” And he most certainly loves being seen as tough and strong. And so when he ordered a crackdown on “tambays” or street loiterers, nobody was surprised when he talked tough again, as he did when he first declared war against illegal drugs.
Saying they are “potential trouble for the public,” Duterte directed authorities to be strict with “tambays,” telling the police to bring to Malacañang those who would refuse to heed the police and he would take care of them. He said he would tie their hands and throw them into the Pasig River. Just like when he said he would throw drug users into Manila Bay to be eaten by sharks.
His audience nodded and cheered, just as when Filipinos in South Korea cheered him on when he kissed a Filipino on the lips, and Duterte obviously loved their adoration. Never mind that it sparked outrage and public outcry.
Just last week, without any provocation, the tough man from Davao City turned his ire on God and the Roman Catholic Church with a rhetoric question: “Who is this stupid God?” and a curse-laced statement on God: “Estupido talaga itong p***** i** kung ganun. (This son of a whore must really be stupid.)”
The President then finished his speech in a Davao City event by lambasting the Catholic concept of original sin. “So now, all of us are born with an original sin. What is that? Was it the first kiss? What was the sin? Why original? You’re still in the womb, you already have sin? What kind of religion is that?” he said.
This latest outburst explains all his previous expletive-laden remarks. The man does not believe in God nor in religion. He has become God unto himself and in his own mind. He obviously believes he has absolute power over his people — not the “stupid” God – including who gets to live and enjoy a free life, and who doesn’t deserve to enjoy God-given freedom and be thrown into the sea to be devoured by sharks.
How else do you explain his penchant for issuing directives that affect mostly the poor people from blighted communities like the wars on drugs, which has killed thousands of mostly poor drug users, and on “tambays” or street loiterers that has resulted in the arrest of more than 7,000 mostly poor slum residents?
Duterte and his apologists explain that the wars drugs and on “tambays” are aimed to prevent crime because drug users are “rapists and criminals” and loiterers are “do-nothings who are potential trouble to the public.”
Based on his latest directives, police all over the country went head over heels trying to impress the President, reminiscent of the first days of the drug war, when policemen gunned down hundreds of drug users in obvious attempt to outdo each other and impress the President. Cebu police, for example, immediately prepared an operational plan called “Operation Tambay” (an acronym for “Tantangon ng mga abusado, badlongon sa katilingban, apil na ng mga yawan-ong buhat” – Remove the abusers and the criminals including those who commit evil deeds).
Other police departments, like Metro Manila and Bulacan, call their drives “Oplan RODY” or the Rid the Streets of Drunkards and Youths. Within a few days, nearly all police departments were announcing their own “tambay” arrest reports.
Never mind that since 2012, vagrancy has been decriminalized.
But as soon as the public outcry raged against this recent drive, Malacanang and police spokespersons said those taken to police precincts were not arrested, but merely “accosted.” Why were they taken to the police precincts then? And why did the various police department report them as “arrests”?
Clearly, there is a stampede among policemen to enforce whatever Duterte says in public even without clear implementing rules. In their desire to show that they are loyal followers of the President, police officers dispatched their men to arrest anyone loitering on the streets at night. There was this incident where five boys were arrested while waiting for their friend outside the latter’s house for a night out. Some call center workers, who work at night, were reportedly apprehended while on their way home or to work.
The danger of such unwarranted arrests was made even more glaring when 25-year-old Genesis Argoncillo, one of the first to be arrested after Duterte made his directive, was mauled to death reportedly by inmates while detained at the city jail for being shirtless. How many more Argoncillos would have to die under similar circumstances before the police take a second look at this campaign?
Many were arrested because, police said, they were drinking, were shirtless (half naked as the police describe them) or were “violating local ordinances,” all because, in Duterte’s word, they were “potential trouble to the public.”
Since when has it become legal to arrest persons because they looked like they were going to commit crimes?
Duterte’s anti-loitering drive is a bad case of stereotyping – that people loitering or drinking outside their homes at night, walking shirtless, or simply merrymaking are potential criminals and should, therefore, be either arrested, sent home or “thrown into the river.”
And yet, the rich who can afford to drink lavishly inside nightclubs and beerhouses need not be touched because they won’t cause any trouble? Does this president not realize that some people do not have the luxury of TV or video games nor the space to relax and enjoy in the comfort of their homes? That these “do nothing” vagrants are just out there in the streets because that is their only means of relaxation or spending time with friends? That men roam around shirtless because they simply don’t have shirts or can’t stand the intense summer heat and they have no air-conditioned rooms in their shanties?
You won’t see loiterers in plush villages and subdivisions because they have game rooms, spacious family rooms, backyards, cable TV, karaoke, and video games to relax after work or school, and money to dine or drink in their favorite nightclubs, beer gardens and cinemas. Aren’t those wealthy men drunk or high from drugs coming from nightclubs any less capable of committing crimes?
The youthful Rep. Sarah Balabago and other critics were right to point out that this latest campaign by the President is targeting the poor – just as the deadly drug war is — and is actually being used to harass and force into meek submission the common people that Duterte swore to protect and for which he won overwhelmingly as president. He was not elected by the people to protect the elite. It is the poor, more than anyone, that need protection because they do not have the means to protect themselves.
The police and Duterte supporters said the anti-loitering drive is merely enforcing existing local ordinances on loiterers, public drinking and public scandal and yet cannot cite any law that makes such actions warrant arrest. Precisely because the vagrancy laws and ordinances were discriminatory, vagrancy was removed from the Revised Penal Code by an act of Congress in March 2012. That act supersedes any local ordinance. Or is the country under de facto martial law and that the President’s words now supersede an act of Congress?
These directives and the justification offered by the administration remind me of what “The Liberator” Simon Bolivar told an officer who was reluctant to join his rebellion because, the latter said, “a government without laws is anarchy,” to which Bolivar retorted:
“laws that protect only the elite is tyranny.” Has the government become one?
(valabelgas@aol.com)
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