The Philippine post-election landscape looks cratered. It has been only eight weeks since Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated.
By one count, over 600 extrajudicial killings in the so-called drug war have come to light. Bodies are discovered with cardboard signs alleging their involvement in the trade. Dead men can't defend themselves. The police have presidential carte blanche and vigilantes abound.
This has been supplemented by a 'name and shame' campaign against more than 100 officials in various levels of government across the country. It breaches constitutional law which presumes innocence until proof of guilt, and it perverts equality before the law.
In this climate, it makes no difference whether you're a Duterte-voting driver from an impoverished neighbourhood, a young woman in her last year at university, or a shady mayor with a retinue of bodyguards. The bullets find you.
Such violent impunity is accentuated by Duterte's insistence on moving Ferdinand Marcos' remains from Ilocos Norte — where they had been kept as a condition of repatriation in 1993 from Hawaii — to Libingan ng mga Bayani. The Heroes' Cemetery. This is being undertaken on no more grounds than that the president had made a promise to his mate, the late dictator's son.
Duterte and his supporters may rail against crime, but there are other kinds of rot. There is burying truth; there is honouring a dishonourable man. There is using the full force of your office to reshape the country in your image.
Filipinos have been here before. It must be excruciating for survivors to witness. In response to a recent letter from the Supreme Court Chief Justice regarding due process, Duterte quipped, 'Would you rather I declare martial law?'
It's hard to make sense of how far the Philippines has managed to regress in such a short time. I used to be able to put things in context. Last May, I wrote here about trying to reconcile with president-elect Duterte, hoping that the hope of so many Filipinos cannot be wrong. I understood the regard for order and security as high priorities in a society where rules are taken as suggestions, plunderers get to run for office (again), and being a journalist can be fatal.
"If all that Duterte manages to deliver in the concrete are bodies on the street, then what a wicked and useless gamble Filipinos have made."
Yet I fret more than ever for friends and family. If life is so expendable, who can be safe? What if my brother-in-law is mistakenly identified as a drug 'pusher'? What if my dad goes to a cockfight and armed vigilantes do a drive-by? What if my more outspoken friends are targeted?
It is disheartening that many Filipinos seem to approve of Duterte's methods. This is the purge many had wanted, and the results only bolster what they believe — that the Philippines can only function under an iron hand. They see the current campaign as a necessary, painful transition to better things. They are wrong. Nothing personal, just history.
The glib analysis is that thug rule is all Filipinos have ever known, and they seek its comfort. More than 300 years of Spanish colonisation, immediately followed by 48 years of de facto rule by the United States, which was interrupted by Japanese occupation. Only two decades span the end of World War II and the start of Marcos' very long presidency.
However, there are complications to the view that Filipinos are inept at self-governance. Post-Marcos reconstruction is now taken for granted, yet it involved drafting a new constitution, devolving power to local units, setting a social reform agenda and liberalising the economy. Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos were flawed in their own way, but a functional democracy emerged under their governments. Its current economic fundamentals are strong, despite slow global growth, and can be objectively attributed to policies under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Benigno Aquino III. Increasing per capita income is expanding the middle class.
This is not to suggest that the resentments that carried Duterte into office aren't real. They are very real. Filipinos look to infrastructure in places like Singapore and lament what might have been. But allowing Duterte to squander the Philippines' economic and political credibility could thwart the very things that they want to achieve. If all that he manages to deliver in the concrete are bodies on the street, then what a wicked and useless gamble Filipinos have made.
I feel most of all for civil society stalwarts who not only have to contend again with authoritarian excess, but its newly avid supporters. On Philippine social media and comment threads, asserting human rights is complicity with drug lords and dissent is treason. Such rhetoric has its provenance in the president, who routinely insults critics and tells them to shut up. These are difficult conditions to work in, to put it mildly.
But if there's anything I know about the people working at the grassroots, in churches and NGOs, some in the halls of power, it is that they are intelligent, principled, innovative and alliance-driven. They will need to strategise and consolidate at great speed.
Fatima Measham is a Eureka Street consulting editor. She tweets @foomeister .
Main image source: Davoa Today, Flickr