It was a heart-wrenching scene: the mother of a young man “salvaged” (allegedly by the police, the latest of the 6,000 casualties or more, and counting, in President Duterte’s brutal war on drugs), insisting that her son, though a user, was not a pusher.

And she had what no Cabinet member/marionette of the President has—the guts to take Mr. Duterte to task for the violence and extrajudicial killings he apparently has inspired; for the fact that almost all the victims were small fry, and not one drug lord or protector in the higher echelons of government, armed forces and civil society has been touched. And she asked the President if he is really a man and the father of the benighted citizenry.

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Think about it, all you of sound mind capable of critical analyses and of discerning right from wrong.

Are these killers acting on their own or is there an organized group behind the operations? What kind of men would have the motive to commit the murders? Have they been suddenly imbued with a sense of nationalism that they would now take matters into their own hands?

How do they fund their sinister operations—the bikes, the guns, the signs, the tapes? And, more importantly, how do they go about their activities seemingly with complete impunity?

How do you explain the deafening silence of the police and lackeys of the President in Congress, who could only agree that the killings are the handiwork of vigilantes? It is noteworthy that the only motorcycle-riding murder suspects ever arrested were those who gunned down a woman in Mindoro. And they turned out to be police officials!

Who would know who the addicts are and their whereabouts? No one, except the police. How’s this for motive—silencing those who could rat on them.

And just like US President-elect Donald Trump who would belie the essentially similar findings of the intelligence services of the United States—that Russia was behind computer hacking operations to influence the recent US presidential election—his counterpart in this corner of the world, President Duterte (he who loves the Russians, and the Chinese that have appropriated unto themselves seas and islands that are clearly ours—don’t you see them giving us the dirty finger just like our President has given it to the United Nations?—but hates the Americans), does not believe the findings and conclusion of the National Bureau of Investigation that policemen were behind the killing of Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa; he believes instead the police version of the murder that was clearly orchestrated.

Who was it who said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing?

Temerity perpetuates the evils that surround us.

That mother should be given the Congressional Medal of Honor, or other similar award—for bravery.

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ROBERT ALVAREZ HYNDMAN, [email protected]

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