A year of living in War on Drugs: Fillennials under Duterte’s imagined drug-free nation

Photo from The Atlantic

By Chester B Cabalza


Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 

(Copyright @ 2017 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

The common notion that millennials around the world share the same youth culture might be somewhat germane to illustrate the Philippines. However the Fillennials or Filipino millennials who are social media junkies diverge from other millennials in a sense that their hopes and dreams are still shaped by its own culture and society. Painting a Disney imagery, they embody optimism, career-driven aptitude, and known for their self-entitlements.

Borrowing Professor Ky Hayes’s definition of the millennial, they are those born between 1980s and expanding even to those born in the early 2000s with ages ranging from 18-34. It is incontestable that this diverse generation floods the cyberspace as the harbingers in the “Information Age” and “Digital Era”.

Ascribed as tech-savvy cohort caters their motivated skills to be socially-aware as they were exposed to significant societal changes globally at the peak of globalism, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the internet age. Being civic-minded, millennials highly value work and lifestyle by standing multi-tasking and team-oriented which draws flak from other generations despite being tagged as self-centered and ambitious.

To identify the existence of a “millennial culture” in the Philippines requires the assumption that a “millennial generation” exists along with an indicative unique set of values, habits, and attitudes that its members demonstrate.

The Philippines’ transformation into a narco-state was created by its own history when its ancestors betel chewed in 1521, opium was banned in 1908, marijuana prevailed in 1954 but by choice preferred as illegal drugs among Filipinos since the Martial Law in 1972, shabu users surfaced in Manila in 1983 and reached its peak in 2004, but since 2002 the Dangerous Drugs Board reported that there were 5.8 million drug users in the country, and a decade after, the Philippines turned out having the highest rate of shabu addicts in East Asia. 

Regrettably, there are almost four million illegal drug dependents in the country, majority are concentrated in big cities, albeit not situated in one contiguous area but spread throughout the entire country.

Policy-making worldwide is increasingly evidence-based. The same should be applied to the Philippines current drug policy. Two schools of thought are challenging Duterte’s banner program on the war on drugs (WOD), whether it is crime deterrence or health and social problem.

Almost a year after his inaugural speech as the 16^th president of the Republic of the Philippines, he boldly crashed the world as he doggedly executed his controversial campaign against illegal drugs called Project “Double Barrel” that connotes a two-pronged approach, namely, project Tokhang (lower barrel approach) and project High Value Target (upper barrel approach),  spearheaded by the Philippine National Police, aimed at attaining utopian drug-free communities across the country .

His prime advocacy of “real change” more so intensified his WOD campaign receiving a mixed support from newly installed world leaders while he defied global human rights watchdogs as the international community witnessed alarming rate of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

The sudden constructions of treatment and rehabilitation centers and the lack of it ensured preponderance of political aid that questioned a posteriori human rights issue. And those who either voluntarily or involuntarily surrendered to law enforcers add to the harrowing condition of prisons in the country. 

In terms of substance abuse among Fillennials, alarmingly the 15-19 years old group who has claimed of drug use is mostly males than females while those undergoing rehabilitation belong to the age group of 25-29 years old totaling to about 2.1million Fillennials engrossed to substance abuse since 1997.

Their experimental behaviors include smoking, drinking, and using drugs leading to mental and neurological disorders while some spend their productive years of their life behind bars with hardcore lawless adults. In effect, the magnitude of drug use problem among the youth impacts the productivity of the workforce linking unemployment and drug-taking habits among drugged millennials.  

Correlating the youth’s digital dependence and drug addiction, these can be manifested by the distorted image of the adolescent relationships to the social environment much produced by consumerism, and faint personal and family values.   

Given the drug policy’s messianic complex against a malignant phenomenon, gradually offsetting a relentless dream encompassing suppression, prosecution and rehabilitation in a holistic manner; the failed vision botched inadequacy of serious policy-making and rigid methods that protects the asymmetrical rights of the felony and the victims.

The bloody war on drugs besets wars on poor people, the youth, and crime busters who lost the appetite of seeing the real picture and turning a blind eye about a genuine social dilemma depriving a person of life, liberty and property.  

If WOD is framed as a social and medical issue, transpotting from the odd view as crime deterrence with a scar face caused by narco-politics and narco-terrorism, it must be institutionalized as an anti-drug campaign to push for inter-agency cooperation, a primus inter pares among government agencies to second the motion as a national security threat.  

Unconditional surrender program for users and peddlers must be encouraged augmenting a well-financed management of voluntary submission for drug pushers and rehabilitated users. Mainstreaming of drug education in curriculum of secondary education as explicitly constituted in the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act must be properly supported and implemented. There should be a comprehensive plan for long/medium/ and short term anti-drug operations to formalize the Project Double Barrel’s procedures with a maximum end of safeguarding human rights.

Ultimately the ramifications of WOD can be overturned, despite its long term end of reducing drug supply or reducing drug demand, if methods are lawfully accomplished and the good intent ensures public safety and internal security.      

Independence from Naval Powers

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2017 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

Photo courtesy of Washington Post

Today the Philippines, Asia’s first republic, celebrates its 119th Independence Day. Long from its young existence, the archipelagic nation has been historically colonized by naval powers Spain, the United States of America, and Japan. Nevertheless the country’s current territorial and maritime row with revisionist China in the Spratlys archipelago and the Scarborough shoal places a dilemma for the Southeast Asian member-state to succumb to the giant neighbor’s resurgence as a naval power.   

Taking off from President Rodrigo Duterte’s bold pronouncement in September 2016, he rattled traditional allies as he cements an “independent foreign policy” by diversifying defense and economic relations apparent in his current pivot to Eurasian powers, Russia and China, yet maneuvering a less dependence from the United States, the country’s oldest treaty ally in the Asia-Pacific.

Considering the Philippines weak deterrence and over reliance to major powers in protecting its territorial integrity and sovereignty, how can the country overcome limited combat capabilities to persuasively survive its “real” independence from foreign naval powers?

In January 2013, the Philippines resorted to lawfare against China to the spectacle of maritime states abroad. The Hague-based arbitral court ruled a landmark case in favor of the Philippines in October 2015 and July 2016 to the dismay of China as it radically altered the features of the controversial U-shaped contested islands in the South China Sea while the Philippines immediately hedged to renew damaged bilateral ties.  

Nonetheless the world’s second largest archipelago remained weak in defending its stolen territory and maritime entitlements despite an increase to 13 million hectares on the Philippine archipelagic territory based on endowment of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to the Benham Rise renamed to Philippine Rise today.  

In March 2017, Mr Duterte promised to further modernize the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) with “more modern military aircraft, sea vessels, and other equipment in the next two or three years to better patrol the country’s territory and combat security threats,” when he spoke before the graduating plebes at the premiere Philippine Military Academy.

The defunct Republic Act No. 7898 in 1995 provides for the Modernization of the AFP behooved to build up the country’s self-reliant defense force but it flunked to address the defense sector’s needs which triggered for an amendment courtesy of the Republic Act No. 10349 in 2012 establishing the Revised AFP Modernization Program. 

The two-decade old AFP modernization programs addressed dual security situations that challenged the country’s intermittent internal and external defense postures. Hence the AFP modernization laws must be scrutinized from its contexts by the time it was enacted to understand the country’s flip-flopping transformational strategies down from the Internal Security Operations up to the Territorial Defense Operations.

After two failed attempts of modernizing the Philippines’ armed forces, the shopping lists of military hardware from the current administration should match its own desired needs to combat local insurgency or terrorism and guard maritime domains from newly befriended gigantic neighbor that has the capability to declare war against a vassal state to secure its own expanding sovereignty rights.

Hence Philippine defense laws and security executive issuances should essentially identify fundamental interests, primarily for the fortification of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Strategic plans at all levels must highlight the interplay between national interests, alliances, and the broad capabilities required. International laws and other mechanisms should contribute to the recognition of the validity of the Philippine interests while capacitating to either bandwagon or hedge with allies and crooks for protection and objection. 

Independence from a naval power pitches a long-term solution for the Philippines to own self-reliant defense posture that it still lacks today abreast with meek military ammunition and defense expenditures in the region. The development of a muscular defense industry considerable in strengthening and sustaining the national defense can provide for credible deterrence to supplant a robust defense industry to flex capable infrastructure, materiel, and the technology needed to the armed force of the nation.

Reality bites the Philippines is still locked in a period when hegemony of naval powers reign at seas to regain its real independence. Sea power theory paves way for small states not to wage war but to avert it with a believable ability to flight. In the long run, the Philippine [in]dependence as evidently perceived on its recent diversified alliance can be considered only a short-term remedy to stoutly hold a credible deterrence paving a way for a long-term independence and/or self-reliance to foster a robust strategic culture. 

#Summer2017

                   Photographs by CBCabalza. Copyright © 2017 by Chester B. Cabalza. All Rights Reserved.

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