War on drugs and its influence to the minds of the students of UDM

Buison, Angelo Rael

Bernardo, Prince Richard
De Guzman, Ghynx Marcus
Garcia, Mark Joseph
Gile, Mark Laurence
Torres, John Harold
Introduction:
Rodrigo Duterte was elected as the 16th president of the Philippines and the
6th president since the establishment of the Fifth Republic of the Philippines after the
ouster of the then martial law president, Ferdinand Marcos. He has gained
notoriety due to his unconventional politics and unprecedented war on drugs. This war
has resulted so far to over one million drug surrenderers (pushers and users), 40
thousand arrestees, and six thousand persons killed, with two thousand due to police
operations and four thousand to extrajudicial killings (Bueza, 2017). In parrying
criticisms against him, he resorted to expletives thrown at will at the US president,
UN secretary-general, and the European Union. Yet Duterte and his war on drugs
enjoy high approval ratings by Filipinos (Pulse Asia, 2017; SWS, 2016). With his
unconventional politics, Duterte has been described as a psychopath (Macas &
Merueñas, 2016) murderer (Ager, 2016), the punisher (Zabriskie, 2002), a singular
man (Jiao, 2017), or one of the most powerful persons in the world (Forbes, 2016). He
is also characterized as old man “who operate on old ideas and obsolete
knowledge” (de Dios, 2016), shunning extant evidence on the ineffectiveness of
punitive measures against drug users and traffickers (see e.g. Csete et al., 2016;
Mohammad & Fulkerson, 2015; Walker, 2011). Scholars see Duterte as a populist
who employs a political style of performing crisis (Curato, 2016, 2017) or igniting a
moral panic (Holmes & Thompson, 2016). In this view, Duterte is seen as a
‘moral entrepreneur’ (Becker, 1963), who defines the ‘dangerous other’ (drug
personalities) and the ‘law abiding us’ and marshal material and discursive resources
to escalate risks, resulting in an atmosphere of crisis. This approach, however, is
“bereft of a cultural moment” (Smith, 2005:)
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

A. HOW THE STUDENT REACTS TO THE WAR ON DRUGS OF THE PRESENT

ADMINISTRATION.
B. HOW THE WAR ON DRUGS OF THE PRESENT ADMINISTRATION AFFECT
THE BEHAVIOR OF THE STUDENT.
C. HOW THE WAR ON DRUGS OF PRESENT ADMINISTRATION HELPS THE
STUDENTS KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN SOCIETY.
This article argues that, in Duterte’s “war on drugs”, state power is exercised through
the body in a spectacle of humiliation and violence. The analysis draws from the work of
Foucault (1979) on the political value of a spectacle of the body to explain the distinctive
character of Duterte’s violent war on drugs; of Feldman (1991) on the use of the body
as an object in which violence is embodied to send political messages; of Agamben
(1995) on eliminating life supposedly devoid of value; and on Mumford et al. (2007),
who pointed to the popularity of “violent ideological leaders.” I argue that, under the
Duterte administration, criminals are humiliated and killed in a spectacle of violence that
politicises their lives, sending a message that intimidates others. In the process, law-
abiding citizens are meant to feel safe, which is seen as likely to increase the newly
elected president’s popularity and his power as chief executive. Duterte has thereby
politicised life, not only putting criminals outside the benefit of state protection but
actively targeting them. Duterte is the first mayor and president to have actively targeted
criminals and, in doing so has encouraged other politicians to follow his example. The
politicisation of the bodies of criminals is distinctive in Duterte’s form of violence. This
article is drawn from data sets of individual killings when Duterte was either serving as
or acting behind the mayor of Davao, and compared with cases of drug-related killings
since he became president on 30 June 2016. On August 2, 2017, Vanda Felbab-Brown
submitted a statement for the record for the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the
human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines. Read her full
statement below. However, as an independent think tank, the Brookings Institution
does not take institutional positions on any issue. Therefore, my testimony represents
my personal views and does not reflect the views of Brookings, its other scholars,
employees, officers, and/or trustees. President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in the
Philippines is morally and legally unjustifiable. Resulting in egregious and large-scale
violations of human rights, it amounts to state-sanctioned murder. It is also
counterproductive for countering the threats and harms that the illegal drug trade and
use pose to society — exacerbating both problems while profoundly shredding the
social fabric and rule of law in the Philippines. The United States and the international
community must condemn and sanction the government of the Philippines for its
conduct of the war on drugs.
The Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has gained quite a reputation in both national
and international sphere due to his controversial war against drugs. Accordingly, this
article aims to determine the media frames used in reporting the issue. By employing
mainly content analysis, three Philippine national newspapers (namely, Manila Bulletin,
Philippine Daily Inquirer, and The Philippine Star) are analyzed to observe the repeating
media frames and the depictions of actors involved in the drug war. It is revealed that
the Law and Order, Crime and Justice Frame, Security and Defense frame, Conflict
frame, and Responsibility frame are mainly used by the three newspapers. The study
also reveals that media narration of the anti-drug campaign is rather neutral in tone and
there is no observable extreme manipulation of stories favoring one group over another.