Road to perdition

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” – Saint Bernard of Clairvaux [c. 1150]

AS if the execution of 17-year old Kian Loyd delos Santos, under the pretext of this administration’s bloody war on drugs, is not enough, Education Secretary Leonor Briones still pushed on to issue Department Order No. 40, Series of 2017 — the “Guidelines for the Conduct of Random Drug Testing in Public and Private Secondary Schools.”

I find it hypocritical when Briones issued a statement condemning the murder of delos Santos and 29 other minors before him when the drug testing will seriously undermine the safety and the right to education of all the other minors. (Yes, other minors have been killed under Digong Dada’s so-called war on drugs.)

Look, I understand that we need to stop illegal drugs from destroying the youth. Let me extend an olive branch then. I think it is accurate to say that most, if not all, Filipinos want to see the end of the drug menace that has gripped this country.

However, even if we declare this as our “basis of unity,” there are still two schools of thought on how to go about ending the drug scourge to contend with. These are through rehabilitation and by a war of attrition.

I’d like to state upfront that I’m for rehabilitation because for me substance abuse is a health problem. You may not agree with me but that’s that.

It’s not that I can’t break it down for you but if you’re one of the zombies who is pissed off because the Commission on Human Rights isn’t investigating crimes committed by drug addicts and other mentally ill people, none of what I write here will make sense to you anyway. So, I’ll cut to the chase because I’m digressing already.

As New York-based Human Rights Watch’s Phelim Kine statement: “Imposing mandatory drug testing of students when Philippine police are committing rampant summary killings of alleged drug users puts countless children in danger for failing a drug test. Education officials should be protecting students, not putting them in harm’s way through mandatory drug tests.”

Although Briones assured the lawmakers during the hearing on the Department of Education’s 2018 budget that the results of the random drug testing will be kept confidential, the schools are still empowered to impose sanctions on the students who will test positive which includes expulsion or denial of admission.

Let me digress on this for a while. My friend Rhona Canoy, who runs the International School in Kauswagan, told me they also conduct drug tests. It is random and is not mandatory, she tells me. Failing their drug test, she said, will not be a reason for expulsion since they have rehabilitation in mind.

Now back to the point I was making. So the government, in effect, will not only push the troubled youth out of school but will also put them in the crosshairs of the overzealous police and their community assets. It will create the impetus of a whole new wave of other “delos Santoses” in its wake.

Like in delos Santos’ case, we have seen how the police did their “intelligence gathering.” They killed him first and then looked for pieces of “damning evidence” to justify their kill. They even scoured through Facebook for that “damning evidence.”

So even if Briones assures parents that the list of the drug test results would be kept confidential, what’s to keep the police from getting their hands on this list when push comes to shove? You ask how? The Deped order is based on Republic Act 9165, otherwise known as the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs of 2002. Who enforces this law? You’re correct — the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the police. You can be sure that they will have access to this list. Even barangays have their own list, for crying out loud. I will discuss this administration’s penchant for “lists” next week.

I fear that if this administration will stubbornly continue on this path, we will be counting more dead bodies of our youth in the days to come.

Yes, we all want the drug scourge to end. That is a good and noble intention — to protect what Dr. Jose Rizal called the “hope of our nation.”

However, this war on attrition against drugs will kill the youth much faster than the drugs themselves will destroy their future if we continue to tread this road. And yes, Secretary Briones, their blood would be on your hands, too.

Let’s kill the cats

WHILE my friend and I were shooting the breeze last Friday, I noticed our ceiling was already quite decrepit. One of the ceiling boards looked like it sagged in the middle part and was ready to fall anytime.

My friend, who repaired our stairway before, explained that the ceiling joists where the ceiling board was nailed to are already rotten. Whenever the cats walk across our ceiling, the nails could not hold the weight, and that’s why one of the ceiling boards is sagging in the middle, he added.

Before I continue, I should let you know that Crow’s Nest is really old. It was built during the “liberation” of the Philippines from the clutches of the Empire of Japan. It’s almost entirely made out of wood. Even the foundations are made of Narra unlike the houses of today which are made of concrete.

My friend offered two options to remedy my ceiling problem.

One, I could replace the whole ceiling construction with new wood for the rotten ceiling joists and replace the ceiling boards which are only 1/4” thick, with the sturdier 2” marine plywood.

Now, my friend said this will surely cost a lot. The materials and manpower, he added, could cost me at least P20 thousand. My friend also said there’s the time frame of the repairs to consider — his modest estimation was that it could take three weeks to replace the whole thing.

The problem is that I can’t spare that much money, I told my friend, plus I can’t expose my children to hazards of falling debris for three weeks.

He said there is another way. It is way cheaper and a helluva lot faster.

“You could just kill off all the cats,” my friend said with a sarcastic grin.

There was an awkward silence because we both realized we were solving my ceiling problem the way Digong Dada would with the drug problem and insurgency in the country.

If you still don’t get it, the ceiling problem is our country’s corrupted institutions, and the cats, well, it’s us, the Filipinos he swore to protect and love.

Are you crazy?

“Sinong dakila? Sino ang tunay na baliw? Yaong bang sinilang, na ang pag-iisip di lubos? O husto ang isip, ngunit sa pag-ibig ay kapos.” – Basil Valdez, Sino ang Tunay na Baliw

WE are living in the 21st century, for crying out loud! We are not in the medieval times anymore. We do not lock up someone or even burn people at the stake just because certain people hear voices.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I launch into rant mode, I should tell you the back-story of what I’m ranting about first. Lest, you too would lock me up or worse, burn me at the stake.

My rant is about how officials of El Salvador City are washing their hands off of their culpability in the death of Rene Fuentes.

Had it not been for the fire that destroyed El Salvador old city hall building last week, we wouldn’t have known that the entire city hall was complicit to the arbitrary detention of Fuentes who choked to his death inside a locked storage room at the city hall compound.

I started off with that because those are the only things that will not change in the story of what happened. In the following days after the fire, key persons, including Fuentes’s own sister, have changed their versions of the story.

Police authorities said Fuentes was detained for “safe keeping.” My question on this reasoning is, why would the police detain a mentally ill man? Is mental illness a crime?

In an effort to “correct” our breaking story, the police chief even had the gall to tell our correspondent that Fuentes wasn’t really charred to death. He supposedly choked to death. Well, that doesn’t change the fact that Fuentes is dead, does it? Pfft.

But two elements of the story will never change: one, Fuentes was arbitrarily detained; two, he died in the fire inside a locked room.

The city’s chief of police was quick to pass the buck to El Salvador’s City Social Welfare and Development Office after this paper published the story of the instances surrounding the death of Fuentes. From “detained for safe keeping” to “Dili ‘to among detainee. Ila ‘to sa CSWD kay ilang gi-safekeeping kay bayolinte lagi.”

The El Salvador CSWD, for its part, passed the responsibility on to Fuentes’s sister Gina Cabigquis. Anuncianon Prospero of the city’s CSWD said Cabigquis held the key to the storage room where Fuentes was detained.

First, they have established that Fuentes had violent episodes in the past, ergo, the reason to detain. But there are laws and protocols that people in government should, nay, must follow when it comes to treating people with mental illness. It is right beside the protocols of how you treat persons with disability. That is because mentally ill people are PWDs.

Principle 1, #5 in the principles for the protection of persons with mental illness and the improvement of mental health care adopted by the general assembly of the United Nations (Resolution 46/119 of 17 December 1991) states: “Every person with a mental illness shall have the right to exercise all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in other relevant instruments, such as the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons and the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment.”

Before these officials blurt out another idiotic alibi, I’d like to point out that the Philippines is a signatory state-member of the principle and the subsequent covenants mentioned in the quote above.

If you don’t believe in UN’s declaration and principles on how to treat people with mental illness, maybe you’ll adhere to the protocols laid out by the national government or even by the provincial government for that matter.

The capitol’s social welfare and development said as much when it insisted that “local governments are supposed to be in the front line in handling people with mental disorders.”

As for the provincial legislature, I’m a bit disappointed with Vice Gov. Jose Mari Pelaez’s pronouncements on the matter. He said he “hoped the city council of El Salvador will initiate an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Fuentes.”

Why not launch an investigation themselves since El Salvador is a component city of Misamis Oriental. When local government people cannot be trusted with their “changing” storyline, methinks the capitol should step in. Every official of El Salvador who holds office in their city hall compound should be held liable for the death of Fuentes. From the city mayor down to city police — they are equally responsible. They cannot just wash their hands off of this by saying “they didn’t know.”

Now, I would like to go back to the original quote. Who is crazier? Authorities entrusted with the people’s welfare, including and most especially persons with disability, or the mentally ill whose only “fault” was to be born at the shallow end of the gene pool?

Macabre joke

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good (people) do nothing.”  – Edmund Burke, Irish statesman [1729-1797].

THE quote above aside, I would like to start this week’s My Wit’s End with a macabre joke — the Department of Education. A joke because, as fellow columnist Rhona Canoy wrote last Saturday, it has been behaving far from what education should be — open to new ideas and dialogue.

I say “macabre” because its most recent actions, or the lack of it, could lead to macabre consequences on the Lumad schools in Mindanao — not that these haven’t been happening already.

Before Digong Dada’s appalling announcement to bomb Lumad schools, “DeafEd” (if I may borrow, manang Rhona’s term of endearment for it) said it could not “find” any record of permits or accreditation of any of the Lumad schools in question, in an interview on national radio. Bolstering the President’s claim that these schools have been teaching subversive ideologies to tribal communities and therefore should be bombed to smithereens. Palace people maintained that they asked Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis-Briones about the schools’ status before Digong Dada’s second State of the Nation’s Address.

Before that also, it took Briones weeks to finally speak on the subject. She hasn’t even replied to the inquiries of journo-friend Inday Espina-Varona. The DeafEd was so silent on the subject that I ranted about it on Facebook.

I posted “DepEd Sec. Briones is awfully quiet on the president’s threat to bomb Lumad schools. Wazzup?”

This came as a shock to me because I have known Briones before she took the department’s helm. I was still with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism when she was at the forefront of advocating against the lower house’s pork barrel allocation, the national budget of the then President Benigno Simeon Aquino and his administration’s infamous Disbursement Acceleration Program.

The silence was appalling because I knew her to be a bright person of conscience. I knew that through the many fora, rallies, and speaking engagements of Briones on her advocacy for good and sound governance.

Last Sunday, I had a very interesting and illuminating interview with DepEd union’s national president Domingo Alidon. Alidon told me the department has been decentralized specifically on the matter of issuing permits and accreditation to private schools, or in this case alternative learning institutions. He agreed that it is possible that DepEd national had no records of any of the Lumad schools in question but that these could all be cleared from the level of the regional director from the region that hosts the school in question.

Now, why did Briones categorically say they don’t have records of the schools being accredited when she could have easily told Palace people to check with the regional directors of her department. Better yet, she could have asked her regional directors for the information before blabbing to the Palace.

I said illuminating conversation because Alidon gave me an insider’s view to Briones’s seeming aversion to dialogue. He told me that their union has been seeking an audience with her for weeks now but she has never responded to any of the union’s requests.

Briones has been black-walling the union, an act that constitutes as a serious infraction to the department’s collective negotiation agreement with the union.

Alidon said they wanted to know why the department employs five undersecretaries when Republic Act 9155 (Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001) and Civil Code clearly stipulate that the department could only hire four undersecretaries, at the most.

He added that the law also stipulates of all undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, at least one should have a Ceso (Career Executive Service Officer) eligibility. One of the assistant secretaries has already complied with this stipulation. However, not one of the five undersecretaries has Ceso eligibility.

Having one extra undersecretary may sound trivial to you, my dear readers, but this clearly isn’t so. Having one extra undersecretary means additional budgetary allocation. As Alidon puts it, if the department continues to employ this extra undersecretary, the taxpayers will be paying for the salaries of that undersecretary, his staff, and operational expenses which are not included in the department’s budget allocation under the General Appropriations Act. Ergo, illegal.

Lastly, Alidon told me they would meet within the week and may resort to filing formal complaints against Briones before the Office of the President and the Office of the Ombudsman.

Let’s see if Briones will be open to “dialogue” by then. Still, until then, the DeafEd will remain a macabre joke of the present administration.