Upping the Ante

LATE last week, a politician ranted on a live Facebook session about trolls, allegedly maintained by city hall, who were attacking him. It was surreal.

On one hand, it was interesting to see the man, fairly or unfairly referred to as the “father of trolls,” squirm at the proposition that his group is getting a dose of its own medicine — trolling. For the politician to go online and preach about the ills of trolling is nothing short of a standup comedy. It was full of irony, not to mention, nonsequiturs.

I doubt if we can trust anyone seeking an elected government position who spends a lot of time lurking on social media platforms than engaging people in the real world setting. I’ve always found that sinister. Case in point: The Donald.

On the other hand, you have a mayor wannabe who has all the time in the world to be concerned with the social media buzz about him.

I’d like to point out that the man has been referred to as the social media director the President’s cyber-troops during the 2016 presidential campaign.

No less than a study of the University of Oxford found that the President’s group spent around P10 million to hire trolls who would spread propaganda for the then-presidential candidate and to target those who were against him.

The study, titled “Troops, trolls, and troublemakers: A global inventory of organized social media manipulation,” found that the poison of choice of trolls and their handlers involve “verbal abuse, hate speech, and discrimination against the values, beliefs or identity of a user or a group of users online.” Netizens were dumbfounded and couldn’t help but be silenced online.

I found the rant of the “social media director” last week to be ironic. Given what his group’s social media operators did in 2016, he should be the last entity to lash out at trolling.

I have always believed that negative or “black” campaigning will never prosper in a relatively small town of electorates. This scheme of deception online might have worked in the national scale as we have seen in the last national elections, but I doubt it would work in a more intimate and constricted space like Cagayan de Oro, a city where almost everyone is either related or at least knows everybody in government service.

It is what I love about this city. Although it has been included in the Top 10 list of the most competitive cities in Mindanao (ranked second), it has managed to maintain its “barriotic” character. While it has become a relative metropolis, one could still ask a neighbor for cooking oil, salt, and other mundane domestic needs.

In the end, what matters is how well our politicians have presented themselves in the real world because, by now, people have realized about the machinations in the social media platforms.

The city electorate cares much more about how these candidates are going to forge a better city than to listen to or read their mudslingings. That is why we have launched the “100% Politics” in our paper.

Through that democratic space, we do not write about what the candidates intend to do once in office but their group’s representatives do. Through this space, voters would see which group has the intellectual stamina and zest for public service.

One editor puts it this way: “If the groups cannot present and articulate their ideas, more so submit articles about what they stand for and about their platforms of government, then why are they running in the first place?”

I agree with that. So far, at least two groups have articulated their visions for the future of the city and the province based on my own scorecard. The others have contained their articles to praising the exploits of their individual candidates.

The city’s or the province’s experiences have shown us that it doesn’t take one individual but a collective effort of a group to realize their vision of development. It is elementary to deduce that without a clear vision, mission, and goal, these groups could be bereft of public service in mind but individual political ambition. In both characteristics, by the way, the city or the province lose.

Ever hopeful as I am, I am looking forward to more substantial and intellectually stimulating articles in this paper’s “100% Politics.” Anyway, there’s still time to make a turnaround and show their respective constituents what they’re made of.

I’ll be crossing my fingers and toes.

Strangers in the mirror

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.” — Mark Twain

WITH what his operatives have been doing to the people they have sworn to serve and protect, a fictional character and plot of a television series should be the least of Philippine National Police Chief Oscar Abayalde’s concern.

It boggles the mind that Abayalde is so concerned with his perceived blowback with Ang Probinsyano to his organization’s integrity when his own personnel is doing a bang-up job tainting their organization themselves.

The fictional Cardo Dalisay, like most of the characters in Philippine cinema and television, acts as a mirror to the harsh realities of society. Television series, like most expressions of art, is included in the right to free expression — a right enshrined and guaranteed in our Constitution. Abayalde would do well not to shut down the show just because he doesn’t like what he sees in that mirror.

He should, instead, concentrate on working towards redeeming his organization’s reputation that, no less than, the President has labeled as “corrupt to the core.”

Why don’t we, in the spirit of public service, list PNP’s “greatest hits.” This list is not to demoralize our police but to point Abayalde to where he should focus on and not waste his time picking on a television show. Besides, from the looks of things, he has been watching way too much television.

For full disclosure, this list of crimes allegedly perpetrated by police officers has been culled from a simple Google search. However, it should be noted that these have been reported by reputable news organizations and some were reported by PNP top brass themselves.

Theft of electricity

Yesterday, GMA News reported that in Cagayan de Oro City, a police station has been using an illegal jumper cable to provide electricity to its camp.

Rape

The PNP’s Internal Affairs Service reported that they have since filed a total of 31 rape cases committed by 43 police officers from 2012 to 2018.

What’s more disturbing is that 2017 marked a stark increase in incidents of rape involving cops, at 15 rape cases. This year, PNP-IAS has been investigating cops involved in nine rape cases.

Kidnapping

In his report to Abayalde, Chief Supt. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar said eight cops assigned at the Muntinlupa City Police Station-Station Drug Enforcement Unit were involved in a kidnap-for-ransom case. They have since arrested four. The other four cops, however, are still at large.

Illegal drugs

Lawyer Alfegar Triambulo, inspector general of PNP-IAS reported in June this year to Abayalde that there have been 349 of its personnel who tested positive for illegal drug use. It is worth noting that the drug of choice of these police officers is shabu. The very substance the organization is supposedly sworn to eradicate.

Equally disconcerting in Triambulo’s report is the fact that of the 349 who tested positive for drugs use, 341 are uniformed personnel. Eight are non-uniformed personnel. The figure is 341 too many for an organization mandated to stamp out illegal drug use.

Extortion

The PNP’s Counter Intelligence Task Force arrested two cops caught extorting P250 in an entrapment operation by another cop who posed as an ordinary motorist on Feb. 12 last year.

As if the amount these cops extorted from a poseur-motorist is not embarrassing enough, the public knows this modus only too well. Where do you think the terms “kotong cops” and “scalawags” come from? These terms did not come out of thin air. It has been happening that is why this modus has been named.

Since the PNP has been ordered to focus on internal cleansing, the organization has received more than a thousand text messages reporting cases of scalawag cops.

Torture

Let’s not forget the 10 police officers who were suspended for running a secret prison where they illegally detain suspects and beat the living daylights out of them.

The detention facility, by the way, is not officially listed in the PNP’s detention facilities. It is a converted house in a residential area in Biñan, Laguna. It has been known to have used the infamous “Wheel of torture,” where different kinds of torture were written on a wheel and what the inmates spin for the choice of the kind of torture to be done to them.

Murders

This May, PNP reported that the organization killed 4,251 drug suspects in anti-drug operations between July 1, 2016, and April 30.

However, Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay refutes the figure since this conflicted with another report the PNP bared to the public before.

Palabay pointed out that last December, the PNP reported at least 20,000 extrajudicial killings in anti-drug operation from July 1, 2016, to September, last year.

Talking of extrajudicial killings, this week we will be commemorating sans justice the Ampatuan Massacre.

Nine years ago on the morning of Nov. 23, 58 people, including lawyers and 32 of whom were media practitioners, were killed on a hilltop in the village of Masalay in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao province. Nine years since the victims’ families have yet to exact justice from the most gruesome election-related violence in the world.

With all these cases hounding the PNP, it seems Abayalde has so much in his plate that the Cardo Dalisay, a fictional character at that, is much more threatening to the image and credibility of the police force of the country.

Here’s an unrequited advise to the good general: Lay off the boob tube and get your house in order.

Raising the level of discourse

METHINKS the biggest losers this election season will be politicos who hired trolls to either promote them or slander their opponents — like in the 2016 national elections — and ultimately, the voting public.

I admit I was among the netizens who were dumbstruck by the attack of the trolls in 2016. It was something new. People were actually silenced by the bullying of trolls.

However, more and more people, actual social media users, are getting back at the trolls. As I have observed in some city-based Facebook groups, people are directly calling out trolls.

I based this observation on the threads of local group “Bantay Kagay-an.” I have been a member of the group even when it was called “Bangon Kagay-an.” It sprang up as a direct response to the devastation of Typhoon Sendong.

I must say first that it is unfortunate that this group has become a cesspool of trolls and its owner has not been forthright with his group members. The group is supposed to be an independent group.

The owner is running for a seat in the city council. He filed for a mayoral position but withdrew and posted a statement of sorts on his reason for his withdrawal to the mayoral race. He said he was waiving his candidacy to a person who supposedly bedazzled him in a brief encounter at a hotel lobby.

In its declaration of group rules, Sec. C: Values and Principles #2, it states that members must “be fair and balanced (in contrast to lap-dogging or doing a PR for somebody).” A cursory scan of the group posts now will show that it has since broken this rule.

The group page is being held hostage by a troll named “Jose Ma. Guerrero.” Since the filing of certificates of candidacy, this troll has regularly and consistently posted slanderous statements against the incumbent administration while bolstering how immaculately clean its principal is.

The funny thing is, real users are openly commenting against the troll’s ad hominem and non sequitur posts. Before, it was unthinkable that you would berate a troll online considering they are masked in anonymity. I guess real social media users have had enough of the toxic discourse if you call it that.

Other Facebook groups are even worse. Case in point is the group called “Ang Baruganan.” If you scan the posts in the group page, you will realize that no real users are commenting or posting on the page. It has been completely taken over by the trolls of all candidates of the city and the province.

It seemed that raising the level of public discourse is becoming less likely on social media. We have to face the reality that it is a practice in futility to be debating with a person cloaked in anonymity. There is no accountability and responsibility with what they post on social media.

Fortunately, my editor-in-chief thought of something that will benefit the electorate. He decided to give all the local political parties a space in the opinion pages of this paper — one day for every group each week. He named it “100% Politics.” This new sub-section within this paper’s opinion pages aims to raise the level of issue-based and fact-based public discourse on matters of politics and governance while the competing political groups keep with good taste and propriety, things that have been lost and which many people no longer value in other public discussion social media groups recently.

All the political groups have agreed and picked a day for their group columns. “100% Politics” started yesterday with city administrator Teodoro Sabuga-a Jr. writing for the incumbent administration (as expected, of course). In the coming days, we, the electorate, would witness a battle of ideas sans ad hominems and non-sequiturs.

The political groups should be able to present their respective development plans and reform agenda. They will have to convince the voting public who deserves to be supported and why the other groups are less deserving.

In the end, the voting public will benefit from this healthy but highly competitive public discourse.

The mystery of the script

“Impunity thrives not so much through actively putting up obstacles to accountability. More than anything, it is nurtured by apathy and inaction of governments and people.” -Nonoy Espina, chairman, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines

IT is good that the city council’s committee on police and public safety would finally be looking into the spate of anti-drug operation killings here. Hats off, also, to Camp Alagar for admitting there is something amiss when deadly force seems to be the response of choice of its operatives. They are, after all, law enforcers.

This show of concern happened after, more or less, 10 people have been killed here in the city.

Camp Alagar spokesman Supt. Surki Sereñas said all of the officers involved in the anti-drug operation killings are undergoing investigation and could be slapped with administrative cases. He said their Internal Affairs Service would be recommending to the top brass of Camp Alagar after its investigation.

However, Sereñas said the IAS recommendation for the anti-drug operation killings in the city would be based on the reports from the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office.

This means that internal affairs investigators will be depending on what the post-operation reports say, which have been filed by the anti-drug operatives. Yes, I know. This almost sounds like a conflict of interest but we have to give our police force the presumption of regularity.

Presumption of regularity, by the way, is a legal precept that assumes government bodies have properly discharged their official mandates. In this case, we assume that the anti-drug operatives followed the protocols in the conduct of anti-drug operations to the letter.

So, let’s look at the post operations report of the operatives. This paper found disturbing and uncanny similarities in almost all of the anti-drug operation killings in the city.

“The similarities in the cases are striking. In nearly all the shooting deaths, the slain suspects had no cash except the marked money of P500, more or less, had a few sachets of suspected shabu, were armed with caliber .38 revolvers or, at times, caliber .45 pistols and/or grenades. According to the police, those killed allegedly fired shots but missed after sensing that they were dealing with undercover cops, and then got shot and killed,” this paper reported.

In the spirit of logic and public service, join me as we deconstruct this narrative. Let’s dissect it.

First, the slain drug suspects (emphasis on suspects) had no cash with them. Most of them only had the buy-bust money, usually amounting to P500. Keep in mind that these buy-bust operations usually happen at night or in the wee hours. This tells us that these poor unfortunate souls are crappy at what they do — selling drugs. If they were any good, they should have at least P1,000 cash in them at the time of the bust. Drug dealers, as we’ve seen in movies and read in books, are movers. They move illegal merchandise as fast as they can.

However, I understand the part were operatives find only a few sachets of suspected shabu. Common sense will tell you that it wouldn’t be sensible to be lugging around kilos of illegal merchandise as they sell on the streets. As we’ve seen kilos of illegal merchandise are the customs’ cup of tea.

Second, and to me, the most disturbing part is that these slain drug suspects, armed with either a .38 caliber revolvers, .45 caliber pistols and/or fragmentation grenades, have the lamest aims.

Let’s consider the narrative that the armed drug suspects supposedly fired shots at the poseur-buyer cops they were dealing with but missed and were killed as the police returned fire since their lives were endangered.

We have seen how small a sachet of shabu is based on the post-operation photo documentation. It is so small you have to be at least a foot away to be able to hand it. To be able to shoot the poseur-buyer, one has to whip out their concealed weapon, aim, and shoot the undercover cop.

During these flurry of actions, the drug suspect and the undercover cop are standing only a foot away from each other. Can’t the poseur-buyer grapple from the drug suspect’s gun as the latter is whipping it out? How can a drug suspect shoot the poseur-buyer, again a foot away from them, when a human arm when it is aiming is at least three feet in length? Don’t our cops train in hand-to-hand combat?

It is almost the same series of movement when it is a grenade. The drug suspect has to get the grenade out of the pocket, pull the pin, and lob the grenade.

An M67 fragmentation grenade, for example, has a killing radius of five meters and a casualty-producing radius of 15 meters. Its fragments could spread to as far as 230 meters. With this in mind, shouldn’t the cop wrestle the drug suspect before he could take the grenade from his pocket?

Deadly force should be the cops’ last resort. I remember a raid in Sto. Niño, years back. Now that operation needed deadly force since the narcotics agents were fired upon from a distance.

These dead sad sacs must be the worst drug dealers in the illegal drugs trade. It is either that or our police need to revise their seemingly “pro-forma” post-anti-drug operations reports.