But apartheid between Europeans and indigenous Filipinos grew such that by the 19th century the latter were still obliged to kiss the hand of any passing Spanish clergyman and were forbidden to break bread at the same table.[...]
That everyman image is a key reason Duterte became president last June. The Philippines is deeply corrupt and economically divided. In 2011, 40 families, most of whose wealth stems from the Spanish era, reaped 76.5 percent of its GDP growth. Since the turn of the century, the country has moved 32 places on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which surveys citizens on how problematic they consider day-to-day malfeasance to be. The Philippines moved from 69th to 101st of 176 countries. [...]
The police have recorded 6,000 deaths under investigation. The Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates has recorded at least 12,000. Over 100,000 people have been arrested, and prisons are packed like slave galleons. Duterte has pledged to kill 100,000 “drug personalities.” Duterte is like the movie character Dirty Harry, one Manila taxi driver told me, holding his fingers up like a gun. “You do something bad now you have two things: the cemetery and the hospital.” [...]
“The sheer number of killings during martial law will pale in comparison with the records of killings in the war on drugs,” Edwin A. Gariguez, of Caritas Philippines, told me. “And the authoritarian rule of Duterte is beginning to become even worse than the martial law of Marcos, which he tried to disguise through some semblance [of] legality. Duterte is more brazen, unreasonably vindictive, with little or no regard for accountability.”
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