Cayetano's Imagination

A quote generally attributed to Albert Einstein says: “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." It is a tribute to what one can accomplish without the limiting boxwork of logic.

Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano is, true to form, unboxing reality with his imagination. His recent framing of the drug war waged during the Rodrigo Duterte administration as “pro-life” and a “human rights campaign” reveals the work of an imagination that creates the limitless world of art and invention, oblivious to the tidy edges of reason that separate right from wrong.

Murder breaks both human and divine laws. It is wrong and cannot be right just because there is an imaginative way to rationalize it.

Mr. Cayetano raises a moral defense to the murder of thousands in the name of the country’s youth addicted to drugs, with the claim that “drugs kill.” Mr. Duterte himself, who is now detained at the International Criminal Court (ICC) facilities in the Netherlands to answer charges of crimes against humanity, has said that “everything I did, I did for the country.” These words might as well come from Adolf Hitler.

Killing can only be justified if it results in preventing another killing. It cannot be justified by inventing a person or thing as the killer.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church advises: “Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life. Preserving the common good requires rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. To this end, those holding legitimate authority have the right to repel by armed force aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their charge” (Part 3, Article 5, Section 2265).

“Legitimate defense” is the parallel of “just war doctrine” in the broader context of “safeguarding peace” between and among nations, which the United States government has invoked for its military conflict with Iran. But Pope Leo, in his first encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas," has now disavowed this doctrine. "The 'just war' theory which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated," he says. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich adds that “the just war theory was always meant to be a restraint, not a permission slip.”

The challenge for the bible-quoting Cayetano is to show the logic, no matter how remote, of how the murders of mostly poor suspects have saved a generation of drug addicts. The threat came more from parenting failures and dysfunctions in government enforcement of law and order than from anything related to aggression. In other words, there is but an abstract link between drug addiction and the need for murder as the means to address it. To contend that killing thousands was meant to protect human rights, especially the right to life, is like the government taxing the people so that the politicians will have something with which to fund ghost projects. The drug war victim is to tax as the killings being pro-life is to the ghost project. One exists, the other does not.

Interviewed in 2017 by Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera, Cayetano, who was then Foreign Affairs Secretary, said all those who were killed by the police during the drug war (Philippine National Police records showed there were 3,800 deaths at the time) were drug dealers. Asked how he knew they were drug dealers when the killings were not investigated, he reshuffled the deck of cards, resembling a magician’s art of misdirection. He said the victims pointed guns at the police, leaving the latter with no other option but to shoot.

When Hasan asked if the police could be trusted, Cayetano said yes. When reminded that Duterte did not trust the police, Cayetano said the Filipinos do not trust the rogue police. Excerpts:

HASAN: The President doesn’t trust them. Your President doesn’t trust your police, you know that, right?

CAYETANO: Filipinos… they don’t trust the rogue police.

HASAN: No, that’s not what he said. President Duterte said, “You policemen are the most corrupt, you are corrupt to the core, it’s in your system.” That doesn’t sound like rogue. “It’s in your system.” … 40% of the police in the Philippines are corrupt, he says. Is that true or false?

CAYETANO: That’s his estimation. Their chief of police estimation is 2%.

HASAN: So who’s right, the President or the chief of police? I can’t believe you’re throwing [him] under the bus.

CAYETANO: I’m not throwing him under the bus. What I’m saying… When you make an estimation…

HASAN: Is it a correct estimation?

CAYETANO: That is his estimation. That’s not the point. The point is he’s trying to clean up the police, and he admits that there is a problem.

HASAN: So he’s trying to clean up… Fine, so there’s a problem, he’s trying to clean up, and maybe 40% or maybe less than 40%, but the same police have killed 3 and a half thousand people and you’re now saying we should trust the police that your President doesn’t trust?

CAYETANO: No, we’re not saying we should trust them, we said we should follow the law which is presumption of regularity, but investigate.

HASAN: How many investigations have there been into the 3 and a half thousand killings?

CAYETANO: 3 and a half thousand. Every single one of them are being investigated.

He even let go of the man who must be investigated first before anyone else. Senator Bato De La Rosa, the chief administrator of the drug war, has an arrest warrant from the ICC for crimes against humanity. Cayetano let Bato disappear despite putting him under “Senate custody.”    

Those who have been following hubris in government will likely see Cayetano at the front and center of the pack.