By Britt Nelson

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.

Angry citizens and angry voters in the United States of America have only to look to the Philippines to see what can happen when certain elements of society get so out of control the government no longer stands a chance of winning the war on illegal drugs, crime, corruption, and related deaths.

Spreading throughout the Philippines is a frightening new method of fighting back: allowing the police to shoot drug dealers -large and small- on sight without any due process of law: no arrests, no jail, no bail, no trial and admitting looking away when local citizens acting as vigilantes also take the lives of drug dealers openly in the streets.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, 71, won the presidency on May 9 and took office June 30 for a six-year term. He promised the Philippine citizenry he would clean up the drug mess in six months.

Duterte had been a long-time mayor of Davao, in the southern Philippines, and there he first gained national recognition for his unprecedented methods of clearing the streets of criminals.

Since Duterte took national office only six weeks ago, more than 700 suspected drug dealers have been found shot to death by the police and ordinary citizens, according to news reports by CNN, London’s Daily Mail and the Chicago Tribune. No arrests of vigilante citizens have been made. No police are under investigation. Many of the deaths go unrecorded so an accurate death toll is impossible to know.

But the Philippine president is also offering drug dealers the opportunity to turn themselves into police and avoid being killed in the streets and hundreds have done so. Also, judicial officials and judges suspected of drug involvement are also being targeted through due process, but some of them — due to a published list — have also turned up dead. One method of rehabilitation consists of mandatory Zumba classes for recovering addicts and street dealers; these classes, which are held in public, also intend to avoid prison overcrowding, a problem Costa Rica knows too well.

With police brutality making headlines daily in the USA and presidential candidates now running for office, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump both denounce police brutality in different ways; it would be hard to imagine them supporting Duterte and his ‘wild west’ tactics, but in the Daily Mail’s story about these happenings the published comments from 190 readers are amazingly in support of the Philippine government ridding their society of the menace of drugs and merciless dealers preying on addicted citizens and visitors.

Neither Clinton nor Trump has publicly commented about the continuing situation in the Philippines and they probably won’t unless they are asked. But for President Duterte, he vows to continue this fight until his country is free of illegal drugs.

“If a criminal fights, and he fights to the death, you can kill him,” said Duterte in a nationally televised speech in June. “Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun … you have my support … shoot him and I’ll give you a medal.”

News agencies in the Philippines are covering these developments and informing the public about the wave of drug killings that now seem unending. Estimates of around 100,000 drug dealers exist in this country of 102 million people, according to news reports. Ugly street photographs of the dead with heads wrapped in duct tape are being published daily throughout the Philippines and far beyond. News of these troubling events and reactions to them are coming in from all points around the globe.

No matter what you may think about these methods of President Duterte this is what an angry society will resort to when faced with such extreme threats that only seem to get worse. For decades and decades, governments throughout the world have struggled with illegal drug issues and some have made drastic improvements, such as in the Netherlands; while other countries are besieged with drug-related government corruption allowing the illegal drug trade to flourish, such as the Philippines.

The worldwide death toll from illegal drugs averages 250,000 deaths annually and untold numbers of families are broken apart by the ravages of addiction, according to LiveScience.com.

Sooner or later this Philippine drug situation will make its way to candidates Clinton and Trump, perhaps from news reporters asking questions or during the upcoming presidential debates starting Sept. 26. More than likely, Clinton would scream against brutality, no due process of law, suspension of human rights, President Duterte is not fit for office, etc.; while Trump would likely give them all a standing ovation.

The deal now in the Philippines is that drug dealers, corrupt judges and other officials can give up, turn themselves in and live, or they can die where they are. Given the circumstances, what’s the problem with that choice?

About the Author

Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.

Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.