Why we need more Dutertes than De Limas

Don't get me wrong--Justice secretary Leila de Lima's reaction is a justified sigh when she heard that most of the public agreed with what Davao city Mayor Rodrigo Duterte suggested when a Senator asked him if David Bangayan aka David Tan visits his town and is caught doing an illicit thing.

Duterte was very direct in his response--he will gladly kill the guy, should he resists.

Bangayan is now widely being accused of being the biggest rice smuggler in the country, an offense that is both criminal as well as socially detestable.

De Lima immediately balked, when if she thinks very hard, she is the one to blame for what Bangayan is undergoing now. When Bangayan appeared in public, he became the public face for smuggling, unwittingly or wittingly. He actually created these troubles for himself.

Like Janet Lim-Napoles whose name is now forever linked with large scale thievery of public monies, Bangayan will now, and forever will be, the name invoked when someone discusses about smuggling, especially rice smuggling.

I am in agreement right now to expose and unmask these people behind smuggling activities here in our country because these smugglers are like parasites--they exploit the weaknesses of the system just to generate personal wealth. They don't play the game--they dictate its terms to a point that government is now helpless and unable to fight them in a square game.

Well, most people agree with Duterte because these people use the very same laws to get what they want. And through the years, they have amass such wealth and in fact, stole billions of dollars from the economy itself to the detriment of the majority.

For me, the worst criminals are those who inflict economic harm against his fellow human being.

According to the Global Financial Integrity report, entitled, " Illicit Financial Flows to and from the Philippines: A Study in Dynamic Simulation, 1960-2011", written by Dev Kar and Brian LeBlanc,
US$ 133 billion got lost in transiting from the formal Philippine economy while the US$ 277 billion that entered into the economy also got lost into the underground economy. Meaning, illicit financial flows which amounted to US$ 410 billion did not enter into the formal economy.

What the report wants us to understand is this---this huge sum of monies disappeared and benefitted the underground economy while it undermined the collection of taxes and paved the way for the slow burn into poverty and underdevelopment for the rest of the country.

This report actually quantified the amount of damage these smugglers and other economic saboteurs committed against the Filipino People.

Imagine, that sum of money US$ 411 billion would have further developed our economy, benefitted millions of Filipino families and probably led to the upliftment of millions of lives.

That sum of money could have averted the exodus of millions of Filipinos away from this country, and probably even prevented others from militating against their fellow Filipinos!

Now, do you understand why we need to kill these saboteurs and display their mangled bodies as proof of our determination to change this country for the better?