EYES WIDE OPEN

When I think about Rody Duterte’s presidency, I am haunted by the memories, the images, the sounds and feelings of those dizzying days, and those cold, dark evenings when a surreal and labyrinthine netherworld existed while the rest of this nation of 120 million was asleep.

- IRIS GONZALES

It’s a time when one’s senses were on overdrive, not in a pleasurable way, but in an overwhelming, perhaps even traumatic way.

To me, it was haunting and traumatic on so many levels – personal and professional. Here was a man who disregarded people’s democratic rights, mocked journalists and journalism, undermined institutions, insulted businesses and had no qualms about killing people.

On a personal level, I witnessed – and experienced for myself – the stress and trauma of covering Duterte’s bloody drug war because my partner and some colleague-friends relentlessly covered the carnage, at the risk of their safety and sanity. I can go on and on.

But this isn’t really about me or my colleagues. It is about the victims of the war on drugs.

Yesterday’s arrest of the so-called The Punisher – unprecedented and historic – was breathtaking and bittersweet all at once. It was as if we were watching a Netflix edge-of-your-seat drama.

This step toward justice is for all those who lost their loved ones because they were either suspected drug users or pushers, actual addicts or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Let me tell you about a victim I saw one night in December 2017 when I tagged along with the night beat. As I wrote about it before:

JJ’s head hung loosely out of the blue body bag. His face was smeared with dirt and covered with blood – thick, red and fresh.