Our Unsafe Country | Applicant’s opinion

In June 1985, 54 percent of Filipinos surveyed nationwide said that people in their neighborhood were usually afraid that their homes might be broken into, and 48 percent said that their streets were not safe to walk at night. This survey was conducted by the Bishops’ Conference of Businessmen for Human Development, a forerunner of the Social Weather Stations (SWS), which then repeated it twice a year from 1986 to 1991, and quarterly from 1992 onwards.

Fear rates in the neighborhood. Recently, in the four national SWS surveys from 2023, the average fear of burglary was 53 percent, and the average street unsafe to walk at night was 43 percent, or very little improvement after 35 years.

In 2005, the SWS added a question about the presence of drug addicts in the neighborhood, and an average of 42 percent said there were many. This average increased to 56% in 2016 when Rodrigo Duterte became president. It fell to 33% in the three polls in 2021, the last full year of his term.

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However, in the four SWS surveys since 2023, now under President Marcos, the average visibility of drug addicts was 39 percent, or slightly below its initial level of 42 in 2005.

Therefore, the feelings of insecurity of the people in the neighborhood have hardly changed after four decades. Timelines of SWS survey data on public safety, as well as many other topics, can be seen in “The 2024 SWS Survey Review,” by SWS Vice President/COO Gerardo “Jay” A. Sandoval, as presented at Asian Institute of Management, (www.sws.org.ph, 2/08/2024).

Crime victimization rates. Feeling insecure is one thing, being victimized is another. In 1989, the SWS National Surveys began asking its respondents whether anyone in their household had experienced, in the past six months, (a) house burglary, (b) street robbery by pickpocketing or pickpocketing, or (c) suffered a violent crime. In the two surveys that year, on average, theft was recorded at 7 percent, theft at 16 percent, and violence at 4 percent. In 1993, SWS added motor vehicle (MV) theft and found that 6 percent, on average, experienced this.

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Three decades later, in the four 2023 surveys, the average victimization rates were about 2% for burglary, 4% for theft, 0.4% for violence, and also 0.4% for vehicle theft. Newly added in 2023 was cybercrime (online scam, hacking or bullying); this was experienced by 3 percent on average.

(These percentages are applicable to a base number of families, since the question is about family experience; one percentage point is now equivalent to 270,000 cases. Additionally, these are six-month case rates and should be doubled compared to annual rates of crime reported to the In addition, other surveys show that many victims do not report their cases, feeling that it is unnecessary.)

Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody approach to the fight against illegal drugs was abusive and unacceptable. This was demonstrated long ago – see “Social Weather Survey Q4 2019: 76% of Filipinos see many human rights abuses in administration’s war on illegal drugs, 24% see few” (www.sws .org.ph, 1/15). /20).

Very few Filipinos believed in the nanlaban or “fight back” excuse for Duterte’s bloody war on illegal drugs. Eight successive national polls from 2016-2019 had the same findings, as reported in the “2019 Third Quarter Social Weather Survey: 29% of Pinoys do not believe police claims of ‘nanlaban’, 26% do, and 45% are undecided” ( www.sws.org.ph, 12/22/23).

The Filipino people see the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an alternative means of obtaining justice. They know that the ICC investigates drug-related crimes, and a growing majority – 53% in December 2023 – agree that it should do so.

In addition, most believe the government should cooperate with the ICC investigation see “Social Weather Report: Sufficient/extensive knowledge of Filipinos about the ICC investigation into drug crimes under Duterte rises to 43% in December 2023, by to 33% in March 2023,” (www.sws.org.ph, 2/20/24).

Many thought Duterte was joking when he referred to the Philippines as a “province of China” during his 2016 presidential campaign. Fortunately, almost no one followed his example in trusting that country.

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