President Rodrigo Duterte’s cruel tactics against drug traffic may have terrified some in the Philippines. But Filipinos feel safer nowadays than they felt back in 2014, walking alone at night in the streets.
That’s according to the recently released 2018 Global Law and Order report,which assigns the Philippines a score of 82, up from 76 in 2014—see Table 1
And that’s well above the average score for East Asia, which stands at 72.
Table 1
Law And Order Index Scores 2014 And 2017*
Source: http://news.gallup.com/reports/235310/gallup-global-law-order-report-2018.aspx
The report is based on data collected from 148,000 responses in 142 countries on how safe its citizens feel walking alone at night in the city or areas where they live.
Philippines’ rising Global Law and Order score confirms that Duterte’s campaign to drug traffic from it city streets is working. But it comes at a dire cost of 12,000+ lives -- mostly innocent lives, according Human Rights Watch.
Besides allowing people to walk safely in the night, law and order is important for helping emerging market economies like the Philippines run smoothly and sustain economic growth. The Philippines economy grew at an annual rate of 6.8% year-on-year in the March quarter of 2018, matching China's numbers.
That's well above the country's long-term growth rates.
GDP annual growth rate in the Philippines averaged 3.68% from 1982 until 2017, reaching an all-time high of 12.40% in the fourth quarter of 1988 and a record low of -10.10% in the first quarter of 1985, according to Tradingeconomics.com.
A high growth, in turn, has made Filipinos feel better off today than a couple of years ago. That's according to another Gallup survey, which finds that 28% of Filipinos consider themselves thriving in 2017 compared to 26% in 2016, pushing the Philippines up a notch in the ranking of the Asia-Pacific countries--Table 2.
The bottom line: Hard tactics aside, Filipinos are better off under Duterte than they were during the previous administration.
Read more from: Forbes
