$5.5 Million of Luxury Vehicles Destroyed in ‘Anti-Corruption Drive’
Philippines president goes to extreme measures as part of campaign against corruption.
The Philippines government shared the footage of 76 luxury vehicles being destroyed, including cars by Lamborghini, Porsche, and Ferrari as well as Harley Davidson, Triumph and Chopper motorcycles. According to CNN through official statements, they are just some of the 800 vehicles imported illegally into the country and seized during the administration’s campaign against smuggling and corruption.
Before we get to the way more serious stuff, lets take a moment to take in the variety of cars President Rodrigo Duterte destroyed in the name of this sideshow to his despotism. The Lamborghini Gallardo is obvious, but also in there are some 996 and 997 Porsche 911s in the destruction line. There’s also some typical Mercedes and BMWs and then real filler to make the exhibition look more impressive, including some old Mustangs and what looks like a Chevrolet SSR. Looking at the state-run media images, it looks like they top-loaded the expensive cars at the front and kept their camera angles tight. The live-streamed video by Philippine government’s presidential communications bureau is over an hour long, but if you want to skip to the car crushing it starts around the 20-minute mark.
The claim for not selling the cars at auction is that it would be too easy for drug dealers to repurchase the luxury vehicles under false identities, but the reality is more like Duterte wanting to make a spectacle and try to justify the pretense for his human rights abuses. In the tradition of starting a dictatorship, he’s using the fight against corruption to justify things even more chilling than destroying some cool cars and motorbikes.
Although it’s horrifying to see this kind of destruction, even if it was only a few cars of any real value, but the situation runs deeper. In true dictator fashion, Duterte is consolidating his power by using his police force and vigilante death squads to murder away people he sees as a problem including petty criminals, drug users, and the homeless while also purging journalists and dismissing a mass of government officials.
Duterte’s administration is currently at 4,000 extrajudicial killings under the guise of a crackdown on the drug trade. And that’s a conservative estimate. Independent observers have it pegged nearer 12,000 and, given that during Duterte’s 22-year run as the mayor of the city of Davao, the body count was well over 1000 then that doesn’t sound far fetched. Duterte even claims to have shot and killed three kidnapping suspects personally. So, next time he has cars lined up like this, expect to see him driving the digger himself.
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