“What, I put morals over results?” I shook my head. “You are intentionally misunderstanding me.” I wondered what the stakes of this conversation were. “The results of Gumboc’s presidency are that the poor live in fear for their lives and with reason. Gumboc’s army of assassins operates in a price per head economy and there is no due process. These people are murdered for money as part of a government-sanctioned program. No amount of public transportation is going to offset that.”

Laird was unperturbed by my outburst. He calmly nodded, as if I had delivered a lecture in a classroom, as if my points were a few of many that should be considered. “Who did you support in the last election?” he asked.

“Me? Gig Lijé.”

“So the Loyalist Party.” Laird was not surprised. Lijé had been the status quo candidate of the educated upper class. “Would Lijé have solved the corruption in government? Would it not have been business as usual, with his cronies getting kickbacks and the poor living in much the same state as before?”

“Laird, if you spend enough time in this country, you come to believe that the problems are largely unsolvable.” I was as unhappy with my response as he was, although I was speaking the truth. “Gig Lijé was the only viable candidate, the least corrupt of the choices,” I said.

“And you were willing to vote for him?”

“We have to assume that all men are bad,” I said, quoting something badly.

Laird processed this and offered a cold smile. “Of course. Machiavelli,” he said. “The ends justify the means in that universe.”

I was getting visibly annoyed. “Are you turning my words against me to make an argument for Gumboc?”

“No,” he said. “I am simply pointing out that your candidate and Gumboc both suffer by being flawed.” He inhaled, flaring his nostrils, summoning some personal conviction, and turned to me, pronouncing: “The future of the Philippines is being conducted on the world stage, and the extrajudicial killings are wrong and should be stopped.”

“You are committed to that?” I asked. Something about Laird unnerved me.

“I understand there has been a positive result with drug usage and crime dropping,” he said, his face gelling to an impenetrable mask. “But the EJKs need to be stopped. Yes. I am committed to that.”