MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Panfilo Lacson urged the Duterte administration yesterday to review its strategy to combat the illegal drug trade in the country because it appears to have failed to make a dent even after two years of making it top priority.
Lacson took note of the report of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) that there are now 96 narco politicians in its drug list, up from the 83 it recorded in December last year.
“If that is the case then there must be something wrong with their strategy,” Lacson said over dwIZ.
For two years since the start of the Duterte administration, Lacson noted how the war on drugs dominated the news, due in large part to the promise of President Duterte to eliminate the drug menace in the country in the shortest time possible.
In the last two years, Lacson said there were regular reports of drug personalities being killed or arrested, but as far as he was concerned, he found the government’s campaign to be wanting.
“It appears that they are only going after the drug peddlers. The strategy is lacking on the big drug lords,” Lacson said.
“So if there are now even more local officials involved, then they should review what they are doing to see what is wrong with it,” he added.
Lacson said the “PDEA or the government should be embarassed by this because their campaign is not effective” based on their own figures and narco list.
PDEA director general Aaron Aquino said the list, majority of which consisted of city mayors, has been validated.
However, unlike before when the names were released and announced by Duterte himself, Aquino said this time around he is taking a different strategy.
Aquino said the PDEA will work silently against the mayors and the congressmen.
Lacson has opposed the public disclosure of the narco lists, which he said were just like intelligence reports for the internal use of the law enforcement agencies to build their cases.
He said releasing the contents of the list would be counterproductive because the personalities involved would be given the opportunity to implement measures to evade prosecution.
Still thriving
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison also said on Thursday that Duterte and his family should explain why the illegal drug trade continues to thrive and even became worse despite his deadly campaign against it.
Sison, chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front (NDF), shared and posted on the NDF website his open forum with the Foreign Correspondents Associations of the Philippines (FOCAP) where he mentioned all the manifestations that would show why no less than Duterte is the number one protector of the illegal drug trade in the Philippines.
“Duterte promised to wipe out the illegal drug trade in the first three to six months of his presidential term. He failed to do so after more than two years. Ínstead, the drug problem has worsened and become more rampant in Davao and nationwide,” Sison said.
Sison said it turned out that Cebu-based Peter Lim, rated as one of the three biggest drug lords in the country, is Duterte’s close associate.
He said Duterte publicly promised to kill Lim if he returned to the Philippines, although he was in Cebu all the time.
“Duterte’s (former) secretary of justice (Vitaliano) Aguirre (II) summarily absolved Peter Lim and Peter Co from being involved in the drug trade. But Duterte never complained about their getting off the hook under the Office of the President,” Sison said.
Sison said Duterte’s son Paolo and son-in-law, lawyer Manases Carpio, have been implicated in the smuggling of P6.4 billion worth of shabu and an earlier shipment of P24.6 billion worth of shabu.
“But these close presidential relatives have been cleared together with their Chinese accomplices,” Sison said.
Sison said that only a poor warehouse guard has been indicted for the huge smuggling case.
“It is Duterte and his close relatives who must explain why the drug problem has become worse,” Sison said.
Sison said the manifestations he mentioned are supported by evidence presented to investigators and to the public.
“But the powerful tyrant Duterte has been able to squelch investigations by the Senate and by prosecutors,” Sison said.
Duterte’s son Paolo, who resigned as vice mayor of Davao City, has called Sison a pathological liar and that his accusations only confirm that the “founder of the oldest terror group in Southeast Asia is completely losing it.” – With Jose Rodel Clapano, Jaime Laude