More drug supermarts found in Quezon City and Caloocan slum warrens

Here we are bragging about our war against terrorism, when we can’t even fight a war against the expanding tentacles of our homegrown drug menace. The February 10 sweep by the Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Force (AIDSOTF) led by Police Director Marcelo Ele at Sitio Mapayapa – so ironically named – in Barangay Sto. Tomas, Pasig City, may have forced open a can of worms, but it’s only one of the worm-infested centers of drug-trafficking.

More super-tiangges exist in Quezon City and Caloocan, it was intimated to this writer yesterday – and are on the verge of being scooped up. The modus operandi of the drug kings is to concentrate their marketing activities deep inside slum areas so that raiding lawmen have to push their way through narrow alleys and mazes to get to the heart of each operation – which has "spy" cameras and other early-warning systems in place. The scandal is that the neighborhood cops are possibly on the take, or actual protectors of the shabu tiangges – which have as their godfathers, as well, some powerful local officials.

How could Pasig’s ranking officials not have known about the Pasig complex so recently raided? It was going full blast literally behind City Hall – and had been operating there for more than two years according to the informant who tipped off the AIDSOTF. The raid bagged 319 persons (216 males, 44 females and 59 minors). Some of the "customers" caught were not poor – two of them were sons of very rich families. Urine samples and other drug tests have been conducted on most of the suspected "users," but even the cops in the area are being tested, too. The results may be interesting.

The seven cops in Police Community Precinct 20 headed by Police Inspector Salvador dela Cruz, as well as the six personnel of the Pasig Drug Enforcement Unit (DEU) there, and the other six DEU agents of the Eastern Police District itself have been relieved – and have had to undergo drug testing.

The discouraging factor is that the shabu peddled so insolently in the super-tiangge was locally "manufactured," not imported from mainland China or elsewhere – meaning that shabu is now conveniently being mass-produced here, the local product "good" enough to compete with the smuggled imports. Marijuana, too, was available in the drug emporium busted in Pasig.

President GMA once again is vowing "all-out" war on the illegal drug trade, particularly in Metro Manila, pledging that no politicians or law enforcers involved in this destructive racket will be spared. She must not be surprised if some of the politicians who ritually go to Malacañang are uncovered to be among the drug coddlers.

The druglords have the money, the clout, and the arrogance to buy their way into the corridors of power – or destroy those who threaten them. If there is, at last, going to be a "war" on them it must be total war.

Remember the notorious shabu-mass-producer in Pampanga? He was caught with his "factory" in full operation, but his pricey lawyers, combined with the ..er, "clumsy" case presented by the police and the prosecutors, got him off the hook.

Sus, it’s long been the buzz on the street, that shabu is even being manufactured (perhaps for "home" use) inside the penitentiary in Muntinlupa. With apologies to the late Elvis Presley, we may have our own version here of "Jailhouse Rock."

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The Senators got their way. Malacañang caved in the other day and will now "allow" Cabinet members and other officials to attend Senate hearings on the budget.

The Senators simply threatened to grant only a P1 per year budget to the departments of the Cabinet officials who invoked Executive Order 464 to decline to go on their hands and knees to the Senate – so the Palace is prodding the officials concerned to ..well, go there on hands and knees in the same way that King Henry once walked barefoot in the snow to Canossa to beg the Pope’s forgiveness. (Barefoot Henry, our solons must recall, however, took his revenge on the Pope later – but that’s ancient history).

I’m afraid that budgetary blackmail is no way to run a republic. But, just as boys will be boys, Senators will be Senators.

The "power of the purse", however, must not be used promiscuously. By all means, Cabinet members will have to testify before Congress on how the funds requested will be utilized, and answer for how they disbursed the allocations they received in the previous year’s budget – but deplorably many of our Senators have been using the budget Club to hammer "confessions" out of Executive Branch officials on matters which have nothing to do with budgetary concerns.

I wish we could put our political squabbling behind us, and get to the serious business of moving our country forward. The problem with many of our distinguished solons is their priority seems to be to move GMA out of Malacañang. And, pray, who do they intend to enthrone in her stead?

Some Senators claim that GMA and her Palace crew are out to "destroy" the Senate. The truth is that the same solons are doing a pretty good job of doing that for themselves.

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The other week, when we had a private four-on-one dinner with GMA, one of the topics discussed was how and when the long-delayed NAIA-3 Terminal could be opened for business. I inquired what the next step would be after the phoney-baloney "Manila Hotel-Fraport" deal very publicly collapsed.

La Presidenta replied that even the above would have had no effect on the plans for the Terminal since the government has already "expropriated" the Terminal. Of course, the government would pay those "owed", it was added, as soon as it was clear who should be paid and how much.

In any event, negotiations are ongoing as to WHO should finance and "operate" the still-stalled NAIA Terminal 3 – and the results will be known shortly.

I subsequently met Department of Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza and he confided that the Terminal’s improvement and finishing touches are about 92 percent completed and that they hope to be ready for the operation of initially five airlines at least in that facility.

A target date? He hinted it might, if plans don’t miscarry (which they usually do in this hemisphere), be scheduled on the President’s next birthday. (April 6?)

What GMA actually told me is that the government was only awaiting certification of the new Terminal by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), whatever that means.

On cue, inspectors and officials of the US Transport Security Agency are arriving here today (Monday) to inspect NAIA-1, 2, and possibly 3. The super-strict TSA inspectors are the "guardians" who make life miserable in every international and domestic airport in the USA for anybody who travels today to and within the United States. They’re the tough security people in brown who frisk you, x-ray your bags, get you to take off shoes, belt, and paw through your hand luggage, making you wish you never ventured to the former Land of the Free after 9/11.

Believe me, I went through them in New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles (LAX) on two consecutive trips, and unless it’s a matter of life-and-death, this journeyman-journalist hopes to avoid going to America as much as possible. Especially after President George W. Bush "revealed" the other day that after 9/11, Osama’s baddies had been thwarted in a year 2002 plan to do a reprise of the Twin Towers attack in New York by attacking one of the tallest buildings on the West Coast, the next time using "Asian" Muslim fanatics, not Arabs.

Gee whiz, thank the Lord I’m not a cartoonist. The Muslim world, including our homegrown copy-cat demonstrators in Manila’s Golden Mosque area and in Mindanao, are up in arms against those cartoons published in an obscure newspaper in Denmark in September last year. We used to laugh at cartoons. After the sons of the Prophet started torching Danish flags, Danish Embassies, and boycotting Danish butter, the Danes are not laughing any more. Neither are their fellow Nordics, the Swedes and the Norwegians – nor, for that matter, much of the Western world.

The repercussions of that "insult’ to the Prophet Muhammad appear to be escalating – fueled by non-stop television coverage and TV debate – rather than abating.

But, once again, I digress. The Transport Security Agency inspectors are here not to wish us a "Happy Valentine," but to check out our security measures – otherwise, probably, they won’t be accepting passengers coming out of our airports bound for the USA. Will they be the ones ruling on the still "unfinished" NAIA Terminal 3 too?

Abangan. I guess we’ll have to await their verdict.