Narco-Politics? PDEA-6 monitoring three town mayors

ILOILO CITY, Philippines — At least three towns in Western Visayas are being closely monitored due to the alleged links of their mayors to the illegal drugs’ trade, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-6 said yesterday.

“We considered these towns to be on hot spot, as far as illegal drug operations is concerned,” said PDEA-6 regional director Yogi Filemon Ruiz.

One of the towns is in Iloilo province, another in Negros Occidental and the third one is in Capiz, said Ruiz, pointing out possibilities that the mayors of these towns have connections to the drug traders in their respective areas. By linkages, “the known illegal drugs personalities are related to the mayor by affinity or consanguinity,” he said.

Besides the three towns, Ruiz said PDEA-6 has been monitoring other areas in the region also, although there has been no indicators of narco-politics in chartered and component cities here so far. “We continue to do intensified monitoring, however,” he said.

Ruiz also admitted that it’s hard to pin these mayors down for their possible link to the illegal drug business in their own turf. “Considering our lack of manpower and funds to go with the operations, it’s difficult,” he said, although more PDEA agents have been enlisted, especially those residing in the pinpointed towns.

The PDEA-6 has been banking on community involvement on this campaign, Ruiz said. “The agents and the community, at large, would help us to gather evidences against these mayors. If we could not pin them down for their direct involvement in illegal drugs, we might file charges against them for dereliction of duty,” he said, adding that these evidences are the usual paper trails.

Belongings and mobile phones of the arrested illegal drug pushers will also be scrutinized to determine their links with the mayors. “It’s not going to be easy because they are not mayors for nothing. While it is hard, it is not impossible,” Ruiz said.

Ruiz said that, as early as January this year, PDEA Director General Jose Gutierrez, Jr. instructed all PDEA regional directors to conduct intensified monitoring on mayors who may be involved in narco-politics and to file necessary charges when evidence warrants.

Meanwhile, in reaction to some reports, Ruiz denied that PDEA has been weak on its performance in the region where they conducted 27 operations, some done with the local police, for July alone. They also did destruction of confiscated illegal drugs a few weeks back, he said.

The other day, PDEA was reprimanded in the Senate for its alleged inability to reduce the prevalence of illegal drugs in the country and reported failure to address the growing influence of narco-politics in the country.

During the budget deliberations, Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano bared his dismay over PDEA’s alleged weak performance. He queried Gutierrez: “Did you instruct the regional directors of PDEA to crack down on the political protectors of drug pushers? Or was there instruction to back off if they are related to politicians?”

Cayetano said that politicians and other government officials and their relatives must not be exempted from the scope of PDEA’s intelligence gathering. (FREEMAN)