In observance of the Holy Week, the Philippine News Agency’s online news service will be off on March 29, Good Friday, and March 30, Black Saturday. Normal operations will resume on March 31, Easter Sunday.

— The Editors

The DDS myth (3rd of 4 Parts)

By Jun Ledesma

March 26, 2018, 6:38 pm

<p>A spectacled Assistant City Fiscal Rodrigo Duterte supervises the exhumation of remains of NPA victims.</p>

A spectacled Assistant City Fiscal Rodrigo Duterte supervises the exhumation of remains of NPA victims.

 

DAVAO CITY -- Duterte’s initial term as Mayor was not a walk in the park. He had to confront the growing menace of drugs, KFR and all other forms of criminality. This was a dangerous time as terrorism was also on the rise. The San Pedro Cathedral was bombed in the early 1980’s and then later the Davao Airport and the Sea Ports. Duterte was able to address the threats of terrorism by organizing tripping points in porous areas in the city with the help of the local Muslim residents and leaders of the Lumads. Kidnaps for ransom were also cut down effectively.

Drugs, moreover, remained to be the most tenacious crime for even school campuses became lucrative market places for drug pushers. Duterte himself led the relentless campaign against drug lords. When a new Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency head, Col. Efren Alcuizar, was assigned in the region, they held a summit against drug menace in Mandaya Hotel where the media was invited. In the press briefing, Alcuizar came out with a list of some 250 plus suspected drug pushers that operate in Davao City.

Mysterious killings

What followed about two weeks after that meeting was a systematic killings of many of those in the list. The summary killings were very much like what happened in Thailand when in February 2003, then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared war on drugs. Thai police came out with a list of names and what followed after was that over 2,800 suspects were neutralized by what police authorities claimed as the handiwork of the drug lords to keep their identity from police authorities.

The war on drugs needs a complex strategy and solutions. Duterte led a composite team that raided of a shabu laboratory in Daliao, Toril, operated by unregistered aliens. Not one of the suspects who fought it out with law survived that assault. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, meantime, condemned Thailand and later Mayor Duterte for what they dubbed as EJK in their campaign against the proliferation of drugs. But Thailand was not cowed by the warnings of the UNCHR. To date, even as Thaksin Shinawatra had been exiled, police sustained their war against drugs.

But the UN need not go far. Right next to the US of A are Columbia and Mexico where the menace of drugs can only be equaled by the insane war the US wage in Syria, Libya and Iraq that decimated their populations. The American government extended billions of aid and military hardware to help their neighbors wage war against drug cartels. The victims of its sponsored wars are dubbed as collateral damage. The UNCHR has become inured to the human casualties of its war in foreign shores but elsewhere across the Pacific where Philippines and Thailand are waging their own campaign against the tentacles of drug syndicates it is ironic that the UNCHR condemns and warns the leaders of both nations for committing violence in the course of their drug problems.

When Duterte became President, he took his successful battle against drug syndicates in Davao to the national level. He promised he would eradicate drugs in three to six months but discovered later when confronted with statistics that the campaign will not be that easy. Police generals, judges and local government officials were involved in drug syndicates. When he launched the drug war and other criminal syndicates, the Commission on Human Rights was there to tally every member of the syndicates killed as victim of Extra-Judicial Killing. Sen. Leila de Lima, who once was chairperson of CHR and then Justice Secretary, condemned every move by the government to eradicate drug menace that had victimized millions of Filipino youths. In the meantime, Pres. Duterte was riding high in the unprecedented trust and popularity ratings. The economy likewise enjoys an “investment grade and stable”.

Duterte never said that fighting the drug syndicates will be bloodless. His order to the law enforcers was to deal with those who would opt to fight it out with the law by not giving them any quarters, but, assist those who wish to surrender and place them in rehabilitation centers. The casualties on the syndicate side ran to anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 depending on which political spectrum or media establishments make the estimate. Rappler, an online media outfit that is funded by the notorious Omidyar Network placed 13,000 EJK victim in their recent scorecard. The more significant and positive development in Duterte’s war against drugs, moreover, is that close to a million drug pushers who surrendered are undergoing rehabilitation.

Drugs and steamy affair

The drug campaign neutralized a number of syndicates that operate in Luzon, Metro Manila, Visayas and Mindanao. It also led to the discovery of shabu laboratories that operated clandestinely within urban centers, remote jungles and even marooned vessels off the coast of Zambales.

In the government war against Maute ISIS in Marawi, it was discovered that drugs helped sustain and expand the tentacles of the terrorist group. But the most startling discovery was that the country’s sophisticated distribution network of illicit drugs was right in the national state penitentiary. Right in the heart of the penitentiary, are high profile inmates who turned out to be heads of drug cartels. They control the delivery of billions worth of shabu from various sources to various points in the country.

The drug lords enjoy what had been described by De Lima’s fellow senators and congressmen as “four-star accommodations” called “kubols” – some kind of special quarters outside the confines of the prison cells. Under her watch as Secretary of Justice, the New Bilibid Penitentiary was veritably the center of drug trade. But she was unmindful the national leadership then was as conveniently nonchalant of the impact of that discovery. What can be more incriminating than the special treatment which she continued to tolerate under her watch? Indeed, she conducted raids now and then but the special treatment that the inmates, the ones convicted for drug crime specially, was never stopped. We have seen it all. As if high in drugs herself sung in duets with the likes of Colangco and other life-termers in an elaborate karaoke bar inside the penitentiary!

But why was De Lima so consumed with raising the issue of extra-judicial killing which she does each time a drug suspect is killed? And each time she indicts Duterte and cannot escape from that frame of mind that the former Mayor was the godfather of the DDS. (PNA)

(to be continued)

Comments