Cotabato City dad denies drug links

COTABATO CITY – A city councilor has denied involvement in illegal drug activities while still a village chairperson here after his name surfaced in President Rodrigo Duterte’s narco-list, which was made public by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) on Monday.

Abdilla Lim, a Cotabato City councilor since 2016, was then village chairperson of Barangay Poblacion in Cotabato City.

Lim was among the five Cotabato village officials named on the PDEA list for alleged involvement in illegal drugs, or have not taken action to stop illegal drugs in their villages.

“It was trial by publicity, we were not even consulted about it, or asked about it or hear our side before the list was made public,” Lim said in Filipino in a radio interview here.

Of the five village officials of Cotabato City named by PDEA, three are incumbent officials who have yet to issue statements.

Lim claimed that he has cleared his name before various government law enforcement agency and that he, when still a village chair, had programs against illegal drugs.

Five village chairpersons in Maguindanao were also on the narco-list. Among them was Sammy Nandang, village chair of Barangay Poblacion, Talitay, Maguindanao.

Juvenal Azurin, director of PDEA in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), refused to comment on the list but noted that Nandang and his wife were arrested last year for possession of illegal drugs.

The case against them, however, was dismissed. Eight other village chairpersons and a village councilor in the ARMM were also on the narcolist but they have yet to issue statements. (Noel Punzalan and Edwin Fernandez/PNA)