It must have been awkward for PNP Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa to sit between President Rodrigo Duterte and House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez during his 55th birthday celebration a few days after Alvarez called on him to resign from his post for the death of Korean businessman Jee Ick-Joo.
That the killing happened within the PNP’s Camp Crame headquarters all the more highlights the sheer humiliation of Dela Rosa and his leadership of the PNP which is under fire from rights advocacy groups for its continuing failure to stop, much less investigate, the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects.
What made the crime that much more condemnable was that Jee’s wife was forced by the kidnappers — who are police officers using the war on drugs as a cover to justify the kidnapping — to pay P9.5 million in ransom even after they killed him. By the time she learned of her husband’s fate, it was too late.
True to form, however, President Rodrigo Duterte told Dela Rosa to stay put rather than resign; and Alvarez, after publicly denouncing Bato, had to eat his words and recant his earlier call for him to resign.
At least Alvarez was right in saying that the Korean businessman’s death was a major embarrassment to the Duterte administration even if President Duterte is loath to admit it.
And since President Duterte already exonerated the police officials accused of murdering Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa in his own cell, it’s only expected that he would similarly defend Dela Rosa from command responsibility in Jee’s death even if the murder was committed near Dela Rosa’s office.
The incident only showed that regardless of their status, drug suspects are unsafe even when jailed or merely brought for questioning under the guise of “Oplan TokHang.”
But more importantly and disturbingly, it showed that police officers can take anyone forcibly with no warrant whatsoever under the guise of “legitimate police operations” with no guarantee at all about the person’s safety and rights to due process.
While a lot of Duterte’s supporters approve of the relentless war on illegal drugs and see the South Korean businessman’s death as part of a so-called “grand conspiracy” to discredit the President, there is mounting concern that the war is not only being exploited by the corrupt elements within the
PNP hierarchy but would open the floodgates to more abuse by law enforcement agencies.
The so-called vigilante killings are bad enough without the police and other law enforcement agencies being dragged into the controversy.
The obvious priority would be to prosecute and jail those involved in the crime, but it is also high time for the Duterte administration to pause and recalibrate their war in order to arrest and not execute drug suspects.