Is the CPDRC our Lawis?

Lopez

Lawis, as you may now know, is the barangay in Ozamiz notorious for the drug trade.

For Ozamiznons or those familiar with the saga of the Parojinog family and their links to the notorious Kuratong Baleleng robbery and kidnap-for-ransom syndicate, Lawis is the epicenter of their extensive criminal organization’s management and operations.

Lawis shot to national infamy after the bloody raid on the Parojinogs a few weeks ago, a raid that’s claimed the lives of three members of the family, including the family patriarch and mayor of Ozamiz Reynaldo “Aldong” Parojinog.

Now I make a comparison between the CPDRC and Lawis. Why? Back in March, President Rody Duterte himself declared during a speech delivered before the members of the Philippine Councilors’ League (PCL) that Cebu has the highest rate of drug use in the country.

“Cebu has the highest rate of [drug abuse]. They do not know it. It is about 60 to 70 [percent],” the President said. He said this as he expressed every intention to continue his war on drugs despite international pressure and criticism from members of the Liberal Party led by Vice President Leni Robredo.

The President’s war on drugs seems to be working for the most part. A few weeks ago, Indonesian President Joko Widodo instructed law enforcers to shoot drug dealers who resist arrest, an order that appears to follow President Duterte’s lead.

Like the Philippines, Indonesia faces a narcotics emergency that has gotten worse, according to some observers, after President Duterte’s crackdown on the drug trade has seen a considerable number of drug lords bringing their business elsewhere, Indonesia presumably.

Back to Cebu. Like the Bilibid in Manila that became a major source of shabu and the focal point of a congressional inquiry that has helped build a case against Senator Leila de Lima for her alleged complicity in the proliferation of the illegal drug trade as Justice secretary, the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC), once world-renowned for its “Dancing Inmates” and the facility’s ingenious use of dance as an effective rehabilitative method, has also become a drug den and the purported source of drug supply in the province of Cebu.

Again, like the Bilibid, the CPDRC has also become the focus of a congressional investigation after drugs, money and other contraband were confiscated from inmates during a greyhound operation in August of last year.

A few more raids and a congressional hearing thereafter, and the CPDRC continues to be a major source of illegal drugs and has even become a haven for illegal gambling.

The greyhound operation last August 1, the fifth since Governor Hilario “Junjun” Davide III won his second term as governor of Cebu (every raid produced drugs and contraband, by the way), yielded nearly Php250,000 worth of shabu, tally sheets, mobile phones, drug paraphernalia, bladed weapons and other contraband.

Why do I zero in on Davide? He is, after all, the most accountable here because, under Section 1731 of the Revised Administrative Code of 1917, the provincial governor is keeper of the jail.

With a President who is hell-bent on winning the war he’s waged against drugs, five raids, and a congressional investigation, one would think that Davide would find some urgency in fixing the mess that has become of the CPDRC under his watch, but no. As ever, all we get is lazy, lethargic and lackluster performance from this man who should have never run for governor to begin with. He remains heavy on rhetoric but extremely wanting in concrete action.

“I cannot also say for certain kung ang iyang figures is correct. I don’t know who fed the President that data,” Davide said, reacting to the President’s March 2017 declaration that Cebu has the highest rate of drug use in the country, something PRRD reiterated during a speech in July calling Cebu a drug “hotspot.”

Furthermore, I find it curious that he is always first to justify things: he was the first to debunk the President’s declaration and he was also the first to speak up about supporting a drug crackdown in Cebu in the wake of the Ozamiz raid.

Defensive much? Curiouser is the fact that like jailed Senator Leila de Lima and the Parojinogs, Davide is a member of the Liberal Party.

Davide’s parallelism with Aldong Parojinog doesn’t stop with being an LP-affiliated local chief executive with a drug den in his territory.

Davide is always described as meek and “buotan” — just like Aldong who is well-loved by the residents of Lawis, the impoverished community surrounding the kingpin’s lair who benefited from his family’s largesse in exchange for protection.

(Remember Rappler’s atrocious article after the raid portraying Aldong as an anti-drug advocate? Susme.)

My point is this. This is either complicity or sheer incompetence and willful neglect on the part of the Cebu governor. Whichever it is, this is completely unacceptable.

Until such time that he fixes the hole he has made of the provincial jail, I will continue drawing parallelisms between Davide and Parojinog so the former shapes up and takes things seriously.