We hope Chief Insp. Jovie Espenido takes President Rodrigo Duterte’s reminder about unlawful killings to heart when he is assigned to Iloilo City/province, which the President described is “the bedrock” of the illegal drug trade in the Visayas.
Whether that “bedrock” comment compares with the President’s description of Cebu as a “drug hot spot” in the Visayas is up for debate, but it is noticeable that Iloilo City is in fact a stronghold of the Liberal Party (LP), with Sen. Franklin Drilon among its leading lights.
Regardless, Espenido’s latest assignment would not have concerned Cebuanos or Cebu-based residents were it not for several things: he was raised in Cebu City and had expressed a desire to be assigned to Cebu where he can probably do a repeat of his end-game dealings with mayors in the province similar to what he did with the late Albuera mayor Rolando Espinosa and Ozamiz City mayor Reynaldo Parojinog.
It is these two cases that had President Rodrigo Duterte personally ordering his reassignment to Iloilo where a certain Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog, who happens to be a second-degree cousin of Senator Drilon, is included in the President’s faulty drug watch list.
And the implication of Espenido’s assignment to Iloilo was not lost on Mabilog, who welcomed his appointment and said he would cooperate with the police chief in ridding the city of illegal drug dealers.
It’s fruitless to speculate at this point what Espenido could have done if he were assigned in Cebu, in which he boasted that he could get rid of the drug problem in Talisay City or Daanbantayan town in one month.
Speaking of Daanbantayan, its town Mayor Vicente Loot, who was also included in the President’s drug watch list, said he would have preferred that Espenido be assigned in his town so he can be cleared of the President’s charge against him.
Loot won’t get that chance unless he actively pursues Espenido and asks him to put in a good word for him to the President. But since Loot couldn’t get past PNP Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, that possibility is moot and academic.
In that respect, both Loot and Mabilog are similar: the two mayors have been stripped of their powers to supervise and direct their police due to being in the President’s watch list, but Mabilog is now at the crosshairs while Loot remains largely inutile as far as police operations go.
Whatever happens, Filipinos hope and expect that Espenido would toe the line insofar as prosecution and the campaign against illegal drug dealers are concerned, whether they be mayors or the powers that be.
They don’t need Espenido to be the Palace “executioner” of drug-coddling public officials, even if President Duterte makes him out to be as one, but someone who can root out the drug problem from a law enforcement perspective without resorting to execution-style police operations.