A news story on an ongoing assessment by the Department of Interior and Local Governments (DILG) on anti-drug councils nationwide came on the heels of the sacking of Customs officials and their replacement with soldiers after more than P6 billion worth of shabu were confirmed to have been recently smuggled on board four magnetic lifters in Cavite province.
Strange that while the DILG and by extension President Rodrigo Duterte thinks nothing of holding anti-drug councils accountable for their performance—as they should by the way, this is not being taken against them—somewhere else, a lot of officials responsible for stopping the entry of drugs like shabu into the country’s shores have failed monumentally in doing so.
In fact Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapeña had been rewarded by President Duterte with a Cabinet post as chief of the Technical Education Skills Development Authority (Tesda) sparking both outrage and incredulity from a public astonished at how the President can not only overlook incompetence and a cover-up but legitimize the debacle with a Cabinet appointment.
President Duterte’s visit to Cebu, while political, is also be a reminder to local officials to step up his administration’s war on drugs especially since a lot of them are either running for higher office or reelection.
But aside from doing what they can to reduce, if not eliminate the drug menace in their communities, the local governments down to the barangay level still need the national government to stop the entry of illegal drugs right at the country’s doorstep.
As it now stands, the recent P6.8 billion shabu shipment which is now being peddled on the country’s streets and had given fuel to speculations that its profits are being used for next year’s elections.
That President Duterte resorted to placing the Bureau of Customs under military supervision /control had drawn flak from the political opposition but it remains to be seen if it will prove effective in stopping the flow of drugs at the door.
In the meantime, the administration may also want to recalibrate their war on drugs by jailing and prosecuting drug suspects and stopping extrajudicial killings which Chief Supt. Debold Sinas, Police Regional Office (PRO-7) chief, claimed to be carried out by rogue cops contracting themselves as executioners for drug syndicates.
Regardless of the veracity of Sinas’s claims, the Philippine National Police should also be more accountable and transparent in order to erase persistent suspicions of summary executions being carried out in their anti-drug operations.