Speaking out from his retirement, former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte expressed concern and apprehension about what appears to be a resurgence of illegal drug trafficking.
There has been a stream of reported drug-related crimes in some major parts of the country from the time he stepped down from the presidency. The drug syndicates that had their unlawful business stopped operating are back with a vengeance. There has been a reported proliferation of drug pushers selling their destructive merchandise. Drug addicts who had vanished from the streets when PRRD assumed the presidency are once again back at their haunts preying on innocent citizens. Police operatives have arrested prohibited drug distributors and confiscated billions worth of shabu.
The DILG and the PNP hierarchies have discovered that about nine police full colonels and generals are involved in the nefarious drug distribution and protection activities which led to their thoughtless scheme of removing them without going through the established administrative processes for removing or suspending civil service employees by requiring them to submit courtesy resignations, which caused widespread indignation and demoralization among the third level ranking police officers.
The arrest of some PDEA agents and police officers recycling confiscated illegal drugs has validated the outrageous involvement of our law enforcement agencies. It took 6 years for FPRRD to dismantle the drug syndicates, and place behind bars the drug pushers, more than 6,000 of them officially recorded to have been killed in buy-bust operations and police raids when they opted to fight it out with the arresting teams, while more than a million of drug addicts surrendered to the authorities and were placed in government and private rehabilitation centers.
More than a thousand barangays were infested with drug pushing and addiction. The drug menace birthed more than a million dysfunctional families. An entire generation was put in peril by this dreaded scourge. The successes and the gains brought forth by the relentless and aggressive war on drugs initiated and pursued vigorously by FPRRD are gradually being eroded. In the words of the former President, the illegal drug monstrosity of a problem is dangerously and gradually creeping back.
FPRRD correctly and wisely urges the officials of the Executive Department to issue strong and unequivocal statements against the illegal drug traffickers and to assure the law enforcement agents that the government will be behind them and give them unqualified support if they will pursue these illegal drug traffickers with hammer and tongs in accordance with law but will punish them if they operate outside of it.
There is a perception, which cannot be ignored, that the message against the purveyors of illegal drugs is lackadaisical. It is bereft of the vigor and aggression ominously and always present during the Duterte administration. The threatening and menacing no-holds-barred words of FPPRD scared the wits out of those criminally inclined, which either made them scamper away or put finis to their criminal activities.
In a fight against those who profit from these criminal ventures, the power of words cannot be underestimated. Powerful intimidating words against the criminal syndicates and their henchmen inject the police enforcers with the adrenalin to pounce and destroy them while putting shivers on the malefactors who cower in fear.
In contrast, announced policy against prohibited drugs couched in timid, weak, vacillating verbalization does not inspire confidence in the crime fighters, while it emboldens the transgressors of law to commit crimes with impunity.
Ordinary citizens have their fears back when they go out at night either going to work or returning from it. Apprehension strikes parents on the safety of their children. Police officers who are otherwise upright are induced to follow the unlawful ways of their superiors and colleagues who are wallowing in easy money because these scoundrels get away with their wicked ways.
The battle against prohibited drugs must be pursued with unrelenting force. The government must alter its generally perceived feeble anti-illegal drug campaign and ineffective strategy of fighting these drug lords and their henchmen.
Police colonels and generals engaged in the distribution and recycling of confiscated drugs must be fired immediately, prosecuted and incarcerated. Those who are empowered to enforce the law must do it fearlessly and with political will. Otherwise, they have no business being given that mantle of power.