PDEA should welcome offers of SC, DoJ
Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 06:28:21 +0000
THE government has come up with several narco-lists – one with 45 local government officials, a second with 10 prosecutors, and a third list with 13 judges. There is also a list of celebrities but these are drug addicts – victims, rather than perpetrators and protectors of the drug trade in the country.
After several weeks of public debate on whether to make the lists public, President Duterte announced the names of 33 mayors, seven vice mayors, three congressmen, one provincial board member, and one former mayor. He said he announced the names as those in the list were running for reelection on May 13 and the voters should know they are involved in drugs.
The President, however, declined to name the prosecutors and judges. The Department of Justice (DoJ) asked the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) for the names of the listed prosecutors so it could immediately initiate its own probe. But the PDEA declined, saying it had not completed its validation.
Secretary of Justice Menardo Guevarra lamented the PDEA’s decision not to share the names in its list of prosecutors. “It is regretful that the PDEA announced it before validation because everyone in the prosecution service as well as judges in the judiciary became a suspect at this point when the names are being withheld,” he said.
The Supreme Court (SC) had also asked the PDEA for the list of judges but the PDEA also declined, saying it has yet to complete its investigation. The SC has already authorized Justice Diosdado Peralta to conduct his own investigation.
The original announcement that so many local government officials, judges, and prosecutors are involved in drugs has made us all realize how big the drug problem has grown in our country. Last Wednesday, the President also declared that the war on drugs was being sabotaged by rogue cops in the Philippine National Police.
But after the announcements and the exposes of involvement in so many government offices – from the police to prosecutors to judges – the work of validating the charges must quickly follow. We cannot allow the cases to remain undecided for very long.
Even as the PDEA carries on with its efforts to get to the truth about the charges of involvement, it must now share its information with other government offices – the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court in particular – who have their own means and capacities to probe the involvement of their own people.
The identities of the prosecutors and judges may not be disclosed at this time, the way the identities of the mayors and congressmen running for reelection were, but PDEA should welcome the offers of the DoJ and the SC to conduct their own probes into the activities of their own people.