Robredo’s bleeding heart for drug dealers
Credit to Author: Atty. Dodo Dulay| Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 19:02:02 +0000
IT would appear that Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo is desperately seeking political relevance that she has resorted to pandering to Western media and international groups, which have been critical of President Duterte’s anti-drug campaign, by parroting their discredited narrative. That or the beleaguered vice president is so out of touch with reality that she wants to put a stop to the Duterte government’s war against illegal drugs, which has been welcomed by an overwhelming majority of Filipinos.
In a Reuters interview, Robredo called the government’s anti-illegal drug campaign a failure, claiming that thousands of people have been killed, with no evidence of a decline in drug supply or usage. “We ask ourselves, ‘Why is this still happening?’ The President has already made very serious threats to drug syndicates, to drug lords … and yet it’s still very prevalent, so obviously, it’s not working,” Robredo told Reuters.
Why Robredo wants to put an end to the drug war baffles me, and, I am sure, many law-abiding Filipinos as well. Isn’t it the responsibility of government to eradicate this illicit trade in the first place? As Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. has repeatedly said in numerous international forums, the State’s first, foremost and overriding responsibility is to protect the law-abiding against the lawless, and the innocent against those threatening their safety and well-being, by any means efficient to achieve that purpose. That does not discount a violent ending for some of them.
Violent ending or not, more than 8 out of 10 Filipinos are satisfied with the way the government is waging its anti-illegal drugs campaign, according to the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) poll. Giving the Duterte administration an “excellent” rating, survey respondents said “drug suspects have lessened” and the anti-illegal drugs campaign has “lessened crime.”
Robredo seems to espouse treating people involved in the drug trade with kid gloves. Perhaps this is why violent crimes exploded during the Yellow administration’s “daang matuwid” when rapes, murders, assaults and robberies by druggies became commonplace. Filipinos waited for Benigno Simeon Aquino 3rd to do something about rising crime, but he was too lazy and soft to take the necessary steps to solve the country’s worsening security problem. Now that President Duterte has taken decisive action to restore peace and order and protect the personal safety of ordinary Filipinos, Robredo and her Yellow gang are castigating him for fixing the mess left by BS Aquino. What’s up with that?
Besides, how can Robredo conclude that President Duterte’s drug war was a failure? Did her contacts in the drug trade tell her? Paraphrasing Secretary Locsin, who else can say if the drug war is going well or badly except the very people involved in the illicit trade?
True, the illegal drug trade is still very much around. But that’s no reason to declare the government’s war against drug a failure or to stop it. To the contrary, that the illegal drug trade continues to exist despite the government’s crackdown only goes to show how deeply embedded narcos are in our communities. If at all, it makes a strong case for the continuation rather than the termination of the Duterte administration’s drug war.
Stop it and we’ll soon become another Mexico, where many cities and towns have been taken over by drug cartels and narco-politicians. These cartels have become invincible that they are able to do almost anything with impunity. Look at what happened in the Sinaloan city of Culiacan last week.
After Mexican security forces stormed a house and arrested Ovidio Guzman, the 28-year-old son of convicted drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, drug cartel gunmen quickly took control of the city center, closed down the airport, roads and government buildings, and exchanged gunfire with government forces for hours in a bid to rescue the drug kingpin’s son. They openly drove in trucks with mounted machine guns, blockaded streets flashing Kalashnikovs and barricaded and burned vehicles, unleashing havoc reminiscent of a war zone.
The gunmen went unchallenged by government troops even after the cartel forces took control of the city, proving that they are the ones really running the show in Sinaloa. Just hours into the cartel chaos, Mexico’s federal government capitulated to the cartel and gave its besieged security forces the go-ahead to release Guzman to his rescuers. With narco money funding the cartel’s armed thugs and sicarios (or hitmen), the cartel is now more powerful than the Mexican army.
Should we wait until the same thing happens in the Philippines? Certainly not. But that is exactly how we’ll end up if we drop the war against illegal drugs. Now is not the time to put our guard down.
Robredo got a lot of flak from citizens and netizens alike for her anti-drug war rhetoric that she quickly did an about-face. Away from the glare of international media, the vice president now denies calling for an end to the Duterte’s anti-illegal drugs campaign, saying she just wanted the government to assess its strategy and tweak its implementation. What a cop-out!
The Yellows’ president-in-waiting is a reincarnation of her thankfully departed patron, BS Aquino. It’s obvious she’s no different from the “daang matuwid” mold, resorting to ad hominem attacks against the Duterte administration for the perceived faults of the drug war. But not once has Robredo disclosed how she would do it better.
Her myopic view of the government’s drug war appears far detached from realities on the ground pointing to the growing scourge of illegal drugs. A European Union-funded study released on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, for instance, indicates that South Asia will experience a rapid escalation in the number of drug users by 2050. Already, methamphetamine (locally known as “shabu”) seizures in East and Southeast Asia rose more than eightfold to 82 tons, accounting for 45 percent of global seizures, with recent data suggesting a further steep increase to roughly 116 tons.
Given Robredo’s propensity to misread the pulse of ordinary Filipinos, I’m sure many voters are experiencing a case of buyer’s remorse. What confounds me, however, is the attention being showered on her by Western media and international groups. I hope she realizes that when these people are done with her, she’ll be tossed away like a used Kleenex.
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