IT may be time to step back and take a close look at the anti-drugs campaign after the last six months that it has been carried out in the country.
President Duterte himself directed the Philippine National Police (PNP) to turn over the campaign to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in the wake of the kidnap-killing of a South Korean businessman right inside Camp Crame by a PNP team. The PNP organization was ordered to first clean up its ranks.
The Supreme Court has also issued a Writ of Amparo with a Temporary Protection Order (TPO) for the survivor and the family members of four persons killed in a PNP “Tokhang” operation in Payatas, Quezon City, in August last year. The SC directed the Court of Appeals to hear the case and receive evidence on the petition alleging that the four men were killed by the police “execution style.”
In the last six months, the anti-drugs campaign has exposed a massive problem of drug addiction in the country, with a number of officials, including many mayors, involved in drug trafficking. The PNP organized teams that raided dug dens all over the country, encouraged by the unstinting support of President Duterte.
The case of South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo last October, however, caused the President to rethink this all-out support to the PNP. Here, it seems, was a police team that had taken advantage of the anti-drugs campaign to carry out a kidnapping for ransom, topped by the killing of the victim right at the national PNP headquarters at Camp Crame. It caused President Duterte to stop the PNP’s Tokhang operations, and order the PNP organization to concentrate on cleaning its ranks. The PDEA will carry on the drive, with assistance from the Armed Forces.
The Supreme Court action is another phase of the reexamination of the campaign. It will look into another incident in which another group of PNP men allegedly raided a house in Payatas, Quezon City, and killed four men under suspicious circumstances. The family of those killed, fearing further police action, sought and found help from the court.
Along with his order for the PDEA to take over the anti-drugs campaign from the PNP, President Duterte said it will no longer be a six-month campaign as he said during the election campaign. It will now continue to the end of his six-year term. The problem is of such magnitude that it cannot possibly be eliminated in just six months. The order should relieve the country’s law enforcement units from undue stress carrying out such a tremendous task under such a time limit.
In any case, it is time to step back and devote some time to a review of the entire operation, see where it may have been abused by some unscrupulous elements, institute corrective measures, and then continue the campaign with all due respect to everyone’s rights, minus abuses that may have insinuated themselves into this major cleansing and reforming program of the Duterte administration.