By: Genalyn D. Kabiling
Malacañang said yesterday that the death of a high school student during a drug raid in Caloocan City last Wednesday was “isolated” and that the government’s war on drugs is “not a reckless exercise of bloodletting” and any policemen involved in abuse would be held accountable.
Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella defended the intensified police operations against illegal drugs and downplayed the death of Kian Loyd delos Santos.
“The perspective of the President has been very clear from the very beginning. This is not a reckless exercise of bloodletting. There’s a rhyme and a reason in the police operations,” Abella said.
Abella said that the police conducted massive drug raids not because of the President’s supposed “endorsement” to neutralize more drug suspects. “It just so happens that they’re taking active steps in addressing the drug situation in the Philippines,” he said.
He said the President has already warned drug syndicates and their cohorts in government to “give up and shape up before it’s too late.’
“The President is very concerned in destroying actually the drug apparatus and the objective in going even after street-level drug pushers is to degrade the community-based retail distribution network that will always fuel the drug trade, whoever is on top,” he said.
