Vice President Leni Robredo should refrain from divulging the strategies of the government’s anti-drug campaign to the media and drug dealers, Senate President Vicente Sotto III said yesterday.
Sotto gave the unsolicited advice to the new Interagency Committee on Anti-illegal Drugs co-chairperson after she reportedly asked for a list of high-value drug targets during a recent meeting with the enforcement cluster of the panel.
The Senate chief agreed with Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Director-General Aaron Aquino who questioned the need for the ICAD to obtain such a list when it’s supposedly not part their mandate.
Aquino is co-chair of the ICAD.
“Director General Aquino is right. The mandate of ICAD is merely coordinating policies among agencies involved in all aspects of drug abuse and illegal drugs. I know because I started the inter-agency concept with Dangerous Drugs Board Director Manuel Supnet in 1989. A list of high-value targets will merely leak if the agencies concerned will submit to the ICAD,” Sotto said.
“If I were an adviser to the Vice President, I will tell her to slow down on the media binge. Submarine strategy is more effective. We should not telegraph our moves to the drug dealers,” he added.
In addition, Sotto said the ICAD should only inform the press about its “major achievements and accomplishments, not when planning strategies.”
The media, at the same time, should cooperate by not broadcasting the ICAD’s plans, he said.
According to the Executive Order No. 15 which created the ICAD, the committee “shall ensure that each member agency shall implement and comply with all policies, laws, and issuances pertaining to the government’s anti-illegal drug campaign, in an integrated and synchronized manner.”
Among its functions, the ICAD must ensure the “effective conduct of anti-illegal drug operations and arrest of high-value drug personalities and street level pushers and users.”
But Aquino said he could not understand Robredo’s request of a list of high-value drug targets, as it is not in the ICAD’s mandate.
Robredo had earlier said that she plans to focus on the crackdown of big-time drug dealers to reduce the demand of illegal drugs in the country. (Vanne Terrazola)
