THE “appeal” by both officials of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) for the public (read: the media) not to create any quarrel between them (“huwag pagsabungin” as PDEA director general Wilkins Villanueva puts it) really borders on the ridiculous, insofar as we are concerned.
That pathetic appeal, of course, was in relation to the shootout between PDEA agents and members of the District Special Operations Unit of the Quezon City Police District (DSOU-QCPD) last February 24 along Commonwealth Avenue that left four persons, two of them policemen, dead.
To begin with, it is never the job of the responsible press to sow intrigues and discord among our law enforcement units, especially over a very sensitive matter such as our national campaign against illegal drugs, the central social problem that catapulted Pres. Duterte to the presidency in 2016 over his promise of solving it “within six months.”
And insofar as we are concerned, such reckless remark by Villanueva is actually an appeal for the media to stop being responsible by asking awkward questions that the public also wanted to know but which would inevitably put either the PDEA or the PNP—or even both of them—into an untenable position leading to, possibly, the removal of their top officials.
That what happened last February 24 has turned out to be one “strange incident” is already beyond a shadow of doubt—more than two days after, both the PDEA and the PNP cannot still agree on who was doing the buying and selling of the illegal drugs and who fired first.
We say this is “strange” considering that both units are well-trained in the processing of crime scene investigations and both are also veteran anti-drug units. Why they failed to determine such “simple matters” can only produce nasty speculations, such as a “joint cover-up.”
And fortunately for both Villanueva and Chief PNP Debold Sinas, Malacañang has stepped into the picture by telling them to both shut up while the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is left with the job of sorting out the bloody mess.
And with both chambers of Congress also agreeing to stop their own independent probes upon the request of the Palace, both Sinas and Villanueva are “safe,” at least for now.
Regardless, what the incident glaringly show is that Pres. Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ has already faltered.
Whether this is due to the incompetence of our anti-drug officials, corruption, possible collusion of some of them with drug syndicates or all of the above, are actually the same weaknesses that have plagued every administration’s anti-drug campaign since our Commonwealth years under the Americans.
And we are still very far from solving our problem on illegal drugs if we continue to have officials who refuse to be transparent and would rather resort to evasion and obfuscation in order to protect their own hides.