President Rodrigo Duterte has told outgoing Philippine National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa to wait and see if he can launch a senatorial or gubernatorial campaign in next year’s elections.
In a television interview Wednesday, Dela Rosa said the President told him to “observe” the political situation first before he is endorsed for either elective position.
The PNP chief said he met Duterte, who extended Dela Rosa’s term for three months until April 21, on Tuesday. He had reached the police force’s mandatory retirement age of 56 on Jan. 21.
“I really asked [the President], ‘Sir, where are you taking me, for senator or governor?’ He said, ‘We should observe first,’” Dela Rosa said on a GMA TV news program.
For the meantime, Duterte directed the top cop to first help his native province of Davao del Sur, “which really needs some help,” said Dela Rosa, who has admitted wanting to become a senator but is unsure of running in 2019.
The PNP chief is poised to assume his new post as the Bureau of Corrections director general, which the President announced some months back.
Meanwhile, Dela Rosa vowed to face any legal cases he may receive for his role in the government’s war on illegal drugs.
“We are trained in the Philippine Military Academy to take responsibility for our actions, so I won’t run away from that. I want to let them know I have the balls to face that problem,” he also told GMA TV.
In another TV program, the top cop told CNN Philippines he wrote the Office of the Solicitor General to request for more time to submit reports and documents on the drug war to the Supreme Court.
This was after the Human Rights Watch said Dela Rosa will step down as top cop with a “sordid” human rights record “unmatched” since the time of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
In a statement, HRW researcher Carlos Conde claimed more than 12,000 people were killed in the Duterte administration’s drug war, either by the police or by police-backed vigilante groups.
Conde said this is way more than the 3,000 deaths that various human rights groups reported during the Marcos years.