Some 96 local government officials—including incumbent congressmen—are likely to face drug charges, Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año said Monday.
Año said he would recommend to President Rodrigo Duterte that he make public his watch list of drug suspects, now that the midterm elections are just three months away.
He said the Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency were verifying the President’s list of narco-politicians.
Their activities ranged from coddling or tolerating drug dealers to active involvement in the drug trade.
Senator Francis Escudero on Monday challenged the PDEA to release the so-called narco-list or the list of government officials allegedly involved in illegal drugs.
Escudero issued the statement as Año renewed calls for the government to disclose the list to help voters decide which candidate should not get their support in the 2019 elections.
“I have long heard of that so-called narco-list, ever since the first week of President Duterte’s administration, but until now, I have not seen even the shadow of that narco-list,” Escudero said.
Escudero said the list should be publicized if the PDEA and DILG are confident about their evidence linking the government officials to the illicit drug trade.
He said releasing the list would also be an opportunity for politicians to clear their name. He said government officials also have the right under the law to file cases against the PDEA and DILG
if their names were included in the list without sufficient basis.
He further challenged the PDEA and DILG to name government officials supposedly blocking the release of the narco-list.
Año said the DILG only helps in verifying the narco-list and that the PDEA can only release the list if the President gives the green light.
The DILG earlier recommended the disqualification of politicians purportedly involved in illegal drugs. The Commission on Elections, however, said involvement in any list does not equate with disqualification of candidates from elections.
But Senate Majority Leader Miguel Zubiri objected to releasing the list until charges were filed against politicians suspected to be involved in the illicit drug trade.
Zubiri said it would be totally unfair to candidates who are running in next year’s midterm elections if their names would be released as those being involved in illegal drugs even though no charges were filed against them.
In the House, the chairman of the committee on dangerous drugs prepared to resume hearings on the smuggling in of billions of pesos worth of shabu through the Bureau of Customs.
Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, chairman of the committee, said his panel would resume its probe into the four magnetic lifters found in a Cavite warehouse in August that could have contained up to P11 billion worth of shabu.
Barbers said his panel will issue an invitation to dismissed cop Eduardo Acierto, sacked PDEA deputy director general for administration Ismael Fajardo and BOC broker Katrina Grace Cuasay.
The three failed to appear in the last hearing, Barbers said.
READ: Duterte goes all out for war on drugs