"These are facts that Robredo, as a lawyer, should have considered."
Vice President Leni Robredo has become an embarrassment not so much that she is unprepared for the position but by her exhibition of unbridled ignorance on what she is supposed to do as co-chairman of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs. Leni is ignorant that she cannot even distinguish her role as a public official whose loyalty is demanded and second to her role as one coming from the opposition.
President Rodrigo Duterte finally got annoyed of her unending tirade where she could no longer distinguish a constructive criticism from outright disloyalty. We can assume she was not given a Cabinet post because the President knows she would only live up to her role as spoiler than one giving constructive suggestions worthy of her position and to the budget allocated to her office.
For the years she has been styling herself as vice president, the issues she raised simply revolved on how to defend her questionable position and in shamelessly slandering the administration consistent to her position as an ingratiating lackey. This explains why President Duterte suddenly appointed her co-chairman with the thought that by giving her a chance to participate she would be able to prove her worth.
But in her case, she has prejudged our law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to contain the drug menace. The circumstance of killings is sometimes the result when suspects resist arrest. These are facts that Robredo, as a lawyer, should have considered. Her lackadaisical pronouncement to stop the bloodletting is woefully misplaced. It appears that only the suspects involved in the sale and distribution of drugs are killed and no policemen are killed.
Notably, upon her acceptance of the assignment, she failed to report to the President, and ask him about the scope of her assignment and responsibilities. Instead, she first reported to the official in the US embassy praising their indispensable cooperation against drugs.
For the long years of the country’s cooperation with the US on illegal drugs, the record will bear that the spread of drugs has not been abated. On the contrary, the drug menace has progressively increased with the US always pointing to China as the main exporter of methamphetamine or shabu.
While is it not disputed that the Philippines ranks the highest in the use of shabu in East Asia in 2019, with the US State Department stating that 2.1 percent of the Filipinos from the age of 16 to 64 are using shabu and marijuana, this does not detract the fact that illegal drug proliferated during the Ninoy Aquino administration. Robredo never realized that per “bato” of shabu can be bought in every street corner.
Robredo has never accorded positive interpretation to the administration campaign against illegal drugs prompting Duterte to campaign hard on this issue. Rather, she is campaigning on the issue of human rights to deflect the efforts to contain the menace that is turning the country into a narco-state. Robredo never interpreted the administration’s stern policy beyond the wisdom why the President was voted overwhelmingly in the 2016 presidential election. The people voted for him not for their love of Duterte, but for his decisiveness, though sadly enough, is being depicted today by the opposition as danger and thirst for blood.
The person whom the opposition branded a “dictator” netted in 1973 a big drug dealer. He was not only engaged in the sale of opium but was caught processing it to heroine. The only unfortunate thing about that incident is that the suspect was a Chinese national by the name of Lim Seng. He was tried and found guilty for the possession and manufacturing of opium and was sentenced to die by firing squad. When Marcos allowed the execution of convicts through musketry, the sale of prohibited drugs and other forms of addictive substances almost instantly disappeared.
When licentious freedom was restored in 1986, the menace of drug slowly resurfaced. Many of the laws enacted during martial law were either abrogated or amended. The hypocrites wanted to amend or scrap it be for as they say have the shade of authoritarianism.
After martial law, drugs once again began to contaminate our society. One celebrated case was the killing of Northern Luzon Command deputy commander Col. Rolando de Guzman, and Nolcom intelligence Chief Avelino Manguera, in Magallenes Commercial Center in 1990. According to then NBI director Alfredo Lim, his office acted on a tip of big heroin haul. The arrest ended in a shootout was Lim’s a former police captain Reynaldo Jaylo. About 10 kilos of heroin worth P230 million was confiscated. Jaylo said the seized dope was being sold by the slain military officers to one Phil Needham, an American drug dealer who fled after the shootout. It turned out that Needham was a US narcotics agent who, along with other US agents, orchestrated the “drug bust.”
According to reports, American agents arranged the “controlled delivery” of the heroin using De Guzman as courier. Needham, who was a US Drug Enforcement Administration did not know De Guzman would pose as buyer.
According to report, it was the US DEA led by Phil Needham and the Americans agents orchestrated the “buy bust” meaning it was not a case of intercepting the sale of drugs. American agents arranged the “controlled delivery” using De Guzman as courier. After that incident , Needham and his two American agents were whisked out of the country. They just disappeared, leaving a blot mark that our soldiers are involved in the sale and distribution of drugs.
After she accepted her appointment, Robredo immediately ranted pointing to China as the biggest exporter of shabu into the country. Robredo statement was in bad taste for aside from the expected benefit from our improved relations with China, she did not mention that it was under the administration of the one who goaded her to run where three Filipinos were executed in China for serving as drug mules.
This now contradicts that drugs freely proliferate in China to justify her accusation of China as haven for drug addicts. Three Filipinos were executed in China sometime in May 2011. They were Ramon Credo for smuggling 4,113 grams of heroin into Xiamen on Dec. 28, 2008; Sally Ordinario Villanueva intercepted in Xiamen on Dec. 24, 2008 while smuggling 4,110 grams of heroin and Elizabeth Batain arrested in Shenzhen in May 24, 2008 for possession of 6,800 grams of heroin.
Finally, the President could no longer hold his exasperation at her extrapolation of facts. She has not consulted the President as a matter of courtesy like asking her of important assignment. Even if we take it that the Philippines has agreement with the US for exchange of intelligence information, still she should subordinate herself to the President, being the country’s chief executive and has the ultimate say to determine what constitute the country national interest that should be kept secret even from countries that have been pretending to be our ally.
Even if the US has officially withdrawn from the UN Commission on Human Rights and has not jointed the International Criminal Court, she should know that the US is the most gregarious member of the UN to bring to court President Duterte. The President even threatened to slap Phelim Kine in front of Robredo should he dare come and make good his arrest which he was quoted saying, “Dear VP [Robredo ]—my bags are packed and I’m ready to come to the Philippines to help advise how to end this murderous drug war.'”
Robredo cannot divulge any secret information to a foreign government for that would constitute a violation of state secret viz a violation of our right as a sovereign and independent state. She did not even take into account that Senator Leila De Lima now in jail for drug charges come from her own party, and that should have been enough for Robredo not to seek assistance from a UN bureaucrat who assert with much braggadocio to prosecute our President.