SENATOR Leila de Lima said Sunday there should be no shortcuts in the Duterte administration’s war on illegal drugs as she pushed for a congressional inquiry to determine if the police operations were legitimate or merely being done to silence police assets.
“We should not forget there should be no shortcuts in our campaign because our laws are still there, our Bills of Rights are still there, our courts, the National Prosecution Service, our judiciary,” De Lima, the former Justice secretary, told dzBB radio.
She considered alarming the government’s use of shortcuts to neutralize people with links to the illicit drug trade.
De Lima made her statement even as Senator Panfilo Lacson said “It takes only a split second for a policeman to die or to live,” insisting that policemen were merely in the regular performance of their jobs during anti-drug operations.
He said during his term as police chief, he had always ordered his policemen to shoot in case of imminent danger.
“It is still better to be alive with a case than dead. At least, if you are alive, you can defend yourself, you can be acquitted,” Lacson said.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial said her department was increasing the number of its health care providers as a result of the growing number of drug addicts surrendering to authorities as a result of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on illegal drugs.
“We’re trying to double or even triple the number of accredited local government health care providers,” Ubial told reporters.
De Lima said only the small fish were being killed in the drug war.
“Where are the big drug lords?” she said.
She said the killings were giving rise to speculations that the victims were police assets who were being killed to stop them from revealing the police officials with links to illegal drugs. AFP
“So we need this inquiry to determine which of those operations were legitimate and which operations were carried out only to kill police assets so they would no longer talk,” De Lima said.
She said she had no intention to demoralize law enforcers in the all-out war against illegal drugs.
De Lima, the incoming head of the Senate’s justice committee, said she will file early this week her resolution calling for a Senate inquiry on the series of killings since Duterte launched his war on illegal drugs.
On Sunday, Senator Win Gatchalian also called on the National Police Commission and the police to take action against the growing violence in the war on drugs as the body count of illegal drug suspects continued to rise by the day.
“Napolcom and PNP should uphold President Duterte’s rejection of extra-judicial killings by undertaking comprehensive investigations into the recent police operations that have resulted in the deaths of the suspects apprehended,” Gatchalian said.