President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday scored former President Benigno Aquino for not even trying to find out the extent of the drug problem in the Philippines.
Citing that he is operating on a budget prepared by the Aquino administration—half of which, he said, was already gone, Duterte said that Aquino never anticipated the illegal drug trade that crept past his administration.
“Maybe he did not realize the gravity of the drug problem because he simply did not know or never attempted to know,” Duterte said in a speech during the 80th anniversary of the National Bureau of Investigation.
Even Aquino’s then Justice secretary and now Senator Leila de Lima, who is accused of coddling drug lords at the New Bilibid Prison, “allowed the drug industry to take place.”
“Now the portals of the national government has been opened to the creeping influence of drugs. You must remember that Leila … was the secretary of Justice herself and she allowed the drug industry to take place.”
“Some of the agents of this bureau testified against her. I don’t know them, but most of them are credible,” Duterte said, referring to the congressional probe into drug proliferation at the national penitentiary, which saw witnesses tagging De Lima as an alleged beneficiary of drug money.
Duterte insisted that intelligence operatives should look better at laundered money, which could reveal the links of his acclaimed nemesis.
“But there was a day which I would like to have come here and you know there are things which I do not like but we are in a crowd. You have to do more, you have to do more, especially on digging records that would show laundered money,” he said.
In the same speech, the President criticized the supposed “stupidity” of foreign governments urging him to focus on rehabilitation of drug dependents.
“I don’t know about the stupidity of foreign governments. They call me and ask me, ‘Why don’t you rehabilitate them?’ Correct. That is correct if you have the money,” Duterte said.
The President cited that there are almost three million drug addicts in the country, along with a long list of politicians implicated in his narco-list.
“So we have here, a three million drug addicts, all potential criminals. There are about 6,000 policemen. There are about 3,000 plus incumbent barangay captains,” he said.
“We have about 17 mayors. One of them just died. And we have about two congressmen and about three or four, I’m not sure of the four, governor,” he added.
Duterte likewise asked the Interior Department to continue with the revalidation of his list to complete the drug crackdown.