THE Palace on Thursday expressed alarm after the Senate slashed an estimated P1.4-billion funding for the Philippine National Police war on drugs, which has been widely blamed for thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration.
“Well obviously, the President needs to fund his pet undertakings and the drug war is one of his undertakings,” Palace Spokesman Harry Roque told reporters in a phone-patch interview.
With the President declaring that he would eventually return the control of the anti-drug campaign to the PNP, Roque said that the move “will have an adverse effect” since the President “cannot fund his war on drugs.”
He hoped that the Congress’ bilateral conference committee will reconsider its decision to give up funding for the drug war—even if the slashed amounts will be realigned to housing programs for the military and police.
“Well that’s not final yet, that is subject of bicameral conference and I’m sure the PNP will be asked for its opinion about this development,” Roque said, adding that he has not gone through the Senate version yet.
On Thursday, the Senate passed on third and final reading the proposed P3.767-trillion 2018 national budget, which slashed more than P900 million for the proposed budget of Oplan Double Barrel and the P500-million proposed outlay for the Interior Department’s Masa Masid.
Instead, these have been realigned to the AFP and PNP housing programs and the acquisition of body cameras during police operations.
The PNP altogether was allocated P131.628 billion in the Senate’s version of the budget.
The realignment was made on the presumption that the PNP was no longer the lead agency in President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
The amount, however, remains intact in the House version of the national budget.
The House of Representatives approved the budget measure in September before the transfer of the control over the anti-drug campaign to the PDEA.
Duterte on Wednesday said he would not listen to human rights advocates who complain about his war on drugs.
“Forget about it. Your complaints would just fall on deaf ears. I will not listen to you,” Duterte said in a mix of Filipino and English in Sual, Pangasinan.
He also slammed human rights advocates and “their counterparts also off their rockers” for merely looking at the number of deaths, without asking about narco-politics.
Dutere again said shooting a drug suspect who has already surrendered is murder.
“The only way that you can shoot and kill a person, is when your life itself…is in danger. That’s the only justification,” he added.