The significant decline in the Philippines’ crime rate is proof of the Duterte administration’s victory in its campaign against all forms of criminality, particularly illegal drugs, an official said Wednesday.
“This is clear proof that President Duterte’s drug war is winning,” Lt. Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, chief of the PNP Directorial Staff, said in a statement.
“And we have been on the right path in the campaign against illegal drugs because the consistent decline in crime means a continuous improvement in the peace and order.”
Eleazar made his statement even as Vice President Leni Robredo stood pat that the Duterte administration’s war on drug was a “massive failure,” and that “only less than 1 percent of the country’s shabu supply and drug money was seized.”
She reacted to the claim of the Philippine National Police and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency that she got the wrong data and information about the drug situation in the country.
“If they [the authorities] say my data are wrong, well those were [all] sourced from them,” Robredo said.
A ranking member of the Liberal Party also slammed the PDEA head Aaron Aquino and PNP officer-in-charge Archie Gamboa for criticizing Robredo’s report on the government’s war on drugs.
“The data came from them,” said Erin Tañada, a human rights lawyer and the Liberal Party’s vice president for external affairs.
“Why are they criticizing the data mentioned by Vice President Leni in her report when they were the ones who submitted these numbers during her short stint as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs?
“Are they now disowning their own data?”
From July 2016 when the drug war was launched up to June 2018, PNP data showed a 21.5-percent decline in the country’s crime rate compared to the crime data from July 2014 to June 2016.
For the entire 2018, there was a 9-percent decrease in the crime volume compared to 2017. An average of 3 to 5 percent was also recorded in the first three quarters of 2019.
Metro Manila is one of the favorite playing grounds of drug syndicates due to its huge population.
Eleazar highlighted the importance of Metro Manila in the link between crime and illegal drugs since the country’s main region serves as a picture of the crime situation in the country.
In highlighting the importance of peace and order in gauging the impact of the drug war, Eleazar noted some of the observations by the PNP leadership.
One of them, he said, was that most of the criminal acts committed were drug-related”•either the perpetrators were high on drugs when they committed rape or murder, or those who engaged in robbery and snatching were doing it to have enough money to buy shabu.
He added that in a number of cases, some of the arrested or slain drug users and pushers were involved in multiple criminal cases.
“We should also not forget that it is the people in the barangay themselves who were saying that the peace and order situation in their community has improved significantly because of the drug war. It is these people themselves who are now saying that the drug pushers and users, who used to be neighborhood toughies, are now scared,” Eleazar said.
Another proof, according to Eleazar, is that people in the community now have the courage to report to the police the drug users and pushers in their barangay because they see an ally in the police in running after suspects.
This is the reason, according to Eleazar, why the drug war continuously enjoys the trust and confidence of the public that eventually translated to high trust, satisfaction and popularity ratings of President Duterte in various surveys.
“It is unfair not to include the impact of the drug war on peace and order because it is the people in the community who experience and witness the improvement in peace and order due to our campaign against illegal drugs,” Eleazar said.
On Monday, Robredo, who served as co-chairman of Inter-Agency Committee on Illegal Drugs for 18 days, claimed that the Duterte administration’s three-year drug war seized only less than one percent of the total shabu supply in the country.
Citing police data, Robredo said the approximate consumption of shabu in the country was 3,000 kilos weekly or about 156,000 kilos a year
She also noted that only P1.4 billion worth of illegal drugs had been seized, despite the fact that around P1.3 trillion worth of shabu were circulating nationwide.
However, PNP spokesman, Brig. Gen. Bernard Banac said Robredo used unofficial data in her report on the war on drugs.
“These estimates are unofficial data. When you plan to sustain the anti-drug campaign, you have to do some estimates, and we do this by contingency planning,” Banac said in a television interview on Wednesday. With PNA