President Rodrigo Duterte dressed down police officials during a joint command conference at the Palace Tuesday night for being part of the drug problem instead of being the solution, Senator Christopher Go said Thursday.
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Go, a close aide of the President, quoted him as saying to them in Filipino: “How can I complete my campaign against drugs if you are the problem?”
Go said the President expressed his disappointment over the latest scandal in which crooked police officers—the so-called ninja cops–sold confiscated drugs, even though he had doubled policemen’s salaries.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said the President did not mention who would replace Oscar Albayalde as chief of the Philippine National Police after he abruptly resigned in the wake of the ninja cops scandal.
PNP officer-in-charge Lt. Gen. Archie Gamboa said he was ready for the challenge, even though his appointment is temporary.
“It’s a challenge [to] my leadership, even if I am just the OIC, that I should do something about the impression of the President,” Gamboa said in an interview with radio dzMM.
“I should have the initiative and I am preparing for it,” he added.
Albayalde, four weeks away from retirement, resigned after former police officers testified before the Senate that he had intervened in the dismissal of 13 of his subordinates, who reportedly kept 160 kilos of shabu from a drug bust in 2013 to resell.
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