“The emphasis should not just be on reducing the drug supply but also on reducing the demand for illegal drugs”
WAS Rodrigo Duterte’s war on illegal drugs from 2016 to 2022 a “catastrophic failure”?
That’s how Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, lead chairman of the House Quad Committee that conducted a months-long probe of Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, described it, and the way we see it, it’s not off the mark.
It’s not only the scale of the drug war that Duterte unleashed throughout the country that makes it a catastrophic failure.
While it led to an officially acknowledged death toll of some 6,400 alleged drug suspects, human rights groups here and abroad claim that as many as 20,000 to 30,000 people may have been killed on Duterte’s orders, many of them small-time street dealers and drug users, with the really big-time drug traffickers laughing all the way to the bank instead of ending up behind bars.
What makes it a really catastrophic failure, according to Rep. Barbers, is that Duterte’s controversial war on drugs entrenched corruption within the Philippine National Police, promoted impunity, and led to widespread human rights abuses. We agree completely.
Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla went even further, saying that there existed a “grand conspiracy” within the police force to hide criminal activities.
Barbers, chairman of the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs, said the indictment of 30 police officers—including two generals—over a fabricated drug haul in 2022 offers “indisputable proof” of the systemic abuse engendered by Duterte’s scorched-earth and take-no-prisoners approach to the drug war.
Remulla previously described the fabricated drug haul, falsely presented as a major anti-drug success, as part of a broader conspiracy to conceal the PNP’s criminal activities. The DILG, he said, would investigate drug-related operations from 2016 to 2022, focusing on the reward system exposed during the Quad Comm hearings.
Testimonies from witnesses, including retired police colonel and former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office General Manager Royina Garma, revealed that the Duterte administration offered cash rewards for drug suspects killed, arrests made, and drugs seized.
Barbers echoed Remulla’s assertion that the reward system encouraged widespread abuses within the PNP, adding that the Duterte administration’s “reckless policies created the perfect storm for corruption.”
The DOJ is on the right track in prosecuting the 30 erring police officers involved in the planting of evidence in one of the country’s massive seizures amounting to P6.7-billion worth of shabu.
But the catastrophic failure that Duterte’s war on drugs turned out to be because of the number of people killed and the abuses and corruption it later revealed could well turn out to be a positive thing if he gets his comeuppance for crimes against humanity via the International Criminal Court, or even by our domestic courts if the Department of Justice is really serious in getting to the bottom of things and filing the proper charges against him.
Duterte has already admitted in his testimonies in the Senate and in the House of Representatives that he really ordered the police to bear down hard on drug suspects.
He has also repeatedly said he would take full responsibility if law enforcers would implement his directive to kill drug offenders.
This admission, made under the glare of television coverage, should tell us that Duterte should be made accountable for upending due process and the rule of law in this country during this six-year term.
Justice is what the families of victims of extra-judicial killings in
Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs are demanding. They should be given the chance to have their testimonies heard by competent courts.
As early as 2016, when reports began to surface of what seemed to be indiscriminate killings in the war on drugs, there were already warnings made both here and abroad that the problem of illegal drugs cannot be solved by police raids on suspected drug lairs and the arrest of thousands of drug suspects, mostly users rather than drug kingpins.
In other words, the emphasis should not just be on reducing the drug supply but also on reducing the demand for illegal drugs through mass education on the perils of illegal drug use and intensified efforts in the rehabilitation of drug dependents.
(Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)