Duterte reorganizes security cluster

MANILA, Philippines - President Rodrigo Duterte has reorganized the cabinet security cluster to emphasize his intensified campaign against illegal drugs and crime.

The president issued executive order (EO) no. 7 designating defense secretary Delfin Lorenzana as the chairman of the Security, Justice and Peace Cluster of the cabinet.

It amended a 2011 order designating the executive secretary as chairperson of the security cluster.

"There is a need to designate the DND (Department of National Defense) Secretary as Chairperson of the Security, Justice and Peace Cluster in order to ensure that the thrust of the government to suppress and prevent lawless violence and win the fight against crimes, particularly illegal drugs and corruption, is achieved," Duterte said in the order dated October 14.

The executive secretary, the former chairperson of the cluster, will remain as one of its members. Other members of the security cluster are the cabinet secretary, the secretaries of interior and local government, foreign affairs and justice, the national security adviser, and the presidential peace adviser.

The National Security Council will serve as the cluster’s secretariat.

The security cluster has been tasked to protect the Philippines' national territory and boundaries, attain a just and lasting peace, ensure the welfare of overseas Filipino workers, strengthen the rule of law, institutionalize an efficient and impartial justice system that delivers equal justice to the rich and the poor and advance and protect human rights.

The security cluster is one of the five cabinet sub-groups. The other clusters are good governance and anti-corruption, human development and poverty reduction, economic development and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Duterte has vowed to step up a brutal campaign against illegal drugs and crime, a campaign promise that enabled him to win by landslide during the May 2016 polls. He initially promised to curb drugs and crime within the first six months of his administration but later on admitted that he would need another six months due to the sheer magnitude of the problem.