It’s killing time, Rody tells LGUs

MANILA, Philippines - Several prominent drug lords have started leaving the country upon realizing that President Duterte’s six-year term is “killing time,” the Chief Executive said on Wednesday.

“When they realized that killing time was coming, they fled. Now, they are using modern technology to give orders to their lieutenants,” Duterte told officers of the League of Cities and Provinces of the Philippines.

Duterte made the statement as he vowed to destroy the illegal drugs “apparatus” until all of them are wiped out.

He was referring to drug lords and their protectors, and the judges, prosecutors, mayors, governors and policemen who can be bought with drug money.

“And what they are able to see is (a picture of a woman) cradling a cadaver. There is drama because there is the apparatus. Unless I destroy the apparatus, we will have a problem. Three presidents from now would not be able to solve it,” Duterte said.

“Money is so corrosive. They can buy judges, fiscals, the police, mayors, governors,” he said.

He encouraged local government executives to join the campaign against illegal drugs, pointing out that while no one would want to kill people, there might not be a better solution to the crisis.

“There’s a huge problem, the enormity and the dimension of which has never been shown in the past of this country,” the President said. “So, how do you do it? It’s the apparatus. Destroy the apparatus. Until they are wiped out, you cannot not do anything.”

He hinted that the drug menace has become the cause of several problems in the country as it destroys the basic unit of society – the family.

“We are all threatened here. We just probably didn’t realize it. But come to think of it – a family with two children and one is a drug addict. It leads to broken marriages. Why? Because they start to blame each other. If you cannot handle the agony, then you will go on separate ways,” he added.

Duterte said he has asked the Armed Forces to open their camps for  “barracks” that would house drug users amid insufficient drug rehabilitation centers in the region.

“This is not a drug problem. It’s a drug crisis… 170,000 surrenderees. Is that a police problem? The police cannot solve it. They are into it. Mind you, this intrigue did not come from us. It came from an (intelligence) intercept. A country, a friend of ours, provided the intercept,” Duterte said.

316 dead in drug war

In the last 24 hours, at least 19 drug personalities were killed, bringing to 316 the total number of slain individuals in the intensified campaign against illegal drugs for the first 28 days of the Duterte administration.

Despite the public clamor against the spate of killings of suspected drug pushers and users, police authorities have yet to receive any formal complaint from relatives of slain suspects for possible abuses and violation of human rights by police operatives.

Senior Superintendent Dionardo Carlos, Philippine National Police spokesman, yesterday assured the public that concerned police units are investigating all drug-related killings.

“If laws and protocols were violated by our personnel, we ask them to file a complaint so we could address these properly,” Carlos said in a press briefing at Camp Crame. – Giovanni Nilles, Cecille Suerte Felipe