VIPs

When amendments are introduced to the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 or Republic Act 9165, among the reforms should be provisions to prevent the abuse of hospital confinement by inmates – whether detainees still facing trial or convicted prisoners.

Incarceration is always an unpleasant experience, and the stress can trigger a wide range of afflictions, from skin asthma breakouts to hypertension and even a heart attack. Curiously, wealthy and politically influential inmates are mostly the ones who get to seek treatment for health complaints in private hospitals outside local jails and national prisons. It seems government health centers can’t even handle dental services for these VIP inmates.

The other day, convicted Taiwanese drug trafficker Yu Yuk Lai was apprehended in her cell at the Correctional Institution for Women after a raid by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency led to the seizure of about P4.5 million worth of shabu. The PDEA agents were lucky to find Yu at the CIW. According to some reports, the Taiwanese has spent much of her life imprisonment confined in private health facilities, with the Metropolitan Hospital in Manila’s Chinatown said to be a favorite.

The Metropolitan, a long way from the CIW in Mandaluyong, is surrounded by establishments that serve good Chinese food, among them my favorite fresh lumpia and the old noodle shop from my childhood in Tondo. But Yu probably doesn’t check into the hospital regularly just for the food. She was previously caught spending her “detention” in a casino.

A Manila regional trial court judge and a Court of Appeals justice have been kicked out of the judiciary by the Supreme Court for giving Yu VIP treatment. This time, how many individuals in the women’s correctional were aware of her continuing drug operations?

And how many cops benefited from protecting Yu’s CEO, her daughter Diane Uy? Only one – Police Officer 3 Walter Vidad of the elite Special Action Force – has been named so far as Uy’s bodyguard. But another escort is reportedly a member of the Presidential Security Group, which is plausible, because you need PSG clearance to enter the San Miguel neighborhood around Malacañang, where Diane Uy ran the family business just a few meters away from one of the Palace gates.

Why are taxpayers even providing security to this woman? Philippine National Police officials claimed yesterday that Uy had requested protection amid kidnapping threats. The PNP also claimed it was not aware that Uy is the daughter of a notorious drug dealer. This should give us an idea of why the drug bust was conducted by the PDEA and not the PNP.

As of yesterday afternoon, mother and daughter were still alive, their heads free of plastic bag and packing tape, with no possibility that they might resist arrest or manlaban. Yu will soon be back at the correctional – where else can you put her? One day soon she might even wangle a pardon on humanitarian grounds, considering she’s 72 and, like most aging inmates, can invoke many ailments.

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Yu can always count on some doctor issuing a diagnosis for chronic hypertension, maybe stomach pains, earache, or how about incontinence? If all else fails, there’s always the old reliable toothache. If you’re 72, you can’t be in the pink of health – especially if you’re behind bars. Some illness can always be dredged up to justify a hospital stay outside a prison facility.

Doctors may argue that it’s up to the courts and prison officials to decide whether an inmate should be allowed to seek treatment and confinement in a hospital outside regular detention facilities. But measures should also be implemented to discourage doctors and hospital administrators from acts that allow prisoners to evade justice.

Drug convicts aren’t the only ones who abuse this privilege. How many prominent (or notorious) personalities, faced with the possibility of detention without bail, suddenly find an excuse to move around in a wheelchair, or walk with a cane and wear a neck brace in public? As soon as they are cleared or freed on bail, all the props disappear.

Naturally, prolonged hospital stays facilitate drug trafficking and other criminal activities for the convict. If only for this, the executive and Congress should work on reforms to prevent the abuse of medical treatment and hospital stays for inmates.

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FOOT IN MOUTH: Another official has just learned the hard way that when criticizing the nation’s top appointing power, it’s best to keep such opinions if not to oneself, then at least away from mass media. Especially if the issue is the war on drugs.

There were people who agreed with the loquacious Dionisio Santiago when he proposed a new strategy against the drug menace, a tack that is supposed to be more balanced and in sync with President Duterte’s social reform agenda.

Called “Love Life, Fight Drugs,” the program calls for coordination with the National Youth Commission. Santiago, as head of the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), submitted his proposal to Malacañang and hoped for Du30’s approval.

What he got instead was the boot.

Santiago’s mistake was to tell the ABS-CBN News Channel that the multibillion-peso drug rehabilitation center in Nueva Ecija, donated by controversial Chinese businessman Huang Rulun who is under probe in his country for corruption, is “impractical” and “a mistake.”

The money, Santiago said, would have been better used to build smaller rehab centers across the country, where relatives can keep tabs of their drug dependent loved ones.

He actually made sense. As of yesterday, there were reportedly fewer than 400 patients in the facility with a 10,000-bed capacity. But Santiago suffered from foot-in-mouth disease, just like his predecessor in the DDB. Benjamin Reyes was unceremoniously fired by Du30 for contradicting the President’s figures on the number of drug abusers in the country.

“You’re fired today. Get out of the service,” Duterte told Reyes. “You do not contradict your own government… you’re just a civilian member of a board.”

By most accounts, Santiago’s sacking was less harsh. But there goes his kinder, gentler anti-drug program.