‘PDEA can’t take orders from Barbers’

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) cannot take orders from Sen. Robert Barbers, President Arroyo’s anti-drug czar, Senate President Franklin Drilon said yesterday.

"They cannot take orders from Senator Barbers, nor can Senator Barbers issue orders or directions to them," Drilon told dzBB’s Mike Enriquez in an interview. He said both could find themselves in trouble if they do that.

Enriquez brought up a hypothetical case. He asked Drilon if Barbers, after being told by an informant that a certain person is keeping two kilos of shabu in his house, can tell the PDEA to raid that house.

The Senate head said his drug czar colleague can relay the information to the PDEA but cannot tell or direct its personnel what to do.

"If he tells them what to do, he would be performing an executive function, a task that a senator cannot legally do," he said. On the part of the law enforcer, Drilon said he should not take orders from a person who is not his boss.

Barbers apparently did not appreciate the fine distinction, as Drilon saw it, between a lawmaker’s job and an executive function.

Interviewed by Enriquez after Drilon, Barbers disagreed with his Senate boss. "Ibig niyang sabihin, If I know that there is shabu in a certain house, I cannot tell the PDEA to raid that house? Hindi naman yata ganoon. "Even a civilian can do that," he said.

Sought later by The STAR to comment on this particular assertion of Barbers, Drilon said, "Yes, an ordinary taxpayer can do that, but not a senator, who is prohibited by the Constitution from doing it."

On Monday, Drilon accused Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye of being "totally ignorant" of the constitutional prohibition against lawmakers doing executive functions.

He was reacting to a statement of Bunye, a lawyer and a former congressman, that Barbers, as anti-drug czar can issue "operational directives" to the PDEA.