Headlines

Palace: 'War on drugs' not wasted opportunity

January 25, 2022 | 6:40pm

Palace: 'War on drugs' not wasted opportunity

A Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency agent secures part of a street holding residents temporarily during a drug raid in Maharlika Village, Taguig, south of Manila on Feb. 24, 2018. The drug raid was conducted to arrest five drug dealers, but only two were captured. President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs has left nearly 4,000 drug suspects dead and seen human rights groups claim he was responsible for a crime against humanity. The anti-drugs campaign enjoys popular support while the fiery-tongued Duterte has rejected any criticism of his human rights record.

AFP / Noel Celis

MANILA, Philippines — There were no missed opportunities in President Rodrigo Duterte's "drug war", Malacañang said Tuesday, after presidential aspirant Sen. Panfilo Lacson remarked that the campaign would have succeeded it if was properly implemented.

Lacson, a former police chief, recently described as "sayang" or wasted Duterte's controversial crackdown on narcotics, saying the campaign had focused on enforcement but not on prevention and rehabilitation.

He said he believes that Duterte had noble intentions in pursuing the "drug war" but maintained that the program would have succeeded without the police "having to resort to extrajudicial means."

"President Duterte did not waste anything in the fight against illegal drugs and the facts will speak for themselves," Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, acting presidential spokesman, said at a press briefing.

Nograles said the government has seized and destroyed more than P74 billion worth of illegal drugs and laboratory equipment from July 2016 to November of last year. He added that 23,686 barangays all over the country have been cleared of illegal drugs.

"The opportunity was not wasted and we continue our extensive campaign against illegal drugs here in the country," Nograles said.

Palace: We prohibit EJKs

The Palace spokesman reiterated that the government does not condone extrajudicial killings (EJK).

"We prohibit EJK. Any extra-judicial means is not allowed. We will prosecute those who should be punished, those who should be charged and even in the Department of Justice and the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation), the wheels of justice are in motion against anybody accused of any EJK," Nograles added.

More than 6,000 persons have been killed since Duterte waged a brutal campaign against illegal drugs, a policy that some sectors claimed violates human rights.

A pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has allowed a probe into the killings tied to the anti-drug campaign but Malacañang insists that the tribunal has no jurisdiction over the matter. Officials insist that the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, did not meet publication requirements and therefore, did not take effect in the Philippines.

The Philippine government recently asked the ICC to suspend the investigation, saying it is acting on the deaths associated with anti-drug operations. The ICC has agreed but has vowed to continue analyzing information related to the campaign.