SolGen awaits President Marcos opinion on drug war truth commission

MANILA, Philippines — Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra is waiting for the opinion of President Marcos on the creation of an independent truth commission to “complement and expedite” the government’s ongoing probe into killings related to the past administration’s war on drugs.

Guevarra said he submitted to Malacañang a proposal to create the commission last year, but has yet to get an answer.

“I submitted a memo on that proposal last year but I guess the President is still feeling it out. Maybe he believes what we’re doing is already sufficient. So maybe that’s one reason why this proposal hasn’t gotten full traction yet,” he told “The Chiefs” on CignalTV’s One News Tuesday night.

Under the Office of the Solicitor General’s proposal, the commission would work separately and independently from the investigation currently being conducted by the task force headed by the Department of Justice.

Guevarra believes that creating this independent body is a workable solution to expedite the investigation into the drug war killings, citing the previous commissions he had worked on, such as the Davide Commission that investigated the coup d’état of December 1989 and the Feliciano Commission for the Oakwood rebellion, both of which resulted in “cases due to their independent investigations.”

“All of these had outputs and all of these resulted in cases because of their independent investigations. So that is one way of complementing the regular investigation being conducted by our law enforcement agencies,” he said.

“But that’s not to say that what we’re doing right now is failing… we’re not saying that the existing investigation right now is insufficient. What we want to say is we can speed things up,” he added.