"Who is right and who is wrong?"
"Who is right and who is wrong?"
In a scathing report, as she had promised, VP Leni Robrero declared that the anti-drug war of President Duterte is a massive failure.
Using data provided by the government, she said that only one percent of the total methamphetamine consumption of the country has been recovered. She likewise reported that only one percent or less of the more than one trillion drug money in the country had been frozen by the government. If we look at the anti-drug war in this limited prism, perhaps one could say that it is indeed a failure. She also pointed out that that the effort is too focused on street level enforcement that is why supply is not affected.
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency chief Aaron Aquino countered that VP Robredo’s assessment was based on wild assumptions. Aquino should have read the report more thoroughly. The Vice President was not making assumptions; she was making her own conclusions using government data.
Who is right and who is wrong?
If VP Robrero is wrong, then Aquino’s figures of having cleared 16,706 barangays of illegal drugs out of the total of 33, 881 or 49.13 of all barangays is truly outstanding. But if the disruption of the illegal drug supply is minimal as pointed out in the report, then there is something wrong with Aquino’s figure also.
The most effective and basic gauge of supply disruption is whether the price per gram of shabu has increased or decreased. And since there is no hard evidence that the street value of shabu has increased, this would seem to point to the validity of VP Robredo assertion that met supply has remained steady.
What is apparent from VP Robredo’s report and Aquino’s answers is the magnitude of the problem. In the words of the President himself, six years might not be enough to eradicate the problem and he is absolutely right. The problem is much bigger and more complicated than what the people really realize. By people, I mean Law enforcers, lawmakers and policy makers. As the report of VP Robredo tells us, the drug money circulating is so huge which makes the eradication of the problem much harder. And if we look at the history of the illegal drug problem and how it has developed in many countries in South America, Europe, North America and South Asia, and illegal drug industry has taken so much roots that it is hard to say whether eradication could still be possible.
As for our country, there might indeed still be a chance to reduce it to the barest minimum but it is going be hard. Whom should we believe, VP Robredo or Aaron Aquino? Neither because the reality is probably in between. VP Robredo did point to valid issues while Aaron Aquino, who has taken the cudgels of defending the government, has pointed out that there is in fact some improvement in the situation.
More precisely, the ongoing illegal drug war is a work in progress. Calling it a total and massive failure is a bit of a stretch. Calling the program a complete success is not right, either. Now is perhaps the best time to assess and review the program for the purpose of tweaking areas that need changes. If in fact it is already being done, the government must have a better way of marketing the program to both supporters and critics alike. For one, the government must do better in grappling with the issue of extrajudicial killing because this issue, more than anything else, is the one weighing down the drug war.
From 2016 where a lot of deaths occurred, this has significantly gone down over the last three years. The government must be able to develop a doable, credible response to this issue instead of the very hard-line approach that is currently being done. Relying on the very strong public support for the campaign is not enough.
At this stage of the ball game, perhaps the government could shift its attention to reducing the supply situation which we know is entering the country through our ports of entry without too much difficulty. One effective way of doing this is to enhance our law enforcement’s cyber capability to go after foreign players and local corrupt officials who are in cahoots with foreign drug suppliers. From a law enforcement perspective, the government’s inability to reduce in significant terms the illegal drug supply is the major weakness of the government campaign, if one can call it that. Also, it has fallen on the shoulders of the President to defend his signature program in his usual blunt and colorful way. This according to some critics of his is the reason why the President is sometimes his own worst enemy.
That may be true but it also an unmistakable fact that the reason that three years on, his approval rating is still over 80 percent, something that no other president in recent times could claim. This gives him the fodder to be able to do his own thing as he wants. The drug problem is such a big problem that it is a pity that our leaders from both the administration and the opposition cannot come together for a united and concerted effort to try to eradicate or reduce the problem to its barest minimum.
If there is anything that President Duterte has done, it is to highlight the magnitude and immensity of the problem. People are now more aware of the destructiveness of the problem and that if we remain complacent, we can go down like some countries that allowed the problem to take deep roots.
