MANILA – Lawmakers urged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to dismantle at least 26 big-time illegal drug syndicates still operating in the country especially now that she has taken a direct hand in the campaign.
The call was made by members of the Committee on Dangerous Drugs of the House of Representatives, which recently conducted public hearings, highlighted by allegations that the country’s “drug lords” have bribed state prosecutors into dismissing the charges filed against them.
“The President should bust wide open the remaining 26 big drug syndicates operating in the Philippines with impunity,” said Congressman Antonio Cuenco of Cebu province in the Visayas. “She should lead the arrest and prosecution of these merchants of death.”
Cuenco, the vice chairman of the dangerous drugs committee, also revealed that two provinces in Mindanao – Misamis Occidental and Lanao del Sur – have become major sources of illegal drugs.
The information, he said, was relayed to the committee during a closed-door hearing by officials of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Authority (PDEA), headed by retired military general Dionisio Santiago.
Cuenco lamented that law enforcers are also aware of this but he expressed surprise why they have done nothing to stop the drug syndicates operating in the two provinces.
According to Cuenco, there were originally 32 drug syndicates in the PDEA’s “order of battle,” but their number was reduced to 26 because the PDEA already succeeded in dismantling six of these groups.
One of the remaining syndicates, Cuento disclosed, is the so-called Lim Group operating in his home province of Cebu and some parts of Central Visayas.
At the same time, Cuenco said the other members of the committee, headed by Congressman Roquito Ablan of Ilocos Norte province in Northern Luzon, are preparing remedial legislation to help strengthen concerned agencies, like the PDEA, in the campaign against illegal drugs.
In particular, he said they already drafted a proposal which aims to increase the penalties for judges, state prosecutors and law enforcers who bungle illegal drug cases.
Under the Revised Penal Code, a judge rendering an unjust decision faces maximum imprisonment of just six years, the same penalty imposed on erring state prosecutors as well as law enforcers, Cuenco noted.
The bill, he said, proposes to increase the jail term for judges to 20 years and 12 years for state prosecutors and law enforcers.
Cuenco justified the imposition of harsher penalties as he disclosed that during the committee hearing, they learned that many of the cases filed against drug suspects have been dropped due to the non-appearance in court of arresting lawmen and prosecutors.
He revealed that the government has a “poor batting average” in the fight against drug lords, saying that since 1998, it succeeded in securing only 24 convictions out of the thousands of drug cases filed in court.
But with President Arroyo now in charge of the campaign, Cuenco expressed optimism the government would score more victories in the fight against the drug menace, which has become a national security problem.
In Malacanang, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said that President Arroyo ordered concerned agencies to spare no one in the campaign, including her supporters.
Ermita did not clarify but he was apparently referring to reports that the three drug suspects arrested in September 2008 by PDEA agents in Metro Manila, belong to rich and influential families whose “connections” went as high as Malacanang.
“There will be no sacred cows,” Ermita emphasized. “The campaign will go all the way and anyone who may be involved, whoever they may be, they will have to account before the law.”
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