By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA
One of the readers of my blog posted at Face Book about a
poster titled: “Mga miyembro ng media na
nasa drugs papangalanan na ni Duterte”.
I knew it was teaser but I have experienced about the bravados of some members
of the Fourth Estate crowing to me when my ears were still wet on the
profession.
 |
DRUG ADDICTS. Illegal substance shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride)
users in the Philippines. PHOTO CREDIT: Starmometer.com |
Ito tatagalugin ko na lang kasi pati pala sa funeraria binabasa na iyong blog
ko ng mga imbalsamador I met on the crime scenes where policemen and drug pushers encountered that caused the
demise of the latter.
“Sabi sa akin ni Media Man X noong chief
of police pa si General Y, may nahuli si hepe na isang sakong high end na
marijuana from Baguio City called “Buntot
Pusa”.
When the pushers, who were Igorots, were being processed for filling of cases
by the chief of police, Media Men X and Z were busy ransacking the content of
the sack and putting some of them in their knapsacks.
When the colonel appeared at the door he saw them stealing some marijuana
leaves.
“Ano iyang ginagawa niyo?” the
colonel barked.
“A wala ito idol, kumukuha lang kami ng
mga Exibits A, B, C, and D para magamit namin,” X said.
“Bakit mga abugado ba kayo at kelangan ninyo
ng Exibits?” the chief posed and laughed.
Those media men were “sui generis” or
“unique”, they have immunity from
arrest not only for stealing some narcotics but even using them while they
interview politicians and police officials.
***
“Mga 80 percent ng
kaso dito sala ko puro drugs (Roughly 80 percent of the cases in my watch is
drug related),“ a judge of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) told me in
Lingayen when I asked him about the influx of drug pushers being charged at his
sala.
“Since drug selling of
shabu is non-bailable, do you have any experiences about a suspect given bail
because evidence was weak as what the Constitution provides as exemption to the
no-bail provision?” I posed.
He told me the entire drug selling cases he litigates he did
not give bail to the accused.
“Don’t tell anybody, I
rooted for Duterte for the presidency in the last election because I want to
see an end to the unabated proliferation of illegal drugs in the country,”
he whispered to me.
The 80 percent litigants who were charged with the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 or Republic Act No. 9165 at the sala of this judge, a former practicing
lawyer, a law professor, and alumnus of the elite Ateneo de Manila’s law school,
are endemic in all RTC’s all over the country.
You go to the detention cells of the Bureau of Jail &
Penology in the country and you will see that most of the detainees there are
charged with illegal drugs.
President Rodrigo Duterte was correct when he said that
without a knuckled duster approached to drug, pushers become emboldened and the
Philippines would become a narco-state like Colombia and Mexico in the next
four to six years.
I saw a documentary at YouTube about a proud new chief of
police in Mexico telling the public in his inauguration one morning that he
would not be likened with his predecessors who were under the payroll of drug lords.
Just hour after he partook his
lunch, he was ambushed to death by pickup trucks riding gunmen
when he was bound to his police office.
Another incident about how long and powerful the tentacles of drug lords like
that of the Los Zetas, Guadalajara, and Sinaloa in Mexico were when the U.S
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) helped the corruption tainted Mexican security forces for the entrapment of the equivalent of our
Secretary of the Department of Interior &
Local Government.
That head of a cabinet told authorities that he received almost U.S $500,000 every month from the cartels.
