My friend, Gov. Eddie “Among Ed” Panlilio, a former priest and currently Governor of Pampanga has finally announced that he is running for President because as he says, “God is calling him.” Despite my being a conservative Catholic, I supported Among Ed in his quest to seek the Governorship of Pampanga, because the people there had no more good choices for their Governor. But running for the Office of the Presidency is another story, because this is already a national office and he needs a national organization (not to mention, a huge budget) in order to win this battle.
I don’t know who are the advisers of Gov. Among Ed, but he ought to seek re-election in Pampanga because his three years in office is just too short, and he has so much to do there, which is why I suspect that one smart way of getting rid of him in Pampanga is to entice, cajole or shove him to run for President. But if you look at the surveys, Among Ed is not even on the radar screen. So this early, you can say that this is a Quixotic quest!
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When Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) declared an All-Out War against Illegal Drugs, quite timely, my friends from the University of Asia & the Pacific (UAP) led by Pete Dimaculangan, Pert Cabatana and Manuel “Awit” Tan invited me to attend a roundtable discussion with Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Regional Director II Randy R. Pedroso and his Deputy Director Yogi Filemon Ruiz for a no-holds-barred discussion on the state of the anti-illegal drug campaign in Central Visayas.
What we gathered was that only last January, the PDEA created for Central Visayas the Regional Inter-Agency Anti-Illegal Drugs Action Group together with the Philippine National Police (PNP), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Bureau of Customs, Coastguard and the Armed Forces of the Philippines to fight the illegal drugs menace. One output of this inter-agency task force was the close to 40,000 marijuana plants in Barangay Bayong, Balamban. This was a surprise to me because since the shipbuilding industry grew in Balamban, I thought that this old practice disappeared.
Mind you, Balamban used to be the hotbed of New People’s Army (NPA) activity until the entry of the Shipbuilding industry 10 years ago and this problem disappeared. But apparently, the lure of quick money has led enterprising farmers to plant marijuana, but they got caught! I’m glad that this was one of the inter-agency’s success stories.
However as for Central Visayas, the figure that Director Pedroso told our group was there were 3,095 drug dependents in Region VII. Compared to the nationwide figure, you would think that this figure in minuscule. But as expected the barangays of Cebu City, like Ermita, Pasil, Calamba and Duljo-Fatima are the most drug influenced areas. As per PDEA’s statistics, there are 6.7 million drug dependents in this country, a huge figure of our population, which is why I agree with the President’s move to call for an all-out war against illegal drugs.
So the big question is, whether this call by the President for an all-out war against illegal drugs is mere lip service, or was this merely a knee-jerk reaction to that news about the fate of a PDEA agent’s daughter? But if the President is dead serious in fighting this war, she should first gather information where the government is weak in its enforcement of its laws and where it is strong.
For instance, we’ve written here before that the prerequisite drug test required by the Land Transportation Office (LTO) before one could get a new or renewal of his driver’s license hasn’t been of any help to the anti-drug campaign. I asked this specific question to Regional Director Randy Pedroso and he told our group that there was no coordination between the LTO and PDEA, so all this drug test by LTO is nothing but nonsense and a money-making venture of the “special friends” of the LTO. So GMA ought to scrap this stupidity and save our drivers all the hassle and useless money spent for drug testing that hasn’t done anything to forward the anti-drug campaign.
To win the campaign against illegal drugs, the Executive and the Judiciary should come up with a bold and novel plan to speed up our snail’s paced Justice system and create a super body that would focus on fighting the drug menace. We’ve seen how difficult this fight is especially in Colombia or in Mexico. Lastly, let’s get rid of that outdated slogan that declares, “Jail the Pusher, Save the User!” It must be said that those drug users create the demand for drugs; hence it is the pushers who fill their appetite for illegal drugs. This war isn’t Gloria’s war; it is our war against illegal drugs!
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For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mozcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.