Enlisting military for anti-drug operations ‘very dangerous’ – Ping

Former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief and now Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson yesterday warned President Duterte it would be “very dangerous” to enlist military personnel to perform anti-drug operations

and go after scalawags in the police organization.

“I’ll stand up against it because it would be chaotic if the one that would check on the anomalies of policemen would be the military,” Lacson told reporters in a press briefing.

“We might end up having armed people – legitimate armed forces – who would be fighting each other. Remember, it’s not only the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) which is armed, even the PNP is an armed force,” the senator said.

“It would be better if the national police itself conducts the internal cleansing against their scalawag members,” he said.

President Duterte had earlier said only the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and a select few from the AFP can conduct drug operations to avoid anymore scandals.

He declared this after dissolving all anti-illegal drugs groups of the PNP due to the killing of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo.

According to Duterte, police officers around the country are no longer allowed to enforce laws related to the drug campaign.

Sen. Leila de Lima also opposed the idea, saying the President has just exercised an emergency power of the commander-in-chief as provided for in the Constitution, calling out the AFP to suppress lawless violence, rebellion, or invasion.

De Lima said such plan cannot be invoked due to his own order suspending the PNP from conducting anti-drug operations.

“The problem here is that the President has wittingly drawn the military to his ‘Tokhang’ program, thus putting civil society in a bind of whether to choose the devil they know, of the PNP doing ‘Tokhang, or the devil they don’t know, the AFP implementing the same murderous Tokhang operations,” De Lima said.

De Lima argued the real issue is the legitimacy of a government antidrug program that sanctions killings and violations of human rights.

“The real problem is not the PNP or AFP per se, but the monstrous policy hatched in the bowels of Davao City and that gave rise to more than a thousand dead in that city and over 7,000 in the whole country. No pretext can change this root of the problem,” she said.

On the other hand, Lacson said the President’s assessment that 40 percent of the PNP are scalawags is “an overestimate” number and he himself “won’t believe that, won’t buy that.”

“It’s very dangerous. If I may again give an unsolicited advice, it would be to better rethink or reconsider the instruction of the President because that’s very dangerous,” he said.

“Unless there is really a huge breakdown in the discipline, say 90 percent of our police force are really scalawags, because who are you going to call to resolve the problem, the 10 percent?

“Definitely, the 10 percent would be hard put defeating the 90 percent but as I said, I wouldn’t believe that 40 percent of the PNP members are scalawags,” he said.

Negros Oriental Rep. Arnulfo Teves Jr. said the Chief Executive should be given a free hand to fully enforce the massive cleansing in the PNP.

“I don’t think he has completely lost trust in the PNP. But he is definitely realizing that some personalities in the organization are rogue and that these people will be detrimental to the success of his programs,” he said.