Reader’s Views Underestimating the president

Whenheformallytookoverthehighestpostoftheland,President Rodrigo Duterte announced with authority his relentless and sustained campaign against the eradication of illegal drugs in the country. His words came into reality when he read in public the names of persons involved in the illegal drugs trade.

In his inaugural speech at Malacañang Palace, he advised the membersofCongressandtheJudiciaryinattendance,saying“…Mind your own work and I will mind mine…” Envisaging the outcome of his campaign against illegal drugs, the president affirmed his avowed promise to the Filipino people -- set the country free from the drug menace.

It is a fact that a lot of Filipino families have been in shamble because of drug abuse and addiction. Either the parents or their children have made themselves an easy prey to the proliferation of illegal drugs – an alarming situation that caught the attention and concern of the new administration. Just imagine, a father, a mother, a son or a daughter has been selling or possessing prohibited drugs. Time and again, President Duterte spoke about the enormity of the drug problem in our country in many of his speeches during the campaign period for the presidential race.

But despite all his efforts in stamping out the drug problem, a lot of President Duterte’s critics openly criticized and blamed him for the numerous drug-related extrajudicial killings. They claimed the president was no longer in control of the situation. He needed to be stopped.

Prominent among them were Senator Leila de Lima and Senator Antonio Trillanes. From the Catholic Church, one bishop called President Duterte a liar. This, after the president asked for another three months in his relentless campaign to solve the drug menace.

Issues of national interest are open for discussion and anybody is free to express his own personal opinion without maligning other person’s reputation. Accusing the president of being a liar is unacceptable, considering the gravity and the severity of the drug problem.Aone-sided opinion coming from the man of God is really surprising and uncalled for.

Another high-ranking official of the Roman Catholic Church, Teodoro C. Bacani, bishop-emeritus of the Diocese of Novaliches, got the chance to criticize President Duterte during a religious gathering in Manila when he said: “The Lord in His mercy knocks, and when He knocks, He brings peace. Today, we in the Philippines also get knocks. We call it tokhang. But this tokhang is not a bringer of peace. It is a bringer of death.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if the good bishop criticized the president in the sense that he could not make himself different from the collective stance of the Catholic Church, accusing the government’s way of killing drug pushers and drug users outside the ambit of law.

We call it extrajudicial killing because the pusher or the user died without the benefit of a court hearing. Under our present law, there is no penalty of death for a person accused and convicted of selling and possessing prohibited drugs; the maximum punishment is only life imprisonment, according to Sections 5 and 11 of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

I can be corrected on this but based on previous reports and information I got from the tri-media outlets and the internet, not a single government or Catholic Church official from the Visayas and Mindanao had the courage to criticize the president for whatever reasons. President Duterte’s critics all come from Luzon or from Metro Manila areas.

When asked by media reporters after meeting the President in Malacañang Palace, CebuArchbishop-Emeritus Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal straightforwardly answered “no comments,” referring to President Duterte’s bloody war against illegal drugs. The good Cardinal gave the right answer and it elicited no further negative reactions from the president's critics.

The irony of it all is that the mire of criticisms against the president emanated from his critics in Luzon, not from the Visayas and Mindanao. Sad to say, they include high-ranking officials of the Catholic Church who criticized the president without digging deeper into the underlying facts of all the extrajudicial killings that transpired.

Are they underestimating the intelligence and the capability of the president in running the affairs of the government on account of his Visayan descent? Well, the opportune time has come and it is now the turn of the Visayan president to rule this country undictated by the elite groups of Imperial Manila.