The wrong person for the job

Former president Rodrigo Duterte said he has turned down calls for him to become drug czar in the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Speaking during his “Gikan sa Masa, para sa Masa” TV program hosted by evangelist Apollo Quiboloy over SMNI channel last Wednesda, Duterte said he would rather the president assume the duty to fight drugs.

“Mukhang hindi na rin tama, pastor, because there is the president duly elected and it is his duty to enforce the law and solve crimes,” the former president said.

We are not sure who made the call or where that came from, but we think Duterte made the right choice to turn down the suggestion to be drug czar, which is a bad suggestion to begin with.

In all likelihood he won’t have much impact on the present drug problem.

Look at it this way; he couldn’t stop drugs when he was president, even with all the power and influence he had at his fingertips. Aside from begging for more and more time to solve it, he himself admitted toward the end of his term that he could no longer solve the drug problem and it had become too big for him to handle.

There is no reason to believe he will be able to do so with a diminished position like a drug czar.

There is also this issue with his methods. While we have to admit that his methods did work for a city like Davao, it was not applicable to the drug problem of an entire country.

Even President Marcos’ announcement last year that the war against drugs will continue albeit in another direction and focus more on prevention and deterring drug use among teenagers was a tacit admission that the Duterte way --addressing only the supply of drugs and not the demand for it-- was the wrong way to deal with the drug problem.

There is no doubt Duterte gained a lot of experience during his presidency and some of this knowledge can be used to help Marcos run the country and even benefit the Philippines. He may yet have some role to play in this administration but drug czar shouldn’t be one of them.