PDEA is not blameless

“If you support the war on drugs in its present form, then you're only paying lip-service to the defense of freedom, and you don't really grasp the concept of the sovereign individual human being.”
--Neal Boortz

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA-6) is reportedly not happy that some of those linked in illegal drugs in Western Visayas won either as councilors or punong barangay (village chief) in the May 14, 2018 Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) and barangay elections.
PDEA-6 Regional Director Wardley Getalla, in fact, called the victory of narco-barangay officials as an “insult” to their agency saying they didn’t deserve to be elected in public office.
Getalla is correct that these narco-barangay officials are not supposed to hold an elective position.
They should be in jail, not in the barangay halls funded by the taxpayers.
But PDEA is not blameless.
PDEA and other agencies tasked to neutralize the spread of illegal drugs slept on their job, to say the least.
They had ample time to prevent evil with an ounce; they will now have to deal evil with a pound of cure.
Some of those narco-village rulers would not have participated in the elections if the the agency, tasked to implement or cause the efficient and effective implementation of the national drug control strategy formulated by the Dangerous Drugs Board, did its job.

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If PDEA was able to identify them as narcotics personalities months or years back, it should have filed cases against them before or even without the elections.
PDEA only disclosed their names (not all of the 200 names were really engaged in illegal drugs) on April 30, 2018, or two weeks before the elections.
By that time, most people have already made up their minds.
In fact, PDEA’s so-called “witch hunting” did not scare some people.
It even benefited some of the those on PDEA’s shame list as they ended up as underdogs; some of them managed to use the controversy to gain sympathy and appeal to people’s emotion claiming they were victims of black propaganda and persecution.
Thus many of those on PDEA’s pre-election anti-illegal drugs radar won handily, which is tantamount to a slap on the faces of our authorities, especially the PDEA.
PDEA failed to beat to the draw these newly-elected narc-village officials, who should have been apprehended as well as searched, as provided by law, for being law violators and the proceeds or effects of their crimes be seized.

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