MANILA, Philippines — A ranking member of the Liberal Party (LP) on Wednesday lambasted Philippine National Police (PNP) officer-in-charge Archie Gamboa and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Chief Aaron Aquino for criticizing Vice President Leni Robredo’s report about the government’s war on drugs.
“The data came from them. Why are they criticizing the data mentioned by Vice President Leni in her report when they were the ones who submitted these numbers during her short stint as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs,” said Erin Tañada, the Liberal Party’s vice president for external affairs.
“Are they now disowning their own data?” said Tañada.
Tanada is also a human rights lawyer and former lawmaker.
If law enforcement arms, such the PDEA and PNP, are disowning their own numbers, then the drug campaign is clearly a failure, said Tañada.
“If they are disowning their own data, then this shows that the drug campaign is really a failure because they are not relying on their own evidence,” Tañada said.
The former lawmaker said the campaign is really doomed to fail if the government is unaware of what it is up against.
“Para kang pumunta sa giyera nang hindi mo pinag-aralang maigi kung sino ang makakalaban mo,” said Tañada.
Instead of criticizing Robredo, Tanada said concerned government agencies should take her report seriously and use it as guide on how to meet the drug menace head-on.
Robredo, in her report on the drug war based on her 19-day stint as ICAD co-chair, gave Duterte’s anti-drug campaign a score of “1 out of 100”, saying that authorities were only able to seize 1% of the total supply of illegal drugs in the country. (Stacy Ang/JGo/CurrentPH.com)
