All the President’s men

By: Reyshimar Arguelles

DON’T we all love a good Senate grilling?

Apart from the usual fanfare we get from telenovelas with recycled storylines, there’s also a hefty share of drama and suspense to be had from Senate committee hearings.

It’s almost as though you’re watching an anthology of related stories, interwoven by a common trope: outright deceit.

It’s no surprise that power has the tendency to corrupt and being in law enforcement puts you in a position where there’s always the risk of going down a suicidal route.

This should’ve been all too clear for PNP Chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde when he headed the Provincial Police Office of Pampanga. Under his watch, he facilitated an operation in Mexico, Pampanga where 13 policemen were found to have recycled the drugs they recovered. And now that he has been linked to the issue of “ninja cops” moonlighting as drug recyclers, Albayalde has to bail himself out of a predicament that has a lot more at stake than the prospect of being able to enjoy his pension fund.

The reputation of Phililppine law enforcement is undergoing an intense debacle, if it hasn’t already been pilloried enough for the spate of extrajudicial killings that have been tarnishing the PNP’s name ever since President Duterte made explicit threats to kill anyone who’s involved in the drug trade.

Duterte had promised to solve the illegal drugs issue three to six months into his presidency. He would, later on, admit that the war on drugs is unwinnable. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the Palace itself cannot fully take the PNP into account for the way it conducts drug raids.

So long as the number of apprehensions and neutralizations of known drug offenders rack up, the government doesn’t worry about the more critical issues that have hounded its agenda since day one. No one likes to talk about collateral damage and the lack of due process for drug offenders so long as bodies continue to pile up. But what’s even more disturbing is the fact that no one seems to care about how some of our men in uniform have questionable morals and loyalties.

Former chief of the PNP’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and now Baguio City mayor Benjamin Magalong accusation against Albayalde doesn’t come close to being a significant revelation. It’s a given that people in authority get blinded by the immense power they wield, thinking as though clandestine activities are part of a culture that doesn’t seem to wilt away.

Albayalde, for his part, didn’t take Magalong to be the most credible person to accuse him of protecting policemen who were in the forefront of the drug recycling business.

Senator Dick Gordon, on the other hand, was adamant in taking Albayalde’s defense as a desperate attempt at explaining that the phone calls he had made to the Phililppine Drug Enforcement Agency Chief Aaron Aquino (who headed the Central Luzon Regional Police Office back then) didn’t have the features of a whitewash.

But what’s already clear is that the CIDG discovered that only 38 kilograms of a 200-kilogram drug haul were accounted for. Added to this is the fact that the policemen who conducted the operation were given only a slap on the wrist, as if what they’ve done pales in comparison to what drug lords have wrought.

Whether or not Magalong is credible does not explain the fact that the government isn’t really that serious when it comes to its own plans of ridding the country of the scourge that is illegal drugs.

While on a state visit to Russia, Duterte wants Albayalde to undergo due process and finally prove if he really has the integrity to lead the PNP. It’s this kind of privilege that many of the drug war’s victims were deprived of. Go figure.