Robredo backs ex-Colombian president: Learn from experience
Vice President Leni Robredo on Thursday expressed support for former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria who said President Rodrigo Duterte was committing the same mistakes he did when he fought his country’s war on drugs.
Gaviria wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times where he urged Duterte to avoid the mistakes he had committed.
In her first press briefing since resigning from the Duterte Cabinet last year, Robredo said history would show that countries that resorted to violence in dealing with the drug problem did not succeed.
“Mahalaga ‘yung statement ng former president dahil dumaan siya sa ganoong track. Mahalaga ‘yung kwento niya hindi para sundin natin kundi para kapulutan natin ng aral,” Robredo told members of the media. (The statement of the former president is important because he went through the same track. His story is important not for us to emulate but for us to learn from it.)
Highlighting Gaviria’s suggestion to decriminalize drug consumption and deal with the problem as a public health and social issue, Robredo urged the Duterte administration to listen and learn from Colombia’s experience.
“Sana ‘yung pamahalaan pakinggan ‘yung kwento at karanasan ng mga dumaan na diyan para hindi natin nauulit ‘yung mga mali. Kung titingnan natin, ‘yung past 7 months, inuulit natin ‘yung ganoong cycle,” she said. (I hope the government listens to his story and looks at the experience of those who have gone through the same so that we don’t repeat the mistakes. We can see that in the past 7 months, we have been going through the same cycle.)
“Hindi naman makakasama sa atin na makinig. Hindi naman makakasama sa atin na pag-aralan din ‘yung pinagdaanan nila. It is worth looking into dahil sa matagal na niyang karanasan sa pakikipaglaban sa illegal drugs,” Robredo added. (It would not hurt us to listen. It would not be bad for us to look into what they experienced.)
In his opinion piece, Gaviria, who served as Colombian president from 1990 to 1994, said the war on drugs was essentially a “war on people,” noting that it could not be won by a heavy-handed approach that merely focussed on law enforcement.
Duterte responded by calling Gaviria an idiot for supposedly lecturing him.
The Duterte government’s antinarcotics campaign has claimed about 2,500 lives in police operations, while another 3,500 to 4,000 have been classified as deaths under investigation. CBB/rga
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