Top police officials present seized drugs to journalists. INQUIRER PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
(Editor’s Note: President Duterte will deliver his third State of the Nation Address [Sona] on July 23. The Inquirer looks back at promises he made in Sona 2016 and Sona 2017, and how he and his administration performed on those promises. We will also look at major issues that marked his two years in office in our #Sona2018 series.)
The Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) claim success in carrying out President Duterte’s brutal war on drugs but seem not to have a way of measuring their progress.
At a joint news conference on July 11, the two law-enforcement agencies were asked how they measured their supposed success.
Senior Supt. Benigno Durana, spokesperson for the PNP, ticked off figures: 147,802 drug suspects arrested and facing charges in court, and 4,354 people killed in police drug operations.
“As far as success is concerned, we have quantified that we prevent them from continuously selling or using drugs for their own good. It’s logical. It’s common sense, isn’t it?” Durana said.
Later, he cited more than 2,000 drug-related “homicides under investigation,” including killings of suspects by “vigilantes” that human rights groups said were also the work of state agents.
Latest figures
The figures given by Durana were the latest from the government’s RealNumbersPH, covering the period from July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2018.
The same body of data covering the first two years of the Duterte administration and its campaign against narcotics lists 102,630 operations against drugs conducted, with 2,738.73 kilos of “shabu” (crystal meth) seized—worth an estimated P14.66 billion on the black market—and 6,562 barangays cleared of drugs.
But other common-sense data are lacking: If drug users and supply have actually lessened, if the arrests have led to convictions, and if anyone has been held criminally liable for killings admitted by police.
In an interview, Director General Aaron Aquino, the PDEA chief, said the agency still subscribed to the figure given offhand by President Duterte in 2016 on the number of drug users in the Philippines: 4 million.
Drug-use prevalence
“It should have lowered by now to show we are successful in our demand reduction [efforts],” Aquino said.
The PDEA chief said he would meet with the government’s interagency committee on illegal drugs to update the information.
The latest nationwide drug-use prevalence survey of the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) is from January 2015 to February 2016. It shows 1.8 million “current users” and a “lifetime prevalence” of 4.8 million Filipinos who have tried drugs at least once at the time.
In an earlier interview, DDB chair Catalino Cuy told the Inquirer that plans to conduct an updated survey this year fell through due to the lack of pollsters taking part in the bidding for the project.
Cuy said the DDB was instead planning to conduct its own this year on “feedback from the public” on the “ongoing campaign and activities on anti-illegal drugs,” such as whether “the public feels safer now.”
Asked whether the board could tell if the number of drug users or syndicates had gone down, Aquino was also neutral: “They haven’t increased because of our continuous operations; they haven’t decreased because they easily get replaced. People still fall victim [to narcotics] despite our operations.”
But he maintained that the PDEA had been able to dismantle local syndicates, referred to in the agency as “neutralized high-value targets.”
Trade value unknown
The DDB also has no estimate of the value of illegal drugs trafficked in the Philippines.
An official of the agency, who declined to be named for lack of authority to talk to journalists, said the narcotics problem was too “dynamic” to have such an estimate.
The only, and most recent, assessment of the value of the Philippine narcotics trade is an eight-year-old report of the US Department of State.
In its March 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the state department quoted the then PDEA chief as saying “the value of illegal drugs trafficked in the Philippines totals $6.4 to $8.4 billion annually.”
But in an interview following the release of the report, then PDEA Director General Dionisio Santiago denied the estimate, saying it was “impossible since the worth of illegal drugs trafficked worldwide is just P400 billion.”
‘High-value targets’
There was no estimate in the US state department’s 2017 report. For the “supply reduction” portion of the report on the Philippines, it detailed arrests and busts carried out by law enforcers in 2016.
During the PDEA’s 16th anniversary last month, the agency said that from June 2017 to May 31, 2018, it arrested 46,121 drug suspects, of whom 1,635 were “high-value targets,” including members of Mexican, African or Chinese drug syndicates, party drug suppliers, operators of shabu, marijuana and ecstasy laboratories and drug dens, and drug traders still masterminding operations although already in jail.
Aquino said that in the second year of the drug war, the PDEA saw “a closer relationship with international counterparts” for high-value operations, with syndicates from the Golden Triangle—Thailand, Laos and Myanmar—were “actively entering [the Philippines].”
The PDEA also declares as high-value targets government officials using drugs or linked to the drug trade. The latest RealNumbersPH data include 229 elected officials, 245 government employees and 52 uniformed personnel arrested since July 2016.
The agency also lists as an accomplishment its release of a barangay “narcolist” earlier this year in a shame campaign timed with barangay elections. The list showed 207 barangay officials allegedly “involved in illegal drug activities.”
So far, only two on the narcolist have been charged, Aquino said.
‘Narcopoliticians’
Recently, the PDEA chief announced that the President had another narcolist, with 87 politicians ranking from vice mayor and higher—including 67 mayors and seven congressmen.
“Revalidation,” “adjudication processes” and “case buildup” are going on for those on the list, Aquino said.
The President’s list of “narcopoliticians” originally had 96 names, including those of two local officials slain in law enforcement operations—Albuera, Leyte, Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. and Ozamiz Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog.
Another mayor on the list, Antonio Halili of Tanauan, Batangas province, was killed by a sniper on July 2.
“Natural deaths” and arrests have also pruned the list, Aquino said.
The PDEA counts among its accomplishments in the past year the arrests of Vice Mayor Luis Marcaida III of Puerto Princesa City in Palawan province, and of Mayor Aniceto Lopez Jr. of Maasim, Sarangani province.
Cases against cops
Durana said the PNP Internal Affairs Service (IAS) had investigated or was still looking into 4,152 drug-related cases against policemen, but only 325 criminal and administrative charges had been filed.
And so far, 398 had been found to be either using drugs and 226 “involved in the illegal drug [trade].”
Information is not available on how many policemen who have killed suspects in drug operations have been charged.
“There are many, but for now, we can’t give you the exact figure,” Durana said. “Of the 325 [drug-related cases in IAS] that have been resolved, we need to look closer at what these are—if they’re for homicide, or grave misconduct,” Durana said.
He said that in proportion to the number of drug suspects arrested, only 2.9 percent had been killed.
“This will, in a way, explain or dispel the accusation that the war on drugs is bloody,” he said.
Listening to criticism
Durana maintained that the PNP was dealing with concerns over fatal police operations.
“We are listening intently to the criticism that sometimes [operations] become bloody. There is a noted decline in deaths per operations. Previously, for every 100 operations,[five persons were] killed. Now, it is only one person killed for every 100 operations,” he said.
The PNP, he said, was tweaking its strategy to make it more effective.
“Oplan: Double Barrel,” the police drive against narcotics, has been made more transparent by involving journalists, local officials and human rights advocates, Durana said.
The PNP and the PDEA have also started to procure body cameras for officers and introduced more programs for “drug demand reduction,” including rehabilitation,” he said.
“We cannot rest on our laurels even if we had made a lot of headway. We should continuously look into strategies, listen to the public, on how to effectively address [the narcotics] malaise,” Durana said.