Nephew of top Southern officials nabbed on drug charges

MAASIN CITY, Southern Leyte—Police have arrested the city’s alleged No. 1 drug pusher who happens to be a nephew of the provincial governor and the province’s representative in Congress.

Simon Misa Mercado, 36, is now detained at the Maasin jail after police collared him in a buy-bust operation in Barangay Tagnipa  past 7 p.m.

Mercado, a job order utility worker at the provincial hospital, is the son of a first cousin of Governor Roger Mercado and his younger brother, Southern Leyte Representative Damian Mercado.

Senior Superintendent Armando Bolalin, the provincial police director, said the suspect was Maasin’s No. 1 drug pusher, allegedly supplying almost all shabu retailers in the city.

Mercado told the Inquirer in an interview in jail on Friday that it was poverty that drove him to sell drugs, and he blamed his uncles for his plight because they did not give him a permanent job.

Senior Inspector Alvin Matibe of the police provincial office said two medium-sized sachets of shabu, a .45 caliber pistol with 14 cartridges, a revolver, P19,000 in cash and some drug paraphernalia were found on Mercado during the buy-bust operation.

The  police also confiscated a Kia sedan with plate No. YDV 714 registered to “JI U BAK” of Barangay Banilad, Cebu City.

Charges were expected to be filed on Friday at the prosecutor’s office.