BATTLE-READY Members of a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) police team raid a house in a Pasig City slum to serve a search warrant as part of President Duterte’s deadly campaign against illegal drug trafficking. AFP
The government has no policy to kill drug suspects; it is just enforcing the law to protect people from the menace of illegal drugs, Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said on Wednesday.
Pimentel’s defense of the government’s war on drugs came after former Colombian President César Gaviria’s statement that the drug problem in the Philippines could not be solved by killing drug suspects.
“There is no doubt that tough penalties are necessary to deter organized crime. But extrajudicial killings and vigilantism are the wrong ways to go,” Gaviria wrote in an opinion piece published in the New York Times this Wednesday.
READ: Ex-Colombia leader’s comment
Reacting to the former leader’s statement, Pimentel said it was “common sense” that killing people should not be allowed in any country.
“Common sense na iyon e (It’s plain common sense). Killing people is not the solution. You are enforcing the law. We are against drugs because it destroys people. So, how can we kill people to protect people? So killing people is not really the answer to any problem,” the Senate leader told reporters.
“Pero iyong sinabi ni former Presidente Cesar Gaviria (But former President Cesar Gaviria’s statement) like for example the decriminalization of the drug problem, that is wrong. Kasi (Because), we are dealing now with synthetic drugs. This is not only marijuana, synthetic drugs. We cannot ever even entertain making the use of making synthetic drugs as legal. No way,” he said.
Pimentel said law enforcers have to go after drug manufacturers and big time drug lords without killing them.
“No country, especially the Philippines, should not apply the policy to kill,” he said, noting that death penalty is not even allowed in the country.
Duterte and his allies in Congress though are pushing for the revival of the capital punishment either on drug-related cases or heinous crimes.
Duterte and Pimentel both belong to the ruling party, PDP-Laban./ac