Senator Panfilo Lacson. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES
“Aren’t you mad at the Bureau of Customs (BOC)?”
Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson posed this question to President Rodrigo Duterte for his supposed silence on the controversy hounding the BOC involving the shipment of P6.4 billion worth of shabu.
“Aren’t you mad at the BOC, Mr. President? That’s 605 (kilograms) of high grade meth that slipped out of the Customs zone under their noses,” Lacson said in a Twitter post on Friday.
SCREENGRAB FROM LACSON’S TWITTER ACCOUNT
This was after Senator Antonio Trillanes IV hit the President for expressing anger towards his critics but not the BOC’s failure to prevent drugs from entering the country.
“Itong si Duterte, galit na galit sa droga, di ba kahit sino ang mag-criticize sa kanya, minumura niya. Pero ito P6 billion na pumasok na shabu, eh sabi nga ni Cong. Alejano, parang speechless siya,” Trillanes said in an interview on Thursday.
(President Duterte says he is mad at drugs to the point of lambasting those who criticize him. But in the case of the P6 billion-worth of shabu, as Cong. Alejano would put it, he seems speechless.)
During the height of the Congressional hearings on the smuggled drugs, Duterte summoned Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon, but expressed his confidence in the embattled official according to Finance Sec. Carlos Dominguez.
READ: Duterte won’t fire Faeldon amid drug shipment probe – Finance chief
Trillanes also claimed his “insiders” said the drug lord who shipped shabu from China had a “powerful protector.” He did not name the protector.
Trillanes however said the protector was “not necessarily Duterte himself but probably somebody close to him.”
In a recent congressional hearing, private broker Mark Taguba name dropped Duterte’s son, Davao Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte, for allegedly having been involved in the under-the-table transactions in the Customs.
READ: Paolo Duterte’s name crops up at House BOC inquiry
President Duterte then said in a speech that he’s willing to resign if any of his children would be proven to be involved in corrupt activities. IDL
READ: Duterte: I’ll resign if corruption claim vs son proven true