PH ‘a little bit safer’ under Duterte, says Cayetano

FILE – CCTV frame supposedly shows Kian delos Santos, his head covered with a shirt, being dragged off by two persons past a basketball court.

Despite the gruesome killings of teenagers Kian Loyd delos Santos, Carl Angelo Arnaiz and Reynaldo de Guzman, the Philippines has become “a little bit safer” under the Duterte administration, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano on Friday said.

However, Cayetano admitted that it may take a while before the country could turn into Singapore and Japan in terms of public safety, taking back his previous claim that the Philippines was “becoming more like Singapore” since President Duterte took office in June 2016.

“While there’s nothing we can say to console the families of the underage victims, the reality is that before the drug war, many had fallen victims to illegal drugs. Lives were destroyed, many were killed or were involved in violence,” Cayetano told reporters after the signing event for the 5th Amendment to the Philippines-US Letter of Agreement on Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement.

“We sincerely believe that we are a little bit safer, but we’re still far from becoming Singapore or Japan as far as safety (is concerned),” he said. “So let me state it very clearly. The problem is the abuse, the problem is not the drug war.”

The former senator, one of Mr. Duterte’s staunchest defenders, said the President’s plan of action against criminality involved a “shakeup of the government as a whole,” including the Philippine National Police.

Amid insinuations that the spiraling drug deaths were state-sanctioned, the top diplomat insisted that the Philippine government would comply with international treaties on respect for human rights.

“We’ve always been sensitive with human lives. There’s no doubt that each and every life is important to us,” he said. “If you take out the drug war, the killings would increase… We don’t excuse murder, whether you call it extrajudicial killing. Murder is murder.”/ac