Alejano to PNP chief: Don’t link criticisms to ouster plots

Rep. Gary Alejano (Photo by AARON FAVILA / AP)

A former Marine captain, now sitting as a party-list representative clashed anew with Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, assailing the Philippine National Police (PNP) chief for linking criticisms against the bloodshed that mars the government’s war on drugs with plots to oust President Rodrigo Duterte.

Rep. Gary Alejano, of the Magdalo party-list group, taunted Dela Rosa saying he thought Dela Rosa was the PNP chief, “rather than the chief enforcer of a policy of killings in the country.”

“His loyalty must be to the Constitution for he is not a private army of one man,” Alejano said of the PNP chief.

Alejano issued the statement shortly after Dela Rosa belittled the legislator’s capability to conclude that there was a pattern of irregularity in drug-related killings based on spot police reports.

Dela Rosa said Alejano’s judgment is suspect because he was in the Navy and had never been a police officer.

Patterns

Among Alejano’s findings in his study of more than 1,000 spot reports on slain drug suspects submitted by police to the House of Representatives was that police drug raids were often conducted at midnight or during wee hours of the morning when there would be few or no witnesses.

Dela Rosa said Alejano does not know what he’s talking about. “Illegal drug transactions usually happen at night and in dark places,” Dela Rosa said in an interview with reporters at the homecoming of Philippine Military Academy alumni in Baguio City.

“Congressman Alejano, I am very sorry to tell you that you do not know the pattern because you are a Navy officer,” said Dela Rosa.

“You are not a policeman,” said the PNP chief.

Dela Rosa also told reporters that he suspected a plot to oust Mr. Duterte was the driving force behind the case of crimes against humanity filed against the President and several other officials at the International Criminal Court.

Keep cool

The PNP chief said he would not allow any individual or group to remove Mr. Duterte. “Over my dead body,” he said. “We’ll have a war. If you want war, I dare you, let’s make war,” said Dela Rosa.

Alejano, however, was unflinching in his reply to Dela Rosa. “It should be understood that there is no need to be always in a defensive mode,” said Alejano.

The legislator said the patterns that he observed in the spot reports on slain drug suspects were “empirical data and were not plucked out of thin air.” —With a report from Jeannette I. Andraded