How to lose the drug war

SUSPECTED big-time drug dealer Datu Michael Bagul, who has already been arrested on more than one occasion but remains free at present, would surely be smiling these days.

For while he is definitely a main character in the running news about the local drug problem, Bagul is not exactly at the center of the whole brouhaha. Up on center stage are the agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and members of the Office of the City Prosecutor in Dagupan.

Bagul supposedly bought his way to freedom: either by paying off PDEA agents to intentionally hold him beyond the reglamentary 36-hour period which would give him a way out of certain prosecution, or buying out city prosecutors to issue a resolution ordering his release over a minor technicality.

There is no direct evidence proving that anyone, whether among the PDEA agents nor members of the City Prosecutor’s office, received any bribe money from Bagul or his bosses. But with all the insinuations and finger-pointing being hurled by the two camps at each other, the public can’t help but suspect that somebody — likely more than one somebody — must indeed made some financial gain along the way between the most recent arrest and release three days later of Bagul. Bribery is an easy conclusion to reach considering the track record of our government agencies, at any level of the administration, when it comes to corruption.

What we see unfolding now is how players of the drug trade, perhaps without even directly intending to, are easily squashing the government’s pronounced efforts to curb the menace.

Other suspected drug dealers, big or small, are surely learning tactics here.

The much-publicized Alabang Boys case could have easily felt like entertainment for most of us here as we watched, read and listened to the turn of events on national media. But the Bagul case is right here. In this instance, the illegal drugs involved is in our midst, poisoning the minds and body of people we know, who are close to us, or our beloved. The public could not help but feel helpless. And there are no local non-government organizations or civil society groups that are vigilantly ta-king up the drug issue as their main cause.

We find ourselves in an illegal drugs battlefield, but the conflict is clearly not between the dealers and the government. Instead, the war is within and amongst the government. The drug victims and their families, and society as a whole, meanwhile, are caught in the ensuing deadly crossfire.

The handling of the Bagul case is one sure way of losing the drug war.

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