Make barangay chairmen accountable

 

THE recent admission of the Pangasinan Police Provincial Office that it can no longer meet its target to make the whole province drug-cleared this year is both understandable and reassuring.

We say it’s understandable and reassuring because it’s clear that PPPO is not working under the illusion that the province can earn that distinction of meeting its target under a prescribed timetable. Because it cannot, and will never accomplish it, not in the war on drugs for as long as barangay officials are not made accountable for the presence of drug trading in their communities.

It is an established fact and truism that nothing gets past barangay officials particularly the barangay kapitan, about anything in the barangay, that includes neighborhood gossips, family squabbles, political activities, and yes, names and homes of drug users!

Oplan Tokhang was a huge success in prompting thousands of drug personalities to surrender in the initial phase of the war on drugs because it involved the active participation and accountability of barangay officials. Without making barangay officials accountable, PDEA and PNP will forever have to rely on assets who have no accountability to track down persons involved in drug trading.

We suggest that  policy should be drafted between the DILG, PDEA and PNP that will put in place a “Strike -3- Suspension Rule” for barangay chairmen. Meaning, if three buy-bust operations in the barangay were conducted successfully without any help from the barangay chairman, it shall be ground for at least six-months suspension with recourse to an administrative charge.

The principle of accountability always gives meaning to faithfulness to official responsibilities and duties.

 

Democracy alive

 

ONE court in Makati City has allowed Antonio Trillanes IV to post a P200,000-bail to go scot-free in a rebellion case.  Another Makati court next made Trillanes deserving of an amnesty after leading a coup d’ etat in 2006.  The message from those twin decisions?  Democracy is alive because it meant that our justice system is functioning without duress.  While it is obviously  ridiculous that two courts are hearing two strikingly similar scenes—aren’t rebellion and coup d’etat one and the same?—this seeming irony lives on out of the government’s innate respect for the rule of law.  In short, Trillanes is being extended all the leeway to shield himself with all possible democratic processes.  And yet, while he basks in the media mileage he abundantly harvests from this scurrilous circus of his own, it is Trillanes himself who keeps mouthing the tired, inutile line that democracy is dead in our country.  Such gall.

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