Drugs Top Issue In 2004 Election

GOTCHA

The worsening drug menace will be a major issue in the 2004 local and
national elections. Not only will young candidates bring it up in their
campaigns, but drug lords also will strive to win elective posts to expand
their illicit trade. In all towns, cities and provinces, it will be a fight
for political power between narcotraders and narcocrusaders.

The confrontation is inevitable. Every family is now affected by the drug
scourge. With 1.8 million addicts and 3.5 million occasional users, mostly
of shabu, one out of every 16 of the 82 million Filipinos has a drug
problem. Homes are being torn apart. Everyday news outlets report how
addicts steal heirloom jewels, hurt their kin, or sell their bodies just to
sustain the habit. Some would flip and hostage toddlers just for kicks.
Conscientious candidates will have to take on the challenge and show a way
out of the drug culture. Drug lords surely will oppose them.

Every barangay is now also affected. With an estimated 150,000 pushers
nationwide, there's bound to be one in each basic political unit. Worst hit
is Metro Manila. Going by road signs warning the youth against drug abuse,
shabu has reached even far-flung villages like Sagada in Mountain Province
and Simunol in Tawi-Tawi. Drugs are the common denominator of disorder and
lawlessness in communities. The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency notes
that three of every five jail inmates are facing drug charges. Two of every
five index crimes - homicide, physical injury, robbery, burglary, theft -
are drug-related. Four of every five heinous crimes - murder, rape,
kidnapping - arise from drugs. Aspirants for local posts will have to face
up to the statistics. Drug pushers will fight back.

Retired ambassador Miguel Perez-Rubio, head of Katotohanan that combats
narcopolitics, narrates that local drug lords put up candidates in last
year's barangay election. Bishops and civic leaders reported to him how
known pushers openly campaigned for community seats. No wonder Local
Governments Undersecretary Alfredo Fernandez notes that the last barangay
campaign was characterized by unbelievably high spending. In drug-torn
locales, it reached as high as P500,000 for kagawad and P2 million for
kapitan, who would draw allowances of only P6,000 to P10,000 per month.
Perez-Rubio analyzes this to mean that syndicates are preparing to grab
seats in municipal, city and provincial councils. Also in Congress and most
likely Malacanang.

Drug syndicates have every reason to influence the election outcome.
Narcotrade has grown to a multibillion-peso enterprise from a naughty
sideline to jueteng in the '70s. The 11 transnational and 215 local gangs
will strive not only to defend but also expand it, in spite of the stiffer
fines and prison terms of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

That law punishes with life imprisonment the mere act of selling one-tenth
gram of shabu, which comes in P100-sachets. It mandates drug rehabilitation
for those caught possessing or testing positive for narcotics. It also
imposes maximum prison terms for policemen, prosecutors and judges who
would plant or misplace evidence and deliberately lose court cases.

With that law the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency was formed. In the
first quarter of 2003 alone, PDEA led the PNP and the NBI in 4,498
operations in which P314 million worth of shabu was confiscated, 5,122
persons were arrested, and 3,849 cases were filed. From March to August, it
also raided close to a dozen shabu laboratories and warehouses.

Due to the enormity of the drug problem, PDEA has hardly made a dent.
Interior Secretary Jose Lina estimates narcotrade to command P216-P432
billion per year. This is a big chunk of the $65-billion annual gross from
amphetamine stimulants like shabu. The United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime ranks RP the third biggest user of such drugs, next only to Thailand
and Australia. Filipinos outrank other countries like Ireland, Japan,
Britain, Estonia, Poland, Spain, Nigeria, United States, Denmark, Czech
Republic, Belgium, Canada, and Netherlands.

Shabu is readily available at school gates, burger joints, factories,
cinemas and plazas. In the slums, female pushers use infants as props, with
shabu sachets hidden under the diapers. The poor are favorite targets of
drug lords. Shabu provides a hallucinative escape from hunger and want.

With over 40 percent of the population living below the poverty line, drug
lords see a huge market potential. They will capitalize on the same poverty
to buy votes and sell their candidates in 2004. Once they win, they will be
able to distribute shabu more openly than the small-town but big-time mayor
from Quezon. They will be able to control other institutions of society,
like the police and military, the press, even the church.

It has often been said that the Philippines is going the route of Equador
and Colombia in allowing the rise of narcoterrorism. Truth to tell, those
two countries have elected narcopoliticians to the Presidency, and
Filipinos could do the same in 2004. There is a big difference between RP
and the Latin American countries, however. Colombia and Equador export
cocaine for foreign exchange. The Philippines makes and uses shabu. Thus,
while Filipinos squander P216-P432 billion a year on drugs, the government
also spends billions to train lawmen and judicial officers in combatting
drugs, to jail pushers and cure users. Election candidates will have to
take stock of those figures in the coming campaign.