WHEN YOU SAY 'DIRTY HARRY', BETTER BE READY TO FIGHT DIRTY

There's a difference between backbone and wishbone. No wonder there's an
expression like "wishy-washy". Thus far, in the so-called war against
drugs, we've had bombastic announcements followed up by disappointments.

When the President first declared she was taking command of the battle to
crush the drug syndicates, a hundred or more arrests were announced
immediately. As soon as we examined those who had been picked up more
closely, it came to light that they were mostly drug addicts and not drug
pushers.

Now, unless plans miscarry at the very last minute, former Gung Ho cop, NBI
Director, ex-Mayor, and ex-DILG chief Fred Lim will spearhead the drive
against the drug octopus.

I can already see trouble on the horizon for Fighting Fred, however. Even
from a cursory glance, you'll see he has too many Bosses, or people who
consider themselves to be above him. In this town of The Vain and The
Vainglorious , this is tantamount to handcuffing Lim even before he begins
to fight. Unless the President reviews the problem and gives him his head,
in short the license to forge ahead without fear or favor, at the head of
his 60 "untouchables", Lim will end up shackled - with the drug lords
getting away, leaving their scornful laughter echoing behind them.

To begin with, how can we define the role of Senator Robert Z. Barbers
who's supposed to be the - what was it? Chairman of the enterprise - i.e.,
he remains a Senator but oversees the war on drugs as Chairman of the
Committee on Order and Dangerous Drugs.

How can anybody operate with one foot in the legislature, and the other
foot kicking out at the drug syndicates? It was only Our Lord Jesus Christ
who was capable of bilocation; i.e., being able to be physically in two
different places at the same time. (It's said that the newly-minted Saint,
Padre Pio, used to be able to appear in two different places
simultaneously, but the second was only an apparition.)

Who'll be giving orders to the agents and policemen in the field, then? The
Action Man, Fred Lim? or will Bobby Barbers be giving orders to Fred?

If you'll recall, Senator Barbers had made it clear to President GMA and
the public that he was ready and willing to quit his Senate seat if he were
designated Anti-Drug Czar by the Chief Executive. However, GMA obviously
didn't wish to upset the precarious balance of power in the Senate by
losing one of her majority senators (thus causing Franklin Drilon, quite
probably, to lose his Senate Presidency). And so this blurred version of
"command" in the anti-drug battle was invented. But it won't work if there
are so many chieftains barking orders right and left.

Although Bobby Barbers used to work under Lim, when the latter was a police
Major General, he's now a Senator and former Secretary of Interior and
Local Government to boot. Moreover, he's the Patriarch of a family dynasty.
His mother used to be governor of Surigao del Norte. Today, his son Robert
Lyndon Barbers is governor of Surigao del Norte; another son is Congressman
Robert "Ace" Barbers of Surigao del Norte (one of the Spice Boys in the
House). A third, Dean Barbers, is now General Manager of the Philippine
Tourism Authority. They all graduated from O.B. Montessori, that's why I
know. Senator Bobby Barbers pater is a kind of nephew of ours, that's why
they were enrolled there - his father originally came from Cabugao, Ilocos
Sur. This is retired RTC Judge of Manila Felix V. Barbers, our cousin and
brother of Police General Jimmy Barbers, the late Mayor Arsenio Lacson's
favorite cop and trusted aide.

It was Bobby Barbers who was one of the NBI agents in the blue police van
in which there was a scuffle and the notorious drug lord, "Don" Pepe Oyson,
was killed. Oyson was a cold-blooded criminal boss who had ordered the
torture and death of newsman Tim Olivarez. (The hapless victim had
allegedly been cut to pieces and the pieces fed to the fishes. That's the
kind of thing the drug lords do.)

Surely, Barbers will insist on giving the orders, don't you think?

Another boss of Fred Lim, if the plantilla shown me yesterday is followed,
will be Undersecretary Anselmo S. Avenido, Jr., Director General of the
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

He, too, is a retired police general. He was, in fact, Philippine National
Police (PNP) deputy director general before he retired. President
Macapagal-Arroyo announced the appointment of Avenido to head the PDEA on
July 19, 2002, last year, and he was endowed with the title of "Drug Czar".
(Susmariosep, everybody's a Drug Czar or Czar of something or other - we've
had more Czars in this country than the Romanovs of Russia.)

Avenido and Lim, of course, as in the case of Barbers, have worked together
in the past, and are on the best of terms. Yet, nobody's perfect. Somewhere
down the line will be a clash of wills and personalities.

After all, Avenido was always at the top of his class in the University of
the Philippines, the Ateneo de Manila, and in his studies abroad. When he
graduated from the Philippine Military Academy (Class 1967), he was "Baron"
of the Academy which is, in broad terms, not strictly academic
valedictorian but Tops in Everything. His classmates and peers in PMA '67
were former PNP Director General Roberto "Bobby" Lastimoso, the current
Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief and DOTC Asst. Secretary who had
been the recipient of that unfortunate televised scolding by GMA, and
former PNP Chief, Police General Santiago Aliño.

Barbers, Avenido and Lim - a great combination in theory - but who's the
real Czar?

I had a heart-to-heart talk with our old friend, Fred, over lunch
yesterday, and I personally told him the very caveats I've now put in
writing, so I'm not telling any tales out of school. After our lunch, he
went on to his meeting with Barbers and the other two potential
gang-busters, Fred's former right-hand man in the NBI, Captain Reynaldo
Jaylo, originally from the Western Police District; and another two-fisted
cop, retired Major Lucio Margallo, who conducted drug busts aplenty in the
past.

At 6 p.m. yesterday, Lim met in Malacañang with Presidential Executive
Secretary Bert Romulo, who's straight as a dye and must not be confused
with his cousin. "Triple R", or Roberto R. Romulo. Bert confirmed Lim's
designation as Presidential Adviser on Illegal Drugs.

In sum, the way I understand it, while Barbers has "over-all" chairmanship,
and USEC Avenido will cooperate, and the group will operate under the
blanket of the two "chairmen", Lim and his 60 agents and policemen will
have operational independence - or, at least, a mandate close to
"independence".

Both Jaylo and Margallo will enjoy the ranks of Director 2 and Director 3
in the PDEA which, I understand, will entitle them to monthly paychecks of
between P22,000 to P24,000. Each of the two will head a "Team".

Lim hopes to recruit a third crackerjack officer, Police Col. Carlos
Baltazar, who's currently in the Inspectorate of the Western Police
District (WPD) which means, in police parlance, the "freezer" in the PNP.
It's suspected that Baltazar was consigned to virtual floating status and
the freezer owing to his closeness to Lim - but, if Barbers and Lim so
decide, he will be "liberated" immediately after his coming retirement by
being placed in charge of the Third Team of the "Untouchables".

Lim, of course, has been empowered to handpick the men under his command.

This is the brave enterprise which will be hopefully launched shortly - to
attack the P30 billion-a-year Drug Monster.

GMA, when the chips are down, must resolve to back Fred Lim and his agents
all the way. For there will be strong pressures put on her and the public,
with innuendos designed to demolish them, defang them, or intrigue them out
of the game.

Already, cellphone texts have been flying all over the place alleging that
Barbers can't be trusted to combat the drug syndicates since his own home
province of Surigao del Norte is "reportedly" awash in drugs like shabu. In
short, the "black" propagandists declare, if you can't clean up your own
home province, how on earth can you clean up the nation? The texts even
hint that Barbers is the protector and godfather of the drug trade in his
province. The texters claim the senator has a P126-million mansion there -
wow! You can be sure their next targets will be Lim, Jaylo and Margallo.

Lim has been called in the media, admiringly, "Dirty Harry", with a bow to
movie action star Clint Eastwood's fast-gun character, and the flicker,
Make My Day! When you're fighting in the gutter, indeed, it gets dirty. The
drug octopus is not defeated by playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.

Nobody knows the frustration of a good cop who had to outdraw his opponents
better than Captain Rey Jaylo, who's famous for the "double tap" by which
he outgunned many assailants who were shooting at him.

Would you believe, after 13 years, Jaylo is still defending himself in a
case of homicide filed against him for that shootout in the parking lot of
the Magallanes Commercial Center of Makati, which occurred on July 12,
1990? Sanamagan. It had been a drug "buy-bust" operation. Jaylo, a WPD
police captain, was heading the NBI special task force which "busted" the
heroin dealers involved - lo and behold, the men Jaylo and his group tried
to apprehend turned out to be no less than the Deputy Commander of the
military Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom), Col. Rolando de Guzman, and Major
Franco Calanog, Nolcom Intelligence Chief, plus a PC-CIS civilian agent
named Avelino Manguera.

The three allegedly tried to draw their weapons, but Jaylo and his team
were faster. When the smoke cleared, the three men were down. No less than
10 kilos of heroin, at that time worth P230 million, were recovered from
their car.

It seems that De Guzman had been a PMA classmate of Armed Forces Chief of
Staff Renato de Villa, who ordered a probe of Jaylo and his men, directing
the then Philippine Constabulary-Integrated National Police Chief, General
Cesar Nazareno, to handle the investigation with the CIS (Criminal
Investigation Service) as the "primary action agency".

In sum, this odds were stacked against Jaylo from the very beginning - in
disgust, he resigned from the service. Loyally, 40 of his policemen also
resigned with him. Fred Lim was then NBI Director (and police Major
General), so he incorporated those resigned cops into the NBI.

As for Colonel de Guzman, he was buried by his PMA "mistahs" with full
military honors and interred in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Since officers who were PMA graduates and "cavaliers" have recently been
captured as members or leaders of kidnap gangs, as well as involved in
other crimes, the anti-drug Teams may have to grapple with the same kind of
"Old Boys Club" fraternal loyalty, if they ever encounter PMA
rogue-criminals in drug busts and, in the extreme, in shoot-outs. Will they
be made to suffer the same fate as Jaylo, who's been defending himself out
of pocket in court - this time the Sandiganbayan - for so many years?

It's time for the President and her top brass to make it abundantly clear
that the fight against the drug menace must be a fight to the finish. This
destructive "disease" has already enslaved four million addicts here! (In
Malaysia, it was just revealed, there's a new addict every 30 minutes, and
their population of 22 million is much less than ours.)

Our policy has to be, if we hope to win this life-or-death struggle, "zero
tolerance". If baril-sa-baril is required, then we'll have to bring in the
heavy artillery.

Remember, the drug lords and their powerful syndicates maintain armies of
goons and enforcers, many of them policemen. They have big-time politicians
in their pocket. They have the best lawyers, prosecutors, and judges money
can buy. They have clout. The word is kamandag. They have more
"cash-and-carry" money than the national government.

It will take more than Jack the Giant Killer to tackle this Giant.