THE Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte-National Executive Coordinating Committee is pushing a nationwide campaign against corruption and lawlessness in line with President Rodrigo Duterte’s promise to make the country a better and safer place for Filipinos.
At the same time, MRRD-NECC will embark on a massive education and information dissemination among various local government units to promote federalism.
The group, which threw its all- out support to the President’s war against drugs and criminality, however, bewailed that the issue of graft and corruption appears to have been left out or sidelined by the aggressive anti-drug campaign.
According to MRRD-NECC officials, Duterte has promised to make the government better and “cleaner”by directing all agencies to shun red tape and for the public to report all forms of corruption.
The group is urging the Filipino people to fulfill their obligation as citizens of this country to help President Duterte in his heroic and patriotic war against illegal drugs, criminality, corruption and poverty.
Former Rep. Dante Liban, in a press conference called by the group, also scored Vice President Leni Robredo for her negative comment on the ongoing anti-criminality campaign by insinuating that the killings are deliberate, as she parroted other critics’ accusation that human rights are being violated. MRRD said the Vice President should be more circumspect in her pronouncements as one misguided statement may cause more harm than good.
“The President magnanimously reached out to her although she ran with another party,” Liban, the president of the People’s National Movement for Federalism (Penamfed), noted.
The event was also attended by the group’s vice president Martin Dino, Ricky Corpuz, president of the Liga ng mga barangay in the National Capital Region, MRRD-NECC officials Roberto Gavina, Virgina Orogo and lawyer Koko Lao, among others.
“The killings could be the handy work of vigilantes who hate the drug trade and those involved in the proliferation of illegal drugs in the country. To put an end to this, we appeal to all the drug lords, drug pushers and drug dependents to surrender so that killing each other would be stopped, and we also appeal to them to stop this,” the group said in a statement.
“In this light, we appeal to all LGUs, the Department of Justice [DoJ], the Ombudsman, Commission on Audit [CoA] and other concerned agencies and officials to fully support this activism,” the group further said.
MRRD-NECC also urged President Duterte to direct a thorough audit by CoA of all government transactions for the past three years, noting the past administration’s lackluster performance in addressing corruption in the bureaucracy.