Lawmakers, the Catholic Church, businessmen and business leaders have shown outrage over the spate of killings resulting in 76 casualties over the past few days.
This is at least a good sign that some sectors in the country are outraged over the killings that have become the new normal in this country since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed the presidency over a year ago.
I wonder how foreigners must regard us now.
What bothers me more than anything is the poor, who are the target of the killings. And yet we hardly hear any objection from the masses aside from the relatives of the victims. Have they become so desensitized to what is happening?
Police estimate that some 3,500 drug suspects have been killed. I wonder how many of these were killed extra-judicially. Some estimates place the figure at 8,000.
President Duterte must realize that killing all drug suspects is not the answer. Drugs users are victims, not culprits. This is why I said from the start that there is a need for more rehabilitation centers.
Mr Duterte must dig deep into why illegal drugs have become so prevalent. So long as poverty and joblessness are there, the drug menace will prevail. It really boils down to the law of supply and demand.
The bigger problem is that there are some 3 million to 4 million drug users in this country. Other countries also have many drug users, but their governments do not go around killing them.
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I am told that some residents of Ecology Village 1,2,3 are wary of what happened to the Prieto-Rufinos’ 2.9-hectare property called Sunvar which the government took over. A court decided that the Sunvar owners have been occupying the place on Amorsolo Street illegally. The lease expired in 2006.
I can say that the Sunvar lease is a different issue altogether from the Ecology Village issue.
During the last days of the Marcos regime, first lady Imelda Marcos as governor of Metro Manila decided to have the National Power Corporation property in Makati developed.
As head of the technology Resource Foundation, she entered into a lease with a firm headed by then Quezon City Mayor Ismael Mathay and Jolly Benitez to build townhouses. The lease was for 25 years, renewable at the option of both the lessor and lessee. There were some 420 houses built at Ecology Village.
In 2006, when the government decided to end the lease, Ecology lawyers met with the Asset Privatization Council then headed by Finance undersecretary Eric Recto. He maintained that since we, Ecology residents, had certificates of titles to the improvements over the land that we occupied, we should be deemed as having good faith with vested rights.
We had a referendum of all the 420 unit owners. Should government try to evict us, we would go to court.
Technically, however, Ecology unit owners are squatters. We no longer have lease contracts with the government. In the meantime, we can rent or sell our townhouses because we all have certificates of titles.
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Philweb Corp., formerly owned by Alphaland chairman Roberto Ongpin, was sold last year to Gregorio Araneta. The gaming license expired on August 10, 2016.
Ongpin used to be my student at Ateneo High School. Last year, President Duterte singled him out for being an oligarch – furthest from the truth.
When Ongpin sold to Araneta, he lost billions with the drop in share prices of his company, He also tried to save it by offering to donate to Pagcor just to save the jobs of his employees. Pagcor rejected the offer. He amended this offer and now said he would donate a rehabilitation center to be built in Atimonan, Quezon. Pagcor again rejected the offer. That was when Ongpin decided to sell.
It is also little known that Philweb has a standing agreement for funding scholars with the Jaime Ongpin Scholarship Foundation.