The Region 6 police office does not believe Police Chief Inspector Jovie Espenido is qualified to become police director of either Iloilo City or the province.
To head the unit, a police officer must have the rank of senior superintendent because Iloilo City is a highly urbanized city, said the spokesman of the regional police.
Superintendent Gilbert Gorero, however, confirmed Espenido’s re-assignment to the region; only the position and its scope are unclear.
President Rodrigo Duterte seems to trust the details would sort themselves out, eventually. What is important to him is that his man Espenido, who used to be assigned to Albuera town in Leyte and to Ozamiz City in Misamis Occidental, would now be in Iloilo.
Mr. Duterte believes Iloilo is the province with the highest incidence of shabu; the capital’s mayor, Jed Mabilog, is also included in the list of politicians protecting the drug trade in their respective areas.
“Will he [Mabilog] live?” Duterte asked this week, alluding to Espenido’s reputation for seeing local executives allegedly involved in drugs killed under his watch.
For his part, Mabilog has repeatedly denied involvement in drug activities and wondered aloud why his name kept surfacing on the list. He welcomes the assignment of Espenido to his province, he says, if only to belie those allegations.
Already the crackdown seems to have begun as agents of the National Bureau of Investigation have visited Mabilog’s controversial residence, described by the President as a palace, even as Mabilog insists he was a successful businessman before entering politics.
Rank issues notwithstanding, Espenido now has his papers saying he is the officer in charge of the police office, on the strength of a presidential directive.
How will the fight against drugs be carried out, we wonder, despite Mabilog’s protestations and despite his supporters’ claim that he is being unfairly targeted by the administration.
We wish Espenido well—but not in the way the President, or the police force, are accustomed to. Death and violence are never indicators of success, just desperation. Success will be measured in the eradication of the drug menace, not in the number of bodies.
We do not wish a bloody confrontation or a gruesome death on anyone: not on a powerful local official, not on a hapless drug suspect in a depressed area.
In an ideal world, despite Duterte and despite Espenido, Mabilog will live: Either to clear his name if he is truly innocent, or to pay for his crimes in jail if he is guilty.