There was a time the President liked to say he would not tolerate even the whiff of corruption from any of his people. Now, as the stench of the so-called ninja cops scandal wafts from hearings at the Senate, the President is uncharacteristically silent.
In testimony before the Senate Blue Ribbon committee, a former police official and now Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong, revealed disturbing details about crooked policemen who recycle illegal narcotics seized in drug raids—either to resell for profit or to plant as evidence to bolster their “success rate.” In an executive session, the mayor also turned over to the Senate a roster of ninja cops still in the service, a list that the senators have since turned over to the President.
In a speech a week ago before a group of Chinese businessmen, the President warned the ninja cops who “think they are the lords of this country.”
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you, everybody dies in this world but you will go ahead first,” he said. “Remember that.”
Outside of that threat, however, the President has let others speak for him. A senator who still acts as a close aide of the President, says Mr. Duterte will release the list of names after he has validated them with “his own resources” when he returns from a five-day visit to Russia on Oct. 5.
The Palace spokesman could not say when the President would make the list public, insisting only that he eventually would.
What are we to make of the President’s apparent reticence?
While we applaud his stated goal to get things right, we recall he showed no similar compunction when he named without hard and credible evidence opposition politicians, journalists and even clergymen in an alleged plot to overthrow his government back in April, producing only a convoluted diagram to show how they were supposedly linked.
The ninja cops are a whole different matter entirely, because they cut into the heart of the President’s two core campaign platforms: to rid this country of illegal drugs and to eradicate corruption in the government. The notion that law enforcement officers can be so corrupt that they are reselling illegal drugs flies in the face of the President’s anti-crime promises and makes his administration appear weak, at best.
This is not the time for aides and spokesmen to field questions and make vague promises while the President flies off to a foreign land. This is the time for the President to act.