To silence drug pushers?

Batas Mauricio

BROADCASTER Vic Somintac raised an interesting insight that the ongoing killings around the country, just days before President-elect Duterte is to assume office are actually the handiwork of drug lords masquerading as policemen or law enforcement agents in active service.

Somintac said many people are actually entertaining the possibility that drug pushers and peddlers are being killed now in an effort to silence them and thereby prevent them from divulging that their handlers are actually rouge policemen when Duterte finally starts his own campaign against scalawags in the police.

Leo Obligar, another veteran broadcasters, chimed in that this maybe the reason why those who are being killed right now, though branded and identified as “drug pushers,” were mainly of the lower-level operatives who were obviously fronted for bigger drug lords. Not one of these bigger drug lords have been killed yet, Obligar noted.

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Can a barangay chairman refuse to entertain complaints pertaining to land problems that have been brought to him for conciliation, pursuant to law, on account of the fact that he himself is a claimant over the same land? The answer is no, he cannot, and any refusal on his part to entertain those complaint opens him up for charges of graft and corruption.

Under Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, any act or omission or failure to act of any official on any matter presented to him in his capacity as a barangay head would be considered “causing undue injury to a private party,” which is a criminal offense.

My advice to a barangay chairman and to his constituents who feel aggrieved by his refusal to act, is this: the barangay chairman must designate a member of the barangay council to act on the complaints, inhibiting himself from any proceeding because of his own private interest. But, to repeat, he cannot refuse to act on the complaint altogether!

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Indeed, it was a demonstration of sheer hypocrisy and a crude attempt at sycophancy–the offer of outgoing President Benigno Aquino III to give advice to incoming President Duterte on how to run this country in the next six years, I mean.

The truth is that, Aquino has no right to advise Duterte or anyone else for that matter. His own administration was a total failure, and there is nothing in his governance that Aquino can be proud of, or worth imitating in any way. Unless, of course, Duterte wants to be a failure too in his own presidency.

Then, that offer was a clear case of sidling up to win the favor of the new president, evidently in the hope of wangling favors for Aquino’s own interests, and, very clearly, for the interest of his family, particularly with respect to Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac. If Aquino thought Duterte failed to recognize this, the solitaire from Tarlac is grossly mistaken.

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com