PNP maintains its war on drugs is "constitutional"
The Philippine National Police (PNP) maintained that its anti-illegal drug campaign is "constitutional", its spokesman said Thursday.
“We maintain that the PNP campaign against illegal drugs is constitutional, legal and is implemented in the interest of public safety,” Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao said.
“All allegations are part of the healthy democracy that the country has. The presumption of regularity remains with the law enforcers and unless proven otherwise in the court of law,” he added.
Bulalacao give his statement after the Supreme Court denied the motion for reconsideration of the PNP through Solicitor General to reverse its earlier decision requiring the submission of documents related to the anti-illegal drug campaign of the government.
The court ruled that “contrary to the claim of the solicitor general, the requested information and documents do not obviously involve state secrets affecting national security.”
In its order issued December 2017, the SC required the solicitor general to submit within 60 days the documents related to anti-illegal drug campaign that includes the list of persons killed in legitimate police operation, list of deaths under investigation within the period of July 1, 2016 to Nov. 30, 2017 and others.
Through the documents it requested to the solicitor general, the Supreme Court wants to determine whether anti-illegal drug operations was done in the performance of official function.
Bulalacao noted the “emphasis should not only be focused on the almost 4,000 deaths in police operations but also on the more than 1.3 million surrenderers, 120,000+ arrested persons and on the number of law enforcers who have died during these police operations.”
“If the claims on extra judicial killing (EJK) are true, then these surrenderers and arrested suspects should not be alive as well,” he added. Robina Asido/DMS
