No Congress funds for EJK, says Abante

Past Congresses supported and financed the Duterte administration’s anti-drug campaign but not the killing of drug suspects, a senior lawmaker said Thursday.

“The objective of the campaign was to end the threat posed by illegal drugs, not to cut short the lives of innocent men, women and children,” Quad Committee co-chair Bienvenido Abante Jr. told reporters.

At least 20,322 individuals were killed from July 2016 to November 2017 in Duterte’s drug war, human rights lawyer Chel Diokno told the Quadcom, citing a Supreme Court resolution.

Local and international human rights organizations, however, estimated the death toll exceeded 30,000, affecting predominantly low-income families and communities.

Government data at the end of the Duterte administration said 7,000 people were killed in legitimate police operations against drug personalities. Included in the figure were law enforcement officers supposedly killed in action.

Police officers, including retired police colonel Royina Garma, who testified at the Quadcom, said cops were motivated to kill drug suspects for the cash rewards.

Garma, an alleged trusted aide of Duterte, said the incentives ranged from P20,000 to P1 million, depending on the prominence of the target.

The payout scheme, she said, was modeled after the so-called “Davao template,” which was purportedly established during Duterte’s tenure as Davao City mayor and which rewarded cops with cash for drug kills.

Garma’s allegations added weight to the previous testimony of drug war “poster boy,” Police Lt. Col. Jovie Espenido, who was the first to confirm the kill orders, quotas, and payout scheme for killing drug suspects.

Lure of money

While lawmakers back then were fully supportive of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign, no funds were allocated specifically for the killing Filipinos in the General Appropriations Act.

“Worse, some law enforcers, particularly from the PNP, competed over whom to kill, regardless of whether the targets were legitimate or not, all for the lure of substantial monetary rewards,” Abante said.

“In simple terms, the Duterte administration used taxpayer money, through intelligence funds, to kill thousands of Filipino drug suspects who were deprived of due process, including innocents,” he added.

At the height of the bloody campaign in 2016, Duterte openly admitted the EJKs but contended they were not state-sponsored.

The Quadcom, however, is adamant about probing whether Duterte tapped his intelligence funds to finance the alleged cash reward system, given that there was an abrupt increase in requests for such funds compared to the administration of his predecessor, the late Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.

A previous report from the Commission on Audit showed that Duterte spent a total of P4.5 billion in confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) in 2021, his last full year in office.

The figure was drastically higher than the P500 million CIF of his predecessor, Aquino, in his last year in office in 2015.