No strategy Leni

“Robredo prefers to listen to the Americans and the officials of the United Nations on how to tackle the drug war.

The manner with which Leni Robredo, the new anti-drug czarina, has been going about her new task just shows that she has absolutely no idea, no program, no strategy in tackling the drug war.

To this day, all she seems to have done is to keep herself in the media spotlight, with information of her meeting with the United States Embassy officials and the United Nations (UN) Representatives, and just one meeting with the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD) heads which yielded nothing concrete by way of a program. This only goes to show that she has nary an inkling on what plans she, who has criticized Duterte and his drug war without let-up, has to come up with to solve the drug problem.

What Robredo wants, apparently, is to approach the drug problem in the country through the adoption of a health-based approach in curbing the illegal drugs problem in the country.

That’s hardly going to help in greatly eradicating the drug problem in the country, since the bigger drug problem is all about the putting an end to drug lords and the smugglers who distribute the drugs and pedle them, wholesale and retail.

If they are not caught since Leni’s attention seems to be focused on drug addicts’ rehabilitation, the drug problem will persist and her time as the country’s drug czarina will only worsen the drug problem in the country, as her way of treating the war on drugs will be a huge failure.

Being a staunch pro-American, Leni of course was all praise for the US. She was also all praise for the UN, since she and her yellows need the UN to get Duterte face the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity, even when she didn’t seem to get anything by way of solid ideas with which to beat the drug problem in the country. What she seemed so excited about was that she and the US will serve as herb partner in solving the drug problem.

She also spoke of getting ideas and help from the UN and coming up with rehabilitation centers, which was earlier tried by Duterte but which obviously was a failure, as the drug addicts/pushers and dealers were out in the streets shortly after their release.

One wonders why Leni, instead of seeking the help of the experienced ICAD officials and members on how to effectively tackle the drug problem, used her meeting with them by questioning their death figures which she insisted was not reliable, taking off from the number of deaths recorded in 2016, or three years ago, the numbers floated by Duterte and the official death count at 5,000, which she refuses to believe.

Robredo prefers to listen to the Americans and the officials of the UN on how to tackle the drug war even when she should know that she will get nothing by way of tackling the drug problem in the country.

If Senate President Tito Sotto is asked on this, he would thumb down this idea of Leni seeking the help of the US. Sotto has already voiced his sentiment, saying that the country gains nothing by way of discussing the government’s war on drugs.

“What do we gain from them (US)? They don’t know the problems in the Philippines. They have their own United States Drug Control Policy Program where some of it were UN-patterned strategy but the UN, as of now, the strategies of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime are not quite clear,” Sotto said.

He added: “What could the Philippines get if it seeks the United States and the United Nations’ assistance in fighting illegal drugs? It’s okay, we have our own opinion. If they think they can help, they can go ahead. My personal opinion, we won’t get anything from them.”

Sotto makes a lot of sense, especially when he points out that it will be better for agencies and groups that are not involved to meddle in the ICAD’s work, since that is not the function of the ICAD, especially since the UN doesn’t know anything about ICAD’s function.

He then asked “They don’t know anything about ICAD’s function. What’s the UN’s business there?”

But while Sotto provides a good argument, he misses the point of Leni Robredo’s true intent in dragging the US and the UN into the drug war problem in the country. The yellows, through Leni, will now be having a direct line to the US government, which would make cooperation with the yellows in staging yet another farce of a coup to oust Duterte easier.

That’s all she and the yellows are after, since they all know that waiting for elections to gain power and position will never come about — not in 2022.