Leni’s timing

“Granting Ms. Robredo played a disconcerting political chess gambit, I argue she unmistakably did have impeccable timing in so far as the present public temper is concerned.

In the past few days, visibly high-strung opponents of Vice President Leni Robredo were still ostensibly clinging to one supposedly lethal censure — she is too plebian to understand the war against illegal drugs.

Momentarily taken aback by Ms. Robredo’s unexpected acceptance of Mr. Duterte’s offer to co-chair a steering body on the war against drugs, her detractors vicious attacks in recent days ramped up, to alarm even any impartial observer.

Not that Ms. Robredo nor her supporters didn’t expect the viciousness. She made it clear in her remarks on accepting Mr. Duterte’s offer she was readying herself for these. But the attacks threaten to drown any honest observations that she may have done right to accept the offer.

Interesting though the noisy attacks are, what is more interesting, however, is the fact Ms. Robredo is adequately dispelling criticisms she’s a mere plebian mediocrity. She perfectly understands the times.

The attacks could do no more but show Ms. Robredo managed somehow to spin drug war zealots in the air, baring their assumptions underlying their opinions on the brutal anti-narcotics campaign hopelessly outdated. It is no small achievement.

Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson perhaps grasped the true import of what she was doing. “I agree with her that it’s about time, after more than three years of hitting hard on the street pushers and even users, to shift the strategy and focus more on the supply constriction side rather than demand reduction,” Lacson said after meeting with the Vice President last week.

He, of course, is receptive to change as he time and again called on the Duterte government to shift focus on the anti-narcotics campaign. In a sense, Lacson now found an ally, one who now has a chance to change how the present war is being waged, from the tokhang strategy targeting drug users to the reduction of the illegal drugs supply.

He insists reducing the drug supply will upset market prices and shift the burden to big-time drug dealers instead.

For what it’s worth, Malacañang also senses the same present temper. For now, Malacañang isn’t about to unceremoniously shoot down the Vice President. It officially says she should be given “wide latitude” and that she works “without interference” to enforce the anti-narcotics war without “senseless killings.”

Granting Ms. Robredo played a disconcerting political chess gambit — which her detractors are more than willing to vehemently disparage and which her supporters are guardedly supporting — I argue she unmistakably did have impeccable timing in so far as the present public temper is concerned.

How it is her timing is plausibly impeccable?

It is borne out by the fact that while survey after survey say Filipinos massively support the war against drugs, 90 percent of those surveyed also insist illegal drug suspects be taken alive during police operations. Far too often many fail to grasp this essential distinction, forgetting the public moderates its support.

The public’s point is all there for all to see plainly — the massive support for the war against the scourge of narcotics does not necessarily mean public support for brutal and suspicious police methods, especially against the poor.

The public point largely comes from the fact the public is keenly aware of the anti-poor brutality of the war, often documented both locally and internationally. The general public, therefore, have nothing to do with the crazed bloodlust that a few drug war zealots, betraying guilty selves, are picturing it to be.

Many also fail to take into account that the same public disgust over suspicious tokhang methods may have in fact largely changed, over time, what is now actually happening on the ground since the start of the present dispensation’s narcotics war.

Recent news reports indicate that drug war deaths from police operations are getting fewer, with most drug suspects arrested alive during buy-bust operations and the much-maligned police nanlaban narrative increasingly discarded.

Contrast these recent news reports with those from some two years ago where 30 drug suspects die in just a single night of tokhang operations.

Drug war critics cite many reasons for this and one tantalizing reason given is that “monetary incentives” for killing drug users, including those by non-state actors, have dried up amid displeasure by the powers-that-be over nagging suspicions the police themselves were heavily invested into the illegal drugs trade.

No matter what the reasons, we nonetheless cannot cheer this turn of events as senseless killings still occur and one senseless killing is still a killing too many. Nor can we rest easy when all guilty perpetrators of unjust killings in the past haven’t faced justice.

Nevertheless, with the public’s street opinion on killings all but clear it now cannot be ignored that going after the sources of illegal drugs, the real drug lords, rather than the proverbial small fry becomes the only correct strategy.

It is in this context which again shows Ms. Robredo’s impeccable timing when she expresses willingness to seek help from other countries and the United Nations.

She is correct to insist the country needs foreign help because it is common knowledge that the country’s supply of illegal narcotics come from foreign sources, almost all untouchable in their foreign lairs.

Just last week a Filipina drug mule was arrested at the country’s main airport for attempting to smuggle some six kilos of shabu with a street value estimated at P40.8-million upon arrival from Cambodia.

So, when Robredo tells us “iyong tulong ng US sa drug war, lalo na sa intelligence-gathering, (is) very important,” she can’t be taken as someone being cute. She is not clueless about the real challenge of the drug war — the importation of narcotics.

Lacson and former police officers offering help to Ms. Robredo are also of the same mind. He says he gave such advice to the Vice President, noting that foreign anti-illegal drug operatives can restrict the entry of illegal drugs into the country. If that is so, Ms. Robredo is on the right path.