All of a sudden - with hundreds of self-admitted, small-time dealers and users even surrendering to authorities, fearing they would be victims of summary executions - the nation has been awakened to the reality that our drug problem, which really afflicts mostly the poor, indeed has reached horrific proportions. So much so that many sectors of this purportedly Catholic nation are now reviving the call for the death penalty.


Such scale of the illegal-drug and crime menace couldn't have emerged overnight. I can only conclude that President Aquino allowed it to grow during his six years in office. He had hundreds of millions of pesos in confidential funds, and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (headed by his executive secretary, Paquito Ochoa), yet did little to fight the drug lords.


Aquino just did not make fighting the proliferation of illegal drugs, and for that matter to combat crime, his priority. His fight against corruption targeted only the opposition, and not grafters in his administration, those involved in such blatant cases that affected the lives of millions of Filipinos, such as the mess in MRT-3 and the botched contract to provide LTO with car plates.

<h3>
Not Aquino's priority
</h3>

Why would the police and other drug-enforcement agencies combat drug lords, if that is not the priority of their commander-in-chief? Since the boss doesn't think it's a problem, wouldn’t the police just resign themselves to coddling the drug lords who provide them with "monthly allowances?"


To illustrate it, an analogy could be: you hire a new pest control expert and he reports, after examining your house, that it is badly infested with termites and mice. He even shows you a colony of such vermin beneath your living room. Then you recall that your previous pest-control guy had been telling you that you have a pest-free residence, and that he’s doing his job, impressing even your neighbors.


It is shocking that all of Aquino's six State of the Nation Addresses (SONAs), he had not even mentioned that we have a serious illegal drug problem, as if he were deliberately concealing its existence.


In Aquino's first (2010), second (2011), and last (2015) SONAs, there was absolutely no reference at all to the fact that we have a huge illegal drug problem in the country. The word "drugs" is not even mentioned at all in these SONAs.


Aquino mentions the drug problem in his 2012, but only once, and as if he had already defeated it. He said then: 

<div class="article-comment">

"He shares the same fate as the more than ten thousand individuals arrested by the PDEA in 2011 for charges relating to illegal drugs."

</div>

But the President's statement really was strange, since by "he", Aquino was referring to one Raymond Dominguez, who was arrested for carnapping charges, as well as an unnamed suspect in the Makati bus bombing in 2011. The suspect, a member of the police's Special Action Force, was acquitted of all charges in 2015.


There is a similar dismissive tone in his single reference to drugs in his 2014 SONA: 

<div class="article-comment">

"I will leave you to your conscience — if you feel any remorse for your fellowmen who have become addicted to the illegal drugs you have helped to smuggle in, or for the farmers who are being deprived of fair profit from doing honest work."

</div>

In his 2015 SONA, he made it appear he had totally defeated the crime problem in the country: 

<div class="article-comment">

"We studied how criminals operate and strategically deployed our policemen. This is how we have caught the 'big fish' gang leaders, dismantled syndicates, and lowered crime rates across the nation." 

</div>

What a President, so totally out of touch with reality!


This is, of course, one of the big reasons why Duterte became so popular in the last elections, so much that Aquino and his candidate, Manuel Roxas, gave up their plans of cheating and instead, threw their cheating machineries and financial resources support behind their vice presidential candidate, Leni Robredo.


Sources: 


<ol class="article-sources">
<li>
Did Aquino coddle and protect drug lords? by Rigoberto Tiglao, June 28, 2016 (<a href="https://goo.gl/PzOq2i" target="_blank" class="news_link" title="Source">http://www.manilatimes.net</a>)
</li>
</ol>



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Aquino coddled and protected drug lords out of his incompetence, outright complicity