(Eagle News) — Only President Rodrigo Duterte “had the guts” to address the drug problem.
This was the message of Rep. Ace Barbers to people who continue to criticize the administration’s drug war without “giv(ing) the President the benefit of the doubt and looking at the whole picture objectively.”
“In the first place, way before the President took office, the drug menace was already spiralling out of control. He alone had the guts to ‘grab the bull by the horns’ so to speak, and declare an all-out war against the problem,” he said.
He said “no one before him dared to cross swords with the mighty drug lords, and their protectors in government.”
“Nobody cared that the country has become a narco-state and the country helpless. None of them dared to say a word nor made a sound, not even a whimper,” he said.
As such, he said “we should all work with (Duterte) and contribute towards solving the problem.”
He said if one criticizes, “he has to offer a better alternative, a permanent one at that, not just a stop-gap measure that is but a band-aid solution.”
He also offered possible explanations for the killings as a result of the drug war: that some drug syndicates are “cleansing their ranks,” which includes “rogue cops and unscrupulous politicians; or that some policemen are really “trigger-happy.”
“Although they cannot be blamed completely as they are putting up a fight against ruthless syndicates whose members are ready to die to defend their drug trade,” he said.