(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte is demanding answers from the previous Aquino administration why it had allowed the drug problem to become worse and balloon into this tragedy wherein he said four millions Filipinos are now drug addicts.
“You read the crimes that were committed before the drug campaign. Look at the victims! Children who are raped, two years old, night shift workers and everybody else,” Duterte said during the groundbreaking of the site where a mega-drug abuse treatment and rehabilitation center will be built in Barangay Casisang, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon.
“Who will now answer for the deaths of these innocent people?” Duterte asked referring to what he said were the 77,000 victims of crimes committed mostly by drug addicts.
“And who will now answer for this huge number of four million (drug addicts)? Who allowed it in our country to happen? Who? I’m asking who?,” Duterte said angrily during the ground-breaking ceremony.
“You know why? You know why shabu fluorished everywhere? Because most of the politicians were already into drugs. Little, did we realize that five years before, we were already a narco-politics state,” he said.
He said that most of the crimes committed during the previous administration were committed by drug addicts.
-Fear of the law disappeared during previous administration, says Duterte
He said during the previous administration the “fear of the law disappeared.” Although he did not name former President Benigno Aquino III, it was clear he was referring to the Aquino administration.
“Apprarently in the Philippines during the previous administration, the fear of the law disappeared. And this is what I have been trying to pound on the critics,” he said.
President Duterte again said that he was appalled that the drug problem became so enormous in the past years before he came in.
He said it was only when he became President that he came to know the gravity of the problem — that there were already four million drug addicts in the country.
Duterte also pointed out that 40 percent of barangays in the country, were already into drugs.
“Most of them, 40 percent of the total barangays in the Philippines were already into drugs,” he said.
-Disbelief on De Lima claim that she is a political prisoner
“So it would not surprise you to see the (former) Secretary of Justice (Leila) de Lima still trying to say that she is a political prisoner. My God! Since when have we been persecuting political personalities here? As a matter of fact, they malverse money, and they go freely,” the 72-year old Philippine leader said as he expressed disbelief on De Lima’s claim that she was a political prisoner.
He again repeated his threat to those who would want to destroy the Philippines, that he would not allow this to happen.
“Because I told them, stop destroying my country, I will kill you. Do not deprive us of the next generation of Filipinos because we need them to run the country, to be the mothers and fathers of our children, so that the Philippines can continue until kingdom come,” he said.
Duterte said he cannot just turn a blind eye on the drug problem, as he clarified what his orders to the police were.
“My orders to the police, arrest them if it is possible. Go out and hunt for them. But if you are confronted with a violent resistance… if you think that your life is in danger, my God shoot and shoot them dead before you are killed,” he said.