PDEA document a cause célèbre
PDEA document a cause célèbre
First of 2 parts
WHAT makes a Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) document, whose existence it denies, but whose authenticity is acknowledged by one of its former agents, a cause célèbre, or a subject that excites widespread interest? And yet, it has become a forbidden fruit that mainstream media is afraid to touch.
Those who dare touch it could only report it in general terms, purposely omitting the names mentioned in the document and the facts leading to its preparation.
Will its detailed reportage lead to the unmaking of a presidency?
When there is a news blackout of a subject of national interest, the more people hunger and thirst for it.
It triggers the wagging of tongues, it launches a thousand misplaced speculations and derails an intelligent national discourse.
The ruckus over the PDEA document — showing a preplanned antidrug raid in a condominium unit owned allegedly by movie actress Maricel Soriano where regular sessions of illegal-drugs-taking were held by certain show-biz and political personalities, that allegedly included President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — started when former president Rodrigo Duterte at a peace rally in Davao on Jan. 28, 2024 stated that when he was still the mayor of Davao City, he was shown a PDEA document that included the name of PBBM purportedly taking illegal drugs.
In his speech at the Davao event, Duterte declared that we have a president who is “bangag,” or high on drugs, then and now.
In response to that startling declaration, PBBM said that Duterte’s adverse remarks could be the result of the latter’s taking fentanyl, a pain reliever and a regulated drug.
Responding to Marcos’ insinuation about Duterte’s mental faculties being impaired by his taking a regulated drug, the former president said he took fentanyl six years earlier before he assumed the presidency in 2016 as prescribed to him by his physician to relieve him of a recurring chronic pain in one part of his body, resulting from a motorcycle accident.
He dared everyone to see the records of the St. Luke’s Hospital to verify his statement on his medical condition.
He then asked PBBM if the drug he was taking was also a prescribed medicine. He challenged PBBM that the two of them undergo a drug test in public to determine who between them is taking illegal drugs.
In an official statement, the PDEA denied the existence of the said document. When asked to comment on the disclaimer of the PDEA, Duterte said that either the document had been removed from the PDEA files by those protective of the subject person, or the man residing across the Pasig River had ordered it removed. He stood by what he previously stated that he was shown the document when he was still mayor of Davao City at the height of his campaign against illegal drugs.
Sometime in the third week of April 2024, a screenshot of a PDEA document signed by a former PDEA agent by the name of Jonathan Morales, that showed a preplanned antidrug operation to be conducted on March 11, 2012 in the condo unit of Soriano with the name of PBBM as one of the targets of the raid, circulated in the social media.
The aforementioned agent came out publicly acknowledging his signature and affirming the existence and authenticity of the document.
While the turmoil over the PDEA document mounts, the Office of the President and the Presidential Communications Office maintained, and continues to maintain, an eerie silence. Except for the SMNI (Sonshine Media Network Inc.), the mainstream media opted not to report the burning issue. However, the political bloggers have kept the subject percolating — arousing the public’s curiosity and interest.
Sen. Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs, responding to a public clamor called for a Senate investigation to probe the volatile matter.
On the day of the Senate hearing, Senator de la Rosa was left alone to conduct the inquiry. Not one of his 22 colleagues showed up. The PDEA officials who were summoned to the hearing, reiterated the position of the agency that no such document exists in its records. The PDEA director general, Moro Virgilio Lazo, tried to destroy the credibility of the former PDEA agent Morales, by bringing up the pending criminal charges filed against him.
However, Morales stood his ground and repeated under oath his narration on the circumstances surrounding the preparation of the document which he earlier gave to various social media platforms. He claimed that the preplanned raid on the residence of the abovementioned movie actress on March 11, 2012 to arrest in flagrante delicto personalities that included PBBM (a senator at the time) who was allegedly taking cocaine with others — was aborted on the orders of higher-ups at PDEA. He pointed to a former Cabinet member of the late president Benigno Aquino III as behind its cancellation.
He asserted the truthfulness of his testimony before the congressional body. In subsequent media interviews after the Senate hearing, the erstwhile PDEA agent vowed he would stick to his guns even if it cost him his life.
As the controversy on the document rages, which piece of paper, to the minds of a growing number of observers, appears to validate the claim of Duterte that Marcos is an habitual taker of a prohibited drug, the subject persons mentioned in the document have yet to unseal their lips.
While the evidence extant so far validates the genuineness of the document, the readers and the rest of the public are cautioned that the antidrug operation of March 11, 2012 did not materialize hence it would be foolhardy if not premature to reach a definitive conclusion that the targets named in the document in the aborted anti-illegal drug are users of a prohibited drug.
There is, however, a delicate and dangerous aspect or an albatross of this controversy that — if not confronted head-on or resolved forthwith — will reap the winds of political unrest that the present dispensation cannot afford.
To be concluded on May 13, 2024