PRESUMPTIVE President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. commits to pursue President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs in the country. He however said he is desirous to put emphasis in running after the sources and major suppliers of the drugs and the rehabilitation of those who are already hooked into it. The emphasis is a clear manifestation that as much as possible the incoming President will give offenders who are arrested a “shot at redemption.” And not only that; by focusing on rehabilitation Marcos Jr. is short of saying that as much as possible he’d prefer having the offenders alive rather than seeing them dead.
Of course the present administration’s bloody campaign against illegal drugs does not really mean that killing the violators is the government’s option. Getting killed is actually the “choice” of the erring individuals. In the first place whgy did he or she engage in the addictive and harmful trade and vice?
Somehow, this assumption of ours with regards to the so-called “extra judicial killings” alleged to be sanctioned by the outgoing administration as organic in police operations may earn howls of protest from certain sectors. But that is how we personally see it. For one why would some suspects prefer to engage the law enforcers if they are afraid to be killed? They can always surrender to the raiding team. And why will the lawmen even bother to confront any one if that person doesn’t even have even a whiff of drug-related crime?
And who are the other party or parties interested in making all deaths during police anti-illegal drugs operation simply because it stands to benefit them when such deaths will effectively deter the government from further pursuing its anti-illegal drugs campaign? The answer of course, is are the drug lords; their distribution conduits big and small. Of course the latter two groups are more than willing to do the killings themselves. After all, they know they can charge it to the police and no one is willing to draw the truth to the surface.
Perhaps it is for this reason that the drug trade in the country will never be successfully eliminated and in similar manner that drugs-related deaths can always occur every now and then in any place in the country for as long as the campaign against the illegal trade remains.
However, with the advent of the Marcos, Jr. reign, and his emphasis on changing the approach used in his anti-illegal drugs drive, the new president may have found the correct formula in reducing incidents of drug-related deaths at the same time improving the numbers of those given the opportunity to go back to normal life.
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This incident gives us the scare in our life.
Yesterday morning during our family breakfast we have this eldest grandson of ours who was dead tired after a week-long of assisting the technicians in our family-owned business of providing band equipment, lights, and sounds services to a candidate in Cateel, Davao Oriental complained of somehow losing his taste. As he was verbalizing his complaint our second son also told those gathered around the table, that he too lost his taste.
Upon hearing this we feel our blood was slowly abandoning our veins. We were extremely scared. The first thing I did was to ask the wife whether or not the children were fully vaccinated. She was quick to answer that what they lack were only the second booster shots. We were able to heave a “sigh of relief.”
Our wife though suddenly burst into laughter while pointing to the scrambled eggs on the table which was our primary viand early yesterday. She ashamedly confessed in front of the entire household that she forgot to add salt on the egg scramble.
That led everyone around the table to confess that they were also at that moment, feeling the leading symptom of the dreaded CoViD 19. Thank you, the incident was only an unintended joke – on us.
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