THE National Government has urged the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) to ensure that drug money will not end up in the campaign kitty of politicians especially now that the campaign period has begun.
Narco-politics should never be allowed at this crucial time, Malacañang said thus urged the PDEA to intensify its anti-drug campaign and strictly monitor the country’s airports and seaports, especially since these drug lords need political protection in order to carry on their business uninterrupted.
Meanwhile, former PDEA chairman, now senatorial candidate Vicente Sotto III of Nationalist People Coalition (NPC), said there’s no politicians in Bacolod City engaged in illegal drugs business.
However Sotto noted that there are businessmen from Bacolod and Iloilo who have already been included in PDEA’s drugs list.
He said before the filing of certificate of candidacy, PDEA has already a watch list of those political candidates involved in the illegal drugs.
Sotto was in Bacolod on Saturday as a guest to the Bacolaodiat Festival which is on its fifth year celebration.
He said the drugs watch list is a compilation of the records from the different agencies of the National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine National Police, and other agencies which a copy of those is furnished to the President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
He said he doesn’t have any update on the records now because he has already resigned and is focused in his campaign sorties.
He opined that if there were some local officials whose municipalities and cities are in the watch list, “it doesn’t necessarily mean that the mayor is directly involved.” (George M. De La Cruz & Merlinda A. Pedrosa)