• President Duterte urges female cops to continue fight vs. illegal drugs
• Palace: Phl recognizes Jewish experience

President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday, September 30, encouraged the women police force to continue strengthening the administration’s campaign against illegal drugs, as he vowed to support them until the end.

“Trabaho lang kayo. Ako na ang nag-garantiya ngayon, not as a mayor but as a President, if you do it legally, fine. I will support you to the end,” the President said in his speech at the 9th National Biennial Summit on Women in Community Policing in Davao City.

“Now that I am the President, maka-garantiya ako sa inyo. Just do it in the performance, in the fulfillment of a duty. Just do it right,” he added.

President Duterte also reminded the police that their loyalty should be for the country, for the flag, and for the Constitution.

“If the problem of drugs because by the… magnitude of the contamination will take years, if this problem would outlast me for one reason or another… this is one request from your Commander-in-Chief: Huwag ninyong hayaan ang bayan,” he said.

“I expect that you will do your duty and that you have to survive, you have to kill. I could understand that. And I am just at your side, at your back and you will be protected,” he added.

The President meanwhile slammed his critics who do not look into the number of policemen who die in the performance of their function.

“‘Yan hindi tinitingnan ‘nong human rights… I lose two policemen a day. Dalawang police ‘yan on the average, araw-araw,” the President said.

President Duterte also talked about the scourge of drugs that has hit the country badly.

He showed a folder containing a list of names of persons involved in illegal drugs trade that includes mayors, congressmen, judges policemen, barangay captains and police. PND

In a radio interview, Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-illegal drugs campaign aims at saving the next generation of Filipinos.

He clarified that President Duterte and the Philippines do not wish to diminish the tragic experience of the Jews during the Second World War.

“The Philippines recognizes the deep significance of the Jewish experience especially their tragic and painful history,” Abella said in a statement he read over government-run Radyo ng Bayan.

“We do not wish to diminish the profound loss of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and the deep midnight of their story as a people,” he said.

Abella explained that the President’s reference to the slaughter was “an oblique deflection of the way he has been pictured as a mass murderer,” adding that President Duterte rejects being labeled a Hitler.

“He likewise draws an oblique conclusion that while the Holocaust was an attempt to exterminate the future generation of Jews, the so-called extrajudicial killings, wrongly attributed to him, will nevertheless result in the salvation of the next generation of Filipinos,” Abella said.

The Palace official explained that President Duterte was merely correcting the negative impression made by people between him and Hitler.

Since the beginning of his administration on July 1, President Duterte has launched a relentless campaign against illegal drugs, saying that the 3.7 million drug users and pushers posed a grave threat to Philippine society as a whole. PND