Body count strategy won’t work in PH

It seems from all accounts that during the three weeks Vice President Leni Robredo was cochair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs, there was not a single fatality. Praise the Lord.

The administration’s holiday gift to us may be the resumption of the failed body count approach, mostly victimizing small users but virtually no drug lords, the list of whom, dead or alive, the administration inexplicably treats as a state secret.

The body count strategy failed in Vietnam and is failing in Iraq and won’t succeed here, either, in dealing with a primarily health — not a law-and-order — issue.

The Palace should be reminded that the Veep’s designation or secondment was an implicit admission that after 40 months, the President had not succeeded in dealing with the drug problem, and which no one could solve in three weeks, either.

R.A.V. SAGUISAG

Palanan, Makati City