Weeping Philippine police chief doesn’t know whom to believe 

So it came as no when the testimony of drug dealer Kerwin Espinosa at the Senate on Wednesday included dramatic allegations that De Lima was one of his “protectors”. The authorities project to “get” De Lima runs from linking her to the prison drugs trade, to ill-gotten campaign donations, to simply “immoral” behaviour. And now it appears to have a new motivation: as an “entertainment” to distract citizens angry over the hero’s burial sanctioned last week for former dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
We say this even though Espinosa’s flawed testimony nevertheless raised legitimate concerns. The question, then, is how to approach Espinosa’s revelations without falling for the bread-and-circus entertainment.
Kerwin and his late father, former Albuera mayor Rolando Espinosa, allegedly owned a blue and pink book, respectively, which supposedly contained at least 226 names of personalities and high-ranking officials protecting the drug trade in the Philippines, including Senator De Lima. Kerwin alleges that the fatal police shooting of his father on November 5 was to prevent him from revealing the names.
De Lima attacked Espinosa’s claims about her as fabricated, though declined the chance to question him in person at the hearing: “I feel that it would be pointless, useless, futile for me to do so given a very nice script, at least insofar as the portions of his testimony about me are concerned.” Was this a missed opportunity for the senator, or did she opt out of the circus?
But the most serious concerns raised by Espinosa’s testimony are over his sweeping accusation against police officials. He said he paid protection money to everyone from policemen manning checkpoints to the police officers in charge of Eastern Visayas region. Among other names, he said he made weekly payments to Chief-Supt Vicente Loot, a newly elected town mayor, Chief-Insp Leo Laraga, Superintendent Santi Noel Matira, and gave Superintendent Marvin Marcos 3 million pesos (Bt2 million) to fund his wife’s political candidacy. All four have vigorously denied the allegations; the latter three were among those involved in the police raid that ended with the killing of Espinosa’s father. Laraga said it was he who fired the fatal shot.
These and other revelations provoked current national police chief  Roland dela Rosa to weep on national television. “I do not know now whom to believe [anymore],” he said. “I place the police force in the hands of God. I love the organisation… There are still many policemen who can be trusted.”
The role of the police in President Duterte’s so-called war on drugs is pivotal. Both the president and Dela Rosa have admitted on many occasions that some policemen collude with or actually take part in the illegal drugs trade. Both have clearly stated that they fully support police efforts to stop the drug trade, even to the extent of killing suspected drug “personalities” in the line of duty.
And yet there is no process, there is no clear and nationwide effort, to hold policemen involved in illegal drugs to account. Is it any wonder that, five months into the most lethal antidrugs campaign the police has ever conducted in our history, with nearly 5,000 killings reported, Dela Rosa does not know “whom to believe”?