Duterte is right, it’s bad! PM COLONEL, CHINESE NATIONAL ARRESTED IN MANILA DRUG RAID

By Manny Piñol

Presidential frontrunner Rody Duterte, who has warned that the drug situation in the country has reached dangerous proportions, was proven right today when an active Marines colonel and a Chinese national were arrested in a drug raid in Sta. Cruz, Manila.

A report by Erwin Aguilon of the Radio Inquirer said that Col. Ferdinand Marcelino of the Philippine Marines and Chinese national Yan Yi Shou, 33, were arrested by a combined force of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the Philippine National Police Anti Illegal Drugs Group in a raid early this morning.

Seized during the raid were 64 kilos of “shabu” with an estimated street value of P320-million.

Marcelino, the highest ranking military officer arrested in the anti-drug campaign, was the director of the Special Enforcement Service of the PDEA before he joined the Marines.

Yan Yi Shou, according to the report served as a Chinese interpreter of the PDEA and had worked with Marcelino in the past.

A PDEA statement said the raid was conducted on the basis of a search warrant issued by Quezon City Regional Trial Court based on the report that the place was used as a storage facilities of illegal drugs.

Agents, however, discovered a large clandestine drug laboratory where Col. Marcelino and Shou were also arrested.

PNP-AIDG Spokesperson Chief Inspector Roque Merdeguia said both Marcelino and You were inside the drug laboratory when the raid was made.

The raid and the subsequent arrest of Col. Marcelino came on the heels of statements issued by Presidential frontrunner Rody Duterte that the illegal drugs situation in the country has gotten worse and that top government officials were already getting involved in the drug trade.

Duterte also warned that unless stopped, the country could become a narco state very much like Colombia and Mexico in South America where drug cartels have become so powerful that they direct engage government forces in armed encounters.

At the Presidential Forum in La Salle University in Metro Manila yesterday, Duterte warned that the campaign against drugs and criminality could be bloody.

He, however, assured the country that if elected President, he would stop the drug trade in six months.

Duterte has promised that he would step down as President if the Filipino people did not feel any improvement in the illegal drugs and crime situation in the country in the first three years of his Presidency.

(File photo of arrested Marines Colonel Marcelino downloaded from Radio Inquirer website.)