Duterte eyes Sino links to drug trade

President Rodrigo Duterte      INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

THE PHILIPPINES may be heading toward another collision course with China—possibly over President Duterte’s war on drugs.

Barely a week after the Philippines won a favorable ruling from an international court in its maritime claims over the West Philippine Sea, Mr. Duterte over the weekend said he would confront the Chinese government regarding the country’s problem on illegal drugs.

“One day, I will ask China: Why is the situation like this? I won’t say why are you sending them, but why is it that most of the guys who come here do drugs, even inside jail?” the President said in a private gathering in Malacañang on Sunday night.

“There will always be a time for reckoning,” he warned. “But when I come face to face with them, you listen. I will really tell them all my gripes.”

But the President, who hosted a fellowship dinner for his fellow alumni from San Beda College of Law, said taking up the matter with China may have to wait due to a “bigger issue.”

He was apparently referring to the country’s territorial dispute with China over the resource-rich West Philippine Sea, which the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled was within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

The two countries have locked horns regarding their overlapping ownership claims over the region, believed to be abundant in natural gas, oil reserves and marine resources.

“(I will do it) at the proper time and not now because, let’s just say, (there’s a) bigger issue. I will observe restraint for the meantime,” Mr. Duterte said in a mix of English and Filipino.

The President also claimed that most of those who were killed in drug-related murders were actually Chinese nationals.

“The bodies of those who died here that remain unclaimed, who will claim them? Most of them really are Chinese. That’s why that’s my lamentation,” he said.

He also noted that the four men who were arrested on a fishing vessel, which the police raided off Subic, Zambales province, last week for allegedly manufacturing “shabu” (methamphetamine hydrochloride), were all Chinese.

On July 7, the President said two of the country’s biggest drug lords, a certain Peter Lim and Peter Co, were of Chinese ancestry.

Lim, a prominent Chinese-Filipino businessman from Cebu province, sought an audience with the President in Davao  on Friday night after the latter threatened to kill him.

Mr. Duterte, however, let the alleged leader of the Triad gang leave unscathed, instructing him to just make himself available for investigation.