meth in the pinas
Renowl
By Jet Damazo
Newsbreak Writer/Researcher
TANAUAN CITY, Batangas -- It was around 7 on the night of June 17 last year.
Ricardo "Carding" Mabait had just had dinner with his parents in his house in
Josefa Village in the Sambat area of this city. The night was young so he went
out for a smoke and a chat with three relatives.
Out of the blue, two men on a motorcycle, their faces masked by bonnets, drove
up to them. The man behind the driver pulled out a gun and fired one shot,
hitting Mabait in the neck and prompting his relatives to scamper away. Fallen
and bleeding, Mabait managed to utter a curse against the gunman. Upon hearing
this, and realizing that their target was still alive, the gunman alighted,
picked up a gun left by one of Mabait’s relatives, and shot him several times
more.
Word that Carding Mabait had been killed quickly spread to the whole city, but
few were surprised. His death was another one of the vigilante-style murders
that had been occurring in Tanauan for about a year. Perhaps, many said, Mabait
had asked for it, having involved himself in the dangerous business of drugs.
Mabait was not simply involved in drugs. Only in his mid-thirties, he was known
as one of the biggest drug financiers in Tanauan who had operated for about a
decade.
And he was just one of the many drug dealers in this newly created city
(Tanauan became one in 2001), whose quiet façade belies the skeletons it
keeps.
‘Most problematic’
At first glance, Tanauan strikes you as isolated from the urban world despite
its proximity to Metro Manila.
Yet many residents of this city, formerly a first-class municipality, are
entrepreneurs and professionals who enjoy the benefits of paved roads and cable
TV. Only families in the distant villages are still dependent on farming for
their livelihood; the rest work in the special economic zones near town, or
abroad, or have turned into traders and businessmen.
There’s a dark side to this, however. To Batangas provincial police chief
Rodolfo Magtibay, "Tanauan is the most problematic town in Batangas when it
comes to drugs."
Tanauan’s story tells us everything that’s lacking in past and present
efforts to combat the illegal drug trade. It breaks common myths about the drug
menace being merely a problem of supply and demand.
Among the 48 "barangay" [neighborhood districts] of Tanauan, Mabait’s
barangay, Sambat, is the most linked to the illegal trade. Of the 77 drug
pushers on the police’s watch list in the city, more than 40 come from
Sambat.
The drug problem in Tanauan goes all the way back to the 1970s. In the 1980s,
people say, marijuana was the drug of choice. Drugs only became a real problem
when "shabu" [methamphetamine hydrochloride, also known as "crack" and "ice"]
entered the picture in the early 1990s. Its point of entry? Sambat, which is
near the town proper and is a breath away from the city market.
"Sambat originally brought shabu into Tanauan," says Councilor Joselito Mabait,
brother of Carding Mabait. "So when someone looks for drugs, they go to Sambat.
That’s why shabu is linked with the barangay’s name."
To users and pushers in the city, in fact, Barangay Sambat is an acronym that
stands for Shabu Ating Mahalin, Bato Ating Tangkilikin [Let us love shabu, let
us patronize ice].
The drug business eventually flourished to the extent that it became an open
secret in Tanauan. Almost everyone knew who were involved and the extent of
their involvement. Everyone -- former drug pushers, users, city hall employees,
policemen, civil society group members, and government officials -- that
Newsbreak interviewed for this story gave consistent answers when asked about
the different drug dealers and syndicates in their town. They knew who operated
where, and what kind of illegal businesses they were into.
Some say that the trade reached its peak in the late 1990s under the late town
mayor Cesar Platon, with Sambat residents earning from it without actually
selling illegal drugs. Some sold lighters and aluminum foil, while others
allowed their homes to be used for drug sessions. It became something of a
"cottage industry," as one resident put it.
Retired colonel Peter Seromines, former chief of Tanauan police and a former
resident of Sambat, says tricycle drivers served as runners, sometimes
conducting business even in broad daylight.
He recalls that Sambat became so notorious for drugs that whenever he had
visitors at his home in Sambat, the police would be sure to come and
interrogate them. New faces were regarded with suspicion, for they could be
suppliers or buyers. This embarrassed him no end before his visitors. Two years
ago, deciding to change residence, he bought a house in another barangay.
But why is Tanauan, and particularly Sambat, notorious for drugs?
It isn’t a coastal town, which is usually the point of entry of drug
shipments from other countries or nearby regions. It isn’t lorded over by a
politician perceived to have connections to the illegal trade. The mayor,
39-year-old Alfredo Corona, is a first-termer. He had served as vice mayor to
Platon, who was killed in 2001 while running for Batangas provincial governor.
Tanauan residents themselves did not perceive Platon to be connected to the
drug trade even if it boomed during his three terms as mayor, and even if the
New People’s Army, which claimed responsibility for his killing, accused him
of protecting drug syndicates.
One local official says Platon used to talk to the known drug dealers in
Tanauan to persuade them to give up their illegal businesses, to no avail.
While he didn’t exactly protect drug dealers, he didn’t antagonize them,
either, by embarking on a serious anti-drug campaign.
There also haven’t been any major drug busts in Tanauan similar to the
500-kilogram shipment seized in Lucena City in Quezon province last year. Nor
has any factory been discovered, like the one found in Lipa City in Batangas
province two years ago. The biggest amount of shabu seized in Tanauan is only
205 grams, from German Agojo, a convicted drug pusher who was meted out two
life sentences last year.
Bustling trade center
Yet, Tanauan has peculiarities that make it an ideal venue for the drug
industry to thrive.
One, its location is strategic. Only an hour and a half away from Metro Manila
and highly accessible to several towns in the Southern Tagalog region, Tanauan
is an ideal trading center. Its market, one of the biggest in Batangas, bustles
24 hours a day. Traders come from as far as Mindoro to bring fruits and
vegetables, and Tanaueños get Batangas beef from all over the province to sell
in their market. Buyers from Metro Manila and various parts of Southern Tagalog
converge here to do business.
When it comes to shabu, the city, which is neither a port of entry nor a
manufacturing area, serves as a trading center for the illegal drug. Police
sources say shabu from Metro Manila and the neighboring province of Cavite are
brought here for distribution.
And who takes care of the distribution? Any one of the several drug dealers,
like Mabait, or syndicates operating in Tanauan.
Aside from its perfect location, the city has produced, over the years,
notorious gangs that have "modernized" their businesses to include drugs.
"Since I was a young kid, there were already a lot of gangs here," says Corona.
Historian Danny Yson, who is writing a book on Tanauan’s history, confirms
this. In the 1970s, Tanauan became known as the hometown of the Cuadro de Jack,
or the Big Four, which was the first group that gained notoriety for car theft
and hijacking. Other gangs that existed were into bank robberies, kidnapping
for ransom, killing for a fee, or drugs, or into all of them at the same time.
Corona says that these gangs were based in Tanauan but operated outside the
town.
Gangs thrive in Tanauan for at least two reasons.
One, Tanauan residents have historically played major roles in Philippine armed
revolts. Apolinario Mabini, the brains of the Katipunan revolutionary movement
against Spanish rule in the Philippines in the 1890s, hailed from this town.
During the Philippine-American War in the early 1900s, Tanauan residents
composed the biggest contingent of the Batangas Army under General Miguel
Malvar. It may be said that fighting and guns run through the veins of
Tanaun’s people, a trait they carry to this day. It is a rare house in
Tanauan that does not have a gun, licensed or otherwise.
Two, Tanauan’s local police force is generally perceived as weak. Tanauan
people would rather take matters into their own hands, which explains their
high number of unsolved murders. Radio news reporter Antonio Romero Sr., a
Tanauan resident, says Batangas got dubbed the murder capital of the
Philippines mainly because of Tanauan.
Strange as it may seem, there are no beer houses in Tanauan. These were banned
through a municipal ordinance in the early 1990s because they were often the
scenes of violence, including killings.
The weak local police is considered one of the major reasons why the drug trade
thrives.
Statistics from the Tanauan police show that only four barangay in Tanauan are
affected by the drug problem today. But Seromines and Romero, leaders of a
local multi-sector monitoring team on illegal drugs and gambling, say that
their intelligence gathering is even more effective than that of the police.
Several residents say there is a perception that the police are just making
money out of drugs.
But the police lament that they are the only ones blamed for the drug problem.
They point to other factors and limitations as reasons for their failure to
curb the drug business here -- the perennial lack of funds, the law, and the
courts.
Magtibay cites budgetary problems, which lead to a lack of manpower and
equipment, as a major stumbling block. The Batangas police force has 1,250 men,
but he says he needs 2,000 men to meet the ideal police-civilian ratio of
1:1000.
Search warrants are another issue among law enforcers. Acquiring one from the
local courts means informing at least two non-police personnel of a planned
raid on a suspected drug dealer. Thus, the information often leaks and the
target suspects are able to escape arrest.
Police colonel Apolinar Atienza, action officer of the Batangas Anti-Illegal
Drugs Task Force, says that the case against the people behind the shabu
factory discovered in Lipa City two years ago was almost dismissed because the
judge refused to honor the search warrant, which the task force got from a
judge outside Lipa precisely to prevent any information leak. Fortunately, the
Department of Justice (DoJ) stepped in and said that it was valid.
Where’s the lab?
The police also have a problem in coming up with evidence against those
arrested. Chemicals seized during raids and arrests have to be tested first
before they can be used as evidence. The problem is that for the whole of the
Southern Tagalog region, there is only one laboratory qualified to do that, the
PNP Crime Lab in Canlubang town in Laguna province. So policemen have to travel
all the way to Canlubang for that test. Postponing travels -- which happen
often to a police force with a paltry gas and transportation budget -- could
jeopardize a case since the law allows the detention of a suspect without
charges for only 36 hours.
The police admit they have been forced to let go of many suspect because of
this problem. And then, many cases filed in court against drug pushers get
dismissed because of technicalities.
They say the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, though described by
some as harsh against drug dealers, makes arrests more complicated. A
representative from the local government, the DoJ, and the media now have to be
present during raids to serve as witnesses, especially for identifying the
amount of drugs seized. The intention of the law is good, but policemen say
this will provide more technical escape hatches for drug dealers.
And, of course, there’s the old woe of a corruptible justice system. As one
army colonel formerly assigned to the region put it, "The government gives you
1,000 pesos to spend for each case, while your opponent spends millions buying
the arresting officers, the fiscal, or the judge."
With the current intensified campaign against illegal drugs, residents and the
police generally concede that the drug trade in Tanauan has significantly
declined. Atienza says, however, that syndicates may only be lying low for the
moment and that once the government shifts its focus to something else,
they’ll be back in business.
"It’s a cat-and-mouse game," says Magtibay. "When they see that the PNP is
concentrating on other things, that’s when they resume operations."
Vigilantes’ move
Interestingly enough, the decline in the drug trade in Tanauan didn’t begin
with the government’s renewed anti-drug campaign. It began two years ago,
when certain vigilantes, not unlike the gunmen who killed Mabait, began taking
matters into their own hands. Residents point to this as one big factor in the
decline.
Some suspect that the vigilantes are fed-up Tanauan residents. Others say they
come from the military. Whoever they are, their killing of Mabait last year
created a big dent in the drug business in Sambat. However, another group, the
Simbahan gang from Barangay Ambulong, took over the vacuum left by Mabait. This
gang, led by Benito Simbahan, was also into other illegal activities like being
guns for hire and kidnapping for ransom.
The gang’s leader was arrested last July 23 in Dasmariñas town in Cavite by
police of that province. In a follow-up operation by the Batangas police a week
later, three of Simbahan’s men -- a brother and two cousins -- were killed
while fighting back.
Atienza says that because of these incidents, other syndicates will again lie
low.
Mayor Corona says the approach to the drug problem has to be both education and
law enforcement. "This is not easy because it’s a moneymaking business," he
concedes. "And the people we are up against are not ordinary. There are big
people behind them."
It’s a situation that the people of Tanauan know can’t be improved through
deadlines and high-profile campaigns alone.
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formula for shabu or meth
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