Paolo Duterte resigned as vice mayor of Davao City in December 2017, months after he was implicated in the smuggling of P6.4 billion worth of illegal drugs. He refused to undergo a drug test or bare his back, which supposedly had a dragon-like tattoo signifying his membership in a triad.
Fast forward to 2024; Duterte, the incumbent representative of Davao City in Congress and son of former president Rodrigo Duterte, files a bill seeking to require random drug tests on all elected and appointed government officials, including the president, every six months.
The timing of the bill is suspect, of course. The Dutertes have come up with several exposés, albeit of dubious origin, to pin down President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on their repeated allegation that he has used or is using cocaine.
Between 2017 and 2024, the tides turned on the Dutertes, who were all-powerful when Rodrigo was president and daughter Sara was mayor of Davao City. Although Sara is still the country’s vice president, she has been sidelined for more than a year following her election as Marcos’ running mate under the 2022 UniTeam alliance and deprived of more than half a billion pesos in confidential funds.
News reports say Paolo Duterte’s bill was filed last Aug. 12, four days before the so-called quad committee in the House of Representatives had its first public hearing in Bacolor, Pampanga.
In that hearing, Jimmy Guban, a former customs intelligence officer serving a life sentence for drug smuggling, implicated Paolo, his brother-in-law Manases Carpio and his father’s former economic adviser Michael Yang in an P11-billion drug shipment in 2018.
Guban said Paolo Duterte and Carpio, the husband of Vice President Sara Duterte, were part of a conspiracy to smuggle 355 kilograms of “shabu” (crystal meth) hidden in steel magnetic lifters that passed inspection by the Bureau of Customs after they arrived at the Manila International Container Terminal in August 2018.
The House leadership has authorized the “quadcom” to conduct a comprehensive joint investigation into a possible connection between illegal Philippine offshore gambling operators, illegal drugs, extrajudicial killings and human rights violations in the course of the former president’s bloody drug war.
The “quadcom” is composed of the Committees on Dangerous Drugs, chaired by Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers; Public Order and Safety, chaired by Laguna Rep. Dan Fernandez; Human Rights, chaired by Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr.; and Public Accounts, chaired by Abang Lingkod Party-list Rep. Joseph Stephen Paduano.
In the P6.4 billion worth of drugs shipped from China in May 2017, which the Senate investigated that same year, Paolo Duterte and Carpio were also implicated but were later cleared by the committee chaired by then-senator Richard Gordon for lack of sufficient evidence.
The Office of the Ombudsman also cleared Duterte and Carpio in May 2018, saying, “The complaints against former Davao City vice mayor Paolo Duterte … were dismissed for lack of basis.”
Paolo Duterte and Carpio faced a Senate investigation in September 2017 on the allegation of then-senator Antonio Trillanes IV that they were connected to a Chinese drug cartel known as the Davao Group that was responsible for the shipment of more than 600 kilograms of shabu seized at a port in Manila.
Trillanes claimed that Paolo Duterte had a dragon-like tattoo on his back that is known to be worn by Chinese triad members. Duterte admitted having a tattoo on his back but refused to describe or show it, invoking his right to privacy.
In April 2019, a two-part video titled “Ang Totoong Narcolist” was uploaded on YouTube and the Facebook account of “Metro Balita,” which claims to be a “media/news company.” The video showed a hooded whistleblower, who identified himself as “Bikoy” and claimed to be a former member of a drug syndicate operating in Southern Luzon and the Visayas region.
Alias “Bikoy” claimed that Paolo Duterte and Carpio were part of a drug syndicate. The video was released just two weeks after the former president came out with an initial list of local officials allegedly involved in drug trafficking.
After he was cleared by the Senate and the Ombudsman of involvement in a 2017 drug smuggling case, Paolo Duterte’s name cropped up again in a revived probe on a bigger drug haul in 2018.
A witness in the 2017 probe, Customs broker Mark Taguba retracted his testimony and apologized to Duterte and Carpio for having dragged their names into the P6.4-billion shabu shipment.
Guban, who was detained for seven weeks in the Senate in 2018 after he was cited in contempt for inconsistent statements, is now singing a different tune.
Can the House “quadcom” succeed in ferreting out the truth in those big drug hauls and hold accountable those behind the illegal drug trading in the country? Does Paulo Duterte still have a dragon-like tattoo on his back and will he be willing to bare his back to prove his accusers wrong?
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
This column also appeared in The Manila Times.
