Duterte explains how presidential bet eluded arrest for cocaine use

By Beting Laygo Dolor

MANILA – Being so rich, a presidential bet has never been arrested for his alleged drug use because he usually snorts cocaine while in a yacht or a private plane.

This is how President Rodrigo Duterte explained why local authorities have been unable to catch the unnamed cocaine user — widely believed to be Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — in the act of taking the illicit drug.

Speaking in the vernacular, Mr. Duterte said during a speech in General Santos City at the start of this week that, “It’s true. There was a candidate who was using cocaine and you can ask the rich.”

In reply to a question why the police had never arrested the suspected drug user, Mr. Duterte said, “You don’t know the rich. They go in the yacht or in the air. There they would snort their stuff.”

Mr. Duterte said that the people could choose to believe his claim or not, but “let it not be said later on that I did not warn you.”

While his camp had earlier said Marcos Jr. “did not feel alluded to” when the president revealed last week that one of the candidates running to replace him when his term ends next year was a cocaine user.

However, after the other presidential bets expressed their willingness to take a drug test to determine if there was any illicit drugs in their system, the son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos joined the fray.

Marcos Jr. claimed to have taken a “cocaine test” at the start of this week, but netizens were quick to point out that the speed with which the results were known made it improbable that he actually took the test.

Also, the test was supposedly conducted by St. Luke’s Medical Center, but the document released to the public by the Marcos camp stating the negative result did not have the logo of the hospital, nor a QR code which usually appears in drug test results.

His latest attack was the third week that the president has targeted Marcos Jr, even if he continued to gingerly avoid mentioning the former senator by name where his alleged drug use was concerned.

Two weeks ago, he said that he could not support Marcos Jr because the presidential candidate was “pro-communist.”

Last week, before mentioning cocaine use, he said Marcos Jr. was “weak leader” who never achieved anything noteworthy in all his years in government service.

The president also said he could never agree to his PDP-Laban party joining forces with the parties supporting his daughter Sara’s vice presidential bid “because he (Marcos Jr.) is there.”

By the process of elimination, the president was clearly referring to Marcos Jr as the cocaine user, who Mr. Duterte said came from a very rich family with a well-known name and who was male.

In another development, presidential contender Manny Pacquiao admitted trying metamphetamine hydrochloride AKA shabu when he was beginning his professional boxing career.

Saying he was “naïve” at the time, Pacquiao also said that he was not aware that use of the drug was against the law.

He was probably referring to two decades ago when he was in his early 20s and not yet a boxing champion and shabu had just entered the Philippine market, replacing marijuana as the most popular illegal drug.