The Philippine national police chief resigned yesterday after he faced allegations in a Philippine Senate hearing that he intervened as a provincial police chief in 2013 to prevent his officers from being prosecuted for allegedly selling a huge quantity of illegal drugs they had seized.
General Oscar Albayalde said his decision relinquishing his post was accepted by Philippine Secretary of the Interior Eduardo Ano over the weekend, but insisted on his innocence, saying he has never been criminally or administratively charged over the alleged irregularity.
Albayalde, a 55-year-old former special forces commando, resigned a few weeks before his scheduled retirement on Nov. 8.
Addressing the 190,000-strong police force in the final flag-raising ceremony he led at the national police headquarters, Albayalde ordered the officers to continue serving the Filipino people well.
“Do not let these challenges demoralize or stray you from your path,” he said.
Opposition Philippine Senator Franklin Drilon, a former justice secretary, said Albayalde’s resignation did not clear him of potential criminal liabilities and called for stricter vetting of candidates for the top national police post.
He said he would work to amend regulations to prevent illegal drugs seized by law enforcers from being stashed and resold.
“The next Philippine national police chief will have to work doubly hard to regain the credibility of the police community and the government’s drug war,” Drilon said.
Albayalde’s deputy, Lieutenant General Archie Francisco Gamboa, temporarily took over the police force.
Albayalde headed the police force in Pampanga province north of Manila when 13 of his officers seized a large quantity of methamphetamine, a powerful and prohibited stimulant, in a raid. The officers later faced allegations that they presented a small fraction of the seized drugs at a news conference, possibly to foster their promotion, then hid and sold the rest, with suspicions being fueled when they purchased pricey SUVs not long after.
Albayalde’s men allegedly freed a suspected Chinese drug lord in exchange for a huge bribe then arrested another foreigner, who they presented as the owner of the seized drugs.
State prosecutors cleared the officers of criminal complaints they had faced for the alleged offenses, Albayalde said, adding that the allegations against him might have been an offshoot of jockeying for the top police post that he was to vacate next month.
However, two police officials, including a general who has retired from the force and is now a city mayor, testified in Senate hearings that Albayalde did not take adequate actions to have his men be criminally prosecuted.
One of the two officials, Aaron Aquino, who now heads the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, testified that Albayalde called him at the time to inquire about the status of the cases against his men.
Asked in recent weeks about the possibility of firing Albayalde, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said that he would allow Ano to make a recommendation to him.
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