MANILA, Philippines – Eduardo “Jojo” Acierto had simple dreams and simple wants. He wanted to go to college without paying for it, wanted to fight drugs, wanted to stay as a cop.
Today he’s the most wanted cop, hunted by his peers for what he said was the biggest blunder he’s committed in his life: believing that President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is real.
“I made a mistake in voting for him,” he said.
We were blindfolded to an interview with the former police colonel somewhere in Manila on April 13, two weeks before a court issued an arrest warrant against him over a justice department charge that he helped facilitate, in July 2018, the entry into the country's ports of machines containing shabu worth billions of pesos. (READ: Timeline: The search for P11-B shabu 'smuggled' into PH)
And on April 29, the Duterte administration announced a P10-million bounty for his arrest.
Acierto previously met with select reporters in a clandestine interview on March 24, where he dropped a bombshell: that President Duterte and the highest echelons of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) repeatedly ignored information he had gathered that a Chinese friend of the President’s and his former adviser on economic affairs, Michael Yang, once helped drug syndicates ship chemicals to shabu laboratories in Davao. (READ: Acierto says Duterte, PNP ignored intel on Michael Yang's drug links)
Informed of this report in late 2018, Duterte blasted Acierto and accused him of being the one in bed with drug syndicates.
The President was so enraged by how Acierto managed to meet with reporters last March, that he castigated the police and military in a speech – asking them, why is the son of a bitch still alive?
PMA network
Just who is 55-year-old Acierto? (READ: Who is Eduardo Acierto?)
