Former Police Colonel Royina Garma and current Commissioner of the National Police Commission (NAPOLCOM) Edilberto Leonardo are being pointed as the masterminds of the extrajudicial killings (EJKs) which happened during the time of former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD). Garma and Leonardo, who have the reputation of being killers within their ranks, are the orchestrators of the killing of 3 Chinese drug lords in the Davao Penal Colony back in 2016.
Royina Garma was the former station police head in Sta. Ana, Davao City, where she presumably started her close relationship with Duterte. She became the chief of police of Cebu City as well as the Central Visayas regional command head of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG). Leonardo on the other hand served as the Davao City regional director of CIDG. This is where Garma and Leonardo started to operate together as they rose in the police ranks and conducted operations together. One of these operations was the killing of the three Chinese drug lords in the Davao Penal Colony.
Leonardo and Garma were able to quickly rise in rank because of their closeness with PRRD. After serving as Davao City regional director, Leonardo was appointed by Duterte as the Commissioner of the NAPOLCOM. For Garma, she was appointed as general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) by Duterte, even though she had 10 years of service left with the police force. Garma was so confident that she would be appointed as PCSO general manager that she retired early from police service even with 10 years left.
Garma’s reputation precedes her. When she was appointed as chief of police in Cebu City, the EJKs in the city rose to 198 individuals killed. Now, she is also being implicated as the mastermind of the killing of former PCSO Corporate Secretary Wesley Barayuga. Barayuga was killed by Garma because he was close in exposing the corruption within PCSO, which includes siphoning money from PCSO to fund the drug war. To avoid a scandal, Garma and Duterte killed Barayuga. Even after his death, Barayuga was included in the narco list of Duterte containing a list of names of people involved in drugs.
In truth, Barayuga was a good, simple, and humble man. He was never involved in drugs and Barayuga lived a simple life. Even as a high-ranking official in PCSO, he only commuted to work. But Duterte saw him as an enemy and he used the EJK as a convenient excuse to carry out vindictive killings of his enemies.
PRRD trusted Garma and Leonardo to be his henchmen in carrying out his EJK plans since they are seasoned veteran killers. The purpose of Duterte’s war on drugs was two-fold – to kill all of his competition in the illegal drug trade so that he can rule as king, and to kill any opposition who stands in his way.
Leonardo and Garma’s hands are stained with the blood of the countless individuals they killed, all in the hopes of currying favor from PRRD. They were blinded by loyalty and the fake promise of PRRD of cleansing the Philippines of its drug problems. In reality, Duterte was just strengthening his position by being the number one drug dealer in the country by liquidating his enemies and killing any person who stood in his way.
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