Actor and National Youth Commissioner Dingdong Dantes and the cross-section of the Boholano community led by Gov. Edgar Chatto will launch the “BarkadaKontraDruga” at the Bohol Island State University (BISU) – Main campus in Tagbilaran City on Tuesday. The heightened anti-drug advocacy activity at the university gym at 2:30 in the afternoon will be dramatized in a covenant signing, according to Provincial Administrator Alfonso Damalerio II who is also capitol's focal person on peace and order concerns. The launching will be attended by officials of the province, city, Philippine National Police, Department of Education, and leaders from the church, academe, including PTCAs and student leaders, media, civil society groups, civic organizations, and other sectors. It will immediately follow the national launching here on the same day of the Abot-Alam, a convergence to map all out-of-school youths (OSYs) and integrate them in program-interventions in education, employment and entrepreneurship.

The Abot-Alam event is set at the Bohol Cultural Center Tuesday afternoon at 1:30 after a press conference at the Governor's Mansion at 11 in the morning. Meanwhile, Tagbilaran City PNP Chief George Vale dismissed wild speculation that the recent summary killings of notorious drug personalities here must be handiworks of the dreaded hit squad from Davao. During the Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) meeting at the Governor's Mansion last Tuesday Vale attributed the violent incidents resulting in the deaths of drug elements themselves to the operation of the drug groups. There is no vigilante group or death squad operating in the city and province, the police official said in response to a query from PPOC member RomyTeruel. Chatto, who chairs the PPOC, was emphatic in invoking due process and rule of law in maintaining peace and order and securing public safety. In the process of peace, all strategies, initiatives and acts have to observe rules of engagement, the governor said. With the Bohol PNP under Provincial Director Dennis Agustin, heightened police operations have resulted in almost daily successful arrests of drug elements who had gone free in their criminal activities in the past. (Yon Rebolus)