The images were unusual when some senior police officers in the Philippine metropolitan area of ​​Manila held their urine samples up to the cameras earlier this year.

The "surprise" test for illegal substances was part of an effort by the Philippine National Police to locate officers with ties to the drug community.

Shortly before, the police officers had also submitted their resignation.

This was in response to Interior Minister Benjamin Abalos Jr. instructing all police officers with the rank of colonel or general to submit resignation requests to their superiors.

He combined the call with the deadline to submit this application by January 31 at the latest.

Till Fähnders

Political correspondent for Southeast Asia.

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The purpose of the exercise is to screen executives for possible links to the drug milieu.

A five-person committee will be commissioned with these investigations, which also include so-called lifestyle checks, in the coming weeks.

Depending on the result, the resignation request is accepted or rejected.

If anything is found, officers could be retired or taken to court.

The interim result should satisfy the Minister of the Interior.

New drug policy under Marcos Jr.

By the day before the deadline, all but ten of the 953 people affected had submitted their resignations.

And the action appeared to have gone well in another area as well: According to the results published a few days later, all 72 urine samples from the officials tested in Manila contained no illegal substances whatsoever.

With the resignation, the government of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who was elected last year, is showing that it wants to open a new chapter in drug policy after the bloody campaign of persecution by predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte once came to power with a promise to rid the country of the scourge of addiction.

The police themselves admit that more than 6,000 people have been killed in the course of their anti-drug operations.

Human rights activists even assume 12,000 to 30,000 dead, who were killed by police officers in the course of operations, but also by hooded killer squads.

While Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. hasn't officially ended the drug war, he wants to focus more on intervention and rehabilitation.

The son of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose surname is associated with a number of human rights violations, probably wants to use it to improve his image.

Doubts about government action

As even Duterte once acknowledged, some in the police force have their fingers deep in the drug business.

Despite all the brutality in dealing with petty criminals, this problem has never really been tackled.

The new initiative shows "the total failure of the previous government to really clean up the system," says political scientist Richard Heydarian.

However, nobody expects that police officers involved in drug trafficking will now be held to account on a large scale.

"The resignations give the impression that the government is doing something, but nothing more," says Human Rights Watch's Carlos Conde of the FAZ.

National police chief Rodolfo Azurin Jr. estimates that there are only about a handful of executives involved in drug trafficking.

Interior Minister Abalos had previously spoken of a "deep infection" of the police forces.

In connection with the drug war, too, most of them get away with it.

In only one case were the officers involved convicted.

The International Criminal Court has only just announced the reopening of its investigation into Duterte's drug war, as it is not satisfied that the Philippines is adequately prosecuting the alleged crimes itself.