The Palace defended administration's "Build, Build, Build" program and the administration's war against drugs after an opposition lawmaker criticized it,

"While detractors of this Administration consistently deliberate on how to mudsling the President's achievements, we remain focused on how to improve the lives of our countrymen through projects that will bring about genuine change for the nation," Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement on Saturday.

"Expectedly the opposition, especially those who wielded powers prior to the present ones, who either by incompetence or sheer negligence failed to initiate any major infrastructure, has denigrated the initiatives of PRRD (President Rodrigo Roa Duterte) to establish the foundation for the country's development and growth," he added

The statement came as a response to "a detained senator" who apparently described President Rodrigo Duterte's "Build Build, Build" " project as "grossly inefficient."

Panelo explained that delays in implementing the administration's projects were due to "legal restraints and resort to judicial remedies by the losing bidders, to which the President has expressed his exasperation and frustration."

He said the administration's infrastructure projects made positive impact in the country's economic sector.

"The government’s infrastructure and other capital outlays, according to the Department of Budget and Management, jumped in the first 10 months of 2018 by 50.3 percent to P665.1 billion from the P442.7 billion recorded in the same period in 2017.

Panelo said the deaths caused by the administration's war on drugs is "a small price to pay to secure the safety of the nation from the scourge of prohibited drugs."

"The relentless drug war resulted in the surrender of more than a million drug addicts and pushers, the arrest of hundreds of drug syndicate members and the neutralisation of less than five thousand drug lords and their henchmen who opted to fight it out with the lawmen making them rest peacefully, never again to destroy a generation of Filipinos and create dysfunctional families," he reiterated.

"The vigorous legal process effectively contained the drug addiction to about three million Filipinos. Without the continuing battle against the destroyers of families, the number of our drug enslaved countrymen could have reached a staggering ten million Filipinos which could probably include the families and relatives of the detractors of the anti-illegal drug campaign," Panelo added. Cristina Eloisa Baclig/DMS