CUSTOMS Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon will continue serving as head of the Bureau of Customs despite calls from lawmakers for him to resign over his failure to stop the entry of P6.4 billion worth of illegal drugs from China, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said Tuesday.
Speaking after President Rodrigo Duterte summoned Faeldon to Malacañang late Tuesday afternoon, Dominguez said the former Marine general continued to enjoy the President’s trust and confidence despite the latest controversy.
Duterte met with Faeldon after some 600 kilos of shabu (methamphetamine) from China slipped past bureau’s green lane in May.
Also called to the meeting were Dominguez, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, and Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Cesar Dulay.
Authorities, acting on a tip from Beijing, eventually found the drug shipment in a warehouse in Valenzuela City.
Both chambers of Congress are conducting investigations into the entry of the illegal drugs.
Lawmakers chastised Faeldon for “glaring ineptitude” in the handling of the illegal drug shipment.
At a congressional hearing conducted by the House committee on dangerous drugs, Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, the panel chairman, urged Faeldon to resign for incompetence.
“Commissioner, you are wasting the President’s trust,” Barbers told Faeldon in Filipino. “You were put there so that you could be the man of the hour. You were from nowhere. We didin’t know what your qualifications were and why you were put there, because the President has full trust and confidence in you.”
“But you embarrassed the President in spite of the fact that we have a serious war against drugs. Shouldn’t you be answerable for that? You should resign to avoid further embarrassment to the President,” he added.
Barbers said Faeldon and the concerned Customs officials tainted the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.
“You have undermined the efforts being taken by the law enforcers. You have a few hours to think about your resignation. All of you, you should all resign,” he said.
During the hearing, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Director Wilkins Villanueva said in the hearing that Faeldon refused to heed his advice on the proper procedures in handling the evidence.
Villanueva said that each time he would give advice on how to proceed with the case, Faeldon would consult a lawyer and overrule him. Faeldon admitted that the lawyer was his fiancée.
Instead of turning over the shipment to PDEA as required by law, the bureau turned the shabu over to the National Bureau of Investigation.
SAGIP party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta also said he was disappointed with the bureau’s “incompetent” handling of the seized drugs and asked Faeldon if he were willing to resign.
But Faeldon said he would not quit unless the President tells him to do so.
“Your honor, I am a soldier, I do not treat this position as a job, it is a mission. And a soldier does not quit from his mission, but a soldier can be fired. So let the President fire me,” Faeldon said.
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez backed calls for Faeldon’s resignation for gross incompetence, which could jeopardize the case against the suspects.
Lawmakers expressed concern that the insistence of the BoC to open the seized cargo of drugs as well as the careless handling of evidence would weaken the case against the suspects.
Alvarez said Faeldon was “grossly incompetent, not just incompetent.”
Alvarez said his stand on Faeldon was not personal, even though the commissioner’s chief of staff, Mandy Mercado Anderson, had called the Speaker “an imbecile” in a Facebook post.
“I’m hoping and praying he tries so he realizes what an imbecile he is when he fails,” Anderson said of Alvarez, after he threatened to dissolve the Court of Appeals.
“Isn’t there anyone else in the House composed of 200+ representatives who can actually be speaker?? Nakakahiya na! [It’s embarrassing!]” she added.
Anderson also said she received an endorsement from Alvarez recommending a Customs employee for promotion. She said she reviewed the employee’s recommendation but found that she was not qualified.
Alvarez brushed aside suggestions that he was lobbying for the employee, and said it would soon be clear who the imbecile was.
Barbers said in many countries, public officials quickly leave office in the face of public scandal or failure to comply with government policy.
Faeldon was allowed to leave the hearing to meet with the President at 4 p.m.
The President later called Senate leaders to a meeting at the Palace an hour later, after a witness identified Customs officials allegedly involved in the entry of P6.4 billion worth of shabu.
Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III announced the meeting as he supported calls for Faeldon to resign.
Bureau officials were grilled on how the huge amount of drugs got through customs examiners.
Duterte also called Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III and Minority Leader Franklin Drilon to the meeting.
The meeting came a day after the Senate Blue Ribbon panel conducted a five-hour hearing on the shabu smuggled through Customs in May.
The shipment was seized in warehouses in Valenzuela days after it entered the country.
During the executive session, a broker supposedly claimed that Customs officials were involved in the smuggling of shabu.
In a radio interview, Senator Panfilo Lacson said corrupt officials and personnel of the Bureau of Customs rake in at least P270 million a day from their so-called “three o’clock habit” on Fridays, which means an average of P98.55 billion–enough to cover for the government’s P147-billion budget deficit.
“It’s an open secret. We all know the three o’clock habit,” said Lacson in an interview on radio dwIZ, referring to the weekly division of bribes at the bureau.
Asked before the Senate session if the three o’clock habit still continues, Lacson said he threw the same question to the Cusfoms officials when they appeared in last Monday’s Senate Blue Ribbon hearing, and he remembered “they merely smiled.”
“What does that mean? They [could have] categorically say there’s no more 3 o’clock habit, Friday afternoon but there was no answer,” said Lacson.
Lacson said brokers operating at Customs said unscrupulous Customs officials and personnel receive grease money of P27,000 to P30,000 per container in a day.
Lacson said Faeldon told the same Senate hearing that about 10,000 containers arrive daily.
“So P27,000 times 10,000, that’s P270 million per day. It’s payola. Multiply this by 365 [days], easily that’s P98.55 billion,” he said.
At this rate, he said, the bribes could wipe out the country’s deficit in just two years. But this went to corrupt officials and not the government, he said.
Lacson also saw the possible involvement of Chinese nationals in the drug shipment.
Sotto said the Chinese involved in the shipment should have been arrested since the bureau had earlier identified them and the shipment intercepted.
Senator Richard Gordon said the Customs officials were either incompetent or corrupt for letting the large shipment through so easily.
“This is really the gang who can’t shoot straight. Either you’re incompetent or you are corrupt. That’s the whole point here,” said Gordon.
Gordon vowed to pinpoint through the investigation how the illegal shipment was able to pass through practically undetected, whether Customs personnel were involved and whether it was because of a change in the bureau’s systems.
Gordon, chairman of the Blue Ribbon committee, emphasized the key role that the bureau played.
“We have to rely on the Customs commissioner and the Customs organization to really guard the front door of our country [so that] contraband [does not] enter,” he said.