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Friday, March 29, 2024

‘Everybody happy’

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President Rodrigo Duterte announced Monday that he was accepting the resignation of Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon and installing the head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Isidro Lapeña in his place.

The announcement followed weeks of speculation on whether Faeldon, a former mutineer who was appointed by the President himself, would stay or go after barely a year on the job.

Mr. Duterte presumably named Faeldon to head the perennially tarnished agency because of he latter’s known aversion to corruption. Faeldon joined the coups he did during the Arroyo administration because he and his group were supposedly outraged about government corruption.

But now Senator Panfilo Lacson alleges that Faeldon himself received a welcome gift—P100 million—when he began his stint at the BoC last year—something the latter vehemently denied.

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Lacson also named numerous Customs officials who were part of the entrenched smuggling syndicate at the bureau. “Hell is empty,” the senator said.

The bureau is one of two major agencies supposedly bringing much-needed revenue to the government. Taxes on goods entering the country, if counted and collected correctly, would be substantial enough to fund government infrastructure and social services.

Unfortunately, the lure of money is much too difficult to ignore for many Customs officials, earning for bureau the notoriety of being perceived as one of the most corrupt in government.

Faeldon insists he waged a lonesome fight against corruption in his agency—which was why he was not able to stop the entry of P6.4 billion worth of shabu from Xiamen, China last May.

Now everybody will watch what Lapeña would do differently from his predecessors. There is pressure to show that the BoC is not as impenetrable to reform, not only now when there is clamor for accountability, but from hereon so that much-needed money can pour into government and be put into good use.

“Everybody happy” is how Lacson described the system at Customs. The loot trickles down to all those involved. The rest of us, however, are unhappy—no, outraged—at how such a system could have gone on for so long, unabated.

It would be naive to believe change will be seen at the bureau as soon as a new commissioner—another outsider, for good or bad—assumes his post. We are prepared to wait it out, so long as there are less happy people over there, every day.

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