Reduce, reuse, recycle.
President Rodrigo Duterte has given new meaning to the 3Rs favored by environmentalists by applying them to favored government officials who have failed at their given tasks.
The latest example of this is the newly appointed head of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, Isidro Lapeña, who was abruptly “promoted” last week from his previous post as Customs chief.
In August, Lapeña set the stage for his abrupt transfer by disputing the findings of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency that billions of pesos of illegal drugs had been smuggled through Customs by way of magnetic lifters, four of which were found empty in a warehouse in Cavite. Although drug-sniffing dogs detected traces of shabu, then Customs chief Lapeña would have none of that—presumably because agreeing with the PDEA would have been an admission that his agency had failed to block the entry of the worst possible form of contraband in the Duterte administration, illegal drugs. Worse, doing so would be to acknowledge that under his watch, crooked Customs personnel were in cahoots with the drug syndicates.
The President at this point sided with his Customs chief, by reducing the gravity of the incident. The PDEA allegations, he said, we based on mere speculation.
Subsequently, Lapeña sacked a Customs official who dared to support the PDEA position by saying that X-ray images suggested that the empty magnetic lifters had indeed contained shabu. Although the bureau’s spokesman insisted this was not an attempt to silence the dissenting voice, the move had all the hallmarks of a coverup.
Under growing pressure to do something about the situation, the President’s spokesman reused the threadbare line that Lapeña continued to enjoy Mr. Duterte’s full trust and confidence.
Finally, when the overwhelming weight of evidence compelled Lapeña to admit during a congressional hearing that he was wrong, and that the lifters may have contained shabu after all, the President abruptly announced his “promotion” to a Cabinet position as the head of TESDA, thus completing the 3Rs by recycling favored officials who had dropped the ball.
This is hardly the first time.
Earlier this year, Jose Gabriel La Viña was named undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture, even though he had been sacked for “his abuse of public funds.”
Manuel Serra Jr. was named a member of the board of the Philippine Coconut Authority, after he and four other commissioners of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor were fired for making too many foreign trips.
The President also fired Lapeña’s predecessor at the Bureau of Customs, Nicanor Faeldon—also over smuggled drugs—only to reappoint him to another government post.
In defending his moves, the President insisted that Lapeña and Faeldon were honest men, who were merely bamboozled by the crooked officials who worked under them.
At this point, we have no reason to contest the President’s assertion. What we do question, however, is the wisdom of rewarding people who, by the President’s own admission, had been duped to the detriment of the public. In our search for honest men and women to work in the government, are we to content ourselves with those who have already shown their incompetence?
The three Rs may be good for the environment, but they can wreak havoc on the notion of good government.