DESPITE the feeble attempt by the Palace to play it down, the bullet-planting scandal at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport is spinning out of control, embarrassing us as a nation, putting our tourism industry at risk, and exposing as a lie this administration’s claim to following the straight path.
Amid mounting evidence of a syndicate planting bullets in luggage at the airport to extort local and foreign travelers, a spokesman for President Benigno Aquino III urged the public to put the reported incidents “in the right context.”
“Thousands [of passengers] are using the airport terminals [each day] and only a few were found in possession of bullets. All of these incidents are being investigated based on law,” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said. “And authorities recognize the human rights as well as legal rights of those [found] carrying [bullets].”
But much as the President may wish it, this problem will not go away with a simple dismissal.
“This is becoming an international embarrassment,” Valenzuela Rep. Sherwin Gatchalian, a member of the House committee on tourism, told the BBC last week.
Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago said the scandal could hurt tourism, a major job-generating industry, by sowing fear among foreigners using Philippine airports and eroding public trust in law enforcers.
The media have so far reported six cases in which bullets were “found” in the luggage of travelers, who were then told to pay up or face jail time for the illegal possession of ammunition.
The latest victim of the bullet-planting scam was a Filipina, Revelina Combis, 68, who was arrested before she could take off for her dream vacation in Boracay on Oct. 29 for having a single .45 caliber bullet in her luggage. Four days earlier, airport security also detained Gloria Ortinez, 56, a domestic worker bound for Hong Kong; and a Japanese tourist, Kazunobu Sakamoto, 33. Only Sakamoto was able to post bail for P80,000.
Earlier, airport personnel also tried to shake down an American missionary who spent six days in jail until he was able to post bail of P40,000, and a wheelchair-bound American woman who said she had to give a member of the Office of Transportation Security P500 so she could fly back to California.
Now the Palace would have us believe that these are isolated cases and do not add up to a serious pattern of abuse. Logic indicates otherwise.
Clearly, there is no plausible explanation why any of these travelers would have tried to smuggle one or two bullets through their luggage. That a wheelchair-bound woman, an American missionary, a Japanese tourist, or a domestic helper flying back to Hong Kong would even think of packing a bullet or two in their luggage defies all logic. That bullets were “found” in their luggage casts suspicion, not on the travelers, but on the airport workers.
But the suspicion goes beyond the airport and extends to the police and the courts that process these cases because their participation makes the threat of jail time credible.
Amid the growing public outrage over the bullet-planting scam, both the Senate and the House have called for congressional investigations.
Given the grave abuse of authority and the damage that this scandal can do to the nation, this is the minimum we demand.
That Mr. Aquino has not already sacked the airport general manager and his feckless Transportation secretary is a bullet to the head of his administration’s credibility—and is indisputable proof that the straight path exists, not in this government, but only in the President’s mind.
