Santa Banana, will the nation have Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte, the president-elect for the next six years, for a chief executive who doesn’t mean what he says?
I ask this question since it is what Du30’s spokesman Salvador Panelo and people close to him seem to be telling us whenever the incoming president is criticized for his statements.
When Du30 wolf-whistled a pretty pregnant reporter who was asking him questions, a crime under his own ordinance as mayor, he said it was his freedom of expression. Panelo interpreted it to be rather a compliment. And whenever Du30 comes out with his obscene and indecent remarks about the opposite sex, his spokesman claims that they should not be taken literally.
Tough-talking Du30 came out with a tirade against corrupt and extortionist mediamen whom he felt deserve, together with drug lords and traffickers, to be killed by private citizens, who will then get medals and even rewards. Again his spokesman defended him, saying he was quoted out of context.
Likewise, when the United Nations called Du30’s pronouncements “irresponsible and dangerous,” unbecoming of a president, Panelo was quick to say that Du30 did not mean it that way. My gulay, what does Du30 mean when he says something? If a president doesn’t mean what he says, should we trust him to lead us in the next six years?
Now, we are told by some people around Du30 that when he said he would no longer give media interviews throughout his term, he meant only during his term as mayor of Davao. He was criticized for isolating himself from the very people who voted for him, and from the nation as a whole.
Santa Banana, have we elected a president whose statements must always be explained by his spokesman or subordinates, who claim to know him better than anyone of us? It would seem so since Du30 himself had said that people seem to misinterpret what he does or says. To my mind, when a president says something and doesn’t mean it, and must always be explained by his spokesman and the people around him, he cannot be trusted as a leader and his words must always be taken with a grain of salt.
I believe that a president must always be honest to the people and forthright, and must never resort to doublespeak like when he said that drug lords and traffickers must be killed even by private citizens, encouraging vigilantism, and making the country a “Wild Wild West,” echoing the warning of Senator-elect Ping Lacson, a former Philippine National Police chief.
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The many rats including House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte who abandoned the sinking ship of the Liberal Party, and the members of other political parties who joined them and lined up to pay homage to Du30 to ensure the speakership of Rep. Pantaleon Alvares, now call themselves the “Super Majority.”
The members of the ruling party in the Senate, with Senator Kiko Pimentel being groomed to be the new Senate president, are also calling themselves the “Super Majority.” Whatever they are called, their self-interests come first rather than the needs of the people who elected them to office.
But, what is amusing to me is that both the incoming Speaker of the House of Representatives and the president of the Senate vow they won’t be rubber stamps of the incoming president. Come again, Rep. Alvarez and Senator Kiko, not rubber stamps when both chambers will now be headed by members of PDP-Laban?
That, to me, is the tragedy of our kind of politics. Most legislators want to become members of the majority to get the most benefits on the pretext of looking after their constituencies. It’s called political patronage, whose endless cycle promotes corruption.
The president-elect vows to end not only criminality and trafficking of illegal drugs, but corruption. With political patronage the name of the game in both the Senate and House, and resulting in corruption, how in the world can we take Du30’s word for it?
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The truth is coming out that Vice President-elect Leni Robredo won as a result of massive fraud and cheating by both the Commission on Elections and Smartmatic-TIM by using what they call “Secret Fourth Server.” This server was kept from the public, and was used in the reported cheating that favored Robredo and gave zero votes to Senator Bongbong Marcos in so many places nationwide.
This “Secret Fourth Server” inserted into the automated election system was never divulged to the public and was never the subject of a source code review. Santa Banana, it’s getting from bad to worse for Comelec Chairman Andy Bautista and the Smartmatic, clearly indicating a big conspiracy to manipulate the results of the May 9 polls in favor of the administration candidates Mar Roxas and Robredo. In the case of Mar, the margin between him and Du30 was too big at more than six million. But, in the case of Leni, it was much less in the initial counting, just over one million.
My gulay, both the Comelec and Smartmatic must have told by BS Aquino, “anybody, but Marcos.”
If I can think of any BS Aquino legacy, it’s in frustrating the people’s will last May 9.
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Because of space constraints. I was not able to explain fully in an earlier column when I wrote that the new Customs Commissioner Nick Faeldon, a marine captain, may have to fire everybody at that bureau if he wants to end graft and corruption there. I said that even the security guards were on the take.
In my earlier days as a business editor of the defunct Philippine Herald, I covered Customs for many years, and I know the bureau inside out where everybody from the commissioners down to the security guards receive bribes from entrenched smuggling syndicates protected by their political “padrinos.”
Customs may be automated now, but still there are elements of human discretion in the examinations of hundreds, if not thousands, of containers arriving at the piers daily. In fact, I know that every Friday, smugglers and members of smuggling syndicates meet on Remedios St. in Malate, for the payoff.
At the international airport, smuggling gets more sophisticated with some chief of “cabos” speaking for customs officials and personnel. The “cabos” are approached by smugglers and in turn the “cabos” liaison with Customs officials and personnel to enable them to release goods from bonded warehouses.
At the piers, it is known that for every alleged container smuggled, some eight to 10 other containers are brought out without any examination, and the security guards are given their share.
At the airport, a Customs official intimated to me that Customs personnel are allowed some kind of a leeway to “fix” the entry of smuggled goods, so long as they keep it under wraps, to augment their low pay. In other words, smuggling gets tolerated so long as they are not scandalous.
There was even a time, when tables with drawers at the bureau were prohibited because when a broker or somebody wants an import to be released, all the Customs personnel had to do is open his drawer.
The smuggling of toxic materials, explosives and chemicals was even worse since these were set apart from the ordinary containers coming from abroad. They are stored in a compound adjacent to the Pasig River to enable smugglers to transport them easily.
My gulay, would you believe that hundreds if not thousands of containers disappear when they are transported from Batangas port to the main bureau or back. Or, when imports land in Subic to be examined in Manila, they eventually disappear. If you believe in miracles, go to Customs and ask why.
Thus, when Faeldon got appointed to Customs, where he never had any experience in, I was told that smuggling syndicates started laughing and singing, happy days are here again.
I can only recall that time when a president, so disgusted with corruption at Customs brought in some 400 cadets from the Philippine Military Academy, hoping that the bureau would be reformed. To his dismay, even the PMA cadets became corrupt.
Often, presidents thought of reforming Customs by replacing the commissioners. During BS Aquino’s six years, five Customs commissioners were appointed one after another in the hope that the bureau would change, but to no avail. So, does Du30 think he can do it?
The only way I think of revamping Customs is to privatize it. Other countries have done the same. It’s only through privatization that the Du30 government can change the culture of the most corrupt agency of government.