“Who will be left standing when this sordid investigation ends?”
Raul Villanueva’s bombshell about a former Chief of the Philippine National Police assisting in Alice Guo’s escape turned out to be nothing but tsimis. But why did he do it and shouldn’t there be consequences to his action? Was it an attempt to show that in all these Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators hullabaloo, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation is as clean as a whistle?
I do not believe that the public bought the ploy. Pagcor, after all, is the government agency that has control over all POGO operations. Furthermore, didn’t Pagcor continue to recommend the continuing operation of POGOs even after the raid in Bamban, Tarlac? Pagcor should just keep quiet and spare the public from its maneuvering in a vain attempt to look good. Besides, the POGO stink has already permeated many parts of the government. As President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said, heads would eventually have to roll. The only question now is who will be left standing when this sordid investigation ends.
Villanueva, being a retired General of the AFP and an intelligence officer, should have known better than blurt out unverified intelligence information because of the reputational damage it can do to his fellow retirees from the PNP. Instead of achieving whatever purpose he had in mind, the ill-advised action has left him and his organization looking very bad.
But with the investigation stopping, at least the 24 retired PNP Chiefs who are still around, can now breathe a sigh of relief. Right from the beginning of Villanueva’s revelation, I already had serious doubts. This is because I would not have thought that a retired PNP Chief would be stupid enough to sacrifice the tranquility of his retirement to get involved in a controversial undertaking. Such a blunder could ruin everything that he worked, and it would certainly affect his family.
Congress or the PNP should now investigate why the general made the accusation in the first place.
As the two Congressional hearings are showing, the tentacles of POGO have pervaded many parts of the government bureaucracy. This reminds me of jueteng, but one on a bigger scale because of its international reach and the amount of money involved. The so-called payolas, for instance, dwarf jueteng money by a huge margin as shown by the amounts being mentioned in the Congressional hearings. It is really mind boggling. To pay P200 million just to facilitate an escape shows the kind of money that can corrupt even the most steadfast government official.
And since we are on the subject of Police officials, we now have a new crying lady or queen of tears in the person of retired Police Colonel Royina Garma, the former general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.
We do not know whether her tears are crocodile tears. By reputation, she is supposed to be one of the toughest officers to have put on a PNP uniform. The allegations circulating against her like — being a leader of the dreaded DDS of Davao City and the things that she also allegedly did while Chief of the Cebu City Police and CIDG — scares the hell of anybody reading the story.
In my years of military and police service, I had the opportunity to know many so-called battle-hardened officers. There are those with real combat experience of fighting against enemies who can actually fight back like the CPP/NPA terrorists or the secessionist Muslim rebels in Mindanao. There are also those whose alleged fighting experience revolves around the death of criminal suspects who cannot fight back.
I do not know the tough retired Colonel personally. I can only surmise to which category she belonged.
If in the end, the allegations against her are proven, she should face the music. Her story has some similarities to Cristopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, who sold himself to the devil for a moment of power and glory then wanted to rescind his contract with the devil. Unfortunately for him, it was too late.
Those still in the service should learn from this story.
