President Benigno Simeon (BS) Cojuangco Aquino III bears full moral and command responsibility for the habitual shenanigans and colossal incompetence in two major cabinet departments—the Department of Transportation and Communications and the Department of National Defense. These key departments are proof positive that the Aquino administration is corrupt, incompetent and insensitive.
Both the DoTC and the DND are headed by men who are very close to Aquino and his family—Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya, 49, and retired lieutenant general Voltaire Gazmin, 71. These two served as aides-de-camp and security officers of the late President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino and her family.
You can say Abaya of Cavite and Gazmin of Tarlac are “members” of the Aquino-Cojuangco family.
Gazmin was the godson of the late Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. when the then army lieutenant married his long-time sweetheart in 1969, a year after he graduated from the Philippine Military Academy. Gazmin also was the sympathetic jailer of Ninoy Aquino when the army surreptitiously hauled the opposition leader for solitary confinement in Laur, Nueva Ecija without Cory Aquino being told about it. She almost went crazy looking for Ninoy until Gazmin secretly told her about her husband’s whereabouts. When Cory became President, Gazmin headed the reorganized Presidential Security Group which saved her from no less than seven coup attempts, including the two bloodiest in history, in 1987 and 1989.
As Defense secretary, Gazmin presides over the largest procurement program ever undertaken by the DND, a total of $1.6 billion in military upgrade in the past two years alone. In 2016, the Defense budget is the biggest ever—at P116 billion. There is danger that some of that money is falling into the wrong hands. Early this year, the Senate tried to investigate the anomalous procurement of 21 refurbished helicopters worth P1.2 billion. Some of the choppers were not functioning properly. Sensing the heat of a scandal, the DND canceled the deal.
In 2013, Gazmin’s able executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council abruptly quit reportedly because he could not stand the procurement scandals at the DND.
Gazmin’s biggest contribution to Aquino’s Matuwid na Daan program, however, is in having a hand in naming corrupt top officials at the Bureau of Immigration and the national penitentiary. Today, both the BI and the New Bilibid Prison have become centers of corruption.
Gazmin also proved his mettle, or lack of it, in four major disasters—two man-made (the 20-day Zamboanga siege of 2013 in which the army burned down 10,000 houses, and the Mamasapano Massacre of January 2015 in which 44 elite police commandos were massacred in the heat of noon by bandits), and two natural—the Bohol earthquake and typhoon “Yolanda”, both in 2013. As the country’s defense and disaster prevention and relief czar, these four disasters showed Gazmin as a leader who is lethargic and far removed from reality.
After these disasters, calls mounted for Gazmin’s retirement or resignation. Aquino would hear none of it.
The President has also been deaf to mounting calls for the removal of Secretary Abaya. On paper, Jun Abaya has impeccable credentials—a great grandson of the first Philippine president, Philippine Science High School, engineering studies at the University of the Philippines, bachelor’s degree in math at Annapolis Naval Academy, Maryland, master in electrical engineering at Cornel 1989, law degree from Ateneo 2005, and congressman for three terms. He is a scientist with legal credentials.
Still, under Abaya’s watch, the DoTC became the leading center of stupidity, incompetence and corruption. Under his watch, Manila’s horrendous traffic made the grade as the worst in the world.
The frequent breakdowns in the mass railway transit that rims the eastern corridor of Metro Manila along Edsa are due largely to incompetence and corruption. The DoTC had the incredible foresight to award MRT’s maintenance to an unknown company owned by relatives of some DoTC officials and henchmen of Liberal Party honchos.
On another front, another DoTC agency, the Land Transportation Office, had this brilliant idea to extort P400 from each of the owners of all motorized vehicles by requiring them to buy new plates which turned out to be inferior in quality to current and old but highly usable plates. The LTO also cannot produce car plates and driver’s licenses on time. The head of the old private supplier told me a few months before he died that DoTC people were demanding from him P500 million in spot cash in exchange for being allowed to negotiate the extension of his contract for car plates and driver’s licenses, “without firm guarantees.” The guy offered to pay half of the P500 million as down payment with the balance payable once he got the contract. No deal.
Management of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport is also under the DoTC. But the man President BS Aquino named as Naia general manager is another yellow general and “relative,” Jose Angel Honrado, also from Tarlac.
Under Honrado, a former air force general and a security officer for six years to President Cory Aquino, the Philippines’ principal gateway acquired two global distinctions—the worst airport in the world and the most dangerous airport in the world.
The “tanim-bala” (bullet planting) scandal wherein unsuspecting airline passengers are suddenly found in possession of bullets in their bags (thus subjecting them to extortion to avoid arrest and prosecution) has made headlines around the world and earned prominent coverage by the BBC and Time magazine. This scandal could damage Naia for a long time, if not forever.
Yet, President Aquino doesn’t think there is a scandal and finds no need to fire Honrado. Honrado is the epitome of the Peter Principle—a man rising to his level of incompetence—and corruption.
Gazmin, Abaya, Honrado. They were once close-in security men of the Aquinos before they rose to their present positions of power. They are the primary proofs why the so-called Matuwid na Daan (Straight Path) is a hollow slogan and a sham.
Ultimately, President BS Aquino must be held responsible for these men. He will, after all, sink with them. In the meantime, the pain and suffering are ours to bear.
biznewsasia@gmail.com