The kidnapping of 84 Chinese-Filipinos is too much to bear

Why talk of a "plot" to destabilize the Arroyo administration? It’s an epidemic of crime, that’s what The Chinese Commercial News, a respected newspaper which has gotten into trouble several times for its candor, even in pre-martial law days, has reported that there have been 84 kidnappings of Chinese-Filipinos alone since the beginning of the year.

Since President GMA took over in Malacañang on January 22, ALL those kidnappings occurred during her watch.

It must be admitted that, from time to time, the police announce the arrest of several kidnappers, like the 15 suspects nabbed for kidnaps-for-ransom, bank robberies, and carjacking in Metro Manila and the surrounding provinces. To nobody’s surprise, the "gang" was found to be composed of cops and military men, either retired, fired, or serving. But this is a drop in the bucket. The police, for instance, remain clueless as to what gang murdered businesswoman Connie Wong (and killed her policeman bodyguard) after her family couldn’t come up with the ransom demanded.

Since kidnapping is classified as a heinous crime subject to the death penalty, hostages are always at risk because they could identify their abductors. For this reason, swift police sleuthing and action are required. That’s not what we’re getting. All we’ve been getting are optimistic press releases.

The figure of 84 cited by the Chinese daily indicates that the families of most kidnap victims don’t notify the police. Quite obviously, they don’t trust our cops. May I ask: Do you?

It’s no use for the President to fume over the situation. Talk is cheap. She must revamp the Philippine National Police. How to go about that is the problem. There are already so many PNP officers and constables in the freezer they could constitute a battalion and sent to fight the Afghan War. Don’t expect them to catch Osama bin Laden, however: He’d probably buy them off.

When General Larry Mendoza took command last January as director-general of the PNP, worried members of the Chinese community told me that kidnappings would shoot up. At the time, I dismissed the idea as born of sheer paranoia – and their admiration for ex-PNP Director General Panfilo Lacson (now a senator under attack.) These days, I can see what they were so worried about.

I won’t say that General Mendoza is in cahoots with the kidnap syndicates, but we’ll have to conclude that he can’t cope. And in matters of life and death, omission is almost as bad as commission. Both are fatal to the long-suffering and very much scared public.

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The arrest by the police of a Quezon town mayor and three of his henchmen (one of them reportedly a Chinese) – while they were transporting 503 kilos of shabu worth P1 billion – shows that drugs are a multibillion-peso business. The cheek of the group was demonstrated by the fact that they were hauling the shabu in a government ambulance.

For every P1 billion worth of shabu we intercept, it’s evident, many more thousands of kilos get away. The town mayor was small potatoes. Track down his bosses, that’s what they ought to do. For instance, down south, well-known opium and shabu kings belong to the best clubs, pal around with big shots, and protected by law enforcement agents. Everybody seems to know what they’re up to – but nobody dares challenge them. The war against drugs may not be as spectacular as that against the Taliban and bin Laden, but they ruin more lives here than were destroyed in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. When will the day of reckoning – if ever – come?

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Is President GMA really determined to combat graft and curb corruption?

Now, at the suggestion of Speaker Joe de Venecia, the Chief Executive is calling a political and economic summit to address the current emergency. What? Another summit? More talk, more speeches, more resolutions, adding up to zero performance.

Another conference is no magic bullet that can save our political structure and our economy. We’re a nation of glib debaters as it is. Too glib.

When I was a young business writer and later an editor, the government had a National Economic Council (NEC) which labored mightily to produce Five-Year Plans, year after year. Those were excellent plans, I recall, the product of much thinking, scholarship and research – but they were never implemented.

What GMA has to do is act. The time for jaw-jaw is over. For too long, ours has been a country where speech is mistaken for action.

Added to our troubles is the inescapable fact that the pervasive corruption and graft in the bureaucracy, indeed, in our society, has worsened. The culprit? As usual, a lack of political will.

Since 1946, every President from Manuel A. Roxas to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo created an anti-graft body to investigate reports and instances of graft and corruption in the executive department. Judging from the present situation, we can only say that all those anti-graft bodies, more than a dozen in all, have failed miserably.

President Arroyo’s own anti-graft body, created by Executive Order No. 12 issued on April 16, 2001, may suffer the same fate as previous ones, owing to the same infirmity of will that unmanned its predecessors.

The PAGC is actually the successor of the Presidential Commission Against Graft and Corruption established by former President Fidel V. Ramos under his Executive Order No. 151. The body was abolished by President Joseph Estrada, who set up his own National Anti-Corruption Commission at the behest of the World Bank. However, the Erap commission never got off the ground. To begin with, Haydee Yorac (now chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government or PCGG) firmly rejected the former President’s offer that she be named the investigating body’s first chairman.

There is much pessimism over the GMA-devised anti-graft body because, according to former PCAGC Chairman Eufemio Domingo – who headed the FVR-created presidential body for seven years – the new one "is a weaker and less effective tool." Could this be the reason Fem Domingo tendered his "irrevocable resignation" as Chairman of the PAGC, effective last September 14? The President accepted the resignation with alacrity.

Among the moves which disgruntled Domingo was the appointment of two new commissioners by the Palace without even consulting him. One of the two appointees is a former street parliamentarian who isn’t even a lawyer, while the other is a former Civil Service Commission regional director who had ranked only 14th in an efficiency and performance rating of 16 CSC regional directors. Incidentally, this new commissioner graduated from the Ateneo Law School in 1972 and was a classmate of you-know-who.

Then there was a third official whose selection as Executive Director should, under the provisions of Executive Order 12 (which created the commission), have been based on the recommendation of the PAGC chairman. In none of these matters was Domingo ever consulted, or his opinion sought.

Based on these developments, Domingo could only conclude that the new anti-graft body would not have the independence from Malacañang needed to effectively carry out its mandate. And so he made straight to the exit.

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Domingo’s frustrations are not exclusively with the current regime. During the past two administrations, his commission recommended the dismissal of several ranking or well-connected officials for established corruption and graft. Nothing ever happened.

In the case of GMA, who can blame Domingo for his disappointment? In a speech delivered at the Greenhills Walking Corp. forum in La Dolce Fontana on February 21, or just a month after she was sworn into office, President Arroyo had declared: "Also in the interest of transparency, yesterday I met with Chairman Domingo of the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission. He is one of those officials who was languishing in some corner of the Administration. But he will now be an active member of this Administration, in both his term of investigating Presidential appointees and working at systems for the prevention of graft. He said that in the previous administration he was called only once and only to be asked why he is investigating the PAGCOR?" (The alleged irregularities in the Estrada-controlled Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation.)

The President vowed: "He will not be asked why he is investigating anybody!"

Today, Domingo is out. What a difference, alas, seven months make.