EDITORIAL - Death of a milking cow

For nearly a decade, scandal has plagued the military’s Retirement and Separation Benefits System. Apart from bad investments and mismanagement, the RSBS used military pensions to give its officials salaries and perks several times larger than those received by the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. One example: P14 million was spent in legal fees simply for the registration of 1,500 golf shares. The value of those shares as well as investments in real estate plunged during the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

Because of the dissipation of RSBS funds, taxpayers now shoulder the payment of military pensions. This year the amount is P24 billion; for 2007 the proposed allocation is P26 billion. Military pensions are based on current salary scales in the AFP. Thus, even if the contributions to the RSBS of a brigadier general who retired 20 years ago was only a tenth of the required contributions today, the amount of his pension will be based on the current pay of a one-star general.

Now defense and military officials have finally decided to shut down the 30-year-old RSBS by the end of the year and replace it with another body that can better administer the military’s pension fund. The shutdown of the RSBS was among the recommendations of both the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and the commission headed by retired Supreme Court justice Florentino Feliciano, which was formed after the Oakwood mutiny in 2003 to propose reforms in the AFP.

Apart from shutting down the RSBS, authorities must make sure those who turned the pension fund into a milking cow must be identified, prosecuted and sent to prison. In recent days the malcontents in the AFP as well as those adversely affected by the shutdown of the RSBS have tried to hit back using the tool of choice of inarticulate cowards in this country: anonymous text messages. These yellow-bellied texters must be traced and punished together with those who mismanaged and pocketed soldiers’ hard-earned money.