EDITORIAL - Lip service to reforms

The capture of Gregorio Honasan will not eradicate the coup culture that he nurtured in the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Only reforms – permanent, institutionalized – will cure the coup virus. The administration, besieged from the start by coup plotters, must bear this in mind as it picks the next secretary of national defense.

The administration needs reminding because the individuals being floated so far to replace Avelino Cruz when he steps down at the end of the month all look like they will reverse the reforms painstakingly implemented over the past two years as soon as they assume the defense portfolio. Two former chiefs of the Philippine National Police who have done nothing to distinguish themselves either in the PNP or in their current Cabinet posts are said to be the frontrunners. Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., now the secretary of public works, even gained notoriety for the escapes of Jemaah Islamiyah bomb maker Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, two Abu Sayyaf militants and the head of the Pentagon kidnapping gang, Faisal Marohombsar, from Camp Crame during Ebdane's watch.

For those escapes, Ebdane was rewarded with the national security portfolio upon his retirement from the PNP. Give President Arroyo an "A" for gratitude: she continues to repay Ebdane, Leandro Mendoza and all the other military and police officers who stood by her side in those turbulent days when Filipinos were trying to oust Joseph Estrada for massive corruption and she, as vice president, stood to become the top beneficiary. She is still recycling Reynaldo Berroya, a member of that same gang, despite repeated objections from anti-crime groups.

The rest of the names being floated for the defense portfolio are just as unpalatable. What will politicians do in a position whose outgoing occupant has been trying to insulate the AFP from politics? For two decades since the first people power revolt, the coup virus has been nurtured by political opportunists and military mischief-makers. The first thing a politician will do in the defense department is to assign a battalion of soldiers to protect himself, his relatives and cronies, and to make sure soldiers protect the votes of his political allies come May 2007.

President Arroyo has made some feeble noises, which grow loud only after mutinies and coup threats, about wanting to reform the AFP. Her choice of the next defense chief will show whether she is just paying lip service to military reforms.