A flawed system

In about two decades, Angelo Tomas Reyes may enter the Philippine Military Academy.

That is if the boy, all of two years old, fulfills his father Pablo’s wish of following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Angelo Tomas Reyes, 27th chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Pablo, 40, is the eldest of Reyes’ five boys, and is named after his grandfather. Pablo IV wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps but dad “Angie” dissuaded him.

Back in the days when Angie Reyes was still an EDSA Dos hero and people power fatigue had not set in, he had confided to some STAR editors that while he loved the organization that he had served all his life, he didn’t want any of his sons to pursue the same career.

Pablo obeyed, but became a reserve officer in the Philippine Army, where he is now a captain.

He told us that while the military is now “much maligned, it is still a noble profession,” and he wants it for his only son.

During the wake at Arlington last week, Pablo recalled his father’s admonition to choose a career not because of money but because one would enjoy it.

“Otherwise you’d be slaving for money,” Angie reportedly told his sons.

And if they know they are entering a profession with modest compensation, they should not expect to earn anything more, Pablo remembered his father telling them.

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If memories of their father’s advice on career and compensation are coming back with force to the sons these days, it must have something to do with the circumstances that drove Angie Reyes to kill himself.

During the five-hour necrological service last Saturday night at Camp Aguinaldo, Reyes’ third son Marc, delivering the family’s response to the eulogies, paid tribute to his father by telling the story of “the Filipino public official who is honest.”

That creature, Marc said, “is not perfect… is aware that the system he is in is flawed… but still tries and never loses faith.”

“This system does not nurture integrity or moral uprightness,” Marc said.

The Filipino public official who is honest “will always find himself alone” and can only do so much, Marc said, because the environment where he operates is kinder to those who simply swim with the current rather than struggle upstream.

Those sentiments seemed to be coming from Angie Reyes himself. In our chats over the years, he intimated frustration and disillusionment not just with the military but also, when he had joined the Cabinet, with the civilian government.

In between his songs and jokes (yes, he had a keen sense of humor), he must have wrestled with inner demons. Replying to some of our blunt questions – Why did you desert your commander-in-chief? Why do you allow yourself to be shunted from one civilian post to another? – he would give a rambling, often philosophical answer, as if he was talking aloud to himself.

That statement he issued shortly before his death, released by his family to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), reflected similar sentiments.

“I might not be guiltless/faultless, but I am not as evil as some would like to portray,” Reyes wrote in the article that many of you have probably read. “I did not invent corruption. I walked into it.”

And he had a good idea of what doomed him: “Perhaps my first fault was in having accepted aspects of it as a fact of life.”

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Even if Reyes had not accepted it and had tried to swim upstream, would he have succeeded in changing the world in the previous administration?

He might have ended up like Jun Lozada.

An administration beholden to the military for its survival will lack the resolve to stop corruption especially among the AFP brass.

When I tell people about reforms implemented since 2004 to clean up the AFP, and that some military chiefs in the past decade might be clean, a common response is that there’s a bridge I might be interested in buying.

Even AFP and defense officials of P-Noy are being closely watched for signs of corruption or being ganid and swapang.

Corruption flourished in the AFP because a succession of civilian governments since the Marcos regime needed military support, and AFP officers knew it.

I don’t know if this mindset is disappearing among younger AFP officers. It has certainly lingered among the older ones. You heard retired Navy Commodore Rex Robles telling soldiers at the necrological rites that the AFP is the only “coercive” force that can bring stability to the nation during periods of social tumult.

Robles, one of the reformist soldiers behind the 1986 people power revolt, lamented that Angie Reyes “was a victim of democracy and justice wrongly applied.”

Some portions of Robles’ speech sounded like a call to arms. Is the new commander-in-chief in trouble? Robles also lamented that the justice system in this country was not being used to uphold the rule of law.

Reyes, in the statement obtained by the PCIJ, called for a continuation of reforms to end military corruption: “The fight to reform the system and the entire country must continue; the sad part is that they are selectively targeting individuals and institutions.”

With a 21-gun salute and the forlorn wail of Taps, Angelo Reyes was buried at high noon yesterday at the heroes’ cemetery. Perhaps by the time his only grandson and namesake grows up and decides to become a soldier, the system would have been sufficiently cleaned up.

At the end of several meals Reyes shared with us, his favorite joke was, “I am fed up.”

His exit from this world was one chosen by a man who was fed up with the system, and was devoured by it.