Honor code

I think the Philippine Military Academy and the Armed Forces of the Philippines made a mistake in not letting PMA cadet Aldrin Jeff Cudia graduate with the rest of Siklab Diwa Class of 2014. Instead of correcting an infraction he made, they destroyed an entire person.

Cudia, to those who do not know his story, was found to have lied in trying to explain why he was late for two minutes to a class. According to the PMA honor code, lying is a mortal sin and deserves the highest punishment.

I beg to disagree. And with my disagreement, I issue a challenge to every PMAer — who among you has never lied in your life? If there is one among you who has never lied even once in your life then you must be God because even the greatest of saints, Saint Peter, lied not once but thrice.

I think what really happened to Cudia was not that he lied but that he got caught lying. Now there is the rub. Everybody lies because everybody is human. And since even PMAers are human, then it follows that they too must lie, only that some are smarter than others.

Now I do not wish to belittle the PMA honor code. Neither am I trying to make excuses for lying. I am just realistic enough to accept the fact that lying is part of human nature. What I find unnatural and inhuman is the incapacity of the PMA, made up as it is of humans, if martial in orientation, to be fair and sensible.

Would it have seriously disrespected and impaired the PMA honor code if Cudia was just allowed to graduate? Would it have been so horrible to allow him to make use of the degree he spent four good years of his young life on in some other endeavor outside the armed forces?

I can understand and accept that Cudia may never be allowed to serve in uniform. Fine. But at least he can be given another shot at life as a civilian. If he had been allowed to graduate and obtain his degree, he could have used it to remind himself of his folly and be the better man his "mistahs" never allowed him to be.

I don't believe there is an honor code anywhere on earth so sacred and worthy of its name and deserving of the respect of others that does not leave open a window for reform. Even the unassailable books of faith and the teachings of God Himself are far bigger on salvation and reform than they are on punishment.

Only the PMA honor code appears to be contrary and thus invites scrutiny to its contrariness, which is best summed up by one question — have each and every PMA graduate, who it must be presumed must have eaten the honor code for breakfast, lunch or dinner marched to the code's cadence in the bigger parade grounds of life?

Again, I am neither assailing the PMA nor its honor code for what they are, only for their departure from what they are supposed to be. And what they are supposed to be is turn out good and decent men willing to sacrifice even their lives for their country.

Nobody is good or decent just like that. Each person becomes good and decent only as a product of constant trial and error, of challenges and revisions. Lying only violates the wording of the PMA honor code. It does not violate the very essence of its intentions.

Because if the PMA honor code is intended to produce good and decent men, then it follows that its essence has to embrace reform. That is what I would like to believe -- that life in the PMA is an entire course made up of great challenges and even greater reforms.

Besides, the PMA honor code cannot be a greater edict than the Ten Commandments of God Himself, the Eighth Commandment of which is a prohibition also against lying, a sin that is in the eyes of God pardonable. Every law that punishes anyone anywhere in this civilized world of today always leaves room for reform.

That is precisely why the word prison is giving way to the phrase correctional facility. Only by correction or reform can a bad person be made good. By refusing to graduate Cudia for violating the PMA honor code, the PMA dishonored him perpetually and gave him no chance at reform.

I do not think lying made Cudia a completely bad person unworthy of even the slightest consideration by the institution where he spent four years of his life except the final few days of his shame. I do not wish anything bad for Cudia but I think he is destroyed as a person. If he turns really bad, you know who to blame.