Comparing Cudia, Purisima / why erring officials remain

In the Philippine government no one apologizes, no one resigns. That’s why Filipinos are amazed and envious that in other lands officials step down at the drop of a hat. Not here where:

• The Army munitions stockyard catches fire, destroying millions of pesos in weapons, killing two soldiers in explosions, and injuring 28 civilian firemen. No officer owns up to the apparent negligence that caused the blaze and consequent losses.

• Three heinous crime convicts are discovered to be able to leave prison for sex orgies in nearby hospitals. And wardens have the temerity to deviate that it’s because the prison hospital lacks specialists, facilities, and medicines for the convicts’ health complications.

• Constituents perish each year in landslides and floods. Yet mayors and governors let the remnants stay in the geo-hazard zones on pretext of fund insufficiency for relocation. They then spend untold amounts to run for reelection or pass on their posts to relatives.

• Probable cause is found to charge and detain for plunder trial a nonagenarian senator in the P10-billion pork barrel scam. He shows no remorse for such heinous offense committed that late in life. Instead, he invokes his very age to demand special treatment and hospital detention.

• The budget secretary unconstitutionally rerouted funds duly appropriated by Congress into personally picked unapproved works. And when the Supreme Court puts a stop to it, he not only defiantly stays in office, he even refuses an audit of the P177 billion he juggled. He also has his party mates chattering in defense that he did it in good faith, his President-boss shielding him by taking responsibility for it, and Malacañang spokesmen digressing to lawmakers to account for the multimillion-peso lump sums he had given them.

National and local officials put the country in such mess that they themselves can’t imagine living in. That’s why they can’t resign or apologize, but stay in office like it’s their personal property.

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The expulsion of a graduating Philippine Military Academy cadet “for lying” is final. Cadet Aldrin Cudia broke the PMA honor code against “lying, cheating, stealing,” Malacañang harrumphs, so he must go.

Cudia’s apparent fault though was wrong English, not deliberate falsehood. He had been two minutes tardy for a midday class and, made to explain, said it was because the previous class was dismissed late. It was imprecise, though, for the other cadets had made it to the next class on the dot. Just that, the professor of the earlier class had pulled Cudia aside after the bell for a quick consultation. The professor had attested so. What Cudia should have explained, more precisely, was that, “The prof had to talk to me.” But the nine-man disciplinary body would hear nothing of it — not even try to imagine that Cudia’s hailing from the barrio had not sharpened his English enough.

Of course, precision in language —and everything else — is a must in the uniformed service. Cudia was weighed and, by Malacañang and PMA scales, found wanting.

If so, then what are we to make of a PMAer like Alan Purisima, Class of ‘81? Here we have a PNP Director General who many times in recent months has not only bordered on breaching every code of honor.

Purisima closed down all gun registration field offices, centralized personal applications and renewals to Camp Crame GHQ, then assigned as delivery courier of licenses a firm owned by two old classmates and an ex-superior. What’s more, that fledgling firm, while charging P190 for each delivery in Metro Manila and P290 to the provinces, subcontracted the work, for P90-flat, to the veteran giant LBC. And when sued for plunder — the lucky courier was to rake in yearly more than P100 million, given the million or so gun registrants — Purisima sneered that there can be no such offense since no government money is involved.

Never mind that Purisima broke his own rules in renewing the licenses of the 50 or so firearms of his target shooting enthusiast-appointer, President Noynoy Aquino, without need for personal appearance, safety seminar, neuropsychiatric test, and ballistics profiling. He can perhaps accord such courtesies to the Commander-in-Chief.

But then, Purisima, by own recent admission, accepted without Finance department consent a donation of a mansion from the Masons. That new manor inside Camp Crame may have cost P25 million by news accounts, or only P12 million as his spokesmen claim. But Purisima has yet to say what it was for, when there’s an existing official residence.

Most needing explanation from Purisima is not mere two-minute tardiness. It’s months-long inability to curb serious crime. Daily now occur broad daylight assassinations, by guns-for-hire on motorcycles, of business, political, and even mere romance rivals. Murder Inc. reportedly now charges as little as P2,000 or two bottles of gin. Congress lent the PNP a hand by enacting a gun-control law that included, in the first six months, one last amnesty for late licensing. Purisima did not enforce it.

And here’s why Purisima can’t stay two minutes longer in office. Lost from the PNP armory inside fortified Camp Crame, under his watch, were 1,004 AK-47s. Now reportedly in the hands of communist rebels, those rifles will be used in rebel raids of far-flung police stations and ambush of army patrols — to amass even more rifles. To think that Purisima’s PNP is to take over counterinsurgency duty, to free the army to face external aggressors.

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