TRIBUNE: SELECTIVE TREATMENT IN MILITARY PROBE
MANILA, FEBRUARY 2, 2011 (TRIBUNE) A military probe on the corrupt "practice" and "tradition" in the Armed Forces of the Philippines relating to the use of military funds by generals and senior officials of the AFP in the hundreds of millions of pesos, is underway, but the focus, or so it appears, would be on the previous AFP officials' terms, with the incumbent military officials spared from the probe.
As claimed by the AFP spokesman, there is no need to include the current military officials because these practice and tradition are a "thing of the past" and no longer in practice.
And the military under the new administration thinks that which its officials say is credible? Why should the current AFP leadership be believed when it claims that such corrupt practice is no longer being tolerated?
The corrupt practice has been going on for decades, and in that time, the military officials of today, who were then junior officers, have been promoted, and with their promotions, they necessarily got a piece of the AFP slush funds.
Note that the testimony of the whistle-blower, retired budget officer Col. George Rabusa, stated that even the military auditor as well as the inspector-general were also beneficiaries of the slush fund, and as long as they kept their trap shut, as they too, were part of the corrupt scheme, the practice and tradition went on with the corruption unconfirmed.
Note too, that no one then — including Rabusa — ever blew the whistle, until a change of administration came about. In much the same way, the current AFP and defense leaderships and their finance officers aren't about to come clean either, which means that traps will be kept shut, while portraying themselves as not part of the corrupt practice, or that the practice had already come to an end.
The problem is that nothing they say today on their claims of being clean, honest and transparent, is going to come off credibly.
What the current military leaders are banking on and will probably have it, given that they have been appointed by a new commander in chief, is that their finance officers aren't going to do a Rabusa, which would then keep the lid on the "tradition" that continues to this day.
And as Noynoy Aquino has the majority of the Senate and the House members as his allies, they too, are probably going to leave the incumbent military officials untouched in any hearing and probe.
As things stand today, despite the fact that former AFP Chief of Staff (CoS) retired Gen. Roy Cimatu has been linked by Rabusa to the "pabaon" system, there went Malacañang, claiming that in the case of Cimatu, who is now a Noynoy appointee, he should be given "the benefit of the doubt."
Yet when it came to a news report saying that Rabusa had linked Gloria Arroyo to the AFP slush fund, which was later denied by Rabusa as ever having claimed such, there went Malacañang quickly challenging Gloria to attend the Senate hearings and answer the questions related to this.
This is not in defense of Gloria, but Noynoy's mouthpieces, obviously following the presidential line, engage in double standards.
Deputy presidential spokesman Abigail Valte even went further, saying that if Gloria has nothing to hide, she should appear before the Senate and defend herself--and this even as she had not been called by the Senate.
But this was never stated by the mouthpieces in the case of Cimatu, who certainly was a former CoS, and certainly also a beneficiary of the slush fund and the pabaon system.
Why give Cimatu the benefit of the doubt, but go down hard on Gloria even when she has not even been linked — at least not yet — to this AFP slush fund mess?
Is it because Cimatu is now with the Noynoy administration and therefore must be protected?
Similarly, just because the Aquino appointees in the Defense department and the military are with the Noynoy government, they are being protected by not including them in the defense and military probe.
And that is not being fair to the Filipinos and to the truth.
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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