The Bureau of Customs: Duterte’s Booby Trap for the Military
The Bureau of Customs: Duterte’s Booby Trap for the Military
Pres. Duterte addressing the military.
Screengraby from RTVM file photo.
It looks like another naive, impulsive move, but turning over the Bureau of Customs to the military is possibly the most dangerous move Duterte has hatched.
Before this, the military has refused to be involved in the war on drugs. It has refused Duterte’s invitation to spearhead a revolutionary government. He has chided the military for missing the chance to transform the country through extra-constitutional means. The military has backpedalled the Duterte order to void the amnesty to Trillanes, and incidentally, all similarly placed military officers. The military has continued to profess loyalty to the Constitution.
But Duterte apparently is on occasion a sophisticated schemer. He is sending the military to partake of the forbidden fruit — the Bureau of Customs. This bureau is the most corrosive government agency. This agency has the most efficient machine for the privatization of public resources, and making mafiosi of government officials. It is an aberration, where mere clerks can come to office in luxury vehicles, and nobody bats an eyelash about it. The Bureau of Customs has been an altar of the secular devil that reformers since the People Power Revolt have tried to dismantle, replace, even abolish, but it has survived like the demon seed. The Bureau of Customs produces an acid so potent it will eat into the hardest of steels. Nicanor Faeldon and Isidro Lapena are only the latest proofs of this. Supposed to be exemplars of military men in uniform who are able to withstand temptations, and who repudiate those in the military and civilian sectors of government who are corrupt. They have become malleable putty in the hands of Rodrigo Duterte.
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