A fighting Admiral forced into disgrace but sustained by honor - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

Vice Admiral Guillermo Wong got into "trouble" by fearlessly telling the truth. In this case, the truth did not prevail – nor did it, as the Bible had promised, make him free. It got him humiliated and, in a clumsy attempt to muzzle him, "demoted" to a stupid position in which he would command no ships, but, I hear, only a couple of rowboats.

Willie Wong, steadfast to the end, refused to go quietly into the night. He filed an urgent request for early retirement (he wasn’t due to retire until December) effective March 1. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who might have upheld the Admiral since she is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, dismally failed this first test of her courage and mettle. She wimpishly threw the decision on the Wong case (wronging Wong, as a punster might quip) to the exiting Armed forces Chief of Staff, General Angelo T. Reyes, who in turn cravenly caved in to darkly-muttered threats from certain officers, not the steadfast rank-and-file, of the Marines Corps.

What a way to run a Republic! At the first hint of a "coup" (more bark than bite, obviously), the top echelons of civilian and military command meekly and disappointingly surrendered. The answer of a tough President and a resolute AFP Chief of Staff should have been: "Fall back in line, you Marines! If you rebel, we’ll clap you in irons. If you shoot, we’ll shoot you." Instead, they offered the surly mobsters in uniform the brave but unfortunate Admiral Wong’s head on a broken plate – not even granting him the courtesy of having his severed head served his foes on a silver platter.

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What was Vice Admiral Wong’s "crime" – for which he was "punished"? He broke the seal of omerta, of conspiratorial silence on corruption in the Armed Forces, which everybody knows, from buck private to private citizen, exists in spades.

Wong had publicly asked for an inquiry, last February 15, into irregularities in the procurement of supplies for the Marines Corps which included substandard kevlar helmets and flak vests and questionably-priced assault rifles. As Navy Chief, which is what Flag Officer in Command (FOIC) means in saltwater lingo, Admiral Wong had asked for an "investigation." He was the one dragged into disgrace instead, without a hearing, and – as for the questioned purchases (which endangered the lives of Marines in combat, and – if feedback allegations are correct – resulted in fatalities and casualties), there were no "investigations."

Would you believe? Wong received an order downgrading him from chief of the entire Philippine Navy (FOIC) to the command of a virtually non-existent group called the "Northern Luzon Command" with its headquarters in landlocked Tarlac!

True to his reputation as a ramrod straight but softspoken officer, Wong declined to swallow this rude effort to intimidate him into submission and immediately (at high noon, at that) filed a request for urgent "early retirement" effective next week, March 1. Panicked at this courageous and defiant move, the top brass hastily rejected his retirement request and put him on "floating status" (which means, in less polite parlance, the Freezer). To mollify him, I’m told (I haven’t spoken to Wong, but to some of his classmates), he has even been dangled an Ambassadorship. Now how do you know about that? Is the new administration’s answer to its blunders now to utilize the Foreign Office as its dumping ground, so it can "export" its embarrassments?

Those who’ve known Admiral Wong for many years tell me that he’s straight as a dye, uncompromising in his principles, and like America’s Farragut, his reply to danger is "Damn the torpedoes!"

One of his former fellow Cadets from Class ’69 of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) related yesterday that Wong had always been studious in his Academy days, and – while constantly courteous and deliberate – didn’t accept as "gospel" everything dished out by their "professors", instructors, and lecturers, but always interrogated them as to methodology and conclusions. "He did his homework," one schoolmate, himself a General, remarked admiringly, "and, although he did not raise his voice, he would never back down when he believed he was right!"

Another recalled that among Wong’s favorite expressions was: "What’s wrong must be set right!"

Before he entered the PMA, still another remembered, Wong went to study in Michigan as an "American Field Scholar" (AFS), while another, a retired colonel, said that Wong had earned a Masters in Public Administration in the University of the Philippines in the 1980s, a course he took "on his own hook" without any prodding from the military. He had been the colonel’s classmate in that UP course.

What emerges is a picture of an officer and a gentleman, heartsick at witnessing corrupt practices in the Armed Forces and, finally, unable to keep his mouth safely shut. There are, we are reminded by Wong’s gesture, soldiers who fall in the field of combat, while others, like Willie, also fall, with equal determination and grit, on the field of honor.
I say, stripped of his command, weighed down by the unwarranted and hypocritical "disapproval" of his superiors and peers, Admiral Wong can march, flags flying proudly, into the sunset of his career. Somehow, although this is a tragedy more garish than anything which can be dreamed up by Hollywood, it brings to mind the Tom Cruise and Demi Moore movie, A Few Good Men.

That’s what we need to save the honor, the integrity, and the future of this nation: A few good men – and women. We salute the Admiral, and wish him a warrior’s peace!

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Remember the case of the three women, kidnapped in Naga City, Camarines Sur, which we highlighted in this column the other day?

The three were actually "taken" on the Pili highway while enroute to the city.

Friday night, in an all-out police assault on their concrete "prison" concealed in the slope of a mountain in Sariaya, Quezon province, two of the hostages – Fe "Nene" Chua and Susan Casano – were rescued from their kidnappers who had chained them to their beds and held them for the past 24 days. The third woman, Salvacion Cosay Tan, had been "released" in Alabang a day earlier (February 22) upon the turnover by her family of the "initial" ransom downpayment of P4.5 million (out of a P40 million ransom demanded from Day One).

Police teams from the PNP Intelligence Group (which is directed by P/Chief Supt. (General) Romulo D. Sales) arrested three of the "suspected" abductors in simultaneous crackdowns in Quezon and Batangas which lasted till past midnight. (The suspects were identified as Santos Remuyan, Cesar Ramos, and Homer Rasado.) Some P325,000 in cash, believed part of the earlier ransom pay-off, was recovered by the Intelligence Group. The Toyota Revo (license plate VVMVV-910) recovered in the raid was apparently the same vehicle utilized by the gangsters when they snatched their three women victims last January 30, PNP Chief, Deputy Director-General Larry Mendoza announced.

P/General Thompson C. Lantion, the Director of the PNP Directorate for Police Community Relations, told this writer yesterday that the two women hostages plucked from their prison and the one earlier released had been kept in a filthy concrete room, chained and prevented from moving about (even to use sanitary facilities) for more than three weeks. The cement bunker-like structure, with bullet-proofed concrete walls three by three meters thick, was located in territory "controlled" by the Communist New People’s Army (NPA), but the police hesitated to outrightly say that the kidnappers had been NPA cadres. They simply reported them as "bandits."

The freeing of the three women (who come from the same family) is a major triumph for the police. I hope this encourages them to try harder to curb the growing kidnap menace.

As for the Greek Port Captain, Filippos Orfanos, who had been murdered by his abductors, Lantion added, the police had nabbed one suspect named Abdul Macaumbang of Marawi City. (Orfanos was found dead in January 17.) Other arrests are expected to follow.

Police sources say that some other cases have been solved, but no announcements have as yet been made. One Deep Throat said last night that certain kidnappers were already pinpointed and made to "disappear", if you get my drift. Me? I don’t know nuthin'.

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The police have just assured me that they have been conducting field operations to grab any cops found to be extorting money from drivers and other individuals. Their report is that those caught in kotong-kotong activities have been Metro Manila Development Authority traffic aides, not cops. Six MMDA aides, for instance, were apprehended in Caloocan City alone, some of them in the Monumento area. Others were arrested plying their extortion "trade" in Divisoria.

Several of the traffic aides caught in Divisoria and Monumento were, in fact, caught red-handed attempting to shake down "undercover cops", whose vehicles were being followed by back-up cars equipped with video cameras and parabolic microphones. So, their criminal capers were "documented", so as to enable the culprits to be charged in court and confronted with evidence "recording" their infractions.

I hope this is the truth, and not just hype. Too many crooks get off the hook in our justice system because arresting officers are frequently careless in documenting and presenting their cases.

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President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her hubby, the First Gentleman, Mike Arroyo, may not know it, but the designation of Ephraim Genuino, an alleged "friend" of Mike’s to the powerful position of concurrently Chairman (meaning Chief Executive Officer) and President (at the same time Chief Operating Officer) of the rich Philippine Amusements and Gaming Corporation or PAGCOR has caught the fancy of inveterate cellphone "texters."

When GMA was our guest of honor of last Wednesday’s Greenhills Walking Corp. forum, she had admonished her listeners (heard over radio and TV) to stop giving her husband their curriculum details because – as she averred – such documents were immediately deposited in the waste basket.

The text message has been going the rounds: "Has PAGCOR become GMA’s waste basket?"

Is it true, for example, that there are now eighteen new PAGCOR "consultants" brought in by the gaming corporation’s new Boss and Centurion? Each of them, and I mean each, reportedly gets a "consultant’s fee" of P70,000 per month. Gee whiz. Where does the queue for such a plush post begin? Is it also true that these new "satellites" of the New Centurion at PAGCOR are enjoying meals gratis et amore at the 5-star restaurants in the posh premises of the hotels where casinos are located?

If this is true, then the present dispensation may end up no better than PCGG’s "fiscal agents" and the Task Forces (later sniffed at as Ask Forces) which descended in 1986, during the first part of the Cory administration on sequestered firms "like the wolf on the fold". At the then Roberto Benedicto-owned Holiday Inn along Roxas boulevard, some of these lucky "fiscal agents" used to feast at the hotel’s restaurants till the wee hours of the morning.

Stop, look and listen, President GMA. You ought to check up on what’s going on: Just in case these widespread "rumors" are terribly true.