Only the ‘best and the brightest’ will do

Of course, two of the top Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chieftains got away. Did our soldiers and police think MILF Vice Chairman for Political Affairs Ghadzali Jaafar and MILF Military Affairs Leader Ibrahim Muhammad Murad would sit waiting in their homes to be "arrested". They skipped.

After all, had not the SouthCom and the PNP already published their names a week and a half ago on "wanted" posters? Give us a break. The reports say the police tracked the two men to their homes in Sultan Kudarat last Saturday, but they left kuno the following morning. Sanamagan: if you’ve tracked fugitives down, why don’t you pounce on them immediately?

I remember it was General Rafael "Rocky" Ileto, at the behest of the late President Ramon Magsaysay Sr. (not Junior) who mobilized the Scout Rangers. The idea was for seven-man teams to be able to move fast and strike like lightning. Nowadays, it seems, it takes days, sometimes a week, to organize an "offensive".

Get there fast. Strike immediately. That was what they did in the old days.

Our Army is growing old, of course. Many of our soldiers are on the verge of getting pensioned off. We’ve got to find a way to "recruit" and pay for new blood in our armed forces – and in our PNP. The United States calls up its "reservists" when it engages in peacekeeping operations or goes to war. We don’t have any "reservists" or recruits. We don’t have the budget. We don’t possess the political will.

* * *

Why is America a superpower – and, okay, is hated by the rest of the world? Because Americans pay their taxes. (They have to, otherwise evaders and defaulters face the wrath of the Internal Revenue Service.) The US government "recalls" reservists from their civilian jobs and professions (some for months on end), so they can send them around the globe to fight or man the ramparts. This is, it must be said, getting harder and harder. The reservists and their families are feeling the burden and the pain. Yet, they still soldier on.

As for us, where does our money go? Congress has just gone on recess. It won’t convene anew until July 28. That’s almost a month and a half from today. Many, if not, most of our senators and the members of our House of Representatives are off like a shot – on their foreign travels. Who foots the bill? Don’t look now, but we do. All "in aid of legislation," naturally.

Let’s get some focus here. We have to reform and modernize our military and our police. This requires both money and political will. For that matter, we need fewer generals, but more troops on the line, and policemen on the beat.

Some people cry that switching to parliamentary system or a federal type of government will solve our ills. On the contrary, it’s not poor structure that ails us – it’s ourselves. We’ve got to do better in whatever we undertake. We’ve got to get better leaders by deserving to have better leaders. Democracy isn’t working in this country because it’s not democracy – it’s either dynasty or travesty. It would be a comedy, if it weren’t a tragedy. Just look at our roster of members of Congress, governors, and mayors. It’s a father-son-daughter-and-wife act. Yes, we have Killin’ Cousins, too.

Corrupt politicians? It’s not even shocking anymore that the Medico-Legal Chief of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) was caught en flagrante receiving P200,000 in extortion money. (NBI agents, too, have been caught in kidnap gangs). These are only the ones who get caught.

One of the big stories in Cebu City, from where I just arrived yesterday afternoon, concerned the radio "blocktime" commentator who got shot and wounded by an unidentified gunman just as he and his radio partner exited the Bureau of Customs building at the pier and were getting into their car. What intrigues their fellow media men in Cebu, though, is why the two radio broadcasters were reported to be carrying .45 caliber pistols themselves. Is this true? Who gave them a permit to carry?

Every question raises additional questions. We in the media throw stones. Are we entitled, if we go by the Biblical injunction, to cast the first stone?

No society is ever perfect. What should bother many of us, though, is how corruption, evil-doing, and cheating are beginning to appear commonplace. As soon as our people get to accept that wrongdoing is okay, then our nation will dissolve into anarchy, the violent law of the jungle, and despair.

When we were kids, we had on almost every gradeschool class wall the motto: "Honesty is the Best Policy." In our Ateneo first year high class, the late Father Walter Mudd, S.J., a rolypoly Jesuit with a heart of gold (God rest him) even put the picture of a crocodile, with the admonition: "Don’t be a buwaya!"

Nowadays, most kids going to school today won’t even find classrooms. I saw it reported on television last Friday that our public schools lack more than 39,000 classrooms! As for the buwayas, they’re all over the place.

Let’s go back to the old maxim: "Honesty is the Best Policy." Sometimes I wish we could turn back the clock. Or start anew – with brave hearts and "can do" approach to the challenges of today, and the promises of the future. Pundits have been complaining that "it’s too late" for the past 30 years. This shows us that it’s not too late. We can do it. But everyone must begin with himself or herself.

Forgive me for sounding preachy. It’s the annoying sin of our "opinion writing" profession.

* * *

Despite all those reports of a tropical depression and a nearby typhoon, our flight from Cebu on a PAL Boeing 747-400 – packed to the gills, incidentally – was smooth and on time.

The banner headlines in Cebu’s newspapers yesterday were more stormy, on the other hand. The Freeman headlined: "Counterfeit King Busted."

Another daily screamed: "Bogus Money Printer Falls." The streamer groaned: "Lady Passenger, 17, Raped on Boat."

Police intelligence and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas agents allegedly "busted" a syndicate specializing in fake currency when they swooped down on the NRL Printers on Sikatuna Street in Cebu City (not to be mistaken for the domain of the Feckless Desert Sheikh of Sikatuna, who’s in Makati).

Last Thursday night, the cops and Central Bank operatives had nabbed Marcelino Mayuela, 62, the general manager of the printing shop and his driver in a "buy-bust" operation in the parking lot of the Waterfront Hotel in Mactan (Lapu-Lapu City) by the airport.

Half a million "worth" of fake money in P100 and P500 bills was seized from Mayuela and his driver, Noel Caballero. The next day (Saturday), acting on a warrant issued by Regional Trial Court Judge Soliver Peras, the government raiders found thousands of fake 500 peso-bills and 100 dollar bills as well as bogus GSIS policy forms on the premises.

The Freeman asserted that even "a computer program to make fake policy forms was retrieved from a computer in a small room used by Mayuela as his office". The policemen and BSP agents discovered torn pieces of fake currency, perhaps "misprints" in one of the drawers of the desk of Mayuela’s wife, Sespiana, but the lady "denied any knowledge of the fake money nor of her husband’s alleged involvement in the manufacture of bogus currency". Is the wife, as the expression goes, really the last to know? Or was she involved, too?

It seems that what alerted the authorities was the arrest in Manila of two men last Tuesday. The men were found to be carrying several fake P500 bills. They confessed the counterfeit bills had come from Cebu and had been dispatched to them through a commercial courier service. They identified Mayuela as their "contact" in Cebu. That’s when the plan was hatched to entrap Mayuela.

If the Cebu-Mactan counterfeit ring was just a Mom and Pop operation, as it appears, can you imagine how many such smalltime but clever "cells" could be churning out fake bills, bogus securities, and other similar stuff? Remember the big haul of bogus bills and "securities" in Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental, only the other year? Modern computers and equipment make it all too easy – and, as the Pyramid Scam uncovered, P.T. Barnum’s dictum of "there’s one (sucker) born every minute" continues to apply.

There’s a world of suckers out there, waiting to be fleeced, or hoodwinked: In love, war, commerce, and politics. The only defense is: Be alert. Sometimes "love" or what passes for it is the deadliest scam of all.

* * *

I notice that it’s time, once more, for President Macapagal-Arroyo to pick another Justice of the Supreme Court. The Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) has just sent up a list of five nominees to succeed Justice Vicente V. Mendoza who retired from the Supreme Court last April 4.

Mind you, this will be GMA’s seventh appointee to the High Court.

When senior Associate Justice Josue Bellosillo retires this November, GMA will be appointing her eighth Supreme Court Justice. Wow! American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (their wartime president) was once accused of "packing" the US Supreme Court. Ditto the late Dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, who loved to put his U.P. College of Law classmates (presumably to do his bidding) in the High Tribunal.

* * *

Surely, it is not GMA’s fault that a majority of the 15 members of the Court retired during her incumbency, from January 20, 2001, to June 30, 2004.

President Cory Aquino during her time appointed 17 new members of the High Court, including the late Chief Justice Claudio "Dingdong" Teehankee, and Justices Vicente Abad Santos, Hugo Gutierrez, Ameurfina Herrera and Nestor Alampay whom she reappointed from the Marcos Supreme Court.

President Fidel V. Ramos appointed 14 SC members during his term, while President Joseph E. Estrada appointed, during his brief incumbency of two years, six months, and 20 days, no less than six. In addition to the six Associate Justices Erap appointed, he elevated Hilario Davide Jr. to Chief Justice on November 30, 2000. (It was Davide who was to preside over Erap’s "impeachment" proceeding in the Senate, and who swore GMA into office in January, 2001.)

The late Apo Macoy – who was in power for 20 years – naturally named the largest number of SC Justices. He had designated 32 (thirty-two) Associate Justices and five Chief Justices.

What is important for our people is that whoever is appointed by President GMA from among the JBC’s five nominees should truly qualify as "the best and the brightest". The Constitution is clear on what this means when it specifies that a candidate must be of "proven competence, integrity, probity and independence".

As Justice Reynato Puno put it so well, while it is the members of the JBC who determine the qualifications of judicial aspirants, it is the President who determine who among the five put forward is "the most qualified" and makes the final choice.

There is, to be candid, much criticism now being heaped on the JBC for some of its "shaky" current choices. The Chief Executive must know this, and scrutinize the list more closely, even with a jaundiced eye. (She’s made a bum choice or two before.)

Remember the James Bond movie, ‘Diamonds are Forever’? Supreme Court justices, once they are named, or misnamed, last almost forever – or too long for comfort, dispensing flawed and even malicious ponencias. A bad appointment at this crucial stage will haunt GMA’s record for years to come. She must choose one who is a recognized legal scholar and who will add lustre and some form of stability to the High Court which is now, sadly, in the eye of a hurricane.

C’mon, Madam President. This time at bat, hit the ball right.