EDITORIAL – No permanent claim

A man’s home is his castle, and shelter is a basic need. The government, however, has limited resources to provide decent housing for members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. And the government cannot afford to extend those limited housing privileges to retired military officers, no matter how well they have served the nation and the AFP.

Top AFP officers should lead by example and vacate their houses inside military camps as soon as possible upon their retirement from the service. Those who delay moving out risk the embarrassment of being physically evicted from their homes, as experienced the other day by the retired chief of the AFP’s Southern Command, Lt. Gen. Alberto Braganza, and two other retired generals.

Braganza, President Arroyo’s former senior military aide, retired in September last year but wanted another month to stay in his officer’s housing at Camp Aguinaldo, ostensibly to look for a new home. The AFP brass did the right thing by giving him only three days. If Braganza can afford a BMW, he can surely afford monthly amortizations on his own house. No one has a permanent claim to military housing.

His experience should serve as a precedent for the strict enforcement of housing rules in all military installations nationwide. The refusal of retired generals to move out of military housing has been a source of disgruntlement especially among junior officers in the AFP for years.

Dedicated soldiers with a good track record certainly deserve decent treatment upon their retirement, but this cannot happen at the expense of other officers in the AFP. Depriving officers in the active service of housing privileges diminishes the achievements even of the most decorated and respected AFP retiree.

Apart from Braganza, those served eviction notices at Camp Aguinaldo were retired Maj. Gen. Efren Orbon and Brig. Gen. Ramon Santos. Military officers are still awaiting the government’s action on other generals who retired ages ago but continue to stay in mansions that they built on prime property at Fort Bonifacio. Active officers are not even demanding an investigation of where the retired generals found the money to build their palatial homes. All that the AFP officers want is for military property to be used by active members of the military, and for AFP housing regulations to be strictly enforced.