Two cops, two different lives

On the same day that retired Philippine National Police comptroller Eliseo de la Paz came home to the Philippines from Russia in a swirl of controversy, a lowly policeman in Cebu by the name of Joseph Clint Cañete was gunned down by assassins on the Mandaue-Mactan Bridge.

Cañete had just attended a court hearing involving a drug case in Lapulapu City and was returning to Cebu City to meet his wife at a local bank to cash a check, proceeds from a P10,000 loan he had taken, when ambushed by two men on a motorcycle.

Robbery was not the motive of the killing. Except for his life, nothing else of value was taken from the victim. The case is still being investigated as of this writing, but a track record of arrests involving drug suspects tend to suggest this was a drug-related murder.

Cañete had already been previously wounded in the line of duty, also in the course of arresting drug suspects who decided to fight it out. For his injuries and his dedication, Cañete was awarded a medal equivalent to a Purple Heart in the military.

I do not know if his dedication to his job earned Cañete much financial rewards, but my guess is he didn’t. He probably remained poor. Otherwise, a P10,000 loan would not be something the wife would meet you out for. To them the money was big deal.

And that is how it is in the Philippines. The honest and the dedicated live largely poor lives. Maybe not in misery, but decidedly underprivileged. Policemen like Cañete are few in the Philippines.

In the Philippines, there is a saying in Cebuano that goes “hayahay pa sa pulis,” meaning a life that is even better than that of a policeman. This is a dig at the lifestyles of many policemen, which can be described, at the very least, as comfortable.

To describe how “hayahay” the lives of many policemen are in another way, in the down-to-earth humor of the Visayan people, and without meaning to slur the Chinese — “Kung birthday sa pulis, Insik gasto; kung birthday sa Insik, pulis kaon.”

Translated loosely into English, the saying goes: “If a policeman has a birthday, it is the Chinese who get to spend for the party; if it is the Chinese who celebrate a birthday, it is the policemen who come to eat.”

Unfair or not, the saying is there. And where there is a saying, there has to be a germ of truth from where it sprung. But why bring this up here? Because if it has not dawned on you yet, not all policemen live similar lives.

We led off at the beginning of this article with a passing mention of former PNP comptroller Eliseo de la Paz, who made the headlines when he was detained by Russian authorities for carrying an illegal amount of money in a foreign country.

When he was accosted, de la Paz had on him 105,000 Euros, or the equivalent of P6.9 million. De la Paz was with a group of Philippine police officers and their wives on an official trip to Moscow and the money was their “baon.”

The amount raised a lot of eyebrows, since it clearly exceeded official limitations. The official line that it was a “contingency fund” for emergency expenses only served to make things more ridiculous. Not only was the “baon” too big, you just don’t lug money that big around.

Whatever the purpose of the trip, and whatever the money was for, it is very clear that these were policemen who fit the description “hayahay pa sa pulis.” Imagine traipsing about in Russia on money that poor Juan de la Cruz broke his back for.

When de la Paz finally came home after Russian authorities let him go, the first thing he did was to apologize. For what I do not know, since he is just part of a system that allowed such a fiasco, the same system that made honest cops like Cañete lose their lives needlessly.