Diokno resignation a sham? What a shame!

Finally Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director Ernesto Diokno has resigned and Pres. PNoy accepted his resignation after many sectors of society demanded his resignation due to the furor that resulted when convicted murderer former Batangas Governor Tony Leviste was caught outside the New Bilibid Prison without any authorization. Finally, this form of corruption has exploded into the nation’s consciousness. But we’ve always known that this has been happening, not just in the New Bilibid Prison, but almost all the prisons all over the nation.

A few years back, when the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center (BBRC) was still located in what is now the Asia IT Park, celebrated prisoner Ruben Ecleo of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA) was caught no less than by the Cebu media with his girlfriend inside his semi-private cell, which had a bed complete with a mosquito net. This was considered a luxury in a jail where inmates have to sleep in turns because there was not enough beds for everyone. The crème dela crème of that corruption was the fact that Ecleo had a sex partner while inside the jail. But no prison officials were sacked because of that corruption!

This is not to mention that many prison officials especially those in charge with giving out meals for the inmates more often than not, get their cut from suppliers and in the end, the inmates get less food than they should be getting. Now Pres. PNoy is seeking for prison reforms, which is a good thing and one suggestion is to privatize the prisons.

While I agree that prisons can be privatized because it has been done abroad, however they should first come up with a pilot project so we can see if Filipino entrepreneurs can make a business out of it. One thing though, the Philippine government must ensure the payment for the privatized facility, lest those usual gov’t payment delays would trigger these businessmen to practice corruption, which we are all trying to rid in the first place.

While we should laud Pres. PNoy for finally convincing Director Diokno to resign, we read another news report that said that Diokno was going to be offered another job by the President? Is this perhaps the reason why Diokno decided to quit… because he was headed for another post? If this is so, all I can say about this fiasco is… shame on this sham!

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The criminal suit filed by my good friend, Francisco “Bimbo” Fernandez against Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama has now been turned into a rich vs. poor scenario, when he dared the Mayor to first demolish the structures owned by businessmen along the esteros and creeks. Perhaps Bimbo has become too emotional on this issue, but it is not a matter of demolishing the rich versus the poor… rather the main issue is to first destroy those structures that have caused the clogging of our esteros or creeks, regardless whether they are rich or poor.

Of course it goes without saying that most businessmen are smart enough not to construct structures that could cause them to have trouble with the law. Alas, it is the poor who do not come from Cebu who more often than not, end up building illegal structures along the riverbanks, first because they don’t know that it is illegal and I would even venture to say that the don’t even know that it is dangerous for them to do so. Let me add that chances are, professional squatters who often have a stranglehold of those areas are the ones that encourage them to build there, while the wiser ones even build structures for these settlers to move in instantly.

So let’s prioritize those illegal structures that are the principal cause of the flooding along our creeks, then we can ask the Mayor to also demolish any other illegal structures that suddenly sprouted out of nowhere in total violation of the National Building Code. Meanwhile we should pray that when the big rains (PAGASA says there will be more rains this week) drench Cebu City, there would be lesser flooding as compared to what happened a few months back where we had historic flood waters that inundated areas that would never get flooded in the past. At this point, I salute Mayor Mike Rama for having the political will to remove those illegal structures.

Mayor Mike must now come up with a team to ensure that those whose areas where the illegal structures were already demolished will not see the return of other squatters, because this is usually the case when the government goes on a demolition mode. I have always said it would have been easier if the Office of the Building Official (OBO) had a team of armed men that would prowl our streets preventing squatters from constructing their shanties anywhere they like. Then we’d have lesser problems today. But as it is, it Mayor Rama is doing the right thing in protecting the greater majority of our people from being flooded because of a few shanties.

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