Not for the faint-hearted

Maybe he was told that a “dental emergency” wouldn’t wash. So, as of yesterday, the excuse of Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon for skipping parallel congressional inquiries was that he needed hospital confinement for a heart ailment.

Specifically, he says he is suffering from “Non ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction Acute Coronary Syndrome: Hypertension Urgency Hypertension Stage II.” In layman’s terms, that’s a cardiac problem aggravated by hypertension.

Faeldon informed Richard Gordon, who chairs the Senate Blue Ribbon committee, that he felt chest pains after skipping the panel hearing for a date with his dentist, and now his heart problem requires his confinement at the Manila East Medical Center in Taytay, Rizal.

We can bet that if the Senate and the House of Representatives aren’t conducting separate probes on the smuggling of P6.4 billion worth of shabu that passed without inspection through the Port of Manila last May and ended up in a warehouse in Valenzuela, Faeldon’s heart and blood pressure would miraculously recover and he would return to work ASAP.

Of course the affliction might be real. Stress can literally weaken the heart. In that case, Faeldon might want to prolong his life by avoiding stress and seriously considering leaving the high-pressure job of Customs commissioner. He will be doing the nation a disservice if he cannot perform in top shape.

Next week, if his purported emergency is over and his heart becomes strong enough to be subjected to congressional grilling, lawmakers should ask him if his heart (and his teeth) are up to the job.

Heading one of the most rotten government agencies is not a job for the faint-hearted.

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It’s also not a job for those who don’t read the laws governing their own office. Faeldon’s men are running around like headless chickens, unable to defend themselves on accusations of incompetence for failing to have members of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) with them during the Bureau of Customs raid on the Valenzuela warehouses. The lapse, the BOC raiders have been warned, could render the P6.4-billion shabu inadmissible in court.

BOC officials might want to take a look at the Tariff and Customs Code. There’s a part there that authorizes Customs personnel to conduct, without a court-issued warrant, “arrests, search and seizure of any vessel, aircraft, cargo, article, animal or other movable property, when the same is subject to forfeiture or liable for any fine imposed under the Tariff and Customs laws, rules and regulations” (Section 2205) and to “at any time enter, pass through, or search any land or enclosure or any warehouse, store or other building not being a dwelling house” (Section 2208).  The BOC needs a court-issued search warrant to enter a “dwelling house.”

There’s also jurisprudence that says the presence of the PDEA is not indispensable in conducting a Customs raid. BOC officials can check out People vs Velasquez, 669 Supreme Court Reports Annotated 426, and People vs Figueroa 669 SCRA 391. SC rulings also give those enforcing laws some leeway in the chain of custody of evidence.

PDEA agents themselves have been embroiled in scandals ranging from accusations of extortion and corruption to lapses in carrying out search, seizure and arrest. Remember the 2011 acquittal of two of the so-called Alabang Boys because the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court noted a break in the chain of custody of the ecstasy pills seized by the PDEA? The court noted that the PDEA head at the time, Dionisio Santiago (now chief of the Dangerous Drugs Board), had presented the supposed evidence to the press when a forensic officer had testified that the seized drugs were undergoing laboratory tests. The Court of Appeals affirmed the acquittal in 2014.

So the BOC can go after drug smugglers even without the PDEA. The BOC is the agency that is tasked to go after smugglers. It has enough powers to carry out its mandate.

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Faeldon surely understands why his supposed health emergency has been greeted with much skepticism.

The nation has heard this story too many times in the past. People are sick of officials escaping detention without bail in this country by pretending to be sick. We know it’s a pretense because they always make a miraculous recovery as soon as they are freed. Suddenly the wheelchairs and neck braces are gone, and they’re healthy enough to travel.

Detention undoubtedly can raise blood pressure and cause heart palpitations. All those hampaslupa drug suspects packed like sardines in jails across the country surely suffer from such ailments. Unlike VIP inmates, however, the poor aren’t given a get-out-of-jail pass; in fact several have died from the heat and extreme congestion. The VIPs, meanwhile, get permission to be confined in an air-conditioned room in a private hospital, safe from the rats, cockroaches and mosquitoes infesting the typical jail.

Even prisoners have escaped punishment by seeking detention in private hospitals, with the help of prison officials and doctors. One VIP prisoner was so “sick” he needed caring by female sexy dancers in his private hospital room.

When one of my relatives was confined this year at the Metropolitan Medical Center in Manila’s Chinatown, the talk was about how convicted drug queen Yu Yuk Lai has managed to spend much of the past three years in the hospital for hypertension.

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If Faeldon resigns, President Duterte should conduct a more thorough vetting of the replacement. BOC operations need financial expertise as well as knowledge of the law, including Customs operations overseas.

This post cannot be assigned merely as a reward for political support. The President can still assign ex-soldiers or cops to scare the crooks in the bureau, but the post of BOC commissioner is a challenging job that requires a person with special skills.

For a President who keeps promising a clean administration, Duterte needs to stop looking at government jobs as political rewards. Public service suffers. The Tourism Promotions Board, for example, requires a head who understands the challenging task of the office, and not just someone who can gather a pro-Duterte crowd for a rally. The term of the TPB’s controversial Cesar Montano ended in June. Has he been reappointed, and is he promoting the Philippines in the US for a month?

The congressional hearings have given us an indication of the extent of corruption in the BOC. The crooks simply laugh at their appointed superiors. If another person clueless about the ways of Customs replaces Faeldon, Duterte should expect no reforms.

People thought former soldiers might apply Tokhang on BOC crooks. Instead the ex-soldiers are the ones who are losing heart and quitting.