Duterte giving in to anarchy?

There was chaos at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport causing hours of delayed flights because protesting Bureau of Immigration (BI) officers did not report for work, thus there were long queues that disturbed many passengers both in the departure and arrival sections for international and domestic flights. In short, if this problem doesn't blow away soon, it is not a good time to travel by air. In fact, the airlines already issued a bulletin asking passengers to be five hours in the airport before their scheduled flights lest they miss their flights.

Indeed, this problem has already caused Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo to write a letter to Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, to immediately resolve the problem as thousands of tourists are expected to spend their summer vacation in the Philippines. Indeed, Filipinos also travel to various places during Holy Week for vacation or simply spend time with family in their home provinces and that is next week already. Obviously, the erring BI officers timed this for the Holy Week season.

So what's really the problem here? Apparently Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno insisted the BI officers' demands were illegal. Diokno said that the BI personnel should not hold hostage the services in our airports and seaports by leaving their posts or going on leave at this crucial time. Diokno believes that the BI personnel had been receiving unlawful allowances that were up to 400 times their basic salary. If I know Ben Diokno, he is no fool!

The Department of Budget and Management Secretary said "Civil service rules allow the payment of allowances of up to 50 percent of basic pay only." Diokno also pointed out that President Duterte stopped the payment of excessive benefits when he vetoed a provision in the Congress-approved 2017 budget allowing the continued use of the so-called Express Lane Fund for the payment of allowances and overtime pay. This means that Pres. Duterte knows about this problem. So now how do we resolve this?

We learned that the BI has more than P250 million in funds taken from the Express Lanes, but Diokno pointed out that the BI has not requested the DBM for the release of these funds. So it's a matter of resolving this issue between the BI and the DBM. I hope that they can resolve this issue very soon as many passengers are already inconvenienced by this problem.

What is happening in our airports is what many pundits call anarchy.

As we read in the news yesterday, Pres. Duterte allowed the members of an urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) to keep the houses meant for policemen and soldiers in Bulacan that Kadamay members illegally occupied. President Duterte made this revelation during the Philippine Army's 120th anniversary in Fort Bonifacio.

President Duterte apparently wanted to avert a violent confrontation over this issue and urged the legitimate beneficiaries to let go of the housing units and promised to provide more comfortable and spacious housing units to the uniformed personnel, as he asked them to understand the behavior of those who occupied their houses.

I'm sure that the families of our soldiers are not happy about the situation, but since a soldier's duty is to obey their Commander-in-Chief, they can grumble to themselves, but never in public. More so that Pres. Duterte has been a huge help to the military, visiting the wakes of those soldiers killed in action or going to the hospital to visit wounded soldiers. So I don't expect any problems from our soldiers.

But what Pres. Duterte has done was give in to anarchy. What Kadamay members have done is so common in the Philippines, which is why squatter colonies have sprouted all over the urban cities of our country. In the name of poverty, people occupy titled land because the owners have not fenced these idle lands and call it their own. In other words, this is what is known as stealing!

Funny, if a snatcher steals your cellphone and the police catch the thief, he can be jailed. But who knows that same thief maybe a squatter living in a shanty he built on someone else's land! So what the BI officers and Kadamay have done is nothing but anarchy, and the president played into their hands!

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