Corruption does plague the military, as it does the whole of society. It manifests in the centralized procurement of logistics by the brass to the decentralized purchase of groceries by field units. In every step of the way money is filched. The only difference is in amounts. A general who signs a supply contract shares a multimillion-peso kickback with the legislator who lobbied for it. The bidding committee that appraises faulty wares, the auditors and the disbursing officers divvy up a smaller sum. The mess sergeant who buys the platoon’s weekly food ration takes a few hundred pesos for himself. The fruits of the crime are evident in the mansion the general builds, the sleek SUVs that his cohorts drive around, or the new schoolbag that the sergeant’s son now totes.
Military corruption also manifests in favoritism. An Army chap can bag all the schooling opportunities abroad if he sucks up to the superior. A Navy counterpart can get snap promotions if he plays along with the commander’s smuggling operations. An Air Force flyboy can be assigned a safe accounting deskjob if he has the knack for spotting ways of neatly stealing aircraft repair funds for the squadron chief. Meanwhile, many retired generals continue to live in on-base bungalows despite the housing rule to vacate within six months of leaving the service.
That corruption is still widespread in the AFP, despite numerous coups and courts-martial that exposed its many ways, shows how acute the problem is. Among the many reasons the Reform-the-AFP Movement (RAM) rose against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 was his habit of extending the tours of duty of selected generals and thus stunting promotions. RAM then attempted putsch after putsch against Corazon Aquino in 1987-89, also on the issue of corruption. "We caught this general in a military hospital to be buying too many bottles of cough syrup when the boys in the field needed other medicines," recalls RAM spokesman Proceso Maligalig, now a retired Navy captain. "It turned out he was passing it to the black market at a time when cough syrup was the drug of choice of junkies. We thought that was bad enough, until we discovered bigger, worse cases."
RAM has since renamed itself the Rebolusyonaryong Alyansang Makabayan and continues to fight against corruption – in peaceful ways. "Some methods of graft have been plugged," says RAM central committee member Atty. Ricardo Blancaflor, now the defense assistant secretary for comptrollership. "Some bad ways continue in the camps and in the field," Malacañang undersecretary for special concerns Abraham Furugganan, also an ex-coup leader, told a television forum. Maligalig rues: "Definitely, if corruption is not eliminated, young officers will always be recruited to suit the sinister aims of political puppeteers." He apparently was referring to Sen. Gregorio Honasan, a former Army colonel who led RAM until a falling off a year ago.
A select commission headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide had investigated the whys and wherefores of the 1986-89 coups. It not only prescribed punishment for the plotters – for which Maligalig and hundreds went to jail – but also dwelt on causes like low pay and morale, and motivations like messianic ideas and power lust. It suggested changes in the curriculum of the Philippine Military Academy, from which most of the AFP officers’ corps – and RAM putschists – come. Most importantly, it recommended a number of legislative measures to curb corruption, refine indoctrination, and raise soldiers’ benefits. For some strange reason, the Davide Commission’s findings have been largely ignored. Congress holds not a single copy of it. Fortunately the Chief Justice kept one for himself.
Honasan, now hunted by authorities for his hand in the attempted power grab of July 27, was in a position to push for military reforms in Congress. More so during the tenure of Joseph Estrada, whom he avidly campaigned for despite RAM’s decision to go for another presidential bet in 1998. "In fairness he filed the most number of bills on soldiery," recalls Blancaflor, who served as the senator’s chief of staff for three years. "But the bills never took off the ground because he was an independent and refused to horse-trade."
The way to reform is in peaceful means, Maligalig prescribes: "Our dreams shall never die. But never again should we push foot soldiers to squander their careers in coups. It’s unfair to them." Blancaflor says that in the fight for higher pay, he was able to accomplish in six months what he failed to do in three years with RAM and three years in the Senate. "From the defense department, we lobbied," he beams, "The lowest pay in the police is P800 more than in the AFP, but soldiers still get more because of housing, combat and other allowances."
The Makati sedition is said to have been funded with at least P30 million. It estimatedly set back economic recovery by a year, and pulled down the stock market and the peso. It ruined the careers of 70 mutinous PMAers, for which taxpayers spent P3 million each to train into officers and gentlemen. Part of AFP reforms should be to make them account for that P210-million loss.