Misuse of power
I was invited to Bayawan City, Negros Oriental, to share some concepts on local legislation. It was a two-day function. In the middle of an animated exchange of ideas on the second day, our discussion veered towards an admittedly less relevant topic. One of the city’s young officials asked to raise a question. He made the premise that his point was outside our topic. Why was a high-ranking officer of the Bureau of Customs, after admitting that illegal drugs was smuggled under his very nose, just transferred to another office? He stunned the crowd and because I had no idea what the gentleman was talking about I felt incompetent to shed light.
It turned out the official referred to the transfer of the Customs Chief Lapeña to still another government office. He remembered that before Lapeña was handed the most premium customs position, he was made the top honcho of the PDEA after retiring from the military, as if being a soldier was the only qualification for the post. This perceptive city official could hardly believe that the day after Lapeña somehow confirmed that dangerous drugs valued estimated at billions of pesos was smuggled into our country he was not punished. Instead he was moved to another office away from the glare of public scrutiny and perhaps prosecution.
The “irrelevant” point of the Bayawan City official was a game changer of sorts because the attention of the participants was riveted to it. Everybody seemed to have a point to raise or a reaction to make. The otherwise silent crowd suddenly became participatory. I could not help but digress from my topic and entertain the surge of new questions. I had to reinvent my approach or I would become irrelevant. In a way, I yielded control of the proceedings. Our main agendum, for which I was invited, had apparently lost its significance. Something pushed it aside. If I were to label the evolving issue, I could call it “misuse of power” without fear of contradiction. While we did not say exactly those words, our residual language conveyed the message that the president misused his power.
Everyone in the group conceded that President Rodrigo Duterte, in the exercise of executive power, can put his own loyal and trusted men, including Lapeña, in his government. When I threw a question zeroing in on the presidential war on drugs, a verifiable majority in the group gave their thumbs up sign. In fact, extrajudicial killings were, to them, acceptable hazards. But, they could not understand why the president would turn a blind eye to someone who admitted that in his watch billions of pesos worth of shabu entered our country through customs’ regulated ports. Allowing the entry of an incredible amount of dangerous drugs thru our ports was worse than the combined sale of the thousands of men killed during buy-bust operations. Why then would a pusher suspected of selling few sachets of the drug be extrajudicially killed, while a government functionary whose negligence (?) made billions worth of shabu reach our shores be rewarded with a high government office. Indeed, the inescapable question was: Is Lapeña in possession of dark secrets against the president’s anti-illegal drug sloganeering?
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