Sen. Leila de Lima —JOSEPH VIDAL
Opposition Senator Leila de Lima slammed on Monday the decision of President Rodrigo Duterte to put the Bureau of Customs (BOC) under military control, calling it “governance by gimmickry.”
READ: Duterte puts Customs under military control
“Deploying the military to every conceivable crisis in the civilian bureaucracy is governance by gimmickry,” De Lima said in a dispatch from Camp Crame.
“It tells a lot about Duterte’s severely limited imagination in solving the country’s problems,” she added.
The senator noted that the President’s “kneejerk response” to instruct the military to solve the problems of the country “reflects his predisposition to ultimately have a military junta take over the country.
“The decision of President Duterte for the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) to take over the Bureau of Customs sets a dangerous precedent,” De Lima said.
“It normalizes the unconstitutional act of granting the military civilian functions and power over civilian offices,” she added.
The detained senator also described the President’s move to let the AFP take over the operations of the BOC as another one of his “populist moves designed to appeal to the prevailing frustration of the people with his own anemic response to the smuggling of billions of pesos of shabu.”
“Duterte himself brought about the present state of corruption at the BOC by failing to stop shabu shipments at the very first instance,” she said.
“It started with the 6.4B peso shabu smuggling under then Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon. This was followed by another 11B peso shipment under Isidro Lapeña,” she added.
Moreover, De Lima frowned upon “recycling” former custom chiefs Isidro Lapeña and Nicanor Faeldon to other government positions.
Lapeña has been under fire due to the alleged smuggling of P11 billion worth of shabu that supposedly slipped through security screening.
He was then transferred to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) last Thursday.
READ: Lapeña out of Customs but named Tesda chief with Cabinet rank
Meanwhile, Lapeña’s predecessor, Faeldon, resigned after P6.4-billion worth of shabu slipped past authorities in May of last year.
Faeldon was then appointed as the new head of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) early October.
READ: Duterte appoints Faeldon as new BuCor chief
“Duterte now resorts to this populist gimmick to get himself out of the problem he himself created when he did not go after Faeldon, instead recycling him to the Office of Civil Defense and now to BuCor,” De Lima said.
“He again tolerated the same incompetence and connivance at the BOC by recycling Lapeña to TESDA after another P11B shabu shipment slipped through,” she added. /je