Poll fraud whistle-blower Senior Supt. Rafael Santiago has escaped being dropped from the police rolls and even managed to get assigned to the office of Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) had been poised to drop Santiago and four men in his unit from its rolls after they were declared absent without leave (Awol) unless they reported back to base by midnight Tuesday [last night] at Camp Crame in Quezon City.
On Tuesday, PNP Director General Raul M. Bacalzo said that Santiago, who had been Awol since his reassignment to the PNP directorate for operations in July, would be dismissed unless he returned to duty and sufficiently explained his prolonged unauthorized absence.
“He was supposed to be reporting today, Aug. 9, and if he could not report today, according to our procedure, he would be declared Awol and dropped from the rolls,” Bacalzo told reporters.
But Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo said Santiago was no longer considered Awol since their meeting on Friday, in which the secretary agreed to reassign Santiago and four members of his police team to Robredo’s office at PNP headquarters in Camp Crame.
Robredo said he officially notified Bacalzo of the reassignment on Saturday.
Asked if this meant Santiago and his team were no longer considered Awol, he replied by text: “Not anymore.”
Bacalzo, however, said he had not been informed of any arrangements Santiago, his men and Robredo may have made.
“As far as we are concerned they remain unaccounted for,” Bacalzo said.
Earlier, Robredo said Santiago and his team would temporarily be posted to his office in the National Police Commission office at Crame.
PNP spokesperson Chief Supt. Agrimero Cruz Jr. called a briefing later Tuesday to clarify that although Santiago’s group was considered Awol, “they would not be automatically dropped from the rolls.”
He said holidays and weekends would have to be subtracted from the 30 days that the group failed to report from July 7.
Contradicting Bacalzo, Cruz said the PNP was aware the DILG and Santiago and his men were talking, but as men of uniform they were still called upon to formally report to their immediate officers.
He said that at the PNP level, Santiago’s group had not officially returned to work and had not requested a new assignment.
In black and white
“But we’re not being adversarial. We just have to put things down in black and white. It can’t just be all talk,” he said.
Following his relief as Zambales provincial director in July, Santiago and his team surfaced to reveal that they were the men seen in a video carrying boxes in the Batasang Pambansa building in January 2005, nearly a year after the May 2004 elections won in controversial manner by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo over the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.
Accusations of cheating resounded and a possible recount of election returns loomed, so his men were ordered by police higher-ups to switch certificates of canvass from Maguindanao that were the subject of protest and were being stored in the Batasan building, Santiago said.
He said he and his team acted on orders coursed through subordinates of then PNP Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., now the Zambales governor. Santiago also implicated other officials.
Ebdane has denied the accusations and said in a recent press conference that he would face any charges in court.