President Aquino ‘smiles away’ Alvarez’s excuse

BEIJING—“Can I just smile away his sentiments?” President Benigno Aquino III said here on Wednesday by way of reaction to ousted Customs Commissioner Lito Alvarez’s statement that Mr. Aquino had been fed the wrong information about his stint at the Bureau of Customs.

“He had a year to do the things that I had tasked [him to do] and I’m not satisfied,” said the President in an informal talk with Filipino reporters after the first full day of his state visit here.

“For instance, wasn’t it during the campaign when I said that my ambition was for us to go after smugglers? Literally, I would be the one to run after these container vans. Did it happen? Where’s the data that would have led to them? What’s painful is even the container vans got lost,” Mr. Aquino said.

The President said Alvarez simply didn’t deliver.

“There were certain things that I’d been asking—I asked his supervisor who is the secretary of finance—and I wasn’t given an answer that I enjoyed or that I liked. Certain priorities, let me put it that way, certain priorities of mine, I think, were not attended to,” Mr. Aquino said.

As for Alvarez’s replacement, whom he had already picked, the President said: “I promised [to give him] until Sept. 16 [to take over]. His wife, who reluctantly said yes, asked if they could have their last few quiet moments [together]. It appears their anniversary is near the 16th,” Mr. Aquino said.