Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Saturday said he saw no reason to believe the alleged bullet-planting scam at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport was part of a plot to make the administration look bad in the run-up to next year’s elections.
Marcos was reacting to reports that investigators were also looking at this angle.
One of the lawmakers who participated in the Senate inquiry into the matter, Marcos said bullet-planting had been going on for a long time.
“This had happened in previous years, and the number of bullet-planting incidents just kept increasing… I think it has no connection [to the elections],” Marcos said in a radio interview.
Based on what the Senate learned at its recent hearing, it was a simple matter of airport personnel preying on passengers to extort money from them, he said.
“There’s no need to make up a complicated story for this,” he added, alluding to a supposed plot against the Aquino administration.
“There are airport personnel up to no good who plant bullets in passengers’ bags to get money out of them. It’s that simple.”
The matter must be stopped and the perpetrators caught, along with those who failed at their job to keep track of such anomalies, he said.
Marcos reiterated his dismay at Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) General Manager Jose Angel Honrado who had said that he had no control over the other government agencies at the airport.
Honrado had said his job was only to act as a coordinator.
If he (Honrado) had no control, he would be unable to do his job as coordinator, Marcos said.
“Maybe the reason that many things like this are happening is because manager Honrado does not know what his job is about,” he said. “It might be better for Honrado to resign if he cannot do his job properly.”
Air passengers had been found to have bullets in their luggage even though they professed not knowing anything about it.
The recent case of an American missionary caught with a bullet he denied owning broke the scam wide open.