Philippine National Police (PNP) chief, Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, has kept the public in suspense on where President Digong will place him after his retirement in January.
“It’s a very difficult job, it’s the most challenging job in government,” Bato said, adding that those who had been appointed to the position were eventually kicked out because they failed.
Well, I’ll spill the beans on what job awaits Bato: Director of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor).
And I’m telling him straight to his face he will fail like the others before him.
Why? Because if he failed to discipline the PNP, he will surely fail to discipline the dregs of society; I’m not only referring to the prisoners but the guards as well.
It’s a job for those with the toughest of guts and brightest of minds; Bato has neither.
He has only the biggest mouth in the Philippines.
I want to contradict Dela Rosa on his statement that everyone who was appointed BuCor director failed.
Yes, almost everyone except Vicente Vinarao.
Vinarao, a retired two-star police general, was twice appointed to the position: first by President Ramos and then by President Gloria.
He made all guards and prisoners toe the line; those who did not later disappeared without a trace or were killed in “rumbles” or “riots.”
Vinarao wasn’t the best chief of the Manila police Intelligence and Special Operations Division (Isod) in the 1970s for nothing.
I should know; I was a police reporter when he was Isod chief.
A few days after Vitaliano Aguirre was appointed secretary of justice, I arranged a meeting between him and Vinarao on how to run BuCor which is under the Department of Justice.
The meeting took place at a restaurant in a Mandaluyong hotel.
As a friend, I wanted Aguirre to succeed as DOJ chief.
But alas and alack! he never took Vinarao’s tips on how to rid the national penitentiary of recidivists and scalawag guards.
Apparently, he believes that his puny mind could solve all of the DOJ’s problems.
All the commissioners of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor were fired for going on unnecessary trips or junkets.
No government official goes on official trips without the approval of the Office of the Executive Secretary.
Executive Secretary Bingbong Medialdea should also be fired for allowing the junkets.
Digong threatens to shoot with rubber bullets jeepney operators and drivers who refuse to go with the government’s modernization program.
If they turn violent, they should be dealt with more severely.
The past administrations spoiled these SOBs.