Usec Rico Puno back in harness

Interior Undersecretary Rico Puno has returned to his duties after staying out of the public eye for months in the wake of controversies, notably the August 2010 hostage crisis and his alleged links to “jueteng” operators.

Puno, a longtime friend of President Benigno Aquino III, reported back to work on Tuesday after a 10-day private visit to Australia, where he visited family members. In January, he accepted an invitation to New York City for a 14-day seminar.

In between these trips, little had been heard from the undersecretary for peace and order, fueling speculation on his whereabouts.

Puno “disappeared” from public view early this year despite security problems that hit Metro Manila in the first quarter, including gruesome car-theft-related murders and a bus bombing in Makati City that killed five persons and injured 13 others.

Reached by phone yesterday in Tarlac, where he was attending a security-related event, Puno laughed off inquiries about his supposed disappearance, saying he had been quietly doing his job all this time.

“I’ve always been in the department, working quietly on matters that need not be announced to the media,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He said his work involved a lot of intelligence-gathering, which would explain his low profile.

He promised to make himself more available to the media, especially on security and police concerns.

VIP probe

Feliciano Reguis, public affairs officer in charge at the Department of Interior and Local Government, earlier confirmed that Puno was back.

“I saw him in his office last Wednesday. I shook his hand,” Reguis said of Puno.

But it was Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo who indicated Puno’s apparent return to public view.

Robredo said he had assigned Puno to investigate the purported VIP treatment of prominent inmates of the high-security jail at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City.

But Robredo did not respond to inquiries later sent by text on Puno’s supposed absence.

Crisis after crisis

Puno—who, Mr. Aquino said, was assigned to handle police matters—found himself in the eye of a storm last August following the hostage-taking crisis that resulted in the deaths of eight Hong Kong tourists and the gunman Rolando Mendoza, a dismissed police officer.

Along with Robredo, Puno was widely criticized for the Manila police’s mishandling of the crisis. But Malacañang merely admonished the two officials with a warning that any wrong move could mean dismissal.

Then in September 2010, Puno was named one of the two “ultimate recipients” of payola from jueteng operators, allegedly getting up to P8 million a month, according to a list Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz submitted to the three Senate committees jointly investigating the illegal numbers game.

Puno denied the charge, saying jueteng operators had only used his family and friends as emissaries to talk to him about continuing operations from northern Luzon to Southern Tagalog.

He refused to name the emissaries.