Top PDEA execs face off at Senate: Chief says aide had problems

Carlos Gadapan lost his job in the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) because he had become a liability to the organization.

His claims of an unjust dismissal from his job as deputy head of the agency mean nothing because as a presidential appointee, he could be removed at anytime.

Gadapan faced the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs on Monday and insisted that he was fired because he had embarrassed his boss, Director General Jose Gutierrez Jr., when he told the latter that his wife had a gambling problem and that she may be using his name to get credit with which to finance her vice.

He also told him that Mrs. Gutierrez could be jeopardizing the PDEA’s operations, as she once asked him to lend her P300,000.

How Mrs. Gutierrez’s borrowing money from him could jeopardize any PDEA operation, Gadapan did not explain.

But his former boss, Gutierrez, was also at the Senate and the PDEA chief told the committee that it was Gadapan himself who had a gambling problem and that he had been fired from a job because of his vice.

Gutierrez, whom Gadapan accused of corruption, disclosed that after leaving the police service in 2005, Gadapan landed a job at Standard Chartered Bank, but he was fired in 2008 because of “habitual gambling.”

Gutierrez said that when Gadapan joined a United Nations peacekeeping mission abroad, his wife turned into a drug dependent and became the girlfriend of a police officer who was killed by an unknown gunman.

Sen. Gregorio Honasan, the committee chairman, cut Gutierrez short and reminded him to concentrate on flaws in the drug enforcement system that could be remedied by legislation.

For example, Honasan said, does the PDEA have a policy on members going to the media to air grievances?

That’s exactly what Gadapan did after being fired from the agency, but his complaining to the press and claiming that he was fired without due process boomeranged on him at the committee hearing, with Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago telling him that as a presidential appointee he was expendable.