Gov’t officials wearing blinders

Either they’re blind, or they’re wearing blinders. Whichever it may be, the anomalies are obvious, and many government officials have a lot of explaining to do.

Last week, several illegal structures called kubols in the New Bilibid Prisons were demolished in a well-publicized operation with top prisons authorities in attendance.

As understood in the national penitentiary, a kubol is a compact apartment with special amenities. They are available to wealthy prisoners willing to pay large sums of money to prison officials in exchange for comfortable accommodations, luxurious by prison standards.

From the volume of rubble that was produced after the demolition, it looks like there were enough such apartments to constitute a separate residential subdivision inside the prison compound!

Photographs published in newspapers and video clips broadcast in the television news show demolition personnel displaying deadly weapons and mobile phones found inside the prison apartments. What the prison officials did not show were the window air-conditioners, television sets and electronic equipment inside the apartments which were used by privileged prisoners.

Where did those appliances go? Were they hidden to be used another day? Nobody is talking.

How were those special prison apartments constructed without the knowledge of top officials of the Bureau of Corrections? If ex-Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and her successor, incumbent Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra did their homework in the first place, the existence of those illegal housing facilities would not have escaped their notice.

Last week, 542 illegal workers from different Asian and South East Asian countries were arrested by police authorities in Parañaque City. Good grief! How did those 542 illegal aliens even get through to immigration authorities at the airport? How did they manage to avoid getting detected by officials of the Department of Labor and Employment? It’s time the labor secretary did some real work, instead of strategizing on how Filipinos can continue working in Kuwait despite the maltreatment they get there from the uncivilized Kuwaitis.

The recent fatal hazing incident at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) is something that cannot be swept under the rug. How could hazing take place inside the academy without the academy’s top brass knowing it? The PMA campus isn’t that big that the academy’s management is unable to notice that hazing is actually taking place in the barracks and at “the usual places.”

Why were military gadgets capable of inflicting physical injuries in the possession of PMA upperclassmen outside of training hours? Those devices are accountable items and should be kept at the fort armory after class and training hours. If those devices were properly kept at the armory, they would not have found their way in the hands of those sadistic cadets who routinely inflict pain on their fellow cadets.

The excuse for all that hazing is that cadets have to be trained to endure physical pain to prepare them in the event they are captured and tortured by the enemy. That’s like scourging a cadet for a whole year, to prepare him just in case his captors scourge him. Physical endurance is better achieved not by torture but through a tough physical fitness regime and a program that develops strong will.

Perhaps the academy’s officials mistook their stay at the PMA as an extended vacation in the cool climate of Baguio.

As a military establishment, and one with an armory filled with firearms, ammunition and explosives which was once raided by communist insurgents led by Lieutenant Victor Corpuz, the PMA must have enough sentries all over the place. Being so, it is impossible for those sentries not to know that hazing is on-going in their midst. They should have reported the violence to the fort authorities.

If the PMA top brass and the fort sentries did their work, Cadet Fourth Class Darwin Dormitorio would have been alive today.