A private-sector anti-corruption group urged President Rodrigo Duterte yesterday to shelve the “promotion” of former Bureau of Customs (BoC) commissioner Isidro Lapena to director general of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda).
The Coalition Against Corruption (CAC), in a news conference, said it was “premature” that Lapena should be rewarded with a promotion to a Cabinet-level rank while investigations into his alleged role in the smuggling of P11bn worth of shabu in August (not P6.8bn as previously estimated), were in progress.
“In fact, Lapena’s reassignment and promotion, without first being cleared of culpability, undermines the president’s avowed policies of ‘zero tolerance’ and ‘not even a whiff’ in the war on drugs and corruption. Illegal drugs and other syndicated crimes can only flourish in an environment of unmitigated corruption,” it said.
Partnering with the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission in the war on corruption from discovery to prosecution and conviction of corrupt officials, encouraged whistleblowers to surface to help prosecute crooks in the government.
In the news conference on Thursday, Lourdes Manaoang, who had blown the whistle on Lapena, accused the sacked BoC commissioner of incompetence.
The National Bureau of Investigation, the Senate and the House of Representatives are separately investigating Lapena’s supposed role in the smuggling of the P11bn shabu in August.
Lapena, a former military officer, has accepted his appointment as the new Tesda chief.
“Yes of course (he has accepted it). As the president said, he’s transferring General Lapena to Tesda,” BoC spokesman and Port of Manila Collector Erastus Sandino Austria said in a text message to Manila Times.
He confirmed that the president and Lapena had a private talk but did not elaborate on what transpired during the meeting.
Lapena was replaced by Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) administrator Leonardo Guerrero, a retired Armed Forces chief.
The president announced Lapena’s transfer to Tesda a day after he admitted before a joint hearing of the House Committees on Dangerous Drugs and of Good Government that he was now inclined to believe that magnetic lifters found in Cavite nearly two months ago contained shabu. Earlier on Thursday or before Duterte’s pronouncement, Mangaoang, former chief of the X-ray Inspection Project of the BoC and now Customs deputy collector, accused Lapena of being a member of a drug syndicate that brought in billions of pesos worth of shabu hidden in four magnetic lifters.
Lapena denied a cover-up, saying earlier evidence had shown that the lifters found in General Mariano Alvarez (GMA) in Cavite, did not hold shabu.
As Lapena has instructed, the bureau will pursue charges against former Customs intelligence officer Jimmy Guban and assist the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in dismantling the “drug syndicate that pervades the government.”
The BoC will also file cases against Gorgonio Necessario and Joseph Dimayuga.
Perjury cases will be filed against Miguela “Meg” Santos and the proprietor of SMYD, Marina Signapan.
Signapan and Santos and broker Katrina Grace Cuasay will face charges for illegal importation.
The Palace said yesterday the president appointed Lapena to Tesda because he wanted to spare the ex-Customs chief from “intrigue.”
In a radio interview, Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said Duterte had been planning the reassignment of Lapena but made the sudden announcement because the latter’s reputation had been besmirched amid controversies plaguing the BoC. Lapena will fill up the post vacated by former Tesda chief Guiling Mamondiong, who stepped down to run for governor of Lanao del Sur in the 2019 mid-term elections.
The decision to transfer the BoC chief also came just a day after the president expressed belief in the integrity of Lapena, who had served him while he was mayor of Davao City in southern Mindanao.
The president also ordered the “freezing” of all section, department and unit heads at the BoC amid the multi-billion-peso drug smuggling scandal.
Lapena’s reassignment was criticised by some lawmakers.
Bayan Muna representative Carlo Zarate said that not only did the transfer “foster incompetence,” it also showed that Duterte’s “militarisation” of the Cabinet was expanding.
Party-list Representatives Antonio Tinio and France Castro also hit Lapena’s reassignment and promotion.
“It looks like Lapena was given a reward for a job well done, for letting P11bn worth of shabu enter the country. But what can a former military official do in an education-related agency (Tesda)?” Castro asked.
Akbayan representative Tom Villarin also questioned Duterte’s decision and compared it to victims of extrajudicial killings who were linked to illegal drugs in the country.
“When it’s an ordinary Filipino, the command is to kill him immediately, but when it is a friend, he is given a second or third chance and is even promoted. Public office no longer becomes a public trust,” he said.
Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said she agreed with the appointment of military men as they have an advantage under the Duterte Cabinet.
“They are literally good soldiers, that’s why,” she told reporters in a chance interview in Sasmuan, Pampanga.
Arroyo refused to comment on the new leadership at the BoC.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson also yesterday expressed hope that Guerrero would “not suffer the same fate” of Lapena.
Opposition Senators Antonio Trillanes 4th and Francis Pangilinan questioned the president’s motive in “promoting” Lapena.
Pangilinan said: “When incompetence or corruption go unpunished and those linked to irregularities are rewarded with other top-level posts, then both incompetence and corruption will just get worse.”