Incongruity

By AMADO P. MACASAET

‘What the President might try to learn is avoiding the appointment of very close friends such as target-shooting partners. It is heart-rending to get rid of them when they go wrong.’

THE other word for it is oxymoron. The dictionary says the word means “something made up of contradictory or incongruous elements.” President Aquino helped us understand better and easier the meaning of the word oxymoron or incongruous or contradictory by what he did to Rico E. Puno, undersecretary of interior and local government.

Of course, he left us confused as ever. We cannot discern between a head and a globe.

And why so? We will not ask the President. We have no right to do that. We will merely point out the incongruity of his actions.

The President said he knew – in fact, ordered – Puno went to secure the documents Jesse Robredo was guarding with his life before he died in a plane crash. The President was specific in saying that he did not authorize Puno to search the apartment of Robredo.

But Puno went to the place anyway and even registered his name. In a sense, Puno went beyond what the President authorized him to do.

Yet the President did not drop a hint that he will include Puno in what was presumed to be an investigation of the people whose names appear in the documents Robredo was keeping.

Out of the blue and obviously without much thinking, the President announced that he was replacing Puno, a long-time target-shooting partner, with PNP Chief Nicanor Bartolome.

As if to strengthen the President’s resolve to weed out the undesirable in his regime, Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa declared to media Monday that there will be no cover-up in the Puno scam.

Ochoa is now saying that Puno is involved in a scam. Before making that statement, President Aquino said he knew, in fact it was under his instruction, that Puno had his authority to “lock down” the documents Robredo was keeping in relation to his quiet investigation of suspicious multimillion-peso gun purchase and jueteng.

The statement of Ochoa that there will be no cover-up directly implies that Puno may be a party to the scam. The President said he ordered the lockdown of the documents Robredo was guarding.

What in heaven’s name do we have here? The President authorized a suspect such as Puno to secure evidence against himself. Is removal from the job the reward for Puno’s obeying the order of the President?

What the series of unwholesome events suggests to us is there might have been an attempt on the part of the President himself to save Puno from the liability of allegedly being involved in jueteng and what is described as an anomalous gun purchase.

Panic attended the effort. The President was left with no choice except to replace Puno with Bartolome without as much as telling the public the extent of his involvement in the alleged scam if he was involved at all.

Their missteps gave the President and Puno away. The search or “lockdown” of the documents in the office of Robredo should have been accompanied by a search warrant. There was none but the President said he knew about it all along.

The President failed to order Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to work on the warrant.

The Chief Executive knew from the start that De Lima from Iriga, Camarines Sur, and Robredo from Naga, Camarines Norte, were fast friends.

Did anybody suggest to the President to bypass De Lima precisely because that intimate and long-time relationship of two Bicolanos in the cabinet may spoil somebody’s show? If that is so, there might have been an attempt by someone to extricate Puno from possible liability that may be proven in the documents that Puno himself was ordered to lock down.

The dismissal of Puno and his replacement by Bartolome did not solve any problem. The first step that President Aquino could have taken was to preventively suspend Puno while an investigation, including the one called by Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, is ongoing.

Better still, for public consumption, Puno should have resigned after his name was implicated in a possible scandal. The President should not have accepted the resignation and, as suggested here, placed him under preventive suspension.

The President was severely criticized when he appointed a slew of target-shooting partners to key positions in his government. Before they were picked, these men, presumed to be honest until the contrary is proven, were unfortunately not that well known for efficiency in their previous occupations.

Joining the government service at the invitation of President Aquino cannot help raise efficiency. Now, we have proof in the person of Rico Puno. He was given so big a turf – the entire police force – which should have belonged to the late Jesse Robredo.

There might be a need to review the wisdom of the continued stay of target-shooting partners in the Aquino government. This is not saying that the suspected involvement of Puno in what is variously described as a scam is involvement of all target-shooting partners in separate scams.

The other lesson that the President might try to learn is avoiding the appointment of very close friends such as target-shooting partners. It is heart-rending to get rid of them when they go wrong.

But they must go as in the case of Rico E. Puno. Who might be next?

email: amadomacasaet@yahoo.com