AMID glaring cases of police corruption and incompetence, notably the kidnapping of two men and stealing P2 million in broad daylight on Edsa by eight policemen, some of them already convicted administratively of graft cases against them, President Aquino has stood by Director General Alan Purisima of the Philippine National Police (PNP), insensitively declaring that he was standing by his man.
It didn’t matter that Purisima was not exactly being blamed directly for the corruption of his men; no, he was not about to bow down to the dictum of command responsibility like that required of an officer and a gentleman. He was being taken to task for his obscenely rich lifestyle by accepting money from rich families of rescued kidnap victims and for his failure to file his statement of assets and liabilities as required of any public official.
The gross insensitivity, nay the sheer arrogance, of Purisima has rubbed off on the President, whom one remembers as having declared in his inaugural speech that he would follow the “daang matuwid” or right path of a public servant. The road has apparently forked and the administration has started to trod the crooked path. The adage, “The captain goes down with the ship” takes on a whole new level of ridiculousness in this case.
Purisima has been more than insensitive; he has been hidebound and shameless. Asked to explain his wealth and high living, he said he had accepted “goodwill money” from rich Chinese-Filipino families whose members had been victimized by kidnap syndicates and rescued through PNP efforts.
Why the President chooses to stand by Purisima is a mystery. If he couldn’t let him go, Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago suggested that the President should appoint him to the National Police Commission or Department of the Interior and Local Government. “That’s the best way, under the circumstances, to get rid of a suspicious character,” she said. “In other words, President Aquino, please kick Purisima upstairs so that he will leave the PNP alone,” she added.
Still, Aquino had the audacity to defend him even while he was on a presidential trip to Brunei, even laughing off the allegations hurled at Purisima. While boasting of the anti-corruption drive of his administration, he seemed averse to entertaining any impure thought about Purisima. On Purisima, it seems, the President is a purist.
