No stop in war on corruption, vows Duterte

MANILA: President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte reiterated he would not stop his relentless campaign against pervasive grat and corruption in government even if the axe would fall on his close allies or his relatives.

“Corruption. I have no patience for that. And we will continue to purge government (of corrupt elements). No one is sacred, not children, not friends. No one,” Duterte vowed in his campaign speech for administration senatorial candidates in the coming May 2019 midterm election in Negros Occidental province in the Visayas. The latest to be dismissed by Duterte for “allegations of corruption” was retired Philippine Marines general Alexander Balutan as the chief of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) that operates the lucrative online loto and sweepstakes draw patronized by most of the 100 million Filipinos.

Duterte has repeatedly said that among the first, including Cabinet officials he had dismissed for alleged corruption, were among his closest supporters in his successful run for the presidency in the May 2016 election.

But Balutan, a combat veteran in Mindanao, is fighting back and disputed his dismissal as announced by Salvador Panelo, the presidential spokesman, for alleged “serious corruption issues” and instead said he resigned because he could not bear doing something ordered by someone at Malacanang Palace or Congress.

“If there are allegations of corruption, I beg for a full and impartial investigation,” Balutan said in a statement, adding that Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, the executive secretary, told him that “powerful people” he did not, however, identify were behind his ouster.

“As I told all PCSO employees when I assumed as the general manager in 2016,” he pointed out, “that if somebody from the Office of the President/congress asks/ order me to do something which I cannot stomach, I will resign.”

Balutan, a member of the state-run Philippine Miliary Academy (PMA) Class of 1983 based in the resort city of Baguio in the Northern Luzon highlands, is a decorated vetean of military campaigns against Moro rebels in Mindanao.

His official records also showed he was a recipient of the Ten Outstanding Philippine Soldiers award from one of the country’s biggest private commercial banks the Metrobank Foundation in 2011.