Trillanes’ Magdalo co-mutineers in control of Customs
The Magdalo mutineers’ joining the Bureau of Customs, a notoriously corrupt agency, is in marked contrast to its older version, the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM), that had played a crucial role in the EDSA uprising. Not a single RAM veteran went into -
The Magdalo mutineers of about 200 tried to overthrow govern the Oakwood Hotel (now Ascott Makati) in 2003 and then, The - ing that others in the military and in the opposition would join them in the fashion of the EDSA 1986 uprising. Nobody did, and they surrendered to the police after about 18 hours, after hearing its armored personnel carriers approaching. The coup attempts dented the country’s image of sta amount of investments, what with - selves trapped in the high-end Ascott and Peninsula hotels.
Key posts
Other than Trillanes and Faeldon, the other Magdalo leaders— classmates in the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1995— who now all occupy key posts at Customs are the following.
who is Faeldon and Trillanes’ peer at Magdalo, is deputy commissioner, in charge both of the management information systems and technology group, and head of the bureau’s “Command Center”. - ment that was found later to contain P6.4 billion worth of shabu is under the Command Center.
who became a one-day sensation when he ranted like a mad government in a Magdalo press conference during the Oakwood mutiny, is director of the Import
who ran for Kalinga governor but lost in 2010, is director of the crucial
Army Capt. Gerardo Gambala, po, Army Capt. Milo Maestrecam- Navy Lt. James Layug,
Port Operations Services.
is chief of the bureau’s legal services.
There’s more. Faeldon brought into the bureau several military men not publicly known to be Magdalo mutineers: Col. Neil Estrella, director of the CIIS; Col. Henry Torres, acting deputy commissioner in charge of the internal Natalio Ecarma, deputy commissioner heading the revenue collection and monitoring group.
My sources at Customs claim that Faeldon had brought into the bureau nearly 200 other Magdalo them as “consultants”. While the Senate committee on dangerous drugs is investigating how the P6.4 billion worth of shabu was cleared by Customs, it might as well seek there are at Customs now.
In appointing Faeldon as Customs head, Duterte— it is not clear if he is aware that the Magdalo mutineer had brought his other comrades into the bureau—more likely thought that his leading coup attempts against government indicated he had the character of someone committed
Col. Alvin Ebreo
to reforming the country.
A Magdalo customs official boasted at a Senate hearing yesterday that under them, the bureau had apprehended so and so worth of illegal drugs being smuggled into the country and had banned over 65 brokers suspected of evad
Haven’t increased
However, customs revenues under the Magdalo- led bureau haven’t ( percentage of its revenues to where it has been since the past decade. It would have risen to as high as 3.4 percent ( the figure for 2008) if the Magdalos had really cracked down, as they claim, on smuggling and graft in the bureau.
This isn’t surprising. After all, how could a group of men whose - ting—know how to run our Customs Bureau, which essentially requires, other than honesty, man in law and accounting?
Worse, brokers say that corruption in the bureau hasn’t changed, that there are only “new faces.” There are rumors in the bureau getting P28 million monthly in grease money from unscrupulous brokers. There is even one rumor circulating wildly that it was Duterte himself who jested -
Whether they are incompetent for the job or corrupt, the Magdalo’s control of the bureau poses a danger to Duterte. They could do what the New People’s Army did during the administration of Corazon Aquino, when she appointed a communist sympathizer to the bureau, who let communist cadres control the graft there, consequently raising hundreds of millions of pesos for their revolution.
Never has a government agency, and a money- making one at that, been under the control of a single gang.
As they demonstrated in their coups against President Arroyo’s administration, the Magdalos are such power-seeking megalomaniacs that they would go against Duterte at the drop of a hat, if ever he encounters a strong political storm. It is still their dream, in- spired by the successful 2014 Thai coup, to establish authoritarian rule in the country under them.
Duterte should realize that Trillanes has demonstrated what a Magdalo mutineer really is. Maestrecampo, and Layug are birds of the same feather. And it is certainly suspicious why the Faeldon and only once during the elections — have never criticized Trillanes, nor he, them. * The mutineers presumptuously called themselves “(“referring to the revolutionary organization “
that led the revolution against Spanish rule in 1896. They were instead dubbed “Magdalo” by the media, as the armbands they wore during their coup attempts was that of the Cavite-based Magdalo faction of the Katipunan.