Dodging Bullets
PHILIPPINE National Police Director General Jesus Verzosa believes that the issue should be laid to rest. By issue, he means the P6.9 million in euros found in the hand carry luggage of PNP comptroller Eliseo de la Paz, who was in Moscow with an 8-man delegation for the 77th Intepol General Assembly. The piles of euro bills amounted to 105,000, and were enough to detain De la Paz and his wife at the Moscow airport just as they were leaving to fly to Warsaw on extended vacation.
In his speech at the regional headquarters just last week, Verzosa dismissed calls for him to step down.
“Personally,” says Verzosa, “I believe that everything has been said about the issue, including statements from the concerned personalities and unsolicited opinion from almost every Tom, Dick and Harry.”
Personally, I tend to think Mr. Verzosa has trouble understanding the concept of accountability and how the Toms and Dicks and Harrys of the country that he so pompously dismisses include the same struggling individuals who give up bottles of cooking oil in supermarkets because of the value added tax. I’ll be happy to align myself with those same people, and offer my unsolicited opinion that Verzosa has very little respect for the intelligence of the public he is meant to serve and protect. It may be necessary to disabuse the good general of the notion that “concerned personalities” are only those who determine whether he keeps his job or not—given that the taxes of the rest of the nation fall into the same sparkling pool that De la Paz and the boys of the PNP have been happily paddling in.
“I believe,” says the director general, “that everything that had been said is already sufficient to finally put the issue to rest.”
“Everything” includes calling the P6.9 million a contingency fund, and then an advance, and then as budget for the purchase of intelligence equipment overseas. It includes declarations by both Verzosa and Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno that they knew nothing about the money. “Everything” also includes information that the P6.9 million was over and above the P2.3-million travel allowance that the PNP had declared, and that its oversight body, the National Police Commission, had approved; it includes the fact that six of the eight gentlemen who traveled to Moscow to learn from the Interpol assembly are set to retire next year, and will be unable to either utilize or pass on what supposed value they got out of the conference.
Verzosa’s “everything” includes the fact that the allowance extended to the delegates for hotel, food and incidental expenses of government officials going to St. Petersburg was double the dictate of the UN Development Fund Index, adopted in 2004 under Executive Order 298, of $229 per day in Moscow. Everything also includes the fact that Verzosa’s wife Cynthia herself flew to the Interpol assembly to “represent” Verzosa, perhaps under the mistaken assumption that her role as the PNP chief’s wife includes the same duties as the British Royal Family, irrelevant of the fact that there were eight other senior police officials capable of shaking hands and offering greetings to various police dignitaries. We have yet to find out if Ms Verzosa was taking down notes during the conference.
Verzosa ordered the filing of criminal charges against De la Paz and three other officials immediately after the Senate hearing where he played bull’s eye to various accusations against his integrity, ethics and ability to run the PNP. Sen. Aquilino Pimentel called the move an attempt to save Verzosa’s own skin, a reasonable assumption given that his first statement was a declaration that there is nothing irregular with De la Paz’s multimillion contingency fund. Interestingly, it was Verzosa himself who later told the Senate foreign relations committee in a letter on Oct. 24 that the P6.9 million was intended to buy intelligence equipment. If the P6.9 million were in fact a justifiable expense that he himself supported, it seems rather strange to file charges against the people who carried out the PNP’s directive.
Things are looking up for Verzosa now, in spite of the numerous calls for his resignation. Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal urged the police chief to remain strong and carry on with his duties.
“I thanked the beloved Cardinal for allowing us to visit him and for praying over all of us,” Verzosa said. He added that the call for him to step down came at a wrong time because he has so many things to do as PNP chief—which is a moot argument, of course, in that any retiring PNP chief, president and school principal can always be replaced by someone who can handle “so many things to do,” the same way Verzosa replaced Avelino Razon.
Verzosa talks about the Moscow incident, appealing to his men not to be distracted by the issue. “Let us put this issue behind us so we can move along and continue with our mandate to serve and protect the people.”
Even if Verzosa were given the benefit of the doubt, and we choose to accept that this man sincerely believes the various contradictory statements and excuses the PNP pulls out of its collective ass, it poses a more ominous dilemma—that the man tasked to investigate violence against the nation is incapable of determining when someone is lying through his teeth. May God protect us all.
