I have not been hearing much about General Light lately. I am worried because many Filipinos have a short attention span and the propensity to leave things half done. Now that Ex-General Ligot and his cohorts’ case are taking a backseat from the media’s limelight because of more important news like the marriage of His Royal Highness Prince Harry and Miss Kate Middleton and Honorable Rep. Manny Pacquiao’s bout against Mosley, I fear that Gen. Ligot could wriggle and pay his way out of the plunder and tax evasion case being heard against him and his wife.
The government filed tax evasion cases against El Heneral de Mandarambong Ligot and his alipores. This strategy was first used by the FBI to prosecute the gangster Al Capone since no criminal charges could be filed against him for lack of witnesses. Now the government is using the same strategy against Ligot. I think the government may be using the strategy as a plan B lest the plunder case filed against the general does not prosper in court. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t but the tax evasion case should be treated as a secondary importance to the plunder case being built up by the prosecutors because all the paper trails, the properties acquired and other shadowy investments made by Ligot, his wife and their dummies are pointing to it.
I heard that one of the outcomes of this case is the turning over of some military operations like acquisitions to the civilian people of the Department of National Defense. This may be good, but any new proposals or corrective steps that the government might undertake may not be taken seriously by everybody unless Ligot with his family and the other generals are persecuted and convicted of plunder. It has so far been the practice of government to change the system in within a department whenever corruption was discovered but few perpetrators have been convicted and punished because most of them are just transferred or relieved. What is needed now is to show to us, the concerned citizens, that big fishes are actually being caught and punished to the full extent of the law. This is more important than changing the system, for now, because this will show that corruption does not pay in the government. Any system has its flow, and any official who has inclinations to steal could always work and play around it.
I have suggestions for the military:
Since many generals, especially those in administration and in services, grow fond of their tables and lose their sensitivity to the needs of the frontline soldiers, I propose that these generals should be given frontline combat assignments as a sergeant for three months so that they could be in touch with the real situation on the ground. This way they would experience firsthand how it is to fight in battles using substandard equipments. Also, generals should be issued Huey Helicopters as a standard vehicle for transportation.
As for congress, both houses should create laws specifically designed to give equitable retribution in the military for generals convicted of plunder. My suggestion is to make a special law specifically designed for the military to make plunder and other corruption in the armed forces punishable by a public firing squad or a public guillotine beheading. I don’t know if the bullets will penetrate their skins or if the guillotine blade will cut through their skins but the effort is worth the try.
And for the family members of the generals that benefitted from the plunder money whether they are the wife or the children above eighteen years old, they should be given combat duty in Basilan or in the NPA infested mountains of the country. This is just fair because they benefited from the soldiers pay. They should be made to experience the ordinary soldiers’ combat situation so that they could realize that the luxury they are experiencing are at the cost of the misery of ordinary soldiers and the family of those who are slain in battle.
The dummies used by the plundering generals to hide their money should be used as dummies for testing nerve gasses, rubber bullets and tactical nuclear shells. They could also be useful as cannon fodders.
These are some of my modest proposals…
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