Recycling Faeldon; correcting the BuCor

Last week, all eyes and ears were glued to national television while the Senate conducted hearings on the cases of more than 1,000 heinous crime convicts who were released by the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor). One of the most celebrated inmates on this list of privileged convicts is former Calauan mayor Antonio Sanchez, currently serving a 280-year prison sentence for the rape-slay of Eileen Sarmenta and the killing of her friend
Allan Gomez in 1993. The two were then students of the University of the Philippines Los Baños

But it was the performance of the investigation’s main character, Nicanor Faeldon, that caught many people’s attention. Faeldon’s performance can put him in the country’s pantheon of great thespians, who can lie naturally even without a script. He showed he can lie through his teeth, with a face that never flinched even once.

It was the huge public outcry that led to the Senate investigation on why the BuCor issued the release papers of these inmates, especially celebrated ones like Sanchez, as well as the rapists and murderers of the Chiong sisters of Cebu. In the case of Sanchez, his release was nipped after the huge outcry snowballed into a basis for a major executive decision to fire the BuCor director.

So the question now is: Would he be recycled, again? And where would his next assignment be?

If Faeldon would again be “recycled,” as what happened to him in previous assignments where he attracted attention for the string of irregularities and indiscretions he has done, he should become a judge in an acting reality show.

After all, who is in the best position to assess actors’ performance but one who is a natural actor, and one who acts in accordance to his director’s wishes.

The Director in Malacañang is probably beside himself with pride at how his favorite actor is able to prevaricate and extricate himself from rather unsavory situations. True enough, whenever something untoward happens, Faeldon is always “recycled,” to head another government agency.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra admitted that the practice of “selling” the freedom of convicts, especially those sentenced for heinous crimes, has become endemic in the BuCor. “…Masyado nang long-established iyang mga kalakaran d’yan sa Bureau of Corrections…” Guevarra said in
a TV report.

We admire Guevarra’s candidness in his public admission of irregularities within the agencies that are part of the country’s justice and penology system. But we are also bothered that having known this “long established” anomaly in the BuCor, he has not done anything to initiate targeted reforms in the system. And if not for the public uproar against the release of convicts of heinous crimes, Guevarra and the entire Department of Justice would have continued turning a blind eye on what the dirty operators in the BuCor are doing.

Installing reforms in this administration is quite challenging, given the nature of the executive leadership itself. Even with incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing, as was demonstrated during the Senate hearings last week, the President has repeatedly shown that he sees nothing wrong with Faeldon, saying, among other things, “tarong siya nga tawo (he is an
upright man).”

Yes, Mr. President, Faeldon walks upright, just like our ancestors Homo erectus did.

But that is only as far as walking is concerned. The way Faeldon spoke in the hearings showed that his thoughts and speech are already tangled in a convoluted maze of lie after lie, so that he needed to spin more to cover up the other lies he earlier made.

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