Archive for March 15th, 2007
Scout Rangers adopt Ebdane
SAN MIGUEL, Bulacan — The elite Army Scout Rangers, whose former commander is being tried for allegedly plotting a failed coup in February last year, named Defense Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., a trusted aide of the President, an “honorary Scout Ranger.”
During ceremonies at their Camp Tecson headquarters here, First Scout Ranger Regiment (FSRR) commander Brigadier General Reynaldo Mapagu pinned a Rangers badge on Ebdane and presented him with a combat uniform.
Mapagu said that as far as he knew, Ebdane is the first defense secretary to be adopted as an honorary Ranger.
Citing Ebdane’s past stint as chief of the elite police Special Action Force (SAF), Mapagu said: “He is a special operations operator. He was formerly with the PC [Philippine Constabulary] SAF. So, he is also a special operations man.”
Reminded that “special operations” and “operator” were tags given Ebdane for his alleged involvement in supposed election fraud operations in the 2004 presidential elections, Mapagu told reporters in a serious tone: “Kayo naman, sobra naman [That’s too much].”
After the FSRR officially adopted him, Ebdane joined Scout Rangers in a “boodle fight” of rice, pancit [noodles], canned sardines, and scrambled eggs.
Armed Forces chief General Hermogenes Esperon Jr., Army chief Lieutenant General Romeo Tolentino, Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) chief Lieutenant General Benito Ramos, and Army Special Operations Command (Socom) chief Major General Victor Ibrado also partook of the meal, which was laid out on a table covered with newsprint and plastic wrap in lieu of banana leaves.
In a speech, Ebdane promised the Rangers free legal assistance and additional equipment under the Philippine Defense Reform (PDR) program.
He also inaugurated a potable water system, a 30-double deck bed bunker, military police barracks, and a planning bay for FSSR combat operations.
“This visit of the SND [secretary of national defense] and the chief of staff, and the CG [commanding general] of the Army is a manifestation of concern for the soldiers,” Mapagu said.
Ebdane was chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) during the 2004 elections. After the election fraud scandal broke, he allegedly gave sanctuary to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s reputed accomplice in vote rigging, ex-elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.
The question over the legitimacy of Arroyo’s victory was one of the gripes of ex-FSRR chief Brigadier General Danilo Lim, who allegedly planned to lead a mass withdrawal of support from the President in February 2006.
Lim is being tried for mutiny before a court martial alongside 18 other Scout Ranger and Marine officers, including ex-corps commandant Major General Renato Miranda and former First Marine Brigade chief Colonel Ariel Querubin.
Asked if the FSRR was likely to rise up against government again, Mapagu said: “Absolutely not.”
View article as posted on INQUIRER.net
‘We’re not in complete control,’ says DND chief
Insists purge behind extrajudicial slays
SAN MIGUEL, Bulacan — Defense Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. admitted on Thursday that government troops were “not in complete control” of the security situation in the country amid unabated extrajudicial killings.
In an interview at Camp Tecson, the headquarters of the elite Army Scout Rangers here, Ebdane said the killings would not stop unless the communist New People’s Army (NPA) stops its “purge” of suspected government supporters within its ranks.
Ebdane was reacting to a statement by US deputy assistant secretary of State Eric John at a Senate hearing in Washington DC that Philippine security forces were not doing enough to stop the murders, which have reached over 800 since 2001 according to the human rights group Karapatan.
“There is a constant effort to stop this [killings]. Pero hindi naman natin kontrolado lahat ng sitwasyon [But we are not in complete control of the situation],” Ebdane told reporters.
“Can we control the other side [rebels] on these killings? We are doing everything within our capability, but on things that are beyond our control, we can’t do anything,” he said.
“Maybe we should engage them [rebels] so they could not perpetrate these [killings],” he said.
Apart from establishing a human rights office in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Ebdane said checkpoints have been set up in places where killings have taken place and along routes frequently used by rebels who extort “revolutionary taxes” from villagers.
Karapatan secretary general Marie Hilao-Enriquez testified at the hearing.
But police Deputy Director General Avelino Razon Jr., former chief of Task Force Usig, a special unit created to investigate the killings, and Colonel Gaudencio Pangilinan, military assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, who were part of a delegation sent to Washington to present the government’s side, were barred from the hearing because they were not invited.
Despite the AFP’s insistence on a communist purge, investigations by United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston and the Palace-formed Melo Commission have rejected this theory and blamed the killings on rogue soldiers.
In a separate interview, AFP chief of staff General Hermogenes Esperon Jr. sought to bolster the purge theory by citing three rebel attacks on suspected government informants over the weekend.
He identified one of the supposed informants as Siche Gandinao, who testified in the Alston investigation on the February murder of her father-in-law and was gunned down in Salay town, Misamis Oriental province.
Esperon claimed Gandinao, a former rebel supporter, was a military asset.
But this has been denied by party-list Bayan Muna (People First) and the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP; Peasant Movement of the Philippines), to which Gandinao, like her father-in-law, Dalmacio Gandinao, belonged.
In the two other incidents, the informants survived the attacks but one remains in critical condition, Esperon said, refusing to give further details except that these took place in northern Mindanao.
“I have directed my commanders on the field to take further measures to protect the civilians, especially those who have given information [to the military] so the NPA will not harm them,” he said.
View article as posted on INQUIRER.net
Here are more pictures
Defense Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane tastes water from a newly-inaugurated pipeline in Camp Tecson as AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., Special Operations Command chief Major General Victor Ibrado, and Scout Rangers chief Brigadier General Reynaldo Mapagu look on
AFP Chief of Staff General Hermogenes Esperon Jr. watches his namesake, Defense Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., plant a tree in Camp Tecson
AFP Chief of Staff General Hermogenes Esperon Jr. plants a tree during a visit to Camp Capinpin
Who packs it in best? Special Operations Command chief Major General Victor Ibrado, defense undersecretary Ernesto Carolina, AFP Chief of Staff General Hermogenes Esperon Jr., Defense Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., Army Chief Lieutenant General Romeo Tolentino, Northern Luzon Command chief Lieutenant General Bonifacio Ramos, and Scout Rangers chief Brigadier General Reynaldo Mapagu stand in attention as the Scout Rangers hym is sung.
