Around 196 generals, flag and senior officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and 28 Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) officials await confirmation of their promotion by the Commission on Appointments during a hearing at the Philippines Senate in Pasay City on Wednesday. (MNS photo)
DAVAO CITY (Mabuhay) – A retired Army general who led failed uprisings against two former presidents is being considered to head the graft-ridden Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s incoming justice secretary said Wednesday.
Brig. General Danilo Lim may soon be in charge of cleaning up the country’s prisons system, where convicted crime lords were found to have stayed in air-conditioned cells with recording studios and stripper poles.
“We need someone tough like General Lim,” incoming justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre said.
“Among those recommended to me, to be recommended to the President, he’s one that I believe in,” he said.
Should his appointment push through, Lim will be the second former military rebel in the incoming government. Duterte named ex-Marine Captain Nicanor Faeldon as customs chief on Tuesday.
Lim was jailed for his involvement in a military uprising against former president Gloria Arroyo in 2006, and but was later granted amnesty by President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.
Lim also led a coup against Mr. Aquino’s late mother, then President Corazon Aquino, in 1989.
Aguirre vowed a “radical” approach that would involve members of the police’s elite Special Action Force taking over from prison guards and other jail personnel.
“I don’t want to telegraph my punches… (but) I have a clear idea of how to do it,” Aguirre said.
“In the first month, you could expect that the drug activities, the drug problem there, transactions would be stopped or at least minimized by more than 90 percent,” he said.(MNS)