Sen. Joker Arroyo yesterday said the wire-tapping of the President, whose constitutional title is "Commander in Chief of all the Armed Forces of the Philippines" by the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) cannot just be brushed aside as asserted by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Senator Arroyo summarized the situation as follows: "ISAFP wiretaps its Commander in Chief. The taped conversation is either sold, disposed of, or given to an outsider who turns it over to a third party. The third party releases it into the open and it becomes the infamous Garci tape. Because of that the President, the Commander in Chief, is asked to step down and a national crisis and scandal ensues.
He noted that "through all this, the AFP does not want to conduct an investigation into this breach of security, breach of discipline, breach of chain of command, breach of the Articles of War, in short, as if nothing happened."
The senator added that what happened strikes at the very core and foundation of any army in the world, without which no army can exist. "This attitude reflects the breakdown of discipline in the AFP. Indirectly it tolerates low-ranking sergeants to spy on superior officers and that norm is all perfectly all right."
"The AFP must conduct its own investigation, get to the bottom of this and make its findings available to Congress, the policy-making branch of the government which would review the AFP’s conduct and make its own decision."
