A retired Army sergeant is threatening to copy what dismissed Senior Police Inspector Rolando Mendoza did last week if the government does not give him part of his benefits, the Senate Blue Ribbon Oversight Office Management (BROOM) Office said Thursday.
In a letter to the Department of National Defense (DND) dated September 2, BROOM director general Rodolfo Noel Quimbo said a certain retired TSgt. Charmie T. Palencia has been calling their office to demand that the Philippine Army include in his benefits his broken service from Feb. 24, 1988 to Aug. 14, 1994.
Quimbo first referred the complaint to the DND on Jan. 21, 2010. It was endorsed to the DND Office of the Secretary on February 26 and has been pending action in the office ever since.
But since Mendoza held hostage 21 Hong Kong tourists and four Filipinos on a bus last August 23, Quimbo said Palencia has reportedly been threatening — through phone calls — to do the same.
At the end of the 11-hour hostage drama, nine people lost their lives — eight tourists from Hong Kong and Mendoza.
"He (Palencia) sounded like he was impatient," he told reporters on Thursday. This, said Quimbo, is why he wrote another letter to the DND. "That's the only bureaucratic thing we can do," he said.
"We were alarmed when he informed the staff that if and when no action will be made relative to his complaint, he'd also do what Mendoza did (during) the Luneta Grandstand hostage-taking incident," Quimbo said in his letter.
Quimbo said he has no other details about Palencia and that their last contact with him was on Wednesday morning. — RSJ/KBK
