Veteran journalist Malou Mangahas posted an article on the PCIJ website as well as the Philippine Online Chronicles of what would have been former Angelo Reyes’ final words. This note was apparently written by the late General himself. I’ll just post a couple of snippets in this entry. Just hop on over to the source for the entire article.
His Two Options
Stonewalling would mean I would have to go on every day of my life or at least a large part of it under a cloud of public suspicion, at least until the case is resolved. Every day as you continue to live with the lie, you lose a little of your self-respect. And every day, as people look at you, you can read from their minds that they find you dishonorable, and you die a little. So if you stonewall – and you have the connections, resources and power to sustain it, and perhaps the thick face to endure it – that would be the preferred option. I have none of these, and so I choose the path of honor.
My honor has been attacked and damaged. I still have a lot of pride and self-respect, and I’d like to come clean to preserve whatever honor is left.
We see plenty of people walking around who have been clearly disgraced in the eyes of the people, and I do not want to join their ranks.
Not Evil
I might not be guiltless/faultless, but I am not as evil as some would like to portray.
To my friends and those who have known me and believed in me, I honestly believe I did not let you down.
I want to assure the (PMA) cadet corps, current and future, that there are plenty of military professionals who have served and will continue to serve the country well. Do not be disheartened by this turn of events. Yours is a noble profession (of arms), and you should feel no shame. I have tried to live with integrity, loyalty, and courage.
In my 48 years of public service, I have tried to live up to the highest levels of professionalism and integrity. Whether it’s my assignment with the AFP-RSBS or with the Anti-Smuggling Task Force, I never received any offers of bribes; in fact, I returned them. In all my assignments, 39 years in the military and 9 years in four different Cabinet positions, I have never had any favorite supplier. Neither have I ever extorted money nor set any financial precondition for the approval of any contract. I can honestly say that I served honestly and well.
What really happened
I did not invent corruption. I walked into it. Perhaps my first fault was in having accepted aspects of it as a fact of life.
While I am familiar with finance, I must admit I had scant knowledge of military comptrollership. Personally, zero experience. Never been assigned as disbursement officer, etc., no stint. It’s a military field of specialization that I do not have.
No system is perfect. The AFP system needs a lot of systemic solutions…And the same might be true of some other institutions.
Tinyente pa ako, ganyan na ang sistema (i.e., “conversion” system, etc.)… I can perhaps be faulted for presuming regularity in a grossly imperfect system. As CS (chief of staff), a big landscape, presume regularity, convenient to ignore it, accept it as part of the system. It’s easy to say, institute reforms after the problems have erupted.
Source: Philippine Online Chronicles
The PCIJ website is currently down as of this writing. It probably couldn’t handle the traffic. Reyes’ final words will live on forever cached by Google and countless blogs and social networking sites which will repost and share the content. Let’s just hope that his message doesn’t fall on deaf ears.
Now that is content worth preserving in the annals of the internet. By the man’s death, it may have raised more speculation than can be raised, but I have to say, it also shows that he has both guilt and conscience. A shame though that he didn’t use that same guilt and conscience to bring what he knows to light.
T.T I feel bad for him talaga. Favorite topic ko na nga sha eh.
Death was an easy way out for him.
“To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.” – Aristotle