LAST week I chanced to ride in a public bus, Ryan Anthony 9254 bound to Legazpi City on my way to work. At San Jose of Pili town that connected the road to the Provincial Capitol, the transport suddenly stopped behind a maroon van with no.EBA-825 where alighted a man in white polo barong who confronted our driver and his conductor on certain courtesies while driving in the highway. The angry man in his fifties seeing the bus attendants silenced by loud voice got a sidearm still in its holster in his car and challenged the two, “Anong gusto mo!?” When things subsided, the man drove to the nearby Camp Martillana. The passengers freed from the breathtaking suspense suspected that such arrogance was indeed coming from a military personnel in civilian clothes.

Everyone in the group came to believe that the action of the AFP officer, if he could be one, was pure and simple bluff. It could be the other way around though, turning the petty traffic altercations into homicide with the civilians at the losing end, victims of a hot-headed military whose obsession is, might is right. At this, I see no reason why people’s perception of these awkward war freaks change. They are no better than the bad guys they rarely apprehend. What of the articles of an officer and a gentleman? It’s a piece of paper whose meaning worsens among these unmeaning men.

Sad to say such attitude results from the military’s tainted independence by the civilian authorities which, while dispensing graces like promotions, particularly, to the former, use them on irregular activities to promote personal ends. Many generals had been implicated with election fraud of no less than presidents.

Yet in the uniformed men’s work, they openly mouth that their only loyalty lies in the Constitution. To the uninitiated, this is not difficult to believe. Account that to overt seriousness carried more by the weight of their decorations, with more colors the dimensional effects do not fail to last.

There was this Martillana an enlisted man in the then Philippine Constabulary in the 1960’s who by the stroke of fate earned a medal of valor. I heard he died in a car accident. It is him that the AFP camp in San Jose is named. When still alive, he committed infractions of law and he would tack his medal during hearings that caused his superiors up to those with star ranks to salute and absolve him of wrongdoings.

With the bad image of the military, young idealistic soldiers see the matter in their organization differently. They become fractious, becoming the imminent troublemakers ready to dissolve the endeared principle of chain of command of the group. This is evidenced by the coups that have been sprouting since the 1980’s.

And unless the AFP is rehabilitated, its condition will go nowhere and deteriorate. And the suspected military man who harassed the driver, the conductor, the passengers of Ryan Anthony bus is not helping his outfit either.