The tag price of Juan

If anyone cares to remember Rolly Joaquin, a top graduate of the Philippine Military Academy who was deported by the US in 2004 for supposedly tampering with the price of a music disc, which his PMA allowance for his Infantry Officer Basic Course at
Fort Benning, Georgia would have easily afforded, he must be wondering where he is now.
I also want to know how he is doing and hoping he was able to rise from one youthful mistake that cost him his military career.
But I also want to know how Daniel Smith, the US soldier accused of raping a Filipina who recanted later, in exchange for a better life in the US with an American boyfriend (not Daniel, of course), is coping with his “nightmare,” even if his terrifying experience never happened in the Bilibid prison, where he should have been, but in the comforts of American facilities where he was taken by the US authorities who snatched him from the court after he was found guilty of raping Suzete Nicolas.
Rolly and Daniel are two stories worthy of a comparison if we are to ask how equal our relations with the US, then and now.
Rolly faced court martial as soon as he got back, all for the crime of placing a $.50discount tag he took from another CD for an artist he liked, but which was not on sale. Very little information filtered out of those proceedings that, if rules were not bent in his favor, the valedictorian of the PMA Class Maliyab, who was 22-years old then when he was caught red-handed, would have already lost his rank as an Army second lieutenant at the time of his crime, and his freedom, for a measly P22.00, which was the equivalent of 50 cents in US dollars in discount for that particular disc. (An newspaper report claimed Joaquin was recently promoted to 1st Lt. in the Philippine Army. A brother has also just graduated in the PMA).
Rolly did not rape an American woman. He did not kill a person. He did not even steal the music disc he sought to have the $.50 discount for. But he was tempted by the discount tag offered in another CD, he thought he could get away with some youthful naughtiness.
Daniel’s crime wasn’t cute. But technically, he isn’t guilty after the recantation, despite the earlier finding by a Makati court that he had raped Suzette.
Suzette, however, was only practical she took the easiest way out of the controversy that put her and her family to shame. She accepted payment and a visa to join her boyfriend in the US, with hopes of settling there and finding peace with her new partner.
Daniel, I suppose, is also at peace now. Although a friend, who is with the US Marines, assured me that he was “processed” following the guilty verdict, Daniel would have picked up with his life since he walked free.
It is something which our own Rolly would not have done easily even if rules were bent for him.
Rolly is not so fortunate to have committed a crime in the US which did not see it as petty.
Daniel is so fortunate for being an American, period. How can we argue, when even our government has allowed its own soldiers to be treated as poor, second class partners in the Visiting Forces Agreement, the document which saved Daniel’s life, even as he had committed a dastardly crime of rape in the Philippines? And are we supposed to find fairness in the document?
Talks have again focused on the VFA as some 600 American soldiers are currently in Mindanao, sharing bunkers with Philippine troops and occupying military areas like they are their own.
We have heard claims these US troops have actively engaged in the war in Mindanao, an action, if true, that is an affront to our constitution. But government is not complaining, its arms and hands even stretched in waiting for alms and hand-me-downs from the US, materials which they have actually junked and due for replacement with new and sophisticated weaponry but which we are gladly to accept and pay for in loans.
We could not even have criminal jurisdiction over these American fighters, as was obvious in Daniel’s case. Poor Rolly, he was deported as quickly as he was seen on the CCTV cameras removing the discount tag and placing it in the disc that he liked.
American troops are here, supposedly as our equal partners in the fight against global terrorism. But their presence here can also involve us in unnecessary international conflicts as we allow our soils to become monitoring stations and launch pads for their own military operations.
It’s no wonder terrorists are looking at the Philippines now as a valuable training and operations hub, where they are very much welcome by their religious brothers who feel instigated and threatened by the US military presence in their region. They need not look far, however, as their targets are all here.
God forbid it happens that we become another Kabul.
But our government would rather take the risk than isolate themselves from the graces of their foreign masters.
Besides, it is easier to send a petty offender to jail than punish a rapist and come out as the better partner in what is an obviously one-side treaty, if you call it such.