After months of being detained, the Senate blue ribbon committee on Monday, March 12, finally ordered the release of former Customs commissioner Nicanor Faeldon from detention.
This development was announced by blue ribbon committee chairman Richard Gordon during the continuation of the hearing into the alleged smuggling of the P6.4 billion worth of shabu shipment from China and corruption at the Bureau of Customs (BOC).
“We will call you on your cognizance that when we ask you a question, there will be no more backtalking and you will answer the question directly,” Gordon told Faeldon.
Responding to the senator, the former Customs commissioner promised that he would no longer get involved in backtalking and will pay attention to Senate summons.
Upon hearing Faeldon’s answer, Gordon said “Alright, so the committee chair hereby orders your release from incarceration.”
“You’re hereby released subject to the fact that you will conduct yourself as we go on the hearings when we need to. Is that understood?” he added.
Gordon even asked Faeldon to flash a smile, saying he looks much better with one.
Faeldon has been detained at the Senate since September 2017 for repeatedly refusing to appear in the committee’s investigation into the controversial P6.4 billion drug haul from China in May.
He was then transferred to the Pasay City jail after he finally showed up in the hearing. Faeldon said that he was “happier” to be placed in a tightly-packed jail cell, joining 108 other inmates, compared when he was still in the Senate detention cell.
The former Customs commissioner was appointed as the new deputy administrator of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD). Gordon urged President Rodrigo Duterte to reconsider Faeldon’s appointment, believing that the President has no business appointing the latter.
“Ilang beses ba natin papatawarin yung nagco-coup d’etat dito? Ilang beses ba natin papatawarin yung mga naloloko, tumatakas ‘pag nahuhuli (How many times are we going to forgive those who are carrying out coup d’ etat here? How many times should we forgive those swindlers, running away when they get caught)?” Gordon said on January 29.
Gordon also stressed that the ex-commissioner seemed to live in “his own world,” even suggesting that he should visit a psychiatrist.
Faledon took his oath before Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana last January 2018.