For a 15-year modernization program, the AFP is asking for P331 billion – about P20 billion per year assuming the needed funds are spread out evenly, and are not needed more up front than downstream.

That’s a lot of money. If, for example, it costs P1.5 million to build a 3-classroom school building, then 10 buildings or 30 classrooms will cost P15 million, 100 buildings or 300 classrooms will cost P150 million, 1,000 buildings or 3000 classrooms will cost P1.5 billion, and 10,000 buildings or 30,000 classrooms will cost P15 billion. So the annual P20 billion modernization budget required by the AFP is equal to 39,000 classrooms or 13,000 school buildings – for which our DepED is also desperately seeking funds.

Assuming only one department of our government will get all the money it is asking for, who is willing to bet that it will be the DepED and not the AFP that will get its funds? No takers?

The way our governments are at the tender mercies of the AFP, I suppose it is safest to bet indeed that the AFP and not the DepED will get the money.

And it is also safest to bet that 15 years down the road a new AFP leadership will again be asking for more money, because somehow the monies requested in 2008 were insufficient, some were "lost" and the AFP remains a laughing stock among Asean armed forces, able only to exercise its might against the political opposition.

If you read the rationale for the AFP budget request, you will wonder whether in fact the monies being requested are better spent for schools than for ammunition.

The AFP, for example, concedes that the 38-year old Maoist rebellion remains the most potent threat against the State. Remember that Mao died on September 9, 1976. or 31 years ago. Yet in our country a Maoist rebellion remains, most active in the most depressed areas of our country, and in answer to which the AFP wants light airplanes, machine guns, howitzers, attack helicopters and radios.

Unfortunately, light airplanes, attack helicopters, howitzers and machine guns do not address the basic issues that drive Filipinos to revolt, the same basic issues that ticked off our national heroes in the late 1800s and ignited student activism in the 1960s. Add to those century-old issues the issue of corruption that is destined to hound this administration to its political grave – and should anyone wonder why the Maoist rebellion persists to this day?

Maybe the only thing of wonder here is that it is alleged that companies from Mao’s own Peoples’ Republic are those fomenting corruption in this country through generous offers of "pocket money" as part of the award of contracts.

Pocket money, as in money to be pocketed.

And while it is conceded that education is one of the greatest and most effective levelers, is it school buildings and classrooms and better paid teachers that we seem prepared to give money to? No – even if you consider the Cyber-Ed proposal that will be funded by Mao’s China, the same Cyber-Ed proposal that many are wary about because it seems to have been hatched at the same time that the infamous ZTE broadband scam was being hatched.

(And we know that we haven’t even gotten to the bottom of that scam because everything is being done to prevent that from happening!)

But here’s more – wasn’t Fort Bonifacio bidded out in the boom years of President Ramos precisely to fund AFP modernization? And remember how First Pacific of Manny Pangilinan paid an astounding price for the property vacated by the Army, easily besting the bid of the Zobels?

Where did all that money go? To the generals to fund their shopping sprees for their wives and/or significant others? Definitely not to the retirement benefits of the rank and file, because weren’t those benefits "mismanaged" – if not in fact stolen as well?

And now here they come again, asking for P331 billion over 15 years? To fight an enemy some suspect has become an "enemy of convenience" whose existence justifies more funding requests?

From where I sit, what is just in as dire a need of modernization is the AFP’s mindset, of which we hear a lot of lip service. "We would be the last to wish war", many a man in uniform would tell you, "because we are the first at the frontlines of war." Well, if that were true, then good – go out and as citizens push government for economic reform, educational reform and social and political reform – because when these programs are properly launched and properly implemented then the people themselves will become the State’s vanguard and the AFP need not fire a single shot in its defense.

But for as long as our political elite remains as corruptly intertwined with our economic elite, buttressed by our unformed elite – then the requirement for more funds for AFP modernization to fight off the Maoist threat will be never-ending.