BARELY hours into his retirement at the mandatory age of 56, Gilbert Gapay was offered a job, a civilian one we had supposed, by no less than President Rodrigo Duterte.

Well, maybe Gapay, the outgoing chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), was smarter than others in the President’s perception, or maybe also, he is by far much luckier than the rest of the possibly pluckless Filipinos unfortunate enough to have been unable to hold on to a job in these pandemic times.