Guess who's fooling the Filipino people?

Last Wednesday I wrote in my column "Inside Cebu" in the Philippine Star comments about an article which came out in the Star on page 11 entitled, "'Pork' used to fund Anti-GMA rallies?" This was in connection with the revelation made by Department of Justice (DoJ) Secretary Raul Gonzales who tasked the left-leaning Partylist members in Congress to account for the pork barrel that they already got, which the DoJ Secretary believes that they could be using government funds for all those Anti-GMA rallies.

This was also a validation to the article we wrote last year questioning 4th District Cebu Rep. Clavel Asas Martinez who gave more than a million pesos from her pork barrel to support Bayan Central Visayas. So why do all these left-leaning Partylist Reps need all that pork when the majority of the Filipino people even wanted the pork barrel abolished for good? Clearly, the job of the left-wingers is to fight an open struggle in brotherly cooperation with the New People's Army (NPA) against our government. If they can find ways to secure funding from the government itself, they would not hesitate to use it to destroy their sworn enemy the Philippine government.

So now you know where the funding came from to buy those red flags seen during the Anti-GMA rallies in front of the Cebu Provincial Capitol and for the rallies at the Malacañang of the South. That report reveals that millions of taxpayers' money were given to people like Satur Ocampo, Bayan Muna's Teddy Casino, Akbayan's Rep. Loretta Rosales and Gabriela's Liza Maza. This is money that these left-leaning individuals could never hope to acquire or see by marching through our streets everyday.

But as Partylist Representatives with their pork barrels, they can entice huge crowds of poor people who are drawn to these demonstrations because it has become their way of life and because, we the taxpayers don't realize that these protesters are now marching our streets because they found a way of using our tax money as their funding source! Perhaps now is the time for all taxpayers to march the streets in protest against these deceivers! Yes, those leftists want GMA to resign allegedly for cheating in the last elections, yet those who seek her resignation are deceivers themselves!

Last Wednesday evening, I was listening to my favorite radio commentary program entitled "Yagyagan" by my idol Elias Baquero and he was reading the joint statement by the Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy (ANAD) supporting the call of the Justice Secretary to audit the pork barrel of these leftist legislators. The statement signed by Jun Alcover and national chairman David "Boy" Odilao quoted the words of Jose Mari "Joma" Sison who said, "Armed Revolution means much more effective when complemented and reinforced by legal forms of struggle. Armed and legal forms of struggle are interactive and help each other in the advance of the revolutionary movement." So let's ask who's fooling the Filipino people?

Need we say more? Either we sign a petition to abolish RA 7941 which created the Partylist Representatives or let's just create a new Constitution which would do away with the Partylist Representatives who have deceived the Filipino people by using our own tax money for their street marchers when we know that money could be better used for the poor!

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The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) missed its July target by 20% meaning instead of collecting P46 billion, they only collected P37 billion. You can say that one of the principal reasons for this is corruption within the BIR itself and the best example was found in the front pages of all the local news last Wednesday where two BIR executives, Division Chief Atty. Bonifacio Desing Ybanez and Revenue Officer Edgar Dequit Palgan were arrested by a unified team from the Cebu City Police Office who found the BIR men positive with marked money.

The apprehension of these two allegedly corrupt BIR men are but a mere drop in the proverbial bucket of crooks working inside the BIR. It just makes you wonder how many more BIR personnel are doing this stuff and for how many years have they been doing it. Many times in the past, many of my friends have asked me to expose a certain corrupt BIR man for extorting money from them; however, they do not want to have their names appear as the complainant, hence I never wrote about it. But to be sure, it is an open secret that BIR personnel have been doing this with impunity so often and for so long now. So how do we catch these crooks? Perhaps the best way is to go to a subdivision and ask who owns the nice houses there and chances are, the nice, plush and big homes belong to someone working in the BIR. Why don't you check this out?

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila's columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com