To catch a thief, no don’t bother

Senators probing the 2004 fertilizer scam would do well to review the textbook scams from past administrations. They will discern a same modus – and same persons – involved. It would show that crime pays.

As far back as May 2004 the names of Rose Lingan, Jimmy Paule, Lenny Aquino and Jane Fabian already came up as fixers for ghost suppliers. Their job consisted of signing up NGOs of congressmen and local officials as "beneficiaries" of fertilizer doles from the agriculture office. With commissions paid in advance, they then bribed budget department contacts to release swiftly the fertilizer funds. The supplies never reached the farmer NGOs. But selected congressmen, governors and mayors got P5-P30 million as share of the loot. Total releases reached more than P788 million.

Lingan and Paule had run ghost deliveries of books and computers at the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao in 1992. The cases are under investigation by the Ombudsman. Lingan and Paule also have pending fraud cases at the Makati and Cagayan regional courts, respectively. But the show goes on.

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Speaking of textbook sales, kickbacks pervade not only in public but private schools as well. A STAR reader who requests anonymity (since she works in a publishing house) cries that among the worst extorters are nuns and priests no less in parish schools.

"They are holier than thou in preaching goodness and criticizing state officials," she fumes, "yet they demand ‘incentives’ to procure our books or other education materials. They ask for cars, plane tickets (ostensibly for educational tours), cell phones and outright cash."

In the case of public schools, the taxpayers end up covering the cost of under-the-table commissions. In private schools, the parents must cover the added costs of their schoolchildren’s materials.

The reader listed five major corrupting publishers. They happen to be the same as those in the ARMM textbook scam exposed by then-education regional finance chief Abdul Malik Ampatuan. They also are the five outfits that, educator Antonio Calipjo Go denounced, continue to publish rubbish on Science, History and English.

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As for computers, the overpriced supply to the Batangas capitol that Vice Gov Ricky Recto exposed has reached shaky first stage. Shaky, because while the Ombudsman has suspended the members of the province bids committee, it spared for "lack of evidence" the apparent principal. It was Gov. Armand Sanchez who had awarded the contract to a two-month-old, unaccredited and undercapitalized company owned by his nieces and pals.

Soon after the contract awarding, one niece ceded all her interests in the supplying corporation to one Alejandro Malabag. Gotcha reports on this cover-up prompted several e-mails from readers, all stating that Malabag is a known jueteng runner in Batangas.

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That is how crimes are all tied together. Congressmen alternate to become governors or mayors, and vice versa. The fixers stay, nurturing cohorts at the budget department to filch funds from other agencies like education, agriculture, health, public works, or social welfare. (The police and military have their own bribing suppliers.) When caught, their cases hardly move since their smart lawyers can charm or confound judges and prosecutors.

The fixers transact with equally corrupt private enterprises as buyers and suppliers. The suppliers, aware of their inferior textbooks, fertilizers or drugs, offer "favors" to purchasing officers to land huge contracts.

In some cases the suppliers are kith or kin of the buyers, which eases the fixers’ job. This is especially true in instances where the buying official is into narcotics or illegal numbers games, and thus needs to launder his money.

Any which way, the ordinary folk end up the losers.

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At times graft results from high officials posting unfit friends to key offices. When Gotcha detailed the life and times of "Misunderstood World Economist" a few weeks ago, e-mails poured in from the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. Most of the writers gave new tidbits, like the work hours of that Filipino bigshot who draws 100 percent of her pay although showing up only 20 percent of the week. They all profess that incompetence goes hand in hand with corruption.

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And because big-time grafters seldom get caught, the bad example filters to the rank and file. A retired newspaper editor confirmed Gotcha’s item on bullet planting by airport personnel out to extort money from unsuspecting passengers.

The x-ray inspectors thought they could pull their trick on this old woman, for she had arrived on a wheelchair. Fortunately, they failed. When they said they had detected two small metal objects in her carry-on bag, she threw a fit and demanded to know if, as had been exposed in the papers as a new modus, they had slipped in two bullets in order to mulct her.

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Many other Filipinos had been set up for that bullet ploy and had to pay their way out of charges of illegal possession of deadly weapon. Balikbayans too have been mulcted via other means, foremost of which was by Customs personnel simply saying "Merry Christmas" to arrivals with nothing to declare. If the latter didn’t hand over spare cash, their pasalubong of MP3s or trinkets were slapped with thousand-peso taxes.

Rackets everywhere, one balikbayan grumbled.

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