But it seems that the Kasosyo Foundation, which allegedly got P6 million from the Fertilizer Funds had as its office at room 102 of the Visayas Community Medical Center where Rep. Antonio Yapha has a clinic. Now whether the Office of the Ombudsman can find a link to him is another story. It's about time that a full-blown investigation be done pronto by the Ombudsman because of the seriousness of this case. The problem is, calls for investigation are being hatched in Congress where we know investigations there end up in a dead end.
Perhaps now would be the right time to ask the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to reveal which foundations have politicians, their friends or families in the board. And another thing… whatever happened to the Ombudsman's investigation of the Perdido Lex of then Vice-Gov. John John Osmeña or Rep. Clavel Asas Martinez's Sikap-Yaman or Girl Scouts investigations? Are they sleeping on this so that the people will forget that this happened here a few years ago?
While we do not want to jump the gun on the Office of the Ombudsman, but it does seem that politicians with malevolent desires use fictitious foundations to funnel our tax money into their pockets. It is time to stop this practice and we just hope that the SEC would cooperate in bringing out the truth to the Filipino people.
But who could really be blamed for what happened last Saturday? Actually, it is not difficult to find out who the culprits were. They were the people at the back who were pushing the people in front of the crowd. It's really that simple, except that no one will admit in public that they were behind the others who were literally pushed to their deaths. Shame on those people! What's remarkable here is that, the majority of the fatalities, except for a few men, were women. I'm sure that the majority of those who went to the Wowowee anniversary were women.
Opposition Senator Jamby Madrigal says that this incident should be a "Wake-up call because a lot of our people are getting poorer and poorer." Yes, I'm glad that Sen. Jamby realizes that, but I also hope that she knows the reality that one of the biggest obstacle to our nation's growth are the politicians themselves! Sure, sound the wake up call, but a few days from now we'll all settle back to normalcy and forget that this incident ever happened.
Our national malaise can be blamed directly at the people who have been using the poor for their selfish political or financial ends. For decades, politicians wanted the poor to stay poor so that they will sell their votes to those politicians who are just too happy to buy those votes. But the bigger tragedy is that Filipinos never learn their bitter lessons… Never!