Once again, CBCP is barking up the wrong tree!

Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Bolante arrived last night at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) supposedly under the custody of Senate Sgt-at-Arms Jose Balajadia. Now whether we shall really get into the bottom of this alleged P728 million Fertilizer scam largely depends on how the Senate investigation proceeds. Last February we did have a celebrated Senate investigation of Eng. Rodolfo Noel Lozada for the ZTE-NBN Broadband scam. Where did that lead us? Zero. Nada. Nothing.

The other night reporter Ricky Carandang of ABS-CBN’s “The World Tonight” obtained a pre-arrival statement purportedly from Joc-Joc Bolante stating why he wasn’t appearing before the Senate hearing on his case. Why was this statement given supposedly by government officials? Is it because they are still supporting Joc-Joc Bolante? I’m worried that the Filipino people might just see a big zarzuela, just like the Lozada caper!

Many of us expected an arrival statement coming from this former Rotarian, but that was not to be. He is now on “hospital arrest” to check whether he can stand the rigors of a Senate inquisition. With Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago fuming mad these days, the fires of hell sounds more bearable than the fire that our Senators can spew, all in the name of Presidential election! We’ve already been hearing that Eng. Rodolfo Lozada is planning to run for the Senate with the opposition slate. It just makes me wonder if the Fertilizer Scam investigation would also result in Joc-Joc Bolante’s seeking a Senate seat. 

* * *

The Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) issued another strong condemnation against the Arroyo Administration and the widespread corruption that it has been tainted with, to the point of rendering the people below the poverty line into hunger. I do not disagree with the CBCP statement but their condemnation of the Arroyo Administration is akin to barking up the wrong tree!

In our Wednesday column in The Philippine Star we pointed out that “The reason why crooks working in the government get away with all the cash (and the glory of being rich beyond their means) is due to the snail’s paced Justice System that we have in this country.

 One of the major rallying cries that made the indignant Filipinos rise up against the conjugal Marcos Dictatorship was about the lack of justice in this country. Twenty two years after the EDSA Revolt, justice still elude the Filipino people despite our having a very good man at the top of the Supreme Court. This is why I’ve been batting for a change in our system of governance because the present corrupt system we have today is no longer working!”

What the CBCP ought to hammer strongly is our Justice system, which has become corrupted to the core! Yet at the height of the scandal of that plagued the Court of Appeals (CA) that led to the expulsion of a sitting Associate Justice, the CBCP was uncannily quiet. The problem with the CBCP is, they’re led by the most vicious anti-Arroyo clerics, thus their attacks are focused on embarrassing the Arroyo administration. The CBCP should change its tactics, after all, the Arroyo Administration has less than two years to go. What the CBCP must do is map out plans that the next President we would be electing into office would not be a clone of GMA.

But then, given the present faulty Constitution that we have, chances are great that the next President would either be a GMA or an Erap clone. This is why even at the risk of my readers getting sick and tired of my advocacy for that paradigm shift to a Federal system of governance, I would still advocate for it whenever I can because like it or not, if we stay on the same course, meaning keep the same unitary system of governance, we would be seeing much of the same in the next eight years because I’m sure that the next President after Pres. Gloria Arroyo would relish being in power in Malacañang and would certainly not put any charter changes on the table.

This is why I’ve been pushing for the election of the delegates for the Constitutional Convention (con-con) together with the 2010 Presidential elections to assure us that there won’t be any hanky-panky from the Arroyo Administration who might try to pull a fast one and extend her power, while at the same time, it guarantees us that even if there is a new President in Malacañang the con-con is going to happen. But the cha-cha issue has been so muddled even civic-minded citizens are scared to go into the cha-cha direction, which means, we shall continue on the same ugly path we’ve had in the last 22 years. What we need is change now like the US will have next week!