Now is the time to ask the Ombudsman to quit!

Just when we thought that no one cared to listen to our cries for justice, Liberal Party President Senator Manuel “Mar” Roxas has finally tasked the Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez to “fix her act to arrest further erosion of public confidence in the government as her failure to act on corruption cases involving officials and allies of the Arroyo Administration has weakened the country’s democracy itself.”

This is what we’ve been saying. As long as the Office of the Ombudsman refuses to file celebrated cases (how many there are?) in court, this allows crooks in the government to continue with their corrupt ways because there’s no threat of jail if they are caught red-handed. If crooks get caught and sent to trial and convicted, this is a guarantee that corruption would soon be a thing of the past.

At least Sen. Mar Roxas has now sent a stern warning to Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez saying, “If Ombudsman Gutierrez will not act on the graft cases pending in her office, the call for the ouster of this government will get stronger.” This is what we’ve been asking the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to focus on Justice rather than merely attacking the Arroyo Administration, which doesn’t help our advocacy to bring justice back to this country. Perhaps now is the time to ask her to quit!

However we already know that Ombudsman Gutierrez doesn’t care about what we say and continues her intransigence. Even our beloved Ricardo Cardinal Vidal already asked what happened to the Girls Scout scam or the Lamppost scam, yet he got no answer from the Ombudsman except that old lame excuse, that they are saddled with tons of cases. I have always said that if it is true that the Office of the Ombudsman is really saddled with so many cases, then she should delegate this tasked to the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas for instance. Surely the Ombudsman officers here are competent to decide for themselves which cases ought to be sent to court? But why doesn’t she delegate this? Ezz a puzzlement!

But we already know the real score, that Ombudsman Gutierrez is only dilly-dallying. There is no stopping Sen. Mar Roxas from already demanding for her resignation. I’m sure that Dilaab Movement coordinator Fr. Carmel Diola is just waiting in the wings for that signal to ask for Gutierrez resignation. So what’s stopping us from demanding this?

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While scams and scandals are stuck in the Office of Merceditas Gutierrez, before the year ends, there are still two more celebrated cases that would end up in Gutierrez’s lap. The first is the Fertilizer scam of Agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Bolante and the other is the case of the “Euro Generals” where former PNP Comptroller Eliseo de la Paz was caught with some P7 million in a Moscow airport.

In truth, the biggest embarrassment to the nation done by Joc-Joc Bolante is not that he was involved in the fertilizer scam, but that this happened to a former member of the Rotary Club who even became a member of the Board in Rotary’s hallowed governing body, Rotary International. As a member of the Rotary Club of Cebu, I am ashamed that this Joc-Joc Bolante once represented Filipinos in Rotary International. I’m sure this fellow must have failed the Four-Way test. How he got to become a member of the board of RI is a story that I would like to find out from our Rotary friends.

Meanwhile with regards the Euro Generals case, I really did not know that former Philippine National Police (PNP) Region 7 Director, Silverio Alarcio Jr. is now the PNP’s Chief of Operations until I read the news that he was among the so-called “Euro Generals” who were with retired PNP Comptroller Eliseo de la Paz when he was caught at the Moscow airport.

We’ve known Gen. Alarcio when he was PNP Regional Director-7 more than a year ago. He did a good job while he was in PRO-7. But because of this controversy, the “Euro Generals” were asked to return the money that they were given for that trip. Well, true to form, Director Alarcio, Jr. returned P274,070 without batting an eye, proof that he really had nothing to hide. Since Gen. Alarcio returned the money allocated to him, the other PNP officers have now returned theirs, some with a promissory note to repay at a later date. With Gen. Alarcio, I’m sure that we’ll all get into the bottom of this mess.