Now it is the US saying our judiciary is corrupt!

For our Special Presentation on our talkshow tonight, we revisit the fabulous wholly Filipino-owned resort, the Plantation Bay. We featured Plantation Bay on the first year when we started this show. It was actually our first time to do an outdoor shoot and we showed it twice on December 2000. But we haven’t been back since so we thought that as the Lenten break is upon us, we’d like to see what’s up with Plantation Bay.

With us tonight is no less than the conceptualizer and creator of Plantation Bay, Mr. Manny Gonzales. He gave us the history and trials he had in creating this masterpiece in tourism, now dubbed as one of the top 20 Best Resorts by that glossy Tourism magazine, Conde Nast. Manny is joined by Ms. Colleen Barcelona, Spa Manager and Ms. Shasha Iona Dizon, Human Resources Training Manager. This makes for a very interesting show you shouldn’t miss tonight on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00 pm.

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The story that made the front pages of national dailies came from the US State Department’s Country Report. It embarrassingly pointed out that corruption and inefficiency in the Philippine Judicial System have undermined human rights and caused widespread skepticism of our due process. It finally validates what we’ve been writing for so long now, that the Judiciary needs to be overhauled. By this I don’t mean just removing those “Rogues in Robes” but a system that would really put an end to the systematic corruption from within the Judiciary via real reforms.

I’ve pointed out especially during those days of vigilante killings that most of that was due to the delays in our courts. Often, people with grudges no longer want to use the courts not only because the “other side” might “buy the judge” but also because the court proceedings just take too damn long! So these people take the law into their own hands and kill their opponents. Often, even the police has been perceived to also resort into this because too many times they catch a thief and the fellow gets out on bail and back into the streets to steal again.

Now that the US is complaining about our Judiciary perhaps it would trigger moves to start reforming the Judiciary and restore our confidence in our Judicial system. But the biggest stumbling block to reforms is the denial by Malacañang about the state of corruption in this country today. Congress is no help either if we based it on that revelation by the World Bank about corruption via collusion between high-ranking government officials and World Bank accredited construction companies. The Senate virtually turned the tables on the World Bank, which some Senators even accused of having some corrupt deals.

That corruption is so bad can also be traced to the Office of the Ombudsman’s incompetence for sitting on many celebrated cases. Look at the cases we have in Cebu, the Lamppost Scam, the Girls Scout Scam and the Perdido Lex drug deal. Even our beloved Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, asked Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez what happened to these cases. She didn’t even honor the Cebu Prelate with a reply.

That the Ombudsman sits on cases has emboldened many corrupt officials to paint the town red because they know that they can get away with stealing government funds even if the media literally spoonfeeds the Office of the Ombudsman like what Efrain Pelaez and the Mactan Chamber have done. Despite calls for her resignation, Merceditas Gutierrez has said that she would never resign. Call it the height of callousness!

The Blue Ribbon Committee Chairman Sen. Richard “Dick” Gordon has accused the President of being “partly to blame” for the Fertilizer Scam for not doing enough to report it to the Ombudsman. The Senate too must do its obligation to rid this country of the Ombudsman because it is only Congress who can impeach the heads of these Constitutional bodies. Let’s demand this from the Senate!

Where are they when we need their voice? I’m referring to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) whose last statement was to call for the rejection of the plans to revive the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) on the flimsiest of grounds, that it would become another source of corruption! If this is how our bishops think, then they might as well stop all road or bridge projects because they too are potential sources for graft and corruption!

While it is true that the BNPP was tagged as an overpriced project, Tita Cory Aquino made the wrong move to cancel this project. In the end, she got tagged as the “Queen of Darkness” as during her Presidency, Manila experienced the worse brownouts! But we need more power plants and perhaps less interference from activist bishops!