Truth Commish can look into crime cover-ups too

Every sleuth in the agency knows that the NBI Investigators Mutual Benefit Association has long been dormant because insolvent. So they were startled when it suddenly revived this week, not in its old role of provident fund but as lobbyist. Buying full-page newspaper ad space for P150,000, the group petitioned P-Noy to retain the incumbent or raise any of the deputies as NBI director. Yet no general meeting was ever called, no agent-members’ resolution was passed. It thus stands to reason that the ad, signed by long-inactive officers, was but a concoction of the NBI brass that wants to keep their lucrative posts. It’s a ruse, thought up by a politico who backs the present NBI bosses.

It’s sad that the NBI, supposedly the premiere law enforcer, has sunk this low — politicking to get its way. The ad claims that raising chiefs from the ranks would fire up the agency. It ignores the sad fact that the present officers brought the NBI to decay.

A scrutiny of NBI goings-on would instruct P-Noy on its pressing need: to restore the agency to its old glory as premiere crime buster. How? First, by wiping out corruption of senior officers via, among others, a no-nonsense probe. This inquiry might include kickbacks from constructing the NBI headquarters’ fifth floor and the new clearance building. Too, the protection racket from vice lords and rice and luxury vehicle smugglers, and extortion while deputized in task forces.

Returning the merit system would raise morale. Of late favoritism has become the basis for elevation and posting. Greenhorns become senior agents due to plain closeness to the top. Even a man whom the NBI once arrested for kidnapping and carjacking is now a high officer. Time was when only lawyers and accountants could become agents, who then rise up the ranks from tenacious crime-solving and intense training. Not anymore. Today non-college grads carry NBI badges as bagmen of corrupt bosses.

Lastly the NBI’s resources, though meager, can modernize facilities and retrain personnel. Thence it can focus, as in its golden past, on solving big crimes that local police can’t. Present NBI leaders have failed in such tasks. Keeping them would only harm whistleblowers and kin. (It could be the cause of the assault on Ramon Tulfo’s teenage daughter, after he criticized text-threatening NBI scalawags.)

*      *      *

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide is to head the Truth Commission for his objectivity. Hated ex-President Gloria Arroyo had favored Davide with political positions, including permanent envoy to the UN. Beloved Cory Aquino had tasked him with reform, as in the Comelec. Davide has a reputation for decency and independence. It’s not yet sure what shape and power his commission will have. All P-Noy has said is that he intends it to put closure to Arroyo’s 2004 election fraud, the $329-million ZTE scam, and the P728-million fertilizer rip-off.

True graft fighters are praying that the Davide Commission will look into other scams of the nine-and-a-half-year Arroyo regime. These include, to recall but a few, the NAIA Terminal-3 bribery, Jose Pidal alias bank account, ZTE-Diwalwal mining deal, Northrail-Southrail overpricing, sick-book scam, National Kidney Center overpricing, irrigation backhoe fraud, jueteng payolas, piglet ghost dispersal, World Bank road construction scam, conflicted national power grid sellout, road tax misuse, unconstitutional Chinese exploration of RP undersea resources, cornering of preferred telecom frequencies, nepotism at the very anti-graft agency, lavish foreign travels and US dinners, SSS-GSIS fund misuse, and the midnight deals. Punishing all the Arroyo grafters would purge the government. Leaving out other shenanigans would be unjustifiably selective.

Investigations of the scams should include how Arroyo covered these up with more patent crimes. Like, the Pidal exposé led to the abduction of a witness from a senator’s custody, and the appointment of his unqualified brother to a plum government position. The Hello Garci wiretapping evolved into a Comelec official’s flight abroad despite a hold-departure. The jueteng inquiry weakened from bribery and murder of witnesses. Probe of the fertilizer scam stalled with the escape to America of the principal suspect, Arroyo spouse Mike’s cohort. Exposure of multibillion-peso faulty textbooks mockingly ended with the whistleblower’s indictment for libel and the perpetrators’ acquittal, amidst sickening media applause.

Suppressing the ZTE-DOTC exposé was graphic. From the start the Arroyo admin illegally hid the national broadband network contract. Lame excuses were given: unavailable until notarized, China unready to disclose, and secrecy of proprietary data. Filipinos were being fooled to just pay $329 million for an NBN, sight unseen. The scammers falsely accused the initial whistle-blowers of stealing the contract from a Chinese hotel room upon signing before Arroyo. They loudly implicated a minor functionary, then quietly dropped the case. A subsequent exposer was abducted and nearly silenced forever (if not for P-Noy’s timely action). With no public bidding Malacañang-DOTC hired multimillion-peso PR firefighters. Columnists were paid under the table and their spouses put in plum government posts to twist the truth and malign critics. (Though disguised as opinionists they were willing accomplices; unable to stay bought, they’re now garish critics of ZTE.) Such breaches of law — on public spending, disclosure and justice — need prosecuting, to stop future concealment of crime in high places.

*      *      *

E-mail: [email protected]