Over the weekend, my friends emailed me two great articles on the controversy involving the bishops; one from my good friend Tony Lopez of the Manila Times, entitled “It’s wrong to shame the bishops”, while the other was supposedly an editorial from Teddy Boy (Locsin) that was read over a radio program entitled “Damn the Bishops for Taking it Lying Down” which gives you an idea how these guys felt about the recent controversy involving the bishops who got SUVs from the PCSO.
Perhaps as a fitting end to this embarrassing episode, allow me to quote from St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:4-10, “Brothers and sisters! That I Paul might not become too elated because of the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an Angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” That this issue boomeranged on the PCSO should be a warning to the Aquino administration; when you mess with the clergy you mess with God.
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Just when we thought that the Office of the Ombudsman was hopelessly mired in its bureaucracy, a couple of months after the resignation of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, all of a sudden, as if someone put grease on the cog in the wheels of justice, the celebrated cases that we’ve been writing about for so many years began to unravel in decisions from the Office of the Ombudsman, which then validates our suspicions that perhaps then Ombudsman Gutierrez was indeed sitting on these cases.
Case number one was the infamous Girl Scout scam case way back in the year 2003 when monies purportedly for the Girl Scout of the Philippines sent through the Land Bank (Bogo Branch) in a manager’s check somehow found its way to the private bank account of former Cebu Congresswoman Clavel Asas Martinez.
Acting Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro approved graft charges to be filed against Martinez over the P10 million released to her from her Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) which was meant for the Girl Scouts of the Philippines (GSP) in Cebu City, where she was also its president at that time. As we wrote way back in 2009 and in earlier columns, this money was for the GSP, but it was later withdrawn by GSP treasurer Ma. Cielo Martinez through a manager’s check and found its way in the bank account of the Congresswoman.
Later, P1.5 million of this money was returned to the government when it was found that this money was meant for the pork barrel funds of the Bayan Muna Party-list. This was another issue that we wrote about during those years when we noticed that during rallies conducted by leftists groups in Cebu were brand new red banners. Of course the camp of the former Congresswoman claimed to have “returned” the P10 million back to the government in the year 2005. But the die has been cast. It doesn’t take a brilliant lawyer to sniff the money trail that public money found its way in the personal purse of the Congresswoman.
Another very controversial case is the corruption case filed by businessman Efrain Pelaez Jr. against the City of Lapu-Lapu who purchased 480 PC computers at an obvious overprice of more than 116 percent from Kein Enterprises. This was a case that was filed seven years ago, which in my book was very easy to decide because of the glaring overprice.
Back then, I remember that enterprising newspaper reporters went to Kein Enterprises to ask for the prices for a brand new PC and to their surprise, they were advertising in their store PC computers at less than P20,000 with a computer table included. Their store prices were very low as compared to the P50,000 per unit that the City of Lapu-Lapu paid for them seven years ago. Incidentally, Kein Enterprises was also found to be an unqualified bidder and most interesting of all, 30 of these computers were given to two island barangays that had no electric power.
In an unexpected move, finally the anti-graft court suspended 18 officials of Lapu-Lapu City without pay, which brings the question — is this the penalty for corruption… a mere suspension without pay? But as the old saying goes, “The big fish got away!” Former Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza and now Congressman of the lone district of Lapu-Lapu City was not included in the administrative case because of the so-called “Aguinaldo Doctrine” whereby administrative infractions committed by elected officials are considered “cleansed”. Maybe this doctrine should be revisited by the Supreme Court in support of President Aquino’s anti-corruption campaign.
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For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mozcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through http://www.philstar.com.