Just call her Ma’am Arlene, the Judiciary’s Napoles

Bashing Metro Manila’s two private water concessionaires is a popular cause. So Congress will investigate a done deal. That is, that past administrations allowed the concessionaires to pass off of their income taxes to customers’ monthly bills.

But can authorities also look into multimillion-peso overspending by trustees of the Metropolitan Waterworks & Sewerage Administration. They’re allegedly mimicking their predecessors under the Arroyo tenure, who awarded themselves house and lots inside the La Mesa watershed.

Quoting the Commission on Audit, newspapers report that the MWSS under Administrator Gerardo Esquivel overshot its 2012 budget by P121 million. Of that amount, P74.36 million went to unauthorized allowances of Esquivel and the trustees. They purportedly padded their take-home pay with P17.03 million in representation and transportation allowances, in excess of P13.1 million of the allowable amount.

Another P88.86 million went to P60,000-a-month consultants. Esquivel took in a staggering number of 436 such advisers since 2010. This, MWSS employees decried, violated the government moratorium on hiring contractual or casual workers. Two of the advisers are from NGOs that accuse the two water concessionaires of “bilking” the customers. Yet the 436 consultants’ fees are charged the concessionaires, consequently to the customers.

The trustees also awarded themselves excessive pay and perks, the employees revealed. They circumvented the P14,500-per diem per board meeting by holding four such meetings a day. That enabled them to collect P58,000 for a few hours’ meeting. And since they did it every week, they were able to get P232,000 each per month. They also took MWSS official vehicles for personal use. Such acts broke the Government-Owned and -Controlled Corporation (GOCC) Law.

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Just call her Ma’am Arlene – the Judiciary’s version of Janet Lim Napoles.

She throws birthday bashes for Appellate Court justices and trial court judges, and bankrolls their family junkets abroad. She is the magistrates’ go-to girl if they need to give an offspring an expensive graduation or wedding gift. She makes them dependent on her, for a reason.

Cases are won depending on which Ma’am Arlene’s rich client-litigant is. Her connections are not limited to the courts, but extend all the way to the Department of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman. She is notorious as a fixer of cases, with investigators, prosecutors, and magistrates, mostly in Metro Manila. She has counterparts in other big cities.

Ma’am Arlene always gets what she wants. That’s because, sources say, court bigwigs and key personnel are in her secret payroll. The justices’ spouses are yearly recipients of luxurious birthday gifts. No one turns her down, lest she spill the beans on them.

Her criminal generosity knows no limits. But some magistrates avoid her. For, she has the funny habit of bragging about her connections. It’s no different from Napoles reportedly telling her employees that this senator or that congressman “is asking for money again.” Riding around town in as snazzy SUVs like Ma’am Janet does, she “owns the Judiciary” like the latter “own the Congress.” And, oh, like Napoles, Ma-am Arlene is no lawyer. Yet she “lawyers” inside chambers, for such “honorable clients” as a flour importer who allegedly also brings in banned substances.

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Omigosh! More than 6,500 trees are to be removed from the hills of Angono, Rizal, in the outskirts of Metro Manila. This is to give way to the expansion of a giant cement firm, according to earth activist and former party-list congressman Angelo Palmones. The tree removal could cause more floods in Rizal, Laguna, and Metro Manila – of the magnitude of 2009 Storm Ondoy, 2012 Habagat, and 2013 Typhoon Maring.

The Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources consents to the deforestation. It’s as if the agency never learned from recent sad lessons. The grave floods in usually spared areas of San Pedro, Biñan, and Sta. Rosa in Laguna were caused by residential and industrial subdivision developments and waterway clogging in adjacent Cavite province.

For, messing around with one part of the ecosystem messes up the whole.

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