Pork Barrel Scam: The plot thickens!

If there is a Rotary project worthy of supporting, it is the Dengue-Free Movement sponsored by all the Rotary Clubs of Cebu and the Cebu Medical Society. Tomorrow the members of the Rotary Club of Cebu (Mother) club will be in the towns of Consolacion, Liloan and Compostela to distribute the Temephos (Abate) Larvicide into stagnant pools of water or ponds where the dreaded mosquitoes breed. We've been having this campaign for a couple of years now that the results are amazing, as the fatalities of dengue in Cebu have sharply reduced by as much as 90 percent.

Thanks to the selfless efforts of people like Dr. Wyben Briones and Rotarian Bobong Castillo who brought in the Temephos Larvicide and repacked them into easy sachets so they can be applied in potential areas where the dengue mosquitoes breed. But we Rotarians cannot just do this all the time as this campaign should be at least a quarterly campaign. Thanks again to the Rotary Clubs of Cebu, the Cebu Medical Society and the Department of Health (DOH) for supporting this noble project. More power guys!

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Finally after weeks as a media circus, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has decided to issue an arrest warrant against Janet Lim Napoles and her brother Reynald "Jojo" Lim, the principal personalities behind the super typhoon hitting the Aquino Presidency known as the P10 billion scam. But this arrest warrant is not for the biggest pork barrel scam that has struck our scam-filled nation. It is for the illegal detention of Ben-Hur Luy for serious illegal detention, the whistleblower of this scam.

The problem now is that Janet Lim Napoles and her brother are nowhere to be found. To think that just a few days ago, Janet Lim boldly appeared before the editors and writers of the Inquirer so she could air her side of the controversy. At the end of the day, Janet Napoles failed to answer the most important question of all…why she got to be so rich! She said that her company was in the coal mining business in Indonesia, but she couldn't even tell the press the name of that company or how much she earned from that particular business. I hope that by the time you are reading this column, the NBI would have already found and arrested her.

Meanwhile, I read this exclusive from Rappler.com which revealed that the eldest son of Sen. Ramon "Bong" Revilla. Jr. happens to be a partner of Janet Napoles. The reports of Rappler.com apparently got this information from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which reveals that a Leonard Bryan Bautista is co-owner of PB&J Corp., a business with James Christopher Napoles, the son of Janet Lim Napoles and her nephew Ronald Lim, Jr. This business enterprise was incorporated only in January 1, 2011. So it is a very young corporation.

In fairness to these sons of famous people, even if they became partners, we must grant them the privilege of innocence until their guilt is proven. But as of now, whistleblower Ben Hur Luy has issued a statement that at least P1.017 billion of Sen. Revilla's pork barrel from the years 2006 to 2011 went to NGOs that JLN formed. At least COA has found an irregularity in the release of P9.7 million in Sen. Revilla's pork barrel to the St. James Apostle Multi-Purpose Cooperative. But Rappler could not find any SEC papers for this NGO. Now the plot thickens.

In the meantime, we task the DoJ to immediately arrest Janet Napoles and her brother Jojo Lim on this particular crime of illegal detention because it is a non-bailable case. We also caution the DoJ, especially the NBI to be extremely careful in their investigation because any hint of trying to "clean" the friends of the President could blow this case sky high.

The least we can expect is for the NBI to be used. Janet Lim already said that the NBI is being used against her, which could also be true. But if the Office of the President uses the NBI to whitewash the allies of the President, then they will lost their credibility and I don't know where this case would lead to in the end. So be extra careful folks as an indignant Filipino people are looking at this investigation with a keen eye.

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Didn't we just write that time flies so fast these days? Indeed it's true as once more the Aboitiz Group of Companies present the 8th Aboitiz Future Leaders Business Summit (AFLBS) that will be held at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel. I can't believe that it is not the 8th year for the AFLBS. Of course, this is another set of students coming from the universities and colleges all over the country. As I've already pointed out many times before that our graduates today are extremely blessed that companies like the Aboitiz Group gives them this insight of how they conduct their daily business life. Something we never learned during our days when we were in college. More power to the Aboitiz Group.

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