Jenny’s work for Noy (2) By Jojo Robles | Posted on September 19, 2013 at 12:01am | 41,561 views 741 Part 1 President Noynoy Aquino put Janet Lim Napoles in charge of “convincing” both the Senate and the House of Representatives to vote in favor of the impeachment and conviction of then Chief Justice Renato Corona and for the passage of the Reproductive Health Law, by her own account. Not only were the lawmakers convinced that Napoles’ involvement in these two initiatives meant that they were doing the bidding of Aquino through a trusted intermediary close to the palace, she confided; if they did what Aquino wanted, they hoped that Napoles’ business of converting pork barrel funds into kickbacks for legislators would continue unabated through her. Corona, who was appointed by former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo near the end of her term in 2010, was impeached in the House, convicted by the Senate and removed from office, all before the end of May last year. By December, both the Senate and the House had approved the controversial RH measure, which was signed into law before Christmas by Aquino. These were among the disclosures made to me by an unimpeachable source recently. This source, who spoke only on condition that I would grant him anonymity, is a private businessman who said he once believed that Napoles’ JLN Trading company was a “legitimate and respectable” enterprise; he had asked to meet Napoles to look into how they could do business together, especially through the government contacts of Madame Jenny, he said. The source and Napoles met “at least three or four times,” with each meeting lasting at least one hour. At least once, the source had to meet with her for several hours, during which they were served a meal made from scratch by the personal chef hired by Napoles to cook the food that she ate. The meetings between Napoles and the source took place between October and December last year in the businesswoman’s 25th floor offices at the Discovery Suites in Ortigas Center; Napoles had by this time already taken possession of the entire floor of the building, having already displaced the final holdout tenant, a “laser acupuncture” service that had been given concessional rental rates by the Tiu family, which controls the posh structure. The source had been introduced to Napoles by a former official of the Arroyo administration. The former Arroyo-era official who introduced the source to Napoles said it was good to be friends with Madame Jenny “because she is very close to Malacanang.” “She also always made it clear that she was really close with President Aquino in our conversations,” the source said. * * * According to the source, Napoles (or “Madame Jenny, as she preferred to be called by everyone”) was always “gracious and well-dressed,” if a little too prone to cursing in Tagalog in private. “She liked to say ‘P– i–,’” the source said. “It was strange to hear that expression so often from someone who was obviously very rich and surrounded with expensive things.” The other thing he noticed about Napoles, he said, was that “she was always on the phone with some high government official .” If she was not talking to these important people, she had to frequently interrupt herself while talking to send or receive their text messages, he said. According to the source, when he met Napoles in October, Madame Jenny was still basking in the glory of her supposed role in Corona’s conviction. “She said she had been assigned to talk to the congressmen and the senators, especially during the trial of Corona in the Senate,” the source said. “I didn’t have to ask her who assigned her; she said it was the President, because she could be trusted with the job of talking to the congressmen and senators.” Furthermore, according to the source, Napoles was excited—and very busy—because she said she was doing the same job for Aquino, this time for the RH law. “There was no doubt in her mind that she could get the job done the second time around, she told me,” the source said. But despite a feeling of mutual respect, the source said, nothing came of their plans to go into business together. “Jenny told me that she was already encountering some problems in the office,” the businessman said. He said he would later learn that Napoles was being maligned in text messages and the occasional unflattering newspaper and broadcast news article. In their final meeting, also held in Napoles’ Discovery Suites headquarters last December after several weeks of no communication, Jenny told the businessman that she was sorry that she didn’t get back to him sooner. “I learned later that some of those senior staff of some senators were trying to discredit Napoles through text messages and news reports,” the source said. These people, according to the businessman, were probably those working with Napoles’ relative and trusted subordinate Benhur Luy, who would become the primary whistle-blower against Madame Jenny. As Luy has testified in the Senate, he was already setting up his own network for pork barrel conversion, in a bid to cut out Napoles entirely from the lucrative trade. Part 2 (Conclusion) In another column, I compared President Noynoy Aquino to Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign to avoid being impeached as a result of the Watergate scandal in the early seventies. The most important question asked of Nixon at the time was: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” If Aquino insists that he met Janet Lim Napoles only when she “surrendered” to him recently, then he could be facing the most serious crisis of confidence of his three-year-old term. Did the President lie about his relationship with Napoles? What is the true nature of that relationship? Did Napoles, as she has herself reportedly claimed, really work for Aquino to have former Chief Justice Renato Corona impeached, convicted and removed from office by Congress? Did she do the same work in securing Congress’ approval for Aquino’s controversial Reproductive Health Law, as she also told my source during their meetings last year? What did the “work” entail? Did it include a spike in the pork barrel funds for congressmen and senators in the critical times right before the Corona impeachment trial and immediately prior to the final deliberations for the RH law, plus quicker “processing” of the Saros and NCAs that Napoles is supposed to have dealt with? Right now, there is no data from either the Department of Budget and Management, which releases the funds, or the Commission on Audit, which is mandated to examine Congress’ expenditures on an annual basis, to prove that more pork was released during these two important periods. I wonder if that data will ever be released – or if it will be released without being altered to show no substantial increase in pork disbursements at those times. Of course, there is the testimony of Napoles herself, assuming that she will be allowed in the Senate or in the courts that will hear the cases filed against her to even talk about her purported closeness to Aquino. Will Napoles, like Aquino before her, deny that the two of them had ever met, except casually, like when they were caught on camera in Cebu during a celebration in honor of local saint Pedro Calungsod? Should Napoles say under oath that Aquino was in no way involved in the racket of stealing Congress’ pork barrel funds, will that be the end of that? Will Aquino no longer be called to account, for instance, for the haste with which he acted on Napoles’ letter last April, complaining that agents of the National Bureau of Investigation were shaking her down? Finally, will all of these questions, which are central to blowing away the cover of secrecy that has surrounded the large-scale theft of Congress’ pork through brazen Napoles-like methods, be ever answered? At this point, not even the most loyal defenders of Aquino can really say. Ultimately, Aquino’s own commitment to his supposed anti-corruption campaign will determine if any meaningful reforms will come out of this sensational and long-running scandal. If Aquino attempts to prevent the whole truth from coming out—because he is protecting his allies or even himself—then he will reap the whirlwind. * * * As for Napoles, it’s truly ironic that someone whose supposed business was based on close relationships with people in power in both Congress and the Executive has suddenly become the one person none of her well-connected friends will admit to knowing personally. And yet, if Napoles decides to tell everything she knows about her own unique and well-paying trade, no one will be able to deny that the cooperation of powerful people on practically every level of government was required for her schemes to work. Then there are the politicians who are being singled out as those who worked with Napoles to steal the pork funds and to line their pockets with cash. Will they allow themselves to become the sacrificial lambs to dial down the public’s anger, even if they know that Napoles and her ilk had “clients” who belonged to every political affiliation in Congress and who will seemingly survive every administration in the Executive? In the beginning, I’m told, both Malacañang Palace and Congress believed that the Napoles story was going to go away, quickly buried by supposedly bigger stories like killer typhoons and attacks by secessionist Moro rebels in Mindanao. But the story has shown remarkable staying power and has even taken a life of its own in all sorts of media, both traditional or online. The only option left is for everyone involved in the scandal, in whatever branch and level of government, to say what really happened. Only then can we start talking about following the straight path and ending the culture of corruption and impunity that has kept this nation in a near-permanent state of turmoil and despondency for as long as anyone can remember.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 03:37:58 +0000