The Senate blue ribbon committee inquiry into the pork barrel scam is turning into a public trial of certain senators the Palace had identified for demolition. This makes the investigation prejudiced which is no better than the selective Commission on Audit (CoA) report on the pork barrel which was clearly meant to pillory the same senators. What the Noynoy senators, the Palace aides, and of course, the yellow media are doing, is to try and convict by publicity the three senators. Clearly the targets are Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. who are all opposition leaders. The cycle is taking shape right before everyone on the public stoning of the opposition figures that had started from the supposed expose on the Napoles pork barrel scam, the subsequent CoA Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) report, which was not only biased and flawed, but used to cover up the pork barrel funds given to non-government organizations (NGOs) by the Liberal Party (LP) senators and allies and the pork barrel of Noynoy when he was a congressman and later, senator. The audit years show this bias and cover up. The whistle-blowers testimonies were aired in the yellow media that daily reported on this and focused on the three legislators. And now comes the blue ribbon hearing that is expected to lead to recommendations for either the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice to file cases based on the Senate body’s findings. The probe was called to look into the misuse of the PDAF or the pork barrel fund which should have covered the entire legislature which consists of the 24 senators and the more than 200 members of the House who all receives their share of the PDAF each year: P200 million for each senator and P70 million for each members of the House. The CoA report was far from conclusive covering only the years 2007 and 2009 and as it indicated in the audit report relying solely on data released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) that moreover deliberately did not submit incriminating documents pertaining to the allies of Noynoy, especially the LPs. The sanitized process in obtaining data for the CoA report is very familiar among reporters covering government agency beats who are fed daily press releases which are stories that the agency heads approve or those in line with the media buildup plan of the department. The reports that come out in the newspapers are those planned and manipulated by the agencies which fall in line with the targets of the government. The same goes with the CoA report based on what it said was the selective data fed by the DBM. The CoA can rightfully claim that it relied completely on data it obtained and was objective in the audit but the data were selective as provided by LP stalwart and Budget Secretary Butch Abad. Most of the data released were on the opposition leaders in the Senate while the data on the LP’s allies were sparse and which are those likely screened by the dominant party. The investigations into the pork barrel scam would have to be comprehensive to be believable, the Napoles syndicate is said to be merely the tip of the huge iceberg of corrupt practices in the use of the PDAF which should have been the guiding principle of the probe. The implementing agencies all under Noynoy that released the funds to the NGOs some of which were supposedly fictitious seems to have been spared from the ongoing inquiry since there are already identified targets to be pinned by the investigation. Unless the inquiry focuses on the intended subject which is the unlawful use of the PDAF and not on personalities then the probe becomes very unbelievable.
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 07:21:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015