What does Aquino know about corruption at DOTC? By Francisco S. Tatad In the last three years, nobody dared to allege the slightest hint of corruption against the Aquino administration. Everyone seemed willing to suspend all disbelief about President Benigno S. Aquino III’s claims of incorruptibility. They never questioned his rather silly campaign slogan, which also became his only known “program” of government, “kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” (the poor would not exist if there were no corrupt individuals). Fully convinced of his celebrated “honesty,” even someone like Vice President Jejomar C. Binay, who has resisted all suggestions to lead the Opposition, would always tell foreign leaders he met abroad that never has the country had a president in recent years, against whom not even the slightest whisper of corruption has been heard. The DoTC extortion story, however, may have changed all that. The revelation by the Czech ambassador that individuals associated with the leaders of DoTC and MRT3 had tried to extort $30 million (eventually brought down to $2.5 million) from Inekon, the Czech transport firm, in exchange for a contract to supply new trains to MRT3—and that the President, after learning about all this, did absolutely nothing—makes the story different from all others. The story may or may not die after it shall have disappeared from the front pages. But more important than that, it may have emboldened even members of the conscript media to play up other stories alleging corruption in the supposedly incorrupt government. First among these is the corruption story in the Bureau of Customs. The story has grown bigger rather than smaller, despite the President’s threat of “reforms” in the bureau. The “musical chairs” of port collectors in various parts of the country has not helped, given the open intervention of political “padrinos” (godfathers). But most damaging to the President has been his own refusal, rather inability, to sack Commissioner Rozzano Rufino Biazon for “command responsibility,” after blasting away at the unchecked corruption and patent inefficiency in the bureau in his last State of the Nation Address. Aquino’s unusual behavior has now spawned some urban legends about Biazon’s alleged untouchability. These are being joked about in board rooms, golf courses, and coffee shops, and tend to show a much different images of the presidency. Then follows the pork barrel story. Nobody paid much attention when, after making some standard noises against the Arroyo administration’s use of the pork barrel during the 2010 presidential campaign, Aquino decided to keep the same pork in his first year budget, to make the congressmen and senators pliant and happy. Not many were disturbed when he rolled out the pork barrel to get 188 congressmen to sign an impeachment complaint against the sitting Chief Justice, even without their reading the Articles of Impeachment, and the senators to convict and remove him from office. Fewer still were disturbed when he repeated the same act to coerce the two Houses of Congress into enacting the foreign-dictated and anti-Catholic Reproductive Health Law, whose constitutionality is now being questioned before the Supreme Court. At that point, Aquino had clearly become the chief corruptor of Congress. But no one, except perhaps this writer, dared to publicly say so. Direct presidential involvement in electoral corruption became even more glaring when Aquino, as Team PNoy’s most active campaigner, used every available public fund to ensure his candidates’ phenomenal 60-30-10 win against Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance candidates and the Independents, even in UNA’s known bailiwicks, and in troubled Mindanao, where the prolonged blackouts had produced a very strong anti-administration electorate. Until now a loose coalition of university-based math professors, IT experts and political activists continues to reject the results of the 2013 senatorial elections as fake. So the pork barrel story continues. But instead of acting decisively to end the scandal, Aquino sends conflicting signals. While the mainstream press talks of a P10-billion scam involving one huge pork barrel “integrator” named Janet Lim Napoles and several opposition and anti-RH senators, the social media and the political gravepine suggest something infinitely bigger, involving virtually the whole spectrum of political players. Napoles is reported to have told one member of Congress: “P10 billion? Barya lang yan. (It’s just small change).” And while Justice Secretary De Lima is reported to be intent on preventing the departure of any of the Napoles brood from leaving the country, she has been quick to clear senators friendly to Malacañang of any possible involvement in the alleged scam while showing no sympathies for those identified with the opposition. And amid the snowballing demand for the pork barrel’s abolition, Aquino has declared, it will stay. Thus, while the Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares is stepping on the most sensitive toes trying to raise enough revenue for the government, the President is freely dispensing the hard-earned currency as politicians’ plunder disguised as pork. Although the Napoles story has been used to demonize Malacañang’s adversaries, it seems unlikely the nation will ever hear everything about it. Not only does she have access to the highest places, but it looks like only a few are not involved. One Congress source believes we are back to the time of Harry Stonehill, the former lieutenant in the US Army who came to the Philippines in 1945 and built a $50-million business empire in the 60s. For Stonehill, “every man has his price,” and he used his money to corrupt nearly everyone he knew in government, business and the press. He was investigated in Congress for tax evasion and other crimes, but could not be pinned down for anything. A raid by the National Bureau of Investigation ordered by Justice Secretary Jose Wright Diokno yielded voluminous documents against him. These included a “blue book,” which contained the names of 200 individuals who had received money from the man. Even then-President Diosdado Macapagal was supposed to be on the list himself. So powerful had Stonehill become that he could say, “I am the government.” The same quote has now been attributed in one online article to Napoles. In her effort to clear herself, Napoles wrote Aquino a letter disclaiming any involvement in the alleged P10-billion scam. But this letter has only provoked speculation about her possible connection with the President. What gave her the courage to write directly to him? Why did she have to explain at all to the President? Did she have any dealings with him in any of the nine years he was in the House of Representatives, or in the three years he was in the Senate? How true are reports that she was one of the bigger contributors to the Team Pinoy 2013 campaign chest? There seems very little optimism that Aquino will be able to do much about the breakout of corruption in the various agencies. Whether it be at DoTC, the BoC, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of National Defense, the Department of Energy or the Department of Energy and Natural Resources, or any other agency, the corruption will continue, driven and justified by the need to build a massive war chest for the 2016 presidential campaign, which presidential pretender Mar Roxas and his associates want to sew up very badly.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:37:27 +0000
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