MALAYA
‘Mike Arroyo could even get away with this. After all, his name does not appear as owner anywhere. He issued no check and never took delivery of the units.’
OF course, the former First Gentleman, Jose Miguel Arroyo owned those helicopters.
Of course. the former First Gentleman will deny that. After all, where is the paper trail? Everything is deniable. There is no document that would testify to his ownership. The owners (according to the documents) were airlines and air charter companies in which Arroyo had no investment, interest or participation. The money with which the choppers were bought was in dollars and in cash.
So, where is the proof that Mike Arroyo even had anything at all to do with these helicopters?
As for the PNP generals who bought the helicopters. of course, they knew that these were used helicopters. In fact, that may well have been the reason why they agreed to purchase the helicopters because they were owned by the former president’s husband. Would the deal have gone through so easily if the Arroyos were not involved in the deal and were making a killing by selling the five year old aircraft at a price higher than they were bought five years earlier?
For all we know, Mike Arroyo could even get away with this. After all, his name does not appear as owner anywhere. He issued no check and never took delivery of the units.
Of course, we all now know that he did own the choppers and caused them to be delivered to the PNP that also knew everything about those aircraft. At one point, Senator Lacson, former chief of the PNP, said that “due diligence” would have made the PNP generals realize that what they were buying was not a new unit. I believe that they knew what they were buying but had learned, probably through osmosis or some other way that creatures acquire life-saving knowledge in the environment of rotten president’s administration to do as they were expected to do. Hopefully, somehow we may be able to get to the bottom of this. However, I would also not be surprised if this investigation goes nowhere. But, at least we, the people, now know and the Commission on Audit (COA) knows.
***
How could Efrain Genuino get away with buying an energy drink (that was being sold at P25.50 pesos in drug stores) at P109.09 from 2006 to 2009? Of course, the government auditors doing Pagcor’s books knew but ignored it.
The situation then was that the whole government was mired in graft and was totally corrupt. The energy drink overprice was something that anyone who looked at the cost to Pagcor would have immediately known that something was wrong. Yet, everyone looked the other way. The coffee too was overpriced but who really cared.
The point to make is that they knew about these things but they felt powerless to even point out the obvious that their bosses were stealing from the government. What would have happened to them if they had blown the whistle on their bosses? Would they have survived if they had talked or noted what was going on
***
Thankfully, there is a world of difference between then and now and I, for one, am glad that PNoy and his crew are letting it all out. This was precisely what he wanted to happen when he created a Truth Commission which the Supreme Court killed for the wrong reason – that it was selective because it sought only to investigate the GMA administration.
All truth commissions have investigated only the abusive administrations after they were deposed. This is something that a country needs once in a while. With the Marcos administration, what we had was the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) which did not work out too well because the crooks in the Marcos administration were simply replaced with crooks in the PCGG. As a report of the new PCGG points out, there were so many sweetheart deals that the PCGG under GMA entered into and so much self-dealing and exorbitant fees charged by the PCGG officials themselves. Again, the fact had to be that a lot of people knew about these things but under a crooked regime, there was nowhere to go, no one to tell who would listen.
***
We should have had a Truth Commission after World War II. Instead of the Americans telling us who were guilty and who were not, we should have found out for ourselves. A Truth Commission is actually a very Christian way of looking at the sins of the past. There are public hearings in which the perpetrators and the victims are in attendance. Everyone tells their story and explanations (not excuses) are exchanged; then, in most cases after the guilty have confessed their participation, what often happens is that the guilty realize what they have done and they ask for forgiveness. More likely than not, they are forgiven.
In a sense, it may be a form of justice that the Supreme Court seemed to think that they were doing Gloria and her crew a favor by shooting down the Truth Commission idea. As it turns out, the Truth Commission might have been kinder to them than the Sandiganbayan and our other courts will be.
A Truth Commission could have taken the fact that the government was corrupt as an extenuating circumstance, Surely, the Sandiganbayan or any court in the land will not do so. Our courts will instead pretend the non-existence of corruption and graft in our present system and that these are never acceptable anywhere they occur.
If they eventually serve long jail sentences, the former president and her loyal band can thank the Supreme Court for not first finding out how a Truth Commission works before shooting it down.
A Truth Commission could have dealt them a kinder hand.
***
Readers who missed a column can access www.duckyparedes.com/blogs. This is updated daily. Your reactions are welcome at duckyparedes@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment