By Bel Cunanan
Political Tidbits
Political Tidbits
It’s now De Lima’s added dilemma, but studied opinions say l’affaire Napoles could also be tipping point for P-Noy. SC Justice Abad’s ‘boiling water’ theory stumps former Rep. Lagman
If in the administrations of Presidents Macapagal Arroyo and Noynoy Aquino, there has been a conspiracy among some members of Congress and Janet Napoles to channel their PDAF to bogus NGOs under a 70-30 sharing scheme, in this reigning regime there could have been a conspiracy among personnel of the Justice Department, as Secretary Leila de Lima is now investigating, security personnel and perhaps even members of Congress to allow this notorious woman to escape arrest.
The query everyone’s now asking: why was the impending arrest ordered by the court publicly announced? As a FB habitué argued, it should have been arrest first and then announcement. This may be because a good number of politicians stand to gain plenty from her disappearance.
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Secretary De Lima, appointed by President Aquino in July 2010, is one of several Cabinet members who have repeatedly failed to get confirmation from the Commission on Appointments (many lost count of how many rebuffs she has faced in the CA). Very soon, however, as Senate President Franklin Drilon, who also heads the CA, said recently, De Lima will again face the CA as obviously the President retains full trust and confidence in her.
De Lima’s dilemma (to borrow a Manila Standard phrase) is that she was already twisting in the CA at the time when investigation of the P10 billion scam perpetrated by Janet Napoles was being conducted by the NBI under her department. Now that Napoles has flown the coop, De Lima has to answer for this in the CA and to the people.
The nation will also be watching what President Aquino will do from hereon—some pundits opine that the Napoles saga could very well be the tipping point for him.
My friend, Star columnist Boo Chanco, put it very well today: “Yes indeed, this pork barrel scam may define the P-Noy presidency. History may remember his watch as the time when public officials were raiding the National Treasury in the tens of billions of pesos and the President considered it as all in a day’s work.”
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Despite enormous public demand, leaders of both chambers of Congress have turned down any investigation of the PDAF scams that have involved past and present members of Congress, and now she’s missing in action. Hence an outraged citizenry appears to have no choice but to press Congress to conduct this inquiry itself.
De Lima has been under tremendous pressure to name names in the pork barrel scandals, and so was Commission on Audit Chair Grace Tan-Pulido—but up to now nothing has come out. Then came the RTC’s order to arrest Napoles—not for masterminding the P10 billion scams, but for illegal detention of her former right-hand man, Benhur Luy who turned witness against her. Even that court order was infirm in itself.
Given this latest crisis in the Napoles saga, it now behooves the citizens of this country and respected institutions to apply pressures on Congress to have the guts to investigate its ranks—if only to get to the bottom of the PDAF mess and undergo its much-needed purgation and catharsis.
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But there’s another angle to the pork barrel scams. Now that the Napoles drama has played out for over two weeks already, pundits are beginning to look at the whys and wherefores of how it began. Some analysts are happy that the fertilizer scam of the past administration is meriting a second look, if only to vindicate Marlene Esperat, the journalist who first began poking into it in 2005 and paid for her zeal with her life.
I’ve also heard other pundits opine that this whole mess may have been raked up by a rightist group fearful of the growing power of the Left, so that the former wants to foment trouble with various scandals, in order to preempt the moves of the Left.
Another theory popular earlier was that the Palace blew up this scam in media to cover up for huge un-detailed pork items for the executive department in the 2014 national budget, such as the President’s P100 billion from the Malampaya funds. But this theory doesn’t wash, for precisely the PDAF scams opened a can of worms and those executive budget items are now being scrutinized by media and left-wing representatives, more than ever.
All these theories about conflicting conspiracies provide unceasing analyses in cocktail and media circles. The plot thickens.
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