By NESTOR MATA
MALAYA
MALAYA
‘No less than President Noynoy Aquino gave a most royal treatment for Janet Lim Napoles, dubbed “Pork Barrel Queen” in Malacañang Palace in the middle of the night.’
PRESIDENT Noynoy Aquino gave a most royal treatment to Janet Lim Napoles, reputed “Pork Barrel Queen,” who surrendered to him in the Malacañang Palace in the middle of the night Wednesday last week, then escorted her for detention in the Philippine National Police Headquarters at Camp Crame, and even made sure that the accommodations were suitable for his “Very Important Prisoner.”
Aquino seemed mindless of what happened last August 26 when tens of thousands of outraged Filipinos went to the Rizal Park in Manila, in several other cities around the country, and in Philippine embassies and consulates in the United States and other key capitals in the world, to demonstrate their disgust over the plunder of billions of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), otherwise called, in derision, as the “Pork Barrel” funds of lawmakers in Congress.
Many of those people who joined the “One Million March” last Monday had been Aquino supporters who were mesmerized by his campaign slogans of “Matuwid na Daan” and “Kung Walang Corrupt, Walang Mahirap” in 2010 presidential polls. And now, in the face of Napoles’s alleged P10-billion “pork barrel” scam, they have loudly demanded the scrapping not only of the lawmakers’ P27-billion PDAF. A much bigger multi-sectoral public demonstration will be staged next week, September 11, at the EDSA Shrine, this time the main focus will be on Aquino’s “pork barrel” appropriation amounting to over P1-trillion of the people’s money.
Three days before that Rizal Park mammoth people’s demonstration, the first ever in the last three years of his presidency, Aquino attempted to preempt it. Flanked by his top acolytes in both houses of Congress, he loudly proclaimed before an impromptu press conference the “abolition” of the scandalous “pork barrel” allocations in the National Budget.
Napoles went into hiding soon after the Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 51 issued a warrant for her arrest on a charge of serious illegal detention of her nephew and former employee Benhur Luy. And when Aquino announced a P10-million bounty for her arrest, Napoles suddenly reappeared, and “surrendered” in the middle of the night last Wednesday August 28 to President Aquino, in the presence of only two Cabinet and Palace officials, and propagandists, who fetched her at the Heritage Memorial Park at The Fort and brought her to Malacañang Palace where she surrendered to Aquino.
Eventually, though it disrupted his bedtime schedule, President Aquino, who’s the Commander-in-Chief of all the Armed Forces, assumed the most unlikely role of an ordinary security officer and led the convoy of cars that took Napoles to Camp Crame, where he turned her over to the custody of Department of Interior and Local Governments Mar Roxas and Director General Alan Purisima, PNP chief, after making sure that the accommodations were suitable for Napoles. The next day, she was transferred to the Makati city jail, but almost immediately after, the Regional Trial Court ruled in favor of her request to be transferred to a more secure detention facility in Sta. Rosa, Laguna.
And now, many political observers, media pundits and commentators, untainted by the yellow virus emanating from the Palace along the stinky Pasig River, are asking: “Why was Napoles given such a special “V.I.P.” treatment by Aquino when she was charged only with serious illegal detention, a bailable crime?” “Did Aquino have any previous meetings or dealings with Napoles when he was still a congressman or senator or when he ran for president in 2010?”
Despite attempts by Aquino’s mouthpieces to brush off all these searching questions, one colleague in columny noted, “a large part of the public seems convinced that Napoles is a big-time Aquino supporter, and this was why he himself had to receive her instead of simply directing the Secretary of Justice, the Secretary of Interior, the PNP chief or the NBI Director to receive her on his behalf.”
The pundit asked more questions: “Is there a grand design to keep Napoles beyond the reach of the news media and the ongoing probe of the scandalous misuse of pork barrel funds by Senate Blue Ribbon Investigation Committee?” “Does this mean that if and when the charges are filed, and Napoles found herself accused of having conspired with senators and congressmen, and various officers of the Department of Budget and Management, Commission on Audit, and some implementing agencies to commit plunder, the government would move to discharge her from among the defendants so she could testify against the other defendants?”
“The Aquino government would try to absolve Napoles of all legal culpability,” the perceptive columnist and political analyst went. “In return, she would try to clear Aquino’s allies of any culpability, while trying to convict Aquino’s political adversaries. Above all, the nation must decide whether it is still within the power of the courts to right injustices and wrongs, or whether the time has come for a morally enraged population to step in and constitute a real court of the people.”
And now, I ask: “Will the insidious scheme of corruptocrats succeed in covering up the truth about the scandalous hijacking of the people’s money as well as their deep involvement in the pork barrel scam, the biggest political scandal ever, the massive web of corruption that has reached the corridors of power in the highest offices of the land?”
Well, as the popular Tagalog saying goes: “Abangan ang susunod na kabanata!”
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