Bureauc-rats and Corpo-rats

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
6/19/2006



With Gloria at the helm of a teetering-tottering Ship of State unable to do anything else but to keep herself afloat, it is inevitable that the rats are running amuck raiding the ship’s stores. Bureauc-rats and corpo-rats associated with Gloira are stealing, looting and plundering the ship’s holds dry. Gloria’s cabinet continue to run away with growing graft.The corporations that backed Gloria in Edsa Dos are incessantly raking in it while the people’s hunger grow. The Lopezes and Ayalas report new windfall profits, while cabinet members elude investigations.

Senate reporters and the DOLE labor union say the Pat Sto. Tomas resignation was prompted by an impending senate investigation on a P 1-M employee fund she withdrew and placed in a bank account only she knows. The amount has not been turned over to the employees or anyone else, and the DOLE union is hot on her heels. Sto. Tomas’ only option was to resign to escape the inquiry. Sto. Tomas may be articulate enough to impress the unknowing public but those who have gotten a close look at her work like the DOLE union know better.

Sto. Tomas collaborated with Gloria in her 2001 power grab and the 2004 election fraud. Hence, the rat has to be kept quiet and now she is appointed to another lucrative post – the DBP directorship which gives a few hundred thousand peso monthly sinecure, but wouldn’t she start chewing into the coffers again? Meanwhile, at the executive and police rat holes the latest news from the grapevine is that the P 1-billion Gloria is releasing to “fight the reds” will be divvied up amongst the Andaya and the police generals whose legmen is a certain Col. Egdon Liscano and a brother named Vic Liscano.

Why should there be a special fund for the anti-red campaign when there’s the entire budget of the AFP and the PNP, and intelligence funds of the President and other executive departments for it. If they haven’t subdue the Reds with the hundred of billions spent the past years another P 1-B won’t be any help. It’s logical to conclude that the special fund from Gloria is not going to the “anti-red campaign” but to be a slush fund for all of them to do as they please. They are “rewards” to corrupt and compliant PNP and the AFP generals.

Let’s turn to the corpo-rats: a columnist wrote about “Oscar’s winner”, i.e. the Lopezes’ whopping P 1.5-B windfall profit from the first year of the Manila North Tollways Corp. (MNTC) with only 48 regular employees. Another affiliate which operates the NLEX raked in P 217.3-M on its first year revenues of P 1.3-B; all that is taken out of the “biyaheros” and bus companies hard earned revenues. The worse news from this group is yet to come: they will link up the Subic-Clark-Tarlac road and then connect NLEX with the C-5 and the SLEX.

Brace for more astronomical toll fees on those new roads they will take over. No one else is alerting the public except this columnist, and the hundred million peso “defamation suit” against us won’t silence me nor intimidate an enlightened public about their highway holdups. There is a Philippine against undue profiting from the public, some day an investigation will uncover this and send the Lopezes to jail as the U.S. has sent the likes of Enron’s Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling to prison for corporate plunder of the public.

The Ayalas also last week announced windfall dividends for itself and stockholder. The report goes, “…The increased cash dividend is reflective of the company’s improved cash flow generation given the financial strength attained by its key subsidiaries and the substantially lower debt at the parent level”, but the subsidiaries are not mentioned in the report lest it embarrasses the Ayalas. For certain, the big earner the past year is Manila Water which has finagled tax holidays despite water rates raised by up to 1,000%.

"Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today": Mahatma Gandhi said. The Tribune reports that the U.S. “plays Big Brother, to help Gloria fight graft” by contributing $ 21-M (over P 1-B) to be administered by USAID. Which would, among other things, establish partnerships with “local universities, foundations and international and local non-government organizations, or NGOs; and build capacity for quality data development …” But is this their real aim?

On the ICH website American David Sirota rages about America’s corruption: “… Ninety thousand dollars in a Democratic Congressman's freezer. A Republican House Majority Leader indicted for money laundering, and a senior Republican thrown in jail for accepting bribes. Washington's biggest lobbyist thrown in jail for trying to buy off lawmakers…” America cradled democratic corruption, enshrined in turn-of-the-century New York senator Geroge Washington Plunkitt’s famous “honest graft”. And these guys want to teach other countries anti-corruption values!

Sirota reserves his biggest condemnation for corpo-rats: “Today, the lifeblood of American politics is money. Candidates must raise enormous sums of private cash to run for office -- sums that the wealthy and corporate interests are only too happy to provide in exchange for legislative favors.” The bureauc-rats and corpo-rats with its Big Money reign, and they must be reined in by pest exterminators.

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