DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
2/4/2011
A retiree from the Commission on Audit, with the initials AR, sent me this text after being glued to radio coverage of the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) generals’ “pabaon” scandal: “Ang gulo congresmen cla cla din nagkokontrahan sobra dunong, puro dal2. Cla din tumutulong s dfendant.” (The congressmen are so messed up; they contradict and upstage one another; all they do is talk. They’re even the ones aiding the defendants.)
Then, Myrna (another texter) said: “Mabuhay kayo jorge rabusa, heidi mendoza tulad ng mga bagong katipunero. kayo ang mga buhay na bayani naming mamayan at bansa natin. Tulad nyo naranasan naming ang insultuhin kutyain bombahin ng tubig batutain sa mga rali.” (Long Live…! You are the citizens’ and the country’s living heroes. Like you, we have experienced insults, taunts, water canons, and truncheons in rallies.)
Such feedback from the public only affirms the Tribune’s recent headline, “House panel goes ‘soft’ on ex-AFP CoS.” But the coddling appears not only limited to the House.
Some members of media who are also at it include one who wrote: “On the downside of that Senate hearing were the actuations of Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Antonio Trillanes against Angelo Reyes… They were boorish and seemed more like spoiled juvenile delinquents instead of senators of the Republic. Instead of generating public support for ferreting out corruption in the AFP, they may have unwittingly generated public sympathy for Reyes instead — counterproductive.”
Columnist Billy Esposo, of course, did a little perfunctory criticism of Reyes before attributing personal vindictive motives to the two senators. What he apparently didn’t like was their vigorous cross-examination of Reyes, who was already used to taking the offensive as a way to distract and intimidate, a tactic seen and countered immediately by Estrada and Trillanes.
How can there be any downside when any investigation that ferrets out the truth is worth every minute and every penny of the public? Even in the case of the congressmen pussy-footing on the former chiefs of staff, their dissolute character in action was readily seen by the public.
The fact of the matter is, many legislators sitting in budget hearings or deliberating on appointments or promotions are known to demand favors that range from the facilitated entry of their own protégés into juicy posts to specified amounts as their shares of the “loot” from earmarked funds or projects.
Many of these individuals (mentioned by military officials) are known allies of Gloria Arroyo, including a notorious politician who ran for a Senate seat in 2007 but lost big-time, landing him a most lucrative post in the LWUA (Local Water Utilities Administration).
As we pointed out in our last column, the entire system is corrupt, especially after the Edsa II power grab. Mrs. Arroyo’s cohorts, starting with Esposo’s Copa (Council of Philippine Affairs), and especially those who helped out in the ensuing cover-ups and illegal operations, became virtually indispensable ever since.
We also said that compared to the many other scams in the past decade’s narrative of felonies, Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia is a small fry. His estimated P300-million loot is certainly small in relation to the scandalous amounts racked by “evil society,” such as the infamous CodeNGO Peace Bonds that netted over a billion in fat commissions, excluding banker’s fees.
It’s also small compared to what certain members of media got in lucrative government directorships that pay out hundreds of thousands monthly even when they hardly have any qualifications to serve at all. Small-time Garcia is, too, compared to the different religious sects, which got their shares either in the form of choice government contracts (such as license plates) or appointments to cash cow agencies or even the courts.
While the nation’s eyes are focused on the AFP, another case of endemic, pernicious corruption, this time by the corporatocracy in connivance with the judiciary, is unfolding.
About a decade ago, Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) reneged on its 10-year supply contract to purchase electricity from the National Power Corp. (Napocor) because its owners had set up their own IPPs (independent power producers) and bought from these at a higher price. Napocor thus sued Meralco for breach of contract, for which the power distributor was fined P12 billion. This amount grew to P20 billion until it was settled at P14 billion, with the caveat that it will be charged to consumers.
Such corrupt shenanigans have gone on for over two decades now with neither the legislature nor the judiciary having ever lent the public a hand.
And Meralco isn’t alone. Another oligarchic firm, Manila Water, has gotten the MWSS, the water regulatory agency, to approve a fresh round of rate increases in the face of a declining dollar which ought to have been a major boon to savings.
But then, in the twisted way that deregulation laws were written, regulatory agencies such as the MWSS have no other choice but to source their funds, including their fat 30-month bonuses, from these privatized utility companies. Is it any wonder whose interests these agencies are working for? Yet after that entire hullabaloo about bonuses during PeNoy’s inaugural address, nothing has been done to curb this basic distortion and conflict-of-interest.
These are the real cases among the countless, ongoing, and all consuming corrupt practices that amount to hundreds of billions annually (P10 trillion in 10 years) that far outweigh the loot of a billion or two by the parade of patsy generals.
This systemic corruption is something that cannot be uncovered by mere legislative investigation. Only a popular awakening can achieve a comprehensive understanding. Only a national political revolution can clean the country of this scourge.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, about “ERC, Meralco and NPC power rip-offs” with Mang Naro Lualhati, lawyer “Batas” Mauricio and Butch Junia; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Friday, February 4, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Radyo OpinYon
Tune in to DWAD 1098kHz from Monday to Friday, 5-6 P.M.
Herman Tiu Laurel, host
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May 17, 2011
Guest: "Linggoy" Alcuaz
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May 26, 2011
Guest: Butch Junia
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June 7, 2011
Guest: Prof. Louie Montemar
Herman Tiu Laurel, host
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May 17, 2011
Guest: "Linggoy" Alcuaz
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May 26, 2011
Guest: Butch Junia
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June 7, 2011
Guest: Prof. Louie Montemar
Just the tip of the iceberg
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/31/2011
As Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia couldn’t have pulled off his larceny on the Armed Forces’ logistics command without authorization from above, so could these superiors of his (i.e. Angie Reyes, other chiefs-of-staff, including various Defense secretaries) also not have conducted these rackets over time without their higher ups ever condoning such acts.
For one, let’s ask who got Reyes to turn against the Constitution in Edsa II by shanghaiing a busload of generals to Gloria Arroyo’s illegal oathtaking, with him even sardonically exclaiming, “Gentlemen, we are committing treason.”
Knowing the answer is key because ever since that fateful day, Mrs. Arroyo has lavishly taken care of Reyes’ fortunes; likewise that of the “cheap” magistrate who administered her oath; and, of course, the vast riches of that noted oligarch slash Edsa pavement dancer who financed her coup — whose ilk Gloria’s economic adviser Joey Salceda claimed nine years later to have “…never had it so good, earning P10 trillion in 10 years” under their Queen’s inglorious reign.
Going by the P300-million loot Garcia had amassed, the former military comptroller may look like a big or middling fish. But once people get to see how much more his bosses may have plundered, he will certainly look like a small fry.
A small fry indeed Garcia is compared to, say, his erstwhile boss, Angie Reyes, who could have amassed P500 million to well over a billion (or even more), and that former Chief Justice, who was alleged to have benefited from the P3-billion Judiciary Development Fund, a scandal circa 2002-2003 that set off impeachment proceedings against him, which Gloria expectedly quashed.
A small fry, too, is what Garcia appears to be especially when placed alongside members of the then expanding Arroyo cabal, whose power addiction grew simultaneous with their own designs to stay in power, such that subsequent elections had to be rigged in order to net the players hefty kickbacks in, say, the ZTE-NBN scandal or even the transitional ruse that was the fraudulent P11.8-billion Smartmatic system.
But then, these billions are definitely miniscule compared to the ten thousand billions of pesos (read: P10 trillion) that the handful of Big Business oligarchs got, starting from the P5-million to P10-million payola-laden passage of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) by the Edsa II lameduck Congress under Sonny Belmonte, which ushered in a decade of power plunder that, up to this day, is the single biggest economic disaster for Filipino households and livelihoods.
Why, Epira was just a harbinger of all the predatory public utility rate increases that followed. In the years after Edsa II, the oligarchs were always on a roll — be it water, toll ways, or even port and harbor service fees! Good thing that a handful of consumer advocates, like the 89-year-old Mang Naro Lualhati, who won us our first P30-billion Meralco refund, are still around. This Feb. 7, he will be presenting in court Meralco’s P92-billion disallowances and P39-billion overcharges.
If and when the likes of Garcia and Reyes are put away in jail, does anyone believe Philippine society will be cleaned up? Their acts of corruption are but shovels of garbage from the Payatas pit of official corruption.
Who were the collaborators of Arroyo and Reyes all through the last decade in the Senate, Congress, media, religious and business sectors, as well as NGOs?
Ask Roilo Golez who, as National Security Adviser, defended Arroyo to the hilt during the Oakwood protests and investigations and called my radio program on dzXL to stop my reading of the Trillanes manifesto on July 27, 2003 and got me kicked out of the station a week later.
Ask Sen. Rodolfo Biazon to enlighten us as to why a group of retired generals reject him as being part of the so-called “righteous generals” of our soldiery. Ask Sen. Miguel Zubiri, too, who has been vocal on the Garcia issue. Let’s see if he can explain how he won his Senate seat.
Oops, I almost forgot, what about Etta Rosales and the funds she got from Gloria to jumpstart her party-lists and her comrades’ congressional careers?
If anyone thinks Garcia and Reyes’ alleged loots are scandalously huge, they should ask Sonny Belmonte where the former QC mayor’s annual P1-billion pork barrel went to in the past 10 years, and why his councilors’ counterpart pork barrel had grown from P40 million to P50 million a year, amid the worsening squalor of Quezon City’s poor.
What about the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and its officials, who are collaborating in a great financial larceny by keeping the P1.22-trillion Special Deposit Account idle while borrowing heavily year in-year out, adding up to the country’s mounting murderous debt to the global banking mafia?
What about the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s top officials, who implement debilitating taxes on small and medium scale businesses, as well as the onerous VAT on hapless Filipino consumers, knowing that an awfully huge chunk of these go off to feed the insatiable sharks of international Finance?
Garcia is a small fry; Reyes is but a middling shark. And while we should never take our eyes off them, we must all know that the megalodons (or prehistoric, dinosaur-like sharks) are swimming below in the coldest, darkest depths of our predatory sea.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, about “Crime and Corruption in Philippine Society” with PMJ’s Tito Guingona and Atty. Oliver Lozano; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/31/2011
As Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia couldn’t have pulled off his larceny on the Armed Forces’ logistics command without authorization from above, so could these superiors of his (i.e. Angie Reyes, other chiefs-of-staff, including various Defense secretaries) also not have conducted these rackets over time without their higher ups ever condoning such acts.
For one, let’s ask who got Reyes to turn against the Constitution in Edsa II by shanghaiing a busload of generals to Gloria Arroyo’s illegal oathtaking, with him even sardonically exclaiming, “Gentlemen, we are committing treason.”
Knowing the answer is key because ever since that fateful day, Mrs. Arroyo has lavishly taken care of Reyes’ fortunes; likewise that of the “cheap” magistrate who administered her oath; and, of course, the vast riches of that noted oligarch slash Edsa pavement dancer who financed her coup — whose ilk Gloria’s economic adviser Joey Salceda claimed nine years later to have “…never had it so good, earning P10 trillion in 10 years” under their Queen’s inglorious reign.
Going by the P300-million loot Garcia had amassed, the former military comptroller may look like a big or middling fish. But once people get to see how much more his bosses may have plundered, he will certainly look like a small fry.
A small fry indeed Garcia is compared to, say, his erstwhile boss, Angie Reyes, who could have amassed P500 million to well over a billion (or even more), and that former Chief Justice, who was alleged to have benefited from the P3-billion Judiciary Development Fund, a scandal circa 2002-2003 that set off impeachment proceedings against him, which Gloria expectedly quashed.
A small fry, too, is what Garcia appears to be especially when placed alongside members of the then expanding Arroyo cabal, whose power addiction grew simultaneous with their own designs to stay in power, such that subsequent elections had to be rigged in order to net the players hefty kickbacks in, say, the ZTE-NBN scandal or even the transitional ruse that was the fraudulent P11.8-billion Smartmatic system.
But then, these billions are definitely miniscule compared to the ten thousand billions of pesos (read: P10 trillion) that the handful of Big Business oligarchs got, starting from the P5-million to P10-million payola-laden passage of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) by the Edsa II lameduck Congress under Sonny Belmonte, which ushered in a decade of power plunder that, up to this day, is the single biggest economic disaster for Filipino households and livelihoods.
Why, Epira was just a harbinger of all the predatory public utility rate increases that followed. In the years after Edsa II, the oligarchs were always on a roll — be it water, toll ways, or even port and harbor service fees! Good thing that a handful of consumer advocates, like the 89-year-old Mang Naro Lualhati, who won us our first P30-billion Meralco refund, are still around. This Feb. 7, he will be presenting in court Meralco’s P92-billion disallowances and P39-billion overcharges.
If and when the likes of Garcia and Reyes are put away in jail, does anyone believe Philippine society will be cleaned up? Their acts of corruption are but shovels of garbage from the Payatas pit of official corruption.
Who were the collaborators of Arroyo and Reyes all through the last decade in the Senate, Congress, media, religious and business sectors, as well as NGOs?
Ask Roilo Golez who, as National Security Adviser, defended Arroyo to the hilt during the Oakwood protests and investigations and called my radio program on dzXL to stop my reading of the Trillanes manifesto on July 27, 2003 and got me kicked out of the station a week later.
Ask Sen. Rodolfo Biazon to enlighten us as to why a group of retired generals reject him as being part of the so-called “righteous generals” of our soldiery. Ask Sen. Miguel Zubiri, too, who has been vocal on the Garcia issue. Let’s see if he can explain how he won his Senate seat.
Oops, I almost forgot, what about Etta Rosales and the funds she got from Gloria to jumpstart her party-lists and her comrades’ congressional careers?
If anyone thinks Garcia and Reyes’ alleged loots are scandalously huge, they should ask Sonny Belmonte where the former QC mayor’s annual P1-billion pork barrel went to in the past 10 years, and why his councilors’ counterpart pork barrel had grown from P40 million to P50 million a year, amid the worsening squalor of Quezon City’s poor.
What about the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and its officials, who are collaborating in a great financial larceny by keeping the P1.22-trillion Special Deposit Account idle while borrowing heavily year in-year out, adding up to the country’s mounting murderous debt to the global banking mafia?
What about the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s top officials, who implement debilitating taxes on small and medium scale businesses, as well as the onerous VAT on hapless Filipino consumers, knowing that an awfully huge chunk of these go off to feed the insatiable sharks of international Finance?
Garcia is a small fry; Reyes is but a middling shark. And while we should never take our eyes off them, we must all know that the megalodons (or prehistoric, dinosaur-like sharks) are swimming below in the coldest, darkest depths of our predatory sea.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, about “Crime and Corruption in Philippine Society” with PMJ’s Tito Guingona and Atty. Oliver Lozano; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
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