GOTCHA, Published in The Philippine Star, Friday, November 9, 2007
Having been there, Rolex Suplico knows too well the many ruses the House employs to block any impeachment of a President. So he tried a trick of his own. Amending his old rap against Comelec chief Ben Abalos, long endorsed by three congressmen, he impleaded Gloria Arroyo in the ZTE broadband bribery. Still the House secretary-general hurriedly rejected the addendum Monday for lack of new endorsers. Foiled? Suplico doesn’t think so. He is confident the Supreme Court will overturn the rejection that was based on a non-existent rule.
Oppositionist Adel Tamano filed his own supplement to a nebulous suit of Atty. Roel Pulido against Arroyo. Straight he went to the justice committee, to which the rap was referred weeks ago on endorsement of Rep. Edgar San Luis. Tamano too was rebuffed, this time by the chairman, on grounds that Pulido’s original charge sheet was “irreplaceable”. Is this something for Tamano as well to bring to the Supreme Court? He doesn’t need to, if only Pulido and San Luis were true to their word.
For weeks since Pulido filed and San Luis certified, they were booed for a “deliberately weak case.” Critics took to calling them the new Lozano-Marcoleta tandem of lawyer and legislator who infamously saved Arroyo from serious charges by scurrying to file sham ones two years in a row. To disprove detractors, Pulido and San Luis made the rounds of the media, professing to welcome any help to “strengthen” their admittedly infirm rap. Well, there was the Tamano revision, waiting for their signatures to show the committee it was as much their work and not a replacement. But where were they? Pulido and San Luis perhaps do not value word of honor.
And so, Minority Leader Ronaldo Zamora says, impeachment that is reserved only for extreme cases has now become a rat race. Rats not only race at the opening of Congress to file frail inoculating cases to get around the Constitutional limit of one rap per year per official. They also have made impeachment an endless, self-defeating, pointless pursuit.
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It’s fantastic that a congresswoman — a deputy Speaker at that — will own up to the scandalous Malacañang cash doles one month after the fact. Nearly eclipsed was a claim of the governors’ league, two weeks late too, that it was they who handed out at the Palace huge amounts in gift bags. They’re obviously covering up for that one person with a real motive to buy the loyalty of congressmen and governors. But they have to put up publicly this insolent show. As critics decry, ginagago na tayo, we’re being taken for fools. And our taxpayers’ money is even being used for it.
Now why would a Southern Luzon regional officer of Kampi party, which is what Congresswoman is, want to give P500,000 to Manila Rep. Benny Abante of the rival Lakas? She claims it was “regular help” for first-term congressmen, but Abante never asked for it. Echoed is the line of the league that they gave “barangay aid” of P500,000 each to neophytes Govs. Ed Panlilio of Pampanga and Joselito Mendoza of Bulacan, but who never asked for it as well. Again, why would the congresswoman be distributing party money in Malacañang, instead of their offices at the Batasan? And why “admit” all this only now, a month after her beloved President Arroyo already was scorned for bribing 190 congressmen and a dozen governors?
Congresswoman’s incredible tale only implicates Arroyo deeper. In other lands public officials resign for committing much less. The head of Japan’s rising Democratic Party resigned Sunday for “causing confusion within the ranks” in failing to reject post-haste a power sharing offer from the Prime Minister. That may never happen in the Philippines. Here, the longer one stays in politics, the thicker the hide becomes.
Still it’s not wrong for voters to expect even only one of the hundred or so new, presumably idealistic, congressmen to stand up and denounce the damning of the chamber they have just joined. But will that happen? Those tyros reportedly were briefed by Budget Sec. Rolando Andaya, once a three-term congressman, on their incoming perks. On top of monthly pay of P35,000, they’d be getting P5.4 million a year for travel, office rental, staff salaries, and such. Not to forget, of course, the P70-million annual pork for which they ran for Congress in the first place. But those who rock the boat — like the opposition minority — would be starved.
So it’s up to whistleblowers Abante, Panlilio and Mendoza to ferret the truth, if they will. They can start by checking the serial numbers of the P1,000-bills they received, if sequenced. Too, if the bundling came from the same bank, which incidentally is not the depository of either Kampi or the governors’ league. There are leads. The cash gifts — bribes — were all given on the same day, Oct. 11, in Malacañang: to congressmen in the morning, governors in the afternoon, but both groups discussing the impeachment rap against Arroyo. Totaling P100 million, the money couldn’t have come from any party, but the people, in the form of kickbacks.
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She’s blind from birth and almost died of kidney failure at age 14 last June. Inexplicably Fatima Soriano suddenly could heal the sick. Persons she touches would be “slain in the Spirit.” Yesterday at Surigao City cathedral, she ministered to hundreds of devotees. Today, after Mass by Fr. Jerry Orbos, SVD, Fatima will strive to accommodate more.
