GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc, The Philippine Star, Wednesday, May 21, 2008
One crucial item went missing from my “Timeline of NBN scam” last Monday. It must be inserted:
The Senate Blue-Ribbon might add more items to the linear diagram. Its analysis of the crime and the culpable could include:
Feb. 5, 2008 — Whistleblower Jun Lozada abducted by airport and police officers upon arrival from Hong Kong, where he was earlier sent by DENR Sec. Atienza to avoid testifying at Senate. While abroad, Lozada receives P500,000 from Palace Usec. Gaite to stay away. Gaite would later claim it was his personal money, and lent it out because he took pity on Lozada, whom he had met only casually twice before. The lawyer cannot produce any loan document.
Feb. 28 — Interviewed by DZRH manager Joe Taruc, PGMA admits fraud in ZTE deal, but that she found out only on eve of signing, and so couldn’t back out lest she offend
And if the latest photographer-witness codenamed Alex no longer surfaces because taken care of by Palace firefighters, then it will merit still another timeline item:
May 2nd week, 2008 — Shrouded witness tells print and TV news he saw PGMA, FG, then-Speaker JDV and Abalos golfing with ZTE execs in Shenzhen on Nov. 2, 2006. Palace at first denies it, but confronted with photos later admits that First Couple even toured ZTE-HQ. Abalos lawyer and JDV wife separately confirm the Shenzhen trip, made four months after ZTE began negotiating supply of NBN and five months before signing. So there’s no more need to prove it. The order of the day is to ensure Alex’s safety.
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Had it not been exposed and forcibly stopped, the needless yet overpriced DOTC-ZTE deal would have cost taxpayers P17 billion. And the patrons would have earned P10-billion kickback.
Other sleazy deals pushed through. Just one “emergency” purchase of coal by Napocor in Apr. 2007 was overpriced by P1 billion.
It’s hard for laymen to imagine what a billion is. But a
“A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. A billion days ago no one walked on the earth on two feet.”
To that I add:
A billion pesos ago was only eight hours and ten minutes — at the rate government is spending taxpayer money. That’s how fast it depletes the P1.12-trillion budget for 2008.
A billion pesos is what a salary man earning P10,000 would make in 100,000 months — or 8,333 years.
A billion pesos is what it would take to build 2,250 classrooms, 375 rural health clinics, and 7,500 barangay wells.
If you steal a billion pesos, much worse ten like in NBN-ZTE, you won’t be able to use it up in your lifetime. But it will earn you a place in the eternal fires of hell.
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Just wondering:
How can priests be acceptable as homosexual, as Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales prescribes, so long as they don’t practice it? Aren’t priests supposed to be asexual as celibates? Isn’t being homosexual, as in being bisexual, already, to use the prelate’s term, “acting out your tendencies”?
Will not their massacring of ten bank employees appall the kith and kin of the Cabuyao bank robbers to turn them in, more so since there’s a P2-million reward?
It’s okay for pollsters to ask Filipinos to rate themselves poor or rich, but can they ask respondents to rate if their English proficiency improved? Isn’t proficiency in language or math or science something for teachers to test? Can I really say my English improved because I now use terms like “comfort room” for washroom, “rubber shoes” for sneakers, or “next-next week” for week after next?
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