ICI member Singson torpedoes hunt for mastermind
I SUSPECTED the day President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) created that it was his move to divert the investigations and public attention over the ghost flood control scam away from his culpability.
Just two weeks after the ICI was set up, Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong, a former veteran police investigator who had been exposing corruption in his region, resigned after that unpleasant Palace spokesman claimed he was just an “adviser,” not an “investigator.” Why should she make that distinction?
Magalong got the message: the Palace doesn’t want him to investigate to its end the ghost flood control corruption. Sources claimed Magalong was set to investigate the flood control projects in Ilocos Norte, where the Discaya couple’s companies accounted for P2.7 billion of the projects. Another construction firm owned by a Marcos ally also cornered much of the projects there.
The other day, the Discaya couple in a hearing at the ICI told the body that they were no longer willing to be state witnesses, after ICI Commissioner Rogelio Singson in a TV interview claimed that the ICI has “not even thought” about taking the couples in as state witness. “Personally, no way,” Singson said angrily. “They are not the least guilty, they are principal players… Nakinabang sila, ngayon they want state protection?”
That was a huge boo-boo for Singson, a body blow to the government’s efforts to go to the bottom of what is the biggest case of corruption in our history. Why would he say publicly that he would oppose getting the Discayas as state witnesses, when that should be the collective decision of the ICI?
As a result, the Discayas said they would no longer help the ICI uncover the culprits in the ghost flood control scam. Indeed, why should they do that if they won’t get anything from it, with Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla echoing Singson’s position, saying that charges will be filed against the couple as “they were not in a tell-all mood.”
Sabotaged
Singson and Remulla practically sabotaged the nation’s search for truth, in effect shutting the mouth of the Discaya couple. Couldn’t they have just accepted the Discayas offer to help, got whatever evidence and testimony from them, and if they thought these were all BS, revoked their status as state witnesses?
What if it was President Marcos and his cousin Martin Romualdez who were, respectively, the godfather and the consiglieri of this scam, which could explain why it became so widespread under his administration, with the Discayas revealing what they know about this? This could also explain why the Discayas’ Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) projects grew so much in just three years under the Marcos administration.
This could also explain the confidence the Discayas have demonstrated in the hearings. Why wouldn’t they if their partner was the president of the Republic?
Did Singson and Remulla know or suspect this that they pushed the Discayas to decide not to help the ICI, who would probably calculate that that with their billions, their phalanx of lawyers, and most of all with the president behind them, they could go scot-free, or even flee to some country for refuge like the former congressman Zaldy Co, allegedly Romualdez accomplice?
Interestingly, the online-only media outfit Vera Files, which for years has been receiving thousands of dollars from the American National Endowment for Democracy, has also been shrill in bucking the Discayas, claiming that “Because the Discayas appear to be the most guilty in the flood control scandal, they may not qualify as state witness.”
This United States tool and Singson are very wrong when they say that the Discayas are the most guilty, and therefore do not qualify as state witnesses. Billions they may have stolen from the flood control scam, but that doesn’t automatically make them the most guilty.
The Supreme Court and Philippine laws define as “most guilty” those who directed a crime, such corruption, its mastermind. They could not have been the masterminds of this infrastructure scam that involved the hijacking of the national budget, more than two dozen legislators’ capability in getting kickbacks from “insertions” of projects after the House had finalized the budget law and the control over the leadership of the DPWH.
The Discayas could not have directed Zaldy Co in undertaking the suspected infrastructure projects, from which he got billions of pesos in kickbacks, which one witness said was delivered to then-speaker Martin Romualdez’s homes in Forbes Park, and in a residence a stone’s throw away from the president’s Malacañang office.
Philosophy
In legal and moral philosophy, the private briber is less guilty. As the famed British jurist Lord Denning put it: “The briber only tempts; the corrupt official betrays.” Betrays what? The state itself, which is his sworn duty to serve. The late dictator Marcos didn’t just wasn’t just a kleptocrat; he destroyed a democracy to steal.
To save their skin, the Discayas could have revealed who the masterminds, the most guilty, were. Thanks to Singson, they no longer will.
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon is hallucinating when he says that we must recover the billions those involved in the scam stole from us. Let the courts and the Ombudsman do that, if they have the manpower to do so.
Dizon, the ICI and the Senate’s main task is to expose the government officials — especially the top dogs — who crafted and undertook this kind of monster graft, that even involved the safety and well-being of millions of pesos. The ICI’s responsibility is not really to gather evidence to get the Discayas centuries of jail terms.
Dizon’s task is not to visit every province with huge flood control projects to find out if these were aboveboard, and if not to identify and charge the culprits. Dizon and the ICI’s main work is to find out how such brazen corruption that could involve even a trillion pesos could have been undertaken. It would have remained undetected, if not for the confluence of President Marcos boasting of his 5,500 projects, and the widespread flooding that belied his claims, because many of such projects were really not built, and the Discaya showing off their 40 luxury car collection in a TV feature.
Template
The ICI’s template was the dictator Marcos’ Agrava Fact Finding Board set up in 1983 to investigate the August 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. That investigation lasted a year and successfully dampened the initial public outrage that the dictator was the brains behind it. It eventually concluded that behind the killing was a cabal of 26 military men, acting on their own.
Despite the dominant suspicion and outrage that the strongman Marcos was the brains behind it, the view dissipated. What brought down Marcos was not the Aquino killing but the economic recession in 1984-1985 that was the result of the administration’s buildup of unsustainable foreign debt.
The son is following the same tactic. We will fail as a nation if he succeeds.
The Palace is betting on forgetfulness. The media will move on to the next scandal; the Senate will adjourn; the contractors will reincarnate under new corporate names. The taxpayers will pay again, and the ghosts will return in concrete form.
But floods have long memories. They wash away propaganda as easily as soil. When the next typhoon comes — and it will — the water will find every weakness left by corruption. And as the dikes crumble once more, people will remember who built them, who stole from them, and who covered it up.
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ICI member Singson torpedoes hunt for mastermind
Source: Breaking News PH
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