Ens. Phillip Andrew A. Pestaño Website

A new take at honesty

From COMMotion: The Official Magazine of the Ateneo Association of Communication Majors (”http://acomm.org/commotion/?p=53″)

A new take at honesty
How does ASLA’s “Honesty Store” test a person’s sincerity?

By Gel Galang, photos by Bianca Redoblado

AT THE corner of the MVP Center for Student Leadership basement is a closet full of snacks and goodies. Similar to a café in Batanes, this establishment’s policy is to pay for what one takes, with no one to answer to the item’s payment.

Indeed, the Ateneo Student Leaders Assembly’s “Honesty Store” is almost like a cookie jar lying in wait. Hungry students can take a treat anytime they wanted to, with no consequences to worry about. Or are there?

Hand in the cookie jar

Perhaps the worst possible time to steal something is lunch time. Everyone is situated in their own little corners at the MVP basement. It didn’t help that there was a considerably long line leading to the Honesty Store, with students readying their money to insert into a tiny cash box.

After loitering at the end of the line, I finally got a handful of mints (the smallest, most unnoticeable goods to steal), paid half my bill, and disappeared into the crowd with my friends.

However, the plan was to steal something, not chicken out and pay half the price. This wasn’t a discount sale.

I didn’t know what I was more bothered with: the fact that I had deviated from the plan and paid a 50% discount price, or the more disturbing thought that I was actually trying to fool my conscience by trying to lighten my crime.

Cookie crumb values

“My tito (uncle) got this concept from the Boodle Bar, [which is] a system in the [Philippine Military Academy],” says Eric Smith (IV BS CTM) on the beginnings of the Honesty Store. “It also [functions] the same way, but there, they write their names and how much they got, so it’s still an honesty system of logging in how much you took.”

The idea was inspired by Ateneo de Manila High School batch ‘89 alumnus Ensign Phillip Pestaño. Pestaño sacrificed his life by disallowing corruption to prevail in the military.

As the story goes, Pestaño discovered a cargo with logs which were cut down, shipped, and about to be sold through illegal means. Along with it were 50 sacks of shabu and several military weapons that were to be sold to the Abu Sayyaf.

Pestaño felt that it was his responsibility to stop the transaction from pushing through. He was found dead on the 27th of September, 1995, lying in his room at the ship where the illegal cargo was located. The case was dismissed as a suicide, and the Pestaño family had not been able to redeem justice for Phillip’s death.

Eric says that the Honesty Store is one way of attaining this justice. “The Honesty Store [is] not after profit. It’s more of [promoting] the intangible aspect of value formation as well as [letting other people know] about the cause that Phillip died for,” he says.

He added, “In the Ateneo, when you’re being men for others, you have to be honest yourselves first.”

To steal or not to steal

According to social psychologist Arlene Lozano, the effects of the Honesty Store on the student population can be considered revolutionary. She says, “The Philippine culture is generally dishonest.”

Coming from an anti-corruption network, Lozano explains that this type of attitude is not confined to a certain age group. “The culture is that they will tend to make palusot [try to get away with it],” she says. Lozano adds that even among children, there are basic forms of cheating.

Most of these assumptions are based on the corruption level of the Philippines, which very much relates to Phillip’s story. If no one is looking and no one will tell, people are likely to try and get away with being dishonest.

Putting the lid back on

But not me. After an hour and a half of waiting for the experiment to be over, I went back to pay for the other half I owed. Maybe I was just ashamed of getting caught stealing mints from a place called “Honesty Store,” or maybe it was the thought of defiling the cause of the store that made me feel the guilt.

Even though the Ateneo Honesty Store is just a pilot project, Eric hopes that if all goes well, they could expand to other schools.

He recalls that on the first day, their total earnings amounted to P3, 400, which was against the inventory that showed they should have earned P3,500. “That means may umutan g (someone loaned),” Eric laughs.

However, since the organizers insist that the Honesty Store is not after profit, Eric agrees that it is indeed serving its purpose. “[So far, the Honesty Store is] doing a good job,” he says. “When we practice honesty in these little ways, then it would engender such goodness.” COMMotion

Visit www.phillippestano.com to know more about Philip Pestaño’s case.

With reports from Aussy Aportadera

From COMMotion: The Official Magazine of the Ateneo Association of Communication Majors (”http://acomm.org/commotion/?p=53″)

Tags: asla, ateneo, eric smith, honesty store, phillip pestano

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Phillip cited as extraordinary leader

Philippine Daily Inquirer - Monday, August 18, 2008

Moral lessons by Pablo A. Tariman

View/Download the PDF file here.

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A Little Bit of Honesty Goes a Long Way

A Little Bit of Honesty Goes a Long Way
by Liana Kathleen Smith-Bautista

A store in which profit is reliant on the integrity of its customers—many would say this is an exercise in futility. Nevertheless, the first Honesty Store opened at 11:30 am on Friday, August 1, 2008 at the basement of Ateneo de Manila University’s Manuel V. Pangilinan Center for Student Leadership. The store is sponsored by the Dare It Forward project of the Ateneo Student Leaders Assembly (ASLA) and the Ens. Phillip Andrew A. Pestaño Foundation. Moreover, Ateneo will be sponsoring the placement of three more Honesty Stores in its dormitory buildings this year.

But what, you might ask, are the precepts of the Honesty Store? A shelf containing a variety of goodies, such as chocolates and candies, is placed in a school building. Each item has a corresponding price that is clearly listed where the items are displayed, and customers will have to place their money in the cash box secured inside the shelf. No attendant will be present to take customers’ money, make change, or make sure that the items are paid for.

The Honesty Store’s earnings relies completely on the honesty of its customers. Its purpose is simple: to encourage Filipino youth to take responsibility for their own actions, to act with honesty and good faith, even when there is no one around to ensure that they do so.

The Honesty Store is a project of the Ens. Phillip Andrew A. Pestaño Foundation, and the proceeds will be used to aid in covering the cost of education for children of deceased military personnel and fund projects undertaken by the PMA MAALAB Class of 1993 and the Ateneo de Manila High School Class Batch of 1989. The Foundation dedicates its efforts to the memory of Ens. Phillip Pestaño, who practiced in life the integrity that the Honesty Store is trying to instill in its customers, and who taught us in death that honor and integrity are qualities that can never be bought or sold.

–

About the Honesty Store : Go to page, or Download Brochure.

Tags: asla, ateneo student leaders assembly, august 1, ens. phillip andrew a. pestano foundation, honesty store

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11th Death Anniversary - GMA7 TV coverage

July 18, 2006 - On discrepancy in ship travel route, etc.

July 19, 2006 - On alleged suicide note, Navy stand, Sen. Lim’s support, etc.

Tags: 24 oras, gma7, lebaquin, mel tiangco, pestaño, philippine navy, phillip pestano, sen. alredo lim

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“If it flies, it dies”

Viewpoint:
˜If it flies, it dies”

By Juan Mercado
Cebu Daily News
First Posted 15:25:00 01/15/2008

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/cebudailynews/opinion/view/20080115-112529/If-it-flies-it-dies

That’s the macho slogan of a hunters’ website. Some members of the Philippine National Shooting Team scrambled to shutter this web’s photo section. Why?

As in Bacolod’s Air Rifle Hunting website, photos show members flaunting near-extinct Philippine ducks and mallards blasted out of the sky. The “Red List of Threatened Birds of the World” includes these species.

Photo scrubbing intensified after GMA-7’s Jessica Soho aired a documentary Saturday, showing that the “kill” included Philippine ducks found nowhere else in the world. Only 5,000 to 10,000 of these birds are left. These issues were stressed by earlier Inquirer and Cebu Daily News columns: “Avian pit stops” (September 18), “Slaughter of the birds” (December 13) and “Postmortem evidence” (December 18).

An “unknown group” swiped those photos from a spoof website, team members Jade and Mike de Guzman, plus Tet Lara, claimed in a convoluted denial. In a “poor judgment call,” they posed with birds somebody else shot. They apologized for “bad taste in photos.”

“Denial ain’t a river in Egypt,” Mark Twain once snorted. Joseph Estrada learned that in his pathetic spin that crony Jaime Dichavez owned the P1.1-billion Jose Velarde account. So did TV host Willie Revillame, who ladled P8,000 in taxes for a P30-million 2006 Ferrari he claimed he didn’t own.

But “mere possession of these species, evidenced by their very own pictures, on their very own websites, is punishable” under Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, emailed Wild Bird Club of the Philippines’s Michael Lu. RA 9147 mandates two-year jail terms and P300,000 fines for those who live by the slogan “If it flies, it dies.”

“We fail to see how defiance of the law qualifies sports hunters as conservationists,” Lu said. “It’s time to step back and consider our common impact on the planet.”

“Inquirer and Cebu Daily News article ˜Few closures’ (January 3) caught my eye as I settled back for the flight to Manila. And when my plane landed, text messages flooded in on the article regarding our son Phillip,” emailed Jose Pestaño.

Phillip Pestaño was a 24-year-old ensign when shot aboard RPS Bacolod. Within 24 hours, the Navy ruled it was a “suicide.” Nonsense, said the Senate after a painstaking investigation. The Ateneo and PMA graduate was murdered, Senate Report 800 declared. Pestaño bucked the loading of illegal lumber and shabu on the boat. “Kawawa ang bayan,” he told his parents, aware of threats.

A spineless Military Ombudsman finally started to ask Navy officials implicated to give their side – 12 years after the murder. Pestaño’s PMA and Ateneo classmates, and groups abroad, are pressing for justice.

“I’m confident these protests will not go unnoticed with Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro,” the father wrote. “He is still on the crossroad as to whether or not they (DND) will pursue a high-level reinvestigation of Phillip’s case.”

Is Teodoro made of sterner stuff, rather than just an administration poster boy? Then, he’d give long-denied justice to a straight-arrow officer whose blood-stained shoes many Navy officers are not fit to polish.

The director of the Asian Bond Market Forum in Hong Kong, Marshall Mays, commented on “Poisoned wells” (Inquirer and CDN, January 3). Water in the Philippines, the column said, morphed from life-giver to serial killer due to massive pollution and weak governance.

“I am worried by how easy it is for politicians to dip from the well, then dump their dregs in afterward. (But) this battle will be won or lost with the middle class. They are the ones fooled into thinking that lower water tariffs are good. And they are the ones most capable (if motivated) of forcing changes in policy. No city’s or country’s policies begin to work until the middle class is roused to action.

“Shift from the ADB’s emotive generalities to specific, near-term consequences for the man-in-the-street. A bomb in your neighbor’s yard is not as scary as a gun at your own head.”

Cebu City officials built themselves a P132-million council building, noted “Frugality’s shame” (Inquirer and CDN, January 1 ). But two, sometimes three, sick kids were jammed into one bed in a decrepit pediatric charity ward, always short of medicine.

“We have the same situation in Iligan City hospital,” Winze Balangao wrote. But Makati’s Tony Elicano wishes he learned to speak Cebuano, “(So) I could say ‘mga walang hiya’ in Cebuano.”

“Comparison of Cebu City Medical Center conditions vs. the shameful monument to wanton megalomania in City Hall is evidence of incredibly distorted value,” Elicano added. “Aren’t we Filipinos to blame? We continue to reelect these trapos. Is this plain stupidity? Or are we just a nation of masochists?”

David R of the United States wrote: “Such ridiculous behavior is not unknown here. Members of our Congress spent thousands of taxpayer dollars to add fireplaces to their offices.

“But in the USA, there is decent medical care available to all. And public and private programs insure that there is no starvation. A politician who can spend money on a private bathroom, while children die from inadequate nutrition or inadequate medical care, displays a lack of humanity that defies belief.

“How Filipinos who have so much (not only politicians) can spend all their time and energy trying to acquire more material wealth than they can even use is scary. Sooner or later, Filipinos will realize that things must change. I hope I live long enough to see it.”

Tags: juan mercado, phillip pestano

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Few closures by Juan Mercado

Viewpoint : Few closures
By Juan Mercado
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: January 02, 2008
From http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=109990

“We have two kinds of politicians. One is the incapable. And the other is capable of anything.” That’s graffiti smeared on a Paraguayan slum wall. But it pretty well describes this country as 2008 wobbles to a start.

Underwhelming competence was one of Joseph Estrada’s (a.k.a. Jose Velarde) signature traits. Over five years of detention for plunder didn’t improve it any. His body language now screams a 2010 run for Malacañang.

Panfilo Lacson, on the other hand, is capable of anything. Scan his credentials: from the tainted Philippine Military Academy class ’72 to Ferdinand Marcos’ torture chamber, otherwise known as the Military Intelligence Security Group, and Philippine National Police chief for Joseph Estrada. He too would be president.

“When I was a boy, I was told anybody could be president,” the great barrister Clarence Darrow once said. “I’m beginning to believe it.”

So does Manny Villar. And Loren Legarda. And Dick Gordon — plus a score of knuckleheads. Count me in, insists Mar Roxas.

“Amidst the revelations of incompetence and pettiness by many of his colleagues [Roxas] rose above the fray and was quoted numerous times by some of the best minds of the country as one ‘who had the firmest grasp of the issues and on finance and economics’ inherent in the ZTE contract.”

This is a no-period-no-comma-one-word overkill. Roxas should cashier his PR flacks if they wrote this pap. No, says the Philippine Journalism Review, or PJR (November issue), ABS-CBN broadcaster Korina Sanchez did it. Oh? “It appeared in the Cebu-based paper, The Freeman.”

“It is no secret that Sanchez has a romantic relationship with Roxas,” PJR Reports added. “When (Sanchez) took the position of news anchor in ABS-CBN 2’s late-night newscast ‘Bandila,’ she said she would not handle any news report about Roxas… She [was] aware of…conflict of interest.”

Print is not exempt from the ethical strictures that bind broadcast. What is sauce for goose should also be sauce for the gander. This track record may partly explain why there are few closures here. And we’re always moving on to the next scandal.

Thus, an examination of basics, especially at the start of a new year, is essential. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” Plato reminds us.

Has the probe, for example, into the Palm Sunday killing of 31-year-old Indonesian priest Fr. Franciskus Madhu, SVD, as he prepared for Mass petered out? He was the sixth religious killed in Upper Kalinga. The victims included a Catholic nun and an Iglesia ni Kristo minister. The suspects, Nestor Wailan, Joel Awingan and Acmor Bonggawon, just sauntered away.

In Cebu City, vigilantes executed 182. Or is it 183? Mayor Tomas Osmeña hasn’t nailed one killer. The US State Department singled Mayor Ronaldo Duterte’s Davao and Cebu as places where “esquadrones de la muerte” [death squads] enjoyed impunity. There were 147 murders in Davao in just one year.

Will President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2008 replace her tinny vows to protect human rights with at least one — one — conviction for rogue military responsible for the “disappearances”? Will Rep. Teddy Casiño and his comrades prove respect for human rights by denouncing at least one — one — “salvaging” [summary execution] by New People’s Army (NPA) hit squads? “The death sentences imposed by their ‘people’s courts’ provide only a veneer of legality for what is really vigilantism or murder,” UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston wrote of NPA “justice.”

Remember the 12-year-old unsolved killing of Philippine Navy Ensign Phillip Andrew Pestaño? — asked the Manila Mail in Washington and the Philippine News in San Francisco. Senate Report 800, submitted by the late former Supreme Court Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, debunked the Navy claim issued within 24 hours of Pestaño’s death that this 23-year-old officer committed suicide. Instead, it found Pestaño had been murdered aboard RPS Bacolod.

This graduate from Ateneo de Manila University and Philippine Military Academy bucked attempts to load illegal logs and shabu on the Navy vessel. And the Military Ombudsman took all of 12 years before it half-heartedly asked the suspected gunman to submit his affidavit. “Kawawa ang bayan,” the Mail said.

It’s been over five years now since Girl Scouts of the Philippines funds ended up in the personal bank account of then-representative Clavel Asas Martinez and others. But Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, who concentrated all powers in her office, hasn’t released the findings of the completed investigation.

Has Gutierrez checked if Mega-Pacific Corp. heeded the Supreme Court ruling to return over P1.3 billion for vulnerable computers it sold to the Commission on Elections? Last we heard, Mega-Pacific sued the computer experts who quoted the Supreme Court decision on this scandal.

And what is she going to do about the long refrigerated case against former Justice Secretary “Nani” Perez as well as the computer scandal probe in Lapu-Lapu City?

The Commission on Audit says 61 offices under the President accumulated P615.3 million in unliquidated advances. That’s only part of an old picture of deadbeats. Back in 1996, unliquidated cash advances already ballooned to P1.06 billion. From “barangay” [village] captains up, officials milk treasuries for cash advances at every turn. If Manadue City is an indicator, only 7 percent bother to settle. Some officials siphon so much of taxpayer’s money, they can afford to look poor.

If the government did nothing else but suspend the salaries of those whose IOUs have piled up, 2008 could well end as a banner year.

Tags: juan mercado, phillip pestano

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Death of an Ensign

GLOBAL NETWORKING
Death of an Ensign

By Rodel Rodis
INQUIRER.net
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/mindfeeds/mindfeeds/view_article.php?article_id=106170

The messenger, Lt. Antonio Trillanes IV, was wrong in his ill-advised, megalomaniacal coup attempts, but his Oakwood Mutiny message about corruption in the military was essentially right. This point was brought home most effectively by Fr. James Reuter in an article that appeared the day after the Manila Peninsula farce.

Titled “Justice at 3 A.M.”, Fr. Reuter wrote about Phillip Andrew Pestaño, a graduate of the Ateneo de Manila High School in 1989, who entered the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), and graduated as an Ensign in the Philippine Navy in 1993, when he was then assigned as a cargo master on a Navy ship.

Sometime in 1995, Fr. Reuter wrote, Pestaño discovered that “the cargo being loaded onto his vessel included logs that were cut down illegally, were carried to the ship illegally, and were destined to be sold, illegally… Then there were 50 sacks of flour, which were not flour, but shabu (methamphetamine) - worth billions. Literally billions. And there were military weapons which were destined for sale to the Abu Sayyaf.”

As cargo master of the ship, Pestaño refused to approve the illegal cargo despite orders from his superior officers that he do so. According to Fr. Reuter, “Pestaño’s parents then received two phone calls, saying: “Get your son off that ship! He is going to be killed!” When Phillip was given leave at home, his family begged him not to go back. Their efforts at persuasion continued until his last night at home, when Phillip was already in bed.”

“His father came to him and said: “Please, son, resign your commission. Give up your military career. Don’t go back. We want you alive. If you go back to that ship, it will be the end of you!” But Phillip said to his father: “Kawawa ang bayan! (Pity the country)” And he went back to the ship.”

“The scheduled trip was very brief - from Cavite to Roxas Boulevard - it usually took only 45 minutes. But on September 27, 1995, it took one hour and a half. When the ship arrived at Roxas Boulevard, Ensign Pestaño was dead.”

Within a day, the Navy investigators determined that Pestaño had committed suicide because a “suicide note” was found in his cabin. Phillip’s family objected to this finding as they pointed out that the note was not in his handwriting and he was an honor student at Ateneo and engaged to be married in a few months.

After two years of prodding by Pestaño’s family, the Philippine Senate conducted an investigation on Andrew’s death in 1987. The resolution calling for this investigation was sponsored by then Sen. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The Pestaño family’s lawyer was former, now current, Sen. Nene Pimentel. In the course of the Senate investigation, witnesses testified that before he died, Pestaño refused to authorize the loading of 14,000 board feet of illegal hardwood logs in Tawi-Tawi even though its governor, Gerry Matba, had a gift for his good friend, Admiral Pio Carranza.

Despite Pestaño’s objections, the logs were loaded in Tawi-Tawi and off-loaded in Cavite before the ship sailed for its home port in Manila in what would normally be a 45 minute trip. The trip lasted more 1 ½ hours. After hearing from numerous witnesses, the Senate Report (#800) concluded: “
Pestaño did not kill himself aboard the BRP Bacolod City… He was bludgeoned unconscious and then shot to death somewhere else in the vessel. His body was moved and laid on the bed where it was found.” Phillip Pestaño - Jan. 1, 1972 - Sept.27, 1995

“The clear absence of blood spatters, bone fragments or other human tissues is physical evidence more eloquent than a hundred witnesses,” the Senate report observed. “It is impossible for a person who has just sustained a fatal head injury to walk from some other place in his room, lie on his bed and drop dead…

“He was killed by an assailant, necessarily aboard the BRP Bacolod City” before it docked at the Navy HQ on Roxas Boulevard. The attempt to make it appear (that) Pestaño killed himself inside his stateroom was so deliberate and elaborate that one person could not have accomplished it by himself.”

But who killed Pestaño?

In a privilege speech several years later, Sen. Fred Lim, now mayor of Manila, named Lt. Carlito Amoroso (PMA class 1994), a close-in security for Admiral Carranza who was not a crew member of the ship, as the possible gunman. Sen. Lim also linked Ensign Joselito Colico to the crime as he admitted before the Senate that he removed the magazine from the .45 caliber pistol and wiped off fingerprints. Calico was never charged, even with tampering with evidence.

Lim also spoke of Petty 0fficer (PO2) Zosimo Villanueva, the officer who tipped Pestaño on the presence of illegal cargo on the ship, specifically about “the concealed bulk of illegal drugs (hidden) in the more than 20 sacks of rice cargoes aboard the ship,” Lim revealed. A week after Pestaño’s murder, Villanueva was sent on mission where he was mysteriously “washed away in a sea mishap.”

There was also Ensign Alvin Parone, who was apparently the officer who called Pestaño’s parents to warn them of plans to kill their son. He was also killed, Sen. Lim said, “a victim of another unsolved murder.”

Also missing and presumed dead is Petty Officer (PO3) Fidel Tagaytay, who was the duty officer on board Pestaño’s ship. When he was summoned to testify before the Senate, he disappeared. His wife Leonila has been desperately searching for him, begging the authorities to investigate his disappearance. He is “absent without leave” is all the Navy brass would tell her.

No one has yet been charged with the murders of Pestaño and the other officers who could abide the corruption they witnessed. The whitewash has continued. Fr. Reuter wrote: “Some military men are killed in battle. They are given a hero’s burial. But Phillip died for a much deeper cause - he was trying to preserve the integrity of our Armed Forces. He died out of loyalty to the Philippines, in an effort to keep the oath that he made when he graduated from the Philippine Military Academy.

”Graft and corruption are the curse of this nation. But when they take root in the heart of our Armed Forces, they threaten our existence as an independent, democratic country.”

Let us all demand JUSTICE for Phillip Pestaño, a genuine Philippine hero.

For more information, log on to www.phillippestano.com. Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com, log on to http://www.rodel50.blogspot.com/, send your letter to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800.

Tags: fr. james b. reuter, lt. antonio trillanes, phillip pestano, rodel rodis

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Ombudsman Order for Counter-Affidavits

Please click on the link below to download and view the OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY OMBUDSMAN FOR THE MILITARY AND OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICES Order for Counter-Affidavits, dated December 6, 2005 to:

LCDR RICARDO M. ORDONEZ, LTJG REYNALDO P. LOPEZ, LTJG JOSELITO L. COLICO, SIHM WILMERIO U. AQUINO, LT. RUBEN B. ROQUE, LTJG LUIDOGAR C. CASIS, LTJG ALFREDERICK A. ALBA,POI CARLITO B. AMOROSO, JOHN DOES

Ombudsman Order for Counter-Affidavit

*Note: Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view the file.

Tags: ombudsman order, phillip pestano

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LCDR RICARDO M ORDONEZ’s Counter-Affidavit

Please click on the following link to download and view LCDR RICARDO M ORDONEZ’s Counter-Affidavit.

Ordonez Counter-Affidavit

*Note: Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view the file.

Tags: lcdr. ricardo m. ordoñez, ordonez, phillip pestano

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A nation of highway men

by Juan Mercado
The Philippine Daily Inquirer
December 10, 2007

From
http://www.inquirer.net/specialfeatures/theestradawatch/view.php?db=1&article=20071210-106042

MANILA, Philippines - “We cannot afford a government of thieves unless we can tolerate a nation of highwaymen.” The late publisher Joaquin “Chino” Roces issued that caution, after receiving the Legion of Honor award from President Corazon Aquino.

It’s been 19 years now since Chino spoke as “the Dreamer of EDSA People Power.” But the themes he stressed remain relevant. They reverberate in corruption surveys as well as in everyday email.

“We were the victors in the 1986 drama of good versus evil,” Roces said. “[But] our people will never forgive us if, in the act of reconciliation, we fail to exact justice…and prove that crime pays.”

Today crime pays — handsomely. The P3,233,104,173 stashed in Jose Velarde’s account dwindled to only P2,770.69. In reaction, L. Gonzales of San Francisco, California, emailed:

“Pardon … was granted before government seized the money Estrada stole and for which he was found guilty…. Now the money is gone. Estrada’s minions must have laughed all the way to the bank. What makes this worse is, there’s probably no way to trace where that money went. What now, Madame President?

“Prosecutors believe this pardon was not unconditional, they should have the power to … put Estrada again in jail where he belonged to begin with. Estrada had to fulfill (conditions) for that pardon… Having stolen one more time, the money he stole before, he is, in effect, in violation of the pardon granted.

“I’ve heard of strange things happening back home. But nothing beats this for its strange twists. Estrada fooled President Arroyo with her eyes wide open. She looks like a nincompoop to be swindled so easily.”

“The thirst for justice was, and remains, the utmost desire of our people,” Roces stressed in his 1988 response. “And the most understandable concept of the delivery of justice, in the perception of the Filipino, is one that clearly implements a system of reward and censure.”

But in this country, “the big thieves hang the little ones,” as the Czech proverb says. Thus, Imee and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. scramble to ferret out the dictator’s loot secreted by a clutch of highwaymen (a.k.a. cronies), I noted in the column “Dumping tin halos” last Nov. 15. “They’ve jettisoned their halos.”

To steal from a thief is not a crime? Some cronies apparently think so. Former commissioner Ruben Carranza of the Presidential Commission on Good Government believes that he who holds the ladder is as bad as the thief. From New York City, he commented:

“The Marcoses won’t settle for ill-gotten wealth they’ve managed to keep. They now want to get back ill-gotten wealth, taken away from them that has, since then, become someone else’s ill-gotten wealth.”

They’re reclaiming choice real estate, previously surrendered by self-confessed Marcos crony J.Y. Campos. They’ve lodged a claim with the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan for the P1.8-billion Payanig sa Pasig property.

The Claimants 1081 groups Marcos victims. It too staked a claim to Payanig. “This is logical. The Marcoses owe the victims $2 billion in damages for the killing, torture, disappearances and abuses inflicted on at least 10,000 Filipinos.”

Here, a thief passes for a gentleman once stealing is completed. Shouldn’t the Anti-Money-Laundering Council (AMLC) check the “usual suspect-banks to check as to how the Marcoses finance their own ill-gotten-wealth recovery efforts?” Carranza asks.

“We must place a premium on selflessness versus service to vested interests,” Roces said. So, how come the President inaugurated in mid-October the country’s “most expensive irrigation project” — the P3.2-billion Bayongan Dam — but by December, the government needed $1 million for “design studies” to improve it?

The dam “would make Bohol one of the top producers of rice in Central Visayas,” the President predicted. The Bohol Chronicle earlier documented a 52-percent cost overrun. Filipino and Australian scientists warned of design flaws. As Viewpoint noted earlier, “The dam has been compromised even before the first drop of water sloshed through.”

Water has not filled the dam today. But Korea’s International Cooperation Agency agreed, with the provincial government and National Irrigation Administration, to provide $1 million to review the brand-new weir. Onli in da Pilipins?

Remember 24-year-old Ens. Phillip Andrew A. Pestaño (Ateneo’89 and Philippine Military Academy ’93)? In 1995, he was gunned down aboard RPS Bacolod. Within 24 hours, the Navy ruled it a suicide. But a Senate probe, led by the late former Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, found Pestaño was murdered. The ensign refused to permit illegal logs and 50 sacks of shabu packed in flour bags to be loaded. “Kawawa ang bayan” was his response to pleas by his parents to heed threats to his life.

If graft takes root in the heart of our Armed Forces, our existence as a nation is threatened, wrote Fr. James Reuter, SJ, who tracked the Pestaño case. Badgered by Pestaño’s classmates, Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim and Filipinos abroad, the Military Ombudsman and Navy finally moved — after 12 years of paralysis. Its lawyers will defend, not Pestaño, but Lt. Joselito Colico, the officer who admitted to unloading the murder weapon and wiping it.

Chino Roces put it so well: “If we adopt one standard for the wrongdoer who is poor and without connections, and another for the criminal who is rich and well-connected, then we would be proven liars.”

Tags: juan mercado, phillip pestano

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