A nation of highway men
December 11, 2007 – 8:10 amby 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