DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Good news – but at whose expense?
Sunday, 07 27, 2003
Tomorrow, before the joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the president will deliver the customary State of the Nation Address (Sona) that will also serve (hopefully) as her valedictory address to the people. By this time the spin doctors at the Palace would have already finalized the twists and turns of a good story to tell, something that would erase the stigma and embarrassment touched off by the not so daring escape of confessed terrorist Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi from the hands of (un)intelligence officers at the supposedly secured brig for high-risk prisoners, that has earned our country international shame and ridicule.
By this time the spinmasters summoned by the temporary residents of the Palace would have certainly cooked up a more jaw-dropping brew, concocted to make the media salivate and turn the country agog in the next couple of weeks, one that will eclipse the al-Ghozi fiasco. For all we know, al-Ghozi himself will simply turn up dead one of these days, or be presented live at the Sona. This will complete a picture perfect scenario.
At the Sona expect the President to dust off her on-again, off-again crusade to rid the bureaucracy of misfits and charlatans. Small fry will again be offered for the delectation of the public, and we hope the President does not end up with egg on her face as in the Acsa Ramirez Brouhaha, where a dedicated public servant who blew the whistle on her corrupt colleagues ended up being presented as the culprit by no less than the President herself. Poor Acsa! – she had to endure all that vilification and shame, and when he was exonerated later on, she got nary an apology from the President or the NBI, not even a sympathetic pat on the back from the media which lent themselves as a convenient agent in maligning of an innocent woman. Damage had been done to poor Acsa but up to now, no rectification.
To deflect the flak from the al-Ghozi fiasco to make amends for that mistake over Acsa, the President in her Sona will surely and certainly trot out the names of supposedly corrupt employees of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Bureau of Customs and elsewhere, except those who are in the good graces of the President. And it will be merciless feeding frenzy once again – and woe unto these poor slobs who have been thrown to print media sharks who cannot seem to discern that imbedded in the bait is the Malacañang hook.
The presidential hook catches the crook. But which and whose crook? We wonder.
Every true effort to cleanse the government requires purity of purpose and a sincere aspiration for constructive change. To institute a purge in one agency of government is no more than self-immolation in parts, no less different from cutting the nose to spite the face.
If the President is sincere in her crusade, she should have started at the top and axed much earlier her top Finance man whose hands dipped into the Code-NGO billions, or that of another who sold out his agency for a few billion pesos to the detriment of his employees and who ignominiously turned in a record-shattering low collection at the agency. But no, these skimmers have even been extolled to the highest, with one of them given an advisory position at the Department of Finance (DoF), enjoying the dollar-denominated perks of an American lobby groups called AGILE, where he continues to sow intrigues against people at the agency who avoid him like he was the scourge of Malacañang.
The apparently unilateral investigation of the DoF Central Management Information Office has netted yet another set of sacrificial lambs that will be offered in the President’s Sona as a way of chalking up pogi points with the people. One of them is Lucien Sayuno.
Thanks to the haphazard investigation conducted by the DoF, Lucien, erstwhile BIR regional director for Southern Tagalog (he resigned immediately after the initial report of his alleged “unexplained wealth” come out) will be trotted out and subjected into the full glare of public scorn and vilification.
Lucien, it seems, is the Acsa of the moment. No mention will be made that he has been the top performer (in collections) among all BIR regional directors the past two years running. Nor will it be acknowledged that he has not been tainted with the brush of corruption in the past 23 years that he has been with the BIR.
For all that it is worth, the DoF report merely shows the haphazard if not amateurish and roughshod manner in which the investigators conducted their business, just so they could wrap up a gift package in the mad rush to pin down somebody in time for the Sona. (The Office of the Ombudsman, which is doing a parallel investigation, must be commended for taking time to sift through the evidence. It is the Ombudsman’s report the matters, not the DoF’s.)
The DoF came up with its conclusion not supported by the evidence. In many parts of its report, the DoF simply discarded evidence that would have supported a different conclusion with respect to Lucien. We are not going to comment on the evidence lost or misappreciated, in difference to the Office of the Ombudsman which is still conducting its investigation, but we are sure Lucien once the real investigation by the Ombudsman is concluded, will come out very badly battered but clean – just like Acsa before him.
Investigations are supposed to ferret out the truth, not pluck hasty conclusions out of thin air. But that is what the DoF did. Why should it fault Lucien for what he has achieved over the years?
But then, why shouldn’t this agency? Doesn’t the public realize that Lucien is needed to be marked as exhibit “A” for the Sona? Never mind if it reeks of fabrications and half-truths. The more important thing is to look pogi before the people, in the hope that they are to gullible and cannot see through the thin gauze of political dressing designed to stave off the unstoppable hemorrhaging of one’s fatally wounded political career.
None the wiser, let us hear the good news then from the President tomorrow. Let us crucify some dedicated public servants. And like Pilate, let us say Lucien Sayuno: Ecce homo – behold the man.
For comments about this website:Webmaster@tribune.net.ph
No comments:
Post a Comment