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The cat
is now out of the bag.
Last
week, dismissed Court of Appeals (CA) Associate Justice
Vicente Roxas spoke of an “unseen hand” that, he said,
wanted to manipulate the outcome of the legal tussle
between the state-run Government Service Insurance
System (GSIS) and Manila Electric Co. (Meralco).
Early
this week, Roxas alluded to the First Gentleman Miguel
“Mike” Arroyo as the “unseen hand” who, he said, had
apparently tried to get in touch with him to ask him to
reverse his decision favoring Meralco. When he did not
respond to the phone call, Roxas told the media, the
demolition job against him started, culminating in his
dismissal from the CA by the Supreme Court.
It would
be interesting to find out how Malacañang, and the First
Gentleman, in particular, will respond to Roxas’s
disclosure.
If what
Roxas said was true, then it will buttress the open
secret that no less than the Palace is behind the
attempted hostile takeover of the Lopez family-owned
Meralco, the country’s largest power-distribution
utility, with the GSIS as the battering ram.
It will
be recalled that on May 27, during Meralco’s election of
new board members, the Securities and Exchange
Commission issued a cease-and-desist order (CDO) to stop
the counting of proxies in favor of the Lopezes. Meralco
lawyers ignored the order and went ahead with the
proceedings, thus allowing the Lopezes to retain control
of the power-distribution firm.
Meralco
questioned the CDO before the appellate court. In
writing the decision that favored Meralco, Roxas
apparently incurred the ire of Malacañang.
“The
game plan of GSIS from the start was to destroy me,
because they knew that they could not challenge my
decision. They needed to undermine the ponente,” Roxas
said in a recent TV interview. He lamented that he was
meted out the most severe sanction—dismissal—while
others, including Associate Justice Jose Sabio Jr., got
away with light penalties.
The
lesson from all this, according to Roxas: “If
politicians can have a magistrate or a justice like me
sacked from his position and bullied and beaten as if it
is nothing, it means Philippine politics is really in
bad shape.”
COA
unearths more DA irregularities
It looks
like the alleged anomalies in the Ginintuang Masaganang
Ani (GMA) rice program are merely the tip of the
iceberg, if we’re to believe the Commission on Audit (COA).
State
auditors revealed recently that the Agriculture
department squandered more than P1 billion in
agriculture and fisheries development funds last year,
while spending P1.3 billion more without leaving an
audit trail. The COA reported that the agency ignored
guidelines on fisheries and rice programs and the
procurement law, and failed to monitor projects and come
up with an accountability system in seed distribution.
An audit of the agency’s GMA banner programs and its
other activities disclosed conditions that led to the
loss or waste of government resources amounting to
P237.6 million. The losses were due to the absence of
public bidding, lack of coordination with farmer-
beneficiaries and untimely acquisition and deliveries of
farm equipment.
Of the P237.6 million in losses, P95.17 million was lost
due to unused post-harvest facilities brought about by
the lack of coordination with farmer-beneficiaries in
Regions 2, 4, 5 and 7 to 11, the COA said.
The COA
also said it could not ascertain benefits from projects
worth P1.3 billion in the absence of an audit trail.
Specifically, fund recipients had failed to submit
liquidation reports, while the master list of
beneficiaries was either absent or incomplete.
The state auditors recommended that the Department of
Agriculture (DA) hold accountable those persons
responsible for the losses.
But
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has a ready answer to
the COA findings. He says the auditors should
differentiate between national agriculture officials and
municipal agriculture officials, who are responsible for
implementing the projects. While the DA supervises the
municipal agriculture officials, Yap points out, project
implementation has been devolved to local government
units (LGUs). Thus, LGUs should be the ones investigated
for the alleged anomalies. The Agriculture department
could file cases against erring municipal agriculture
officials to make them accountable, according to Yap.
This is a step in the right direction, and the DA should
waste no time in doing so.
E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com. |
