MANILA, Philippines -- Militant partylist lawmakers on Monday asked the House of Representatives to investigate the alleged misuse of a P46-million fund for joint exercises between Filipino and American soldiers in 2007, and provide protection to a Navy lieutenant who blew the whistle on the anomaly.
Bayan Muna Representatives Satur Ocampo, Teodoro Casiño, and Neri Colmenares filed House Resolution 1159 asking the committee on good government and public accountability to investigate the allegations of Lieutenant Senior Grade Nancy Gadian.
The lawmakers said ?utmost and immediate protection? should be given to Gadian and her family.
Gabriela Representatives Liza Maza and Luz Ilagan, Anakpawis Representatives Rafael Mariano and Joel Maglunsod, and Kabataan Representative Raymond Palatino filed House Resolution 1160, seeking a separate investigation by the committees on national defense and good government on the matter.
In a news conference Monday, Maza said measures should be taken to ensure the safety of Gadian and her family.
The Bayan Muna lawmakers said the House should ?extend all its assistance and provide protection to Lieutenant Senior Grade Nancy Gadian and her immediate family so that they cannot be harmed, and the issue does not go the way the all the other whistleblower cases went.?
?It has been the action or reaction of the AFP to malign and destroy any and all whistleblowers instead of putting the exposed officials, mostly generals, under investigation,? they said.
Gadian has voiced fears for her life, saying that many junior officers who blew the whistle on past anomalies in the military had been silenced.
The Navy officer had accused her former superior, retired Lieutenant General Eugenio Cedo, of pocketing part of the P46-million fund for the 2007 Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) war games, which ran from February 1 to March 16 that year.
At that time, Cedo was the chief of the Armed Forces Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) while Gadian was the command?s assistant chief of staff for civil military operations. Cedo retired in late 2007.
Gadian is on trial before the Efficiency and Separation Board (ESB), where she is facing administrative charges for failure to account for P2.3 million that was released to her office for the 2007 Balikatan.
The Bayan Muna congressmen said that among Gadian?s fellow ?victims of reprisals? from the AFP included whistleblowers retired Brigadier General Francisco Gudani, dismissed Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Balutan, Captain Marlon Mendoza, Ensign Philip Andrew Pestaño, and Technical Sergeant Vidal Doble.
Gudani and Balutan testified before the Senate on September 2005 about the military?s alleged involvement in vote-rigging operations in the previous year?s elections. They were charged with insubordination before a court martial.
Mendoza told the Senate in August 2005 that the male voice on the so-called ?Hello Garci? tapes belonged to former elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, whom he served as chief security officer.
In the ?Hello Garci? wiretaps, Garcillano was purportedly talking with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo about plans to rig the 2004 elections in her favor.
Doble had claimed that he was the one who wiretapped the President and Garcillano, but retracted his allegations after he was returned to military custody.
Pestaño, who protested the use of Navy ships to ferry illegal logs, was found dead on board the BRP Bacolod City with a gunshot wound on the head on September 27, 1995. The AFP claimed it was a suicide.
The Ombudsman and the Senate conducted separate investigations on Pestaño?s death and concluded that he was murdered. The Philippine Navy, however, stood firm in its position that Pestaño committed suicide despite the findings of ballistic and handwriting experts and a forensic pathologist that he was killed.
