AGRICULTURE Secretary Arthur Yap exchange greetings with Cebu governor Gwen Garcia after a MOA signing for the recovery of a DA property. TONEE DESPOJO/CEBU DAILY NEWS
MANILA, Philippines—Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante may have given what senators described as “unbelievable” testimony on Thursday, but he tagged past and present officials of the Arroyo administration as possible keys to the mysteries of the P728-million fertilizer fund scam.
Under questioning by members of the Senate blue ribbon committee, Bolante said the senators should also grill other Department of Agriculture (DA) officials—Luis “Cito” Lorenzo (a former secretary), Arthur Yap (a former undersecretary and now secretary), and Belinda Gonzales (a former assistant secretary and now undersecretary).
Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano said on Friday on the phone that Lorenzo, Yap and Gonzales would be summoned by his committee to appear at the second hearing set for next week.
It was apparently Gonzales who had told Bolante that the fertilizer fund had been “91-percent liquidated.”
But Yap vehemently denied involvement in the “design, implementation and monitoring” of the P728-million fertilizer fund.
He said that sometime in February 2004, President Macapagal-Arroyo appointed him agriculture undersecretary for Luzon operations upon the request of Lorenzo, the then secretary.
“I was appointed because he wanted me to assist him in addressing the high poultry and pork prices at that time,” Yap said on the phone.
“He wanted to ask my assistance in possibly considering having to import chicken, poultry and pork products to help stabilize price and supply.
“That’s the reason he asked me, to handle [those] problems. He needed help from me to help in the administrative tasks of crafting solutions.”
Dragged into scandal
According to Sen. Mar Roxas, “Joc-joc effectively dragged [the DA officials] into the scandal.”
“In proving his innocence, by consequence he is saying they are guilty,” Roxas said in a separate phone interview. “We will summon the concerned DA officials because Bolante pointed to them as perpetrators of the anomaly, so we will now get their side and we will find out the truth.”
Cayetano pointed out that Bolante, himself a former agriculture undersecretary, had not actually volunteered Yap’s name.
Bolante had attributed the purchase of overpriced liquid fertilizers intended for ornamental plants to DA regional directors and “the usec (undersecretary) for operations.”
A staff member of the blue ribbon committee checked the DA website and found that Yap was the undersecretary for operations from February to August 2004.
When asked by Cayetano whether he wanted to change his earlier statement, Bolante stood by what he said—that the undersecretary for operations had a hand in the disbursement of funds.
He told the senators that the regional directors and other DA officials should be given a chance to “explain their side.”
‘Nothing about fertilizers’
But Yap said that even if he was appointed undersecretary for operations, he did not handle anything that concerned fertilizers, let alone the fund currently being investigated.
“Actually, I don’t have anything to do with operations at all,” he said, noting that Memorandum Order No. 13 series of 2003 specifically stated that the then agriculture secretary (Lorenzo) “shall henceforth directly supervise operations and its attached agencies.”
The memo did not include Yap’s name in the list of the designated operations officers.
Yap also said he was designated undersecretary in his concurrent capacity as administrator of the state-owned National Food Authority (NFA).
He said the only fertilizer procurement he had handled was when the NFA conducted a public bidding in 2003, the case for which had been cleared and dismissed by the Ombudsman.
“[The case] was dismissed because there was a public bidding and there was no evidence of overpricing, unlike this one,” he added.
Search for Lorenzo
Roxas said the Senate would also “search for and invite former Secretary Lorenzo” to testify because “he has seen what happened to Joc-joc.”
Bolante said at the Thursday hearing that it was Lorenzo who asked the Department of Budget and Management on Sept. 4, 2003, to release the P728-million fund.
Under questioning by Roxas, Bolante admitted the original amount was P28 million, which later ballooned to P728 million.
“The P728 million was not just for fertilizer, but [also] farm implements required for agriculture ... which turned out to be inadequate. Precisely, Secretary Lorenzo augmented the fund for hybrid programs to something like half a billion,” Bolante said.
“What I’m driving at is that the agricultural requirements that year was not only P28 million; it was more than half a billion,” he said.
Roxas confronted him with a Commission on Audit report stating that “the majority of this, about P700 million,” had been liquidated as fertilizer subsidy.
But Bolante ignored this, saying the DA was not really required to submit the list of project proponents to be able to release the requested P728 million.
“Because as I told you, the P728 million was part of the 2003 budget. We could have merely requested the lump-sum release of the P728 million. It was actually the unutilized fund of the 2003 budget that was requested for release as early as Sept. 4, 2003. The 2004 budget was a reenacted budget, as far as I know,” he said.
Election losses
Bolante also dropped Lorenzo’s name while being questioned by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
He said he did not distribute or purchase the fertilizer from a lone supplier, Feshan Philippines, but “only downloaded money from the central office to the regional field units.”
He added that Lorenzo had authorized him to do so because the latter was “oftentimes traveling at that time.”
Lorenzo was reportedly booted out of the DA because Ms Arroyo lost heavily in areas in Mindanao—where the Lorenzo family runs agricultural plantations and agriculture-based businesses—in the 2004 presidential election.
He became presidential adviser on countrywide development before finally fading into obscurity. He is reportedly in the United States.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. had earlier said Ms Arroyo forced the then agriculture secretary to quit.
“She lost in these areas where she expected to win. And she’s taking it against Cito, who has performed creditably as agriculture secretary,” Pimentel had said.
3 undersecretaries
In a statement released by the DA Friday afternoon, Yap said Bolante had stated during the Senate hearing that it was the undersecretary for operations who was supposed to monitor the implementation of DA programs.
“He must be specific as to who exactly he was referring to because there were three undersecretaries at that time,” Yap said. He named the three officials as Edmund Sana, Celestino Martinez and himself.
Yap was appointed administrator of the NFA in October 2002. He was appointed concurrent agriculture undersecretary for Luzon operations in February 2004. He held both positions until August of that year, when he was first appointed as agriculture secretary.
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