MANILA, Philippines — Despite being cleared by the Ombudsman, Senator Grace Poe believes that Health Secretary Francisco Duque III still has “moral liability” in a health card program launched ahead of the 2004 elections to allegedly boost the campaign of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
This, after Malacañang had reportedly expressed doubts that Duque, who served as president and CEO of Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) at the time, had any liability of corruption in the program dubbed as “Plan 5M.”
“Maybe he has no legal liability but he has a moral liability. He knew very well that that wasn’t right but of course, he can always say ‘I was just following orders,’” Poe said in an interview over ABS-CBN News Channel on Thursday.
During a Senate hearing on the alleged corruption in PhilHealth last August 18, a senior PhilHealth official said the state insurer began incurring losses due to non-payment of premiums following the distribution of the five million free insurance cards bearing Arroyo’s photo.
Duque had supposedly ordered regional vice presidents to distribute a total of five million PhilHealth cards, which corresponded to the 5-million lead votes of then-presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. in the pre-election survey.
The late Fernando Poe Jr., father of Senator Poe, ran against Arroyo in the 2004 polls.
“The courts found him (Duque) innocent of that deed but whistleblowers themselves have said that that began the ruin of PhilHealth and now we are still suffering from that,” the senator went on.
But Duque, during the hearing, denied any “correlation” between the controversial health card program to the 2004 elections.