QUEZON LAWMAKER DANILO SUAREZ. “How many lives did we save with that amount of money?” (photo: congress.gov.ph)
LUCENA CITY, Philippines -– Embattled Quezon lawmaker Danilo Suarez has accused Malacañang of appointing questionable characters to sensitive positions in the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which the Aquino government has sworn to clean up.
Suarez, who has been accused by the current PCSO management of cornering fat PCSO donations during the Arroyo administration, alleged that two members of the board of directors of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) have records of criminal cases.
“Our information in the minority is that two members of the PCSO board of directors have string of syndicated estafa cases in the National Bureau of Investigation,” Suarez disclosed in a phone interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Sunday morning.
However, he declined to identify the PCSO officials.
“It seems that Malacañang search committee was not conducting thorough character evaluations of appointees especially those who are now occupying sensitive posts in the government,” said Suarez, the House of Representatives deputy minority leader and representative of Quezon 3rd District.
Suarez, a close ally of former President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, also defended his millions of pesos in endowment from the PCSO.
“How many lives did we save with that amount of money?” Suarez said.
On Friday, PCSO documents revealed that Suarez, along with seven other lawmakers, were granted by the PCSO a total of P92.2 million in endowments for their constituents’ hospital and medical expenses in the last three and a half years of Macapagal-Arroyo’s presidency.
Report said Suarez received a total amount of P68 million for 16 hospitals.
The lawmaker argued that all congressmen could also avail of the PCSO fund.
“I see nothing wrong with receiving PCSO funding for medical assistance not only for my less fortunate constituents in my own district but also from even outside the Bondoc Peninsula. All lawmakers can also ask for their own funding assistance,” Suarez explained, as he also stressed that the PCSO funds did not pass his hands but were directly deposited in the accounts of hospitals.
Lopez town mayor Isaias Ubana II from the province’s 4th district attested to Suarez’s claim that the medical assistance from the PCSO endowment had benefited his town mates from way back in 1998 in his first year as local chief executive.
“The PCSO funds of Congressman Suarez’s medical assistance have been reaching the four corners of the province. His health assistance project is already a legend in the province. Accusing him of siphoning PCSO funds for his own benefits was not only malicious but also unfair and a grave injustice to him,” Ubana, former president and the present secretary general of the Quezon Mayor’s League, said over the phone on Sunday.
He said he personally witnessed how Suarez and his staff granted medical assistance requests to countless Quezon folks at the Suarez residence inside the ritzy Forbes Park in Makati City.
According to Ubana, Suarez personally entertained his visitors and often joined them in their breakfast even in his pajamas.
“No one would leave his house disappointed. His house is always open to whoever is in need, whether it is in Unisan and the gated Forbes Park. If he is not around, there is always his staff ready to attend to all requests,” Ubana said.
San Francisco town Mayor Hernani Tan, a past president of the Quezon mayors’ league, also defended Suarez, saying, “Not once he (Suarez) refused my request for medical assistance to my constituents.”