‘Notebooks galore’
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” That plays out in those five notebooks that surfaced in the still-unfolding pork barrel scam.
The notebooks record dealings of detained Janet Lim-Napoles from 2012 up to August 2013 , Whistleblower No. 11 told probers. They list cash dole-outs, properties, bank accounts (over 400 at last count) to “other information” Such as?
Code names for one. “‘Kuya’ and ‘Sexy’ are the handles for Sen. Jinggoy Estrada.”An entry in one note says P20 million had been alloted for ‘Kuya’ and ‘Sexy’. ‘Pogi’ is used for Sen. Ramon Revilla. Smile Bong. Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, 89, is dubbed “Tanda”. That means “Old Man.”
Probers got an overview of Napoles properties in the second notebook with red cover. That includes 28 houses, scattered from Forbes Park, Punta Fuego in Nasugbu and California. (Eat your heart out Ampatuans. They only had 24 mansions.)
In the list are 30 cars. The Justice Department says the models are varied: Mercedes Benz, , BMW, snazzy Porsches to the humble Toyota Vios. Are the Napoles’ three yachts, which suddenly lifted anchor, recorded too?
The third notebook is blue and lists “documents received by the whistle-blowers on behalf of their boss” These range from credit card numbers and details of credit-card transactions. The fourth notebook is red. This contains the names of contact persons and their phone numbers. The fifth notebook is blue-green serves as an “organizer” of those who turned whistle-blowers.
Where did we hear this farce before as tragedy?
The South China Morning Post provides a clue in a recent cover story: “Embarrassment of Riches” That relates how the eldest daughter of Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos “inadvertently” left behind, in the People Power uproar, “a very interesting notebook.”
“The book contained lists of vast secret holdings belonging to Imee’s father and held by dummy nominees in various corporations.” Marcos had dummies everywhere: coconut, bananas, banking to real estate.
On April 25 last year, now Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno wrote the decision that affrmed an earlier Sandiganbayan decision that ordered $3,369,975 of assets in Arelema S.A, formed by Marcos Sr., be forefeited in favor of the government.
Imee’s notebook was among incriminating documents left behind in Malacañang after Chinook helicopters scooped the Marcoses and cronies like Eduardo Cojuangco ahead of furious crowds racing in Edsa.
Those documents led investigators to, among other discoveries, secret Swiss bank deposits totalling US$356 million and four buildings in Manhattan, New York, Raissa Robles wrote in the SCMP feature.
“PCGG commissioner Maita Gonzaga now occupies Imee’s old office. She showed me a curious design feature: a secret door disguised as a wall panel that leads to a fire escape. It is a metaphor, perhaps, for the intricate web of offshore accounts, foundations, fake identities and dummy companies that has kept much of the Marcos money well hidden.”
The Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that Imee, now Ilocos Norte governor, has a secret account stashed in the Virgin Islands. “Imee formed a company overseas called Sintra Trust, in 2002, which was used to open offshore accounts in Singapore.
“The problem here is that as a sitting provincial governor, she never disclosed the accounts in her statements of assets, liabilities and net worth. Under the country’s 1987 constitution, every public official is required to do.” Imee refuses to comment.
Man however does not live by pork alone. We ignore structures at the risk of embedding further greed.
And that precisely is the main issue that the 2013 Philippine Human Development Report raises: Pork barrel items, play into the claws of politicians, because they chop up, robot like, the tax peso across the board. It turns a blind eye to varying needs of particular areas.
The needs of local government units are set by its geography, University of the Philippines’ Economics professors Emmanuel de Dios and Toby Melissa Monsod say. The physical space that a province, town or city occupies determines the health, livelihood and economic chances of its inhabitants.
Failure to tailor socioeconomic services to the local geography court disaster. Health underscores this reality. The diseases that afflict people are set by where they live. If a tropical country, like the Philippines, fails to prioritize tropical diseases, it would rack up huge human development losses.
Malaria is the ninth leading cause of morbidity here. It festers in 58 out of 80 provinces that are “forested, swampy, hilly and mountainous.” PHDR estimates that a person afflicted with malaria could lose one to five working days per malaria episode. About 14 million Filipinos are at risk of this disease. Simple arithmetic spells out an unacceptable cost.
Other “neglected tropical diseases” endemic to the Philippines, pinpointed by PHDR include: schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis or elephantiasis, soil-transmitted helminth infections or STH, foodborne trematode (FBT) and leprosy, Lala Ordenes of Vera Files notes.
“STH, or intestinal worms, affect two out of three preschool children and school-age children and two in five of the general population in a province.”
Economic benefits of a peso spent on de-worming can be stunning. “Among school- age children, this translates to 25 percent reduction in the number of days a child is absent from school.” That adds up “to an additional year of education.”
Those notebooks kept by Imee and Janet record human pain and degradation…
