The Senate blue ribbon committee has yet to act on a request of whistle-blower Rhodora Alvarez to place her under the government’s Witness Protection Program.
She feels her life is in danger.
Alvarez has exposed what she claimed was corruption that attended the P1.26-billion helicopter deal of the Department of National Defense which she describes as “rotten.”
The deal involves buying helicopter scraps from Germany, shipping them to the United States to be reconstructed and refurbished, and then sending them to Manila to be used by the Philippine Air Force.
It was supposed to cover 21 “state-of-the-art” combat choppers, but out of seven units that have arrived in the country, only one is flying.
Alvarez has linked Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, Undersecretary Fernando Manalo and other defense and military officials to the allegedly graft-ridden transaction.
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According to Manila’s rumor mill, Immigration Commissioner Siegfred Mison is about to be replaced because he has been linked to corrupt practices in the bureau.
Why doesn’t the Noynoy Aquino administration just tell him frankly that he’s being kicked out because he hasn’t been contributing to the Liberal Party’s campaign fund?
It’s very unfair to Mison, one of the most honest chiefs the Bureau of Immigration has ever had.
Mison, a graduate of West Point (US Military Academy) and teacher of law subjects at the Ateneo College of Law, never asked for the job of immigration commissioner, among the most sought-after positions in the bureaucracy.
A chip off the old block, his father is retired Army three-star general and former Customs Commissioner Salvador Mison.
When the elder Mison heard rumors that he was about to be relieved as customs chief, he went to President Cory Aquino to tender his resignation. He told Ms Aquino he was leaving Customs with clean hands.
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The firm which filed a syndicated estafa case in the Makati City Prosecutor’s Office against a mining company mentioned in this space on May 28 said no pressure is being exerted by the complainants on the Makati prosecutor handling the case.