Let the ill-fed pay

On grimy post office steps, flanked by cartoons and plastic bottles, scavenger  “Raul” prepared Sunday breakfast: green mangoes plus salt. Kain tayo, sir, he called when we passed to mail  a  letter. “Dine with me.”

“Raul” is  55, but looks 80.  Blind in one eye, he  limps in discarded slippers. Hand-me-down clothes flap on a frame  sapped by too many altanghaps.: breakfast ( almusal ), lunch ( tanghalian ) dinner ( hapunan) rolled into one.

We  itched to prod Raul:  Ask Senators  Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and, Ramon Revilla. “Did you include me in  P194.7million  doled from your  pork barrel to bogus nongovernment organizations?”

Commission on Audit documents how legislators shoved  millions to  a shell  Pangkabuhayan Foundation Inc, then flipped  to a bogus ZNAC Rubber Estate Corp (ZREC). Amounts squandered: Estrada—P106.7 million;  Enrile—P74.69 million; Revilla—P9.7 million.

This foundation deployed multiple tax identification numbers. They claimed no liabilities, but  their Quezon City office was padlocked for failure to pay rent.  PFI president Petronila A. Balmaceda vamoosed. Fund balance equaled total assets—to the last centavo, auditors marveled. How did  it  “operate  without any office equipment, furniture and fixtures, essential in day to day operations?”

Raul never heard of these scams. So we zipped our lips and  instead cast about for some cash . He’d  breakfast  on something  other  than salted green mangoes this Sunday morning at least.

But  what  about  breakfast  Monday? And how many other Rauls are there?

This January, Social Weather Station reported that.3 million families went hungry in the last quarter of 2012 .That’s  a million families fewer than in the previous quarter. Still, “hunger knows no friend.”

Estrada, Enrile and Revilla insist they were conned. Enrile claimed ignorance of the recipient of his pork. “What I designated were local government units. And I do not know why ZREC had to transfer the money to Pangkabuhayan Foundation whatever that is.”

Revilla scrubbed his hands too. Sure, he identified projects under the agriculture department’s program for Basilan. “When an NGO asks for our help to assist countrymen caught in the armed conflict in Mindanao, we had no second thoughts. We set  aside funds for them, especially since it was the Department of Agriculture that’d implement the project.”

“I do not recall the name of that foundation,” blandly declared former agriculture secretary, now Bohol congressman Arthur Yap. He also passed the buck. “Senators and congressmen, then and today, are allowed to endorse coops to undertake projects using their PDAF. They must account for the funds.”

“They’re all  honest men,” as  the Iberian shepherd wailed. “But my cloak is still missing.” Is that because  the senators   played  deaf?   Walang bingi dito sa mundo gaya nang ayaw  makikinig, the Tagalog proverb says. “There  are  none so blind as those who refuse to see.”

Malacañang  provided  an unsolicited  reminder.  As  senator, President Benigno Aquino III,  in December 2009, voted against the  budget—precisely because it allocated P340 million from legislators’ pork kitty to a corporation recommended for dissolution since December 2003. Guess who?

Who else  but  ZNAC Rubber Estate Corp. “Why and how could funds have been allocated to a corporation subject for dissolution?” then Senator Aquino said. He shredded then Agriculture Secretary  Arthur Yap’s excuse: There’d  been no Department of Finance notification that ZREC had been blackballed.

“We cannot simply dismiss suspicions of duplicity and corruption,” Aquino insisted. The 2009  COA report  already flagged warnings about ZREC. Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez included ZREC on a list of 36 “underperforming” government-owned and -controlled corporations. Rodriguez recommended its abolition in a bill that he filed in the House.

From 2008 to 2013, the Senate’s Maintenance Operating  and Others  Expenses  kitty  bolted from P759 million to P1.57 billion, not subject to audit. In  the face of public fury, the Senate agreed to accounting  as the  15th Congress  ends. Its coffers were  drained anyway.

We need to unmask those who benefited from this scheme,”  Sen. Jinggoy Estrada  now  demands. “The Senate ” should  investigate this scam”.

Hold it right there, senator.  Estrada’s  pork barrel was dissipated. Like it or not, Jinggoy’s  role is under question. And  the  first thing to do is dispel the slightest  doubt . That  demands  Estrada & Co.” must inhibit  themselves from any Senate probe, least of all, one called by themselves.

Otherwise, they’ll  be  suspect,  prober, judge and acquittal artist  rolled into one. Estrada’s statement on the need to “unmask those who benefited from this scheme,” already implies self  absolution. A whitewash is  the last  thing this country needs from Estrada & Co.

Jinggoy “was linked to payoffs from jueteng operators during the short-lived administration of his father,” Inquirer notes.  Remember former Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)  chief of staff Angelo Reyes who committed suicide? Estrada relished ridiculing  Reyes, at public hearings,  for receiving pasalubongs from AFP on his retirement.

Jinggoy however   slurped  unabashed into  MOOE  kitty that underwrote P1.6 million “Christmas gifts” from Enrile. Estrada and 17 other “friendly” senators  didn’t  return them.

Alas, “the injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scales,” Aesop says in one of his “Fables.” Instead, the bill for such scams will be fobbed on people like Raul the scavenger.