Madness...in the highest councils of government

[Zeus]

Ano masasabi nyo dito?

Madness

Oct. 20, 2007
Inquirer Opinion

MANILA, Philippines -- It would seem that madness reigns in the highest councils of government. From the unraveling of the National Broadband Network (NBN) project to its (still developing) aftermath, the nation has been treated to the incredible spectacle of the country’s highest officials stumbling from one dumb decision to another disastrous mistake, compounding the overpricing of a contract with a series of bribe attempts, sometimes to persons who were most unlikely to just quietly pocket the payoffs.
The madness began when some smart operators in President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration thought they could hoodwink the Filipino people into accepting a contract to build the NBN at a cost of $329 million, double its actual cost by some estimates, although the same project could have been built at no cost to the government.
To get Romulo Neri, then director general of the National Economic and Development Authority, to drop his objection to having the project built with a loan from the Chinese government, instead of a build-operate-transfer scheme as President Arroyo had originally insisted, then-Chair Benjamin Abalos of the Commission on Elections allegedly offered to give him P200 million. (Abalos was said to be the broker between the government and the Chinese company, ZTE Corp.) And to make businessman Jose de Venecia III give up his own bid to bag the project, Abalos allegedly offered him $10 million. If those mind-boggling sums look unreasonably high to many people, it is probably because, in the past, bribes of such magnitudes were reserved for presidents.
Just as crazy (or was it?) was Malacañang’s response to the invitation extended by the Senate for Neri to testify. It gave him the green light to implicate Abalos but stopped him from revealing what the President did after he disclosed to her the bribe offer. But while Neri’s disclosure to the Senate put Abalos in deeper trouble, Neri’s silence about the President only made her look complicit as far as the ZTE deal was concerned and derelict in her duty to enforce the law.
As soon as talk started about impeaching the President, her allies and subalterns moved swiftly to vaccinate her with a weak complaint. But where they sought to introduce method, only madness surfaced. For who but a fool or a desperate soul would seek out the Anakpawis party-list group’s Rep. Crispin Beltran, an outspoken if not a bitter critic of the administration, to dangle P2 million in exchange for his endorsement of the flawed impeachment complaint? But that was exactly what the second highest official of the President’s own party Kampi did.
And who but the most cynical or stupid of political operatives would not think twice before distributing cash, ranging from P200,000 to P500,000, to more than 200 congressmen, governors and mayors inside Malacañang? Considering the big number of officials gathered there that day, that was an open invitation to be exposed publicly. And they pushed their luck some more by including on the list of recipients the likes of Pampanga Gov. Ed Panlilio, a priest who ran on an anti-corruption platform.
Trying to extricate the Palace from the payoff scandal, Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno first claimed that the money must have come from an association of local officials, which the group immediately denied. Next, he said it came from Speaker Jose de Venecia, prompting the latter to complain that “para tayong ginagago,” meaning Puno was trying to make a fool of everyone.
But it is not just Puno doing that. Taking everyone for a fool has been the underlying assumption of Malacañang’s strategy in responding to the NBN mess. And its latest move is no different: It ordered the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PAGC) to investigate the cash gift-giving inside the Palace.
When it was last heard from, the PAGC declared that it couldn’t find any evidence to support Neri’s bribery charge against Abalos. It was able to reach that conclusion after a “quiet investigation” in which neither the accused nor the accuser was asked about the incident. Only a national leadership that believes that Filipinos are incapable of rational thought would think they would find any PAGC findings credible, including one that would say Panlilio and the congressmen who confessed planted the money in those envelopes or bags.
The old saying could be true: Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. With so much madness sprouting all over Malacañang, it looks as if the gods have been busy planting the seeds of its destruction.

Source:www.inquirer.net

[Isuzoom]

hope they will choke and die with their stolen billions

[rey_rya]

yup, another Malacanang moro-moro in the making!

[buriroy]

The Arroyo administration is self-destructing and choking from
the bile of their own greed.

Si GMA kasi is a "professional" politician - she lives, eats, drinks,
and breathes politics. To her, normal na yung mga cash "gifts",
payoffs, and bribes to advance their interests and she has
become numb (manhid) to the people's clamor for a moral
regeneration.

I'm not justifying her actions but she grew up na puro
politics na yung kapaligiran nya (remember, maliit pa siya
ay presidente na yung tatay niya).

What we need is a leader with less political inclinations
and more heart and compassion for the coomon good.

[empy]

oo nga....para nga kayo ginagago nitong mga to ah.

i don't know what is more irritating - the fact that the stupidest of operators are still able to hold public office and get away with graft, or the fact that the garapal way they go about their business suggests they think the Filipino citizen is even stupider than they are.

[VtEC]

oo nga....para nga kayo ginagago nitong mga to ah.

i don't know what is more irritating - the fact that the stupidest of operators are still able to hold public office and get away with graft, or the fact that the garapal way they go about their business suggests they think the Filipino citizen is even stupider than they are.

mas tama yata na sila sila nag gagaguhan.just look at the scenario, sila sila sa gobyerno ang nagtatalo talo. edi sila sila ang mga naglolokohan lang

[istan]

they think the Filipino citizen is even stupider than they are. <- we voted for them...

I think we should strike fear in our politiko's hearts, if they know, they'll stopped being voted for if there's something bad happens in their term. ie. corruptions

Right now, walang ganun na nangyayari, except yun kay Tessie.

[Stoner]

Read an editorial in the Philippine Star about the big picture with regards to the ZTE issue...

...about the souring relations between the Philippines and the US... GMA trying to woo the Chinese (through the NBN project and various other deals)...

The author certainly introduced fresh new points into the possible underlying currents within the government...

[oliver1013]

Obvious naman, kaso ano nga gagawin natin?

[Zeus]

...and some more madness, the League of Governors said they are the ones who distributed the money at Malacanang to the governors