Edwin A. Sumcad, PAR Columnist
The greatest case
of plunder and pillage of public funds yet to be filed against a criminally
corrupt Philippine head of state and his accomplices would most likely occur when
the second part of President Benigno Aquino III [Noynoy] regime expires in
December 2016.
In the case of former President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo, plunder charges were filed against her and cohorts right
after her term of office expired. In the case of ex-Presidents Marcos and
Estrada, charges of embezzlement, pilfering of public funds, theft and grand larceny
[plunder and pillage] – sort of a hangman’s noose around their neck so to speak
– were unleashed when the anger of millions of Filipinos exploded in Epifanio
de los Santos Avenue, Metro Manila otherwise known by its acronym EDSA.
It would be the biggest case of corruption
ever filed against a Philippine president which would make the alleged Marcos
plunder, Estrada’s looting of public fund and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s pillage
of the national treasury through kickbacks and other forms of thievery which reportedly
international observers believed had sucked the blood of Filipinos dry to the
bone thereby sending their country to Asia’s economic graveyard – look like
droplets in the bucket!
Historically, the size of Marcos’ globally
published Philippine plunder is supposed to be one of the world’s worst lootings
of public funds ever imagined, but if the claim recorded in several investigations
and in the court trial that took place in Hawaii years back is true that what
Marcos and his secret confidants had stashed abroad in Swiss banks was mainly
the dollar-value of the Yamashita Gold that in World War II Marcos as a commanding
officer and his soldiers had reportedly raided, sequestered and finally hidden
just about towards the end of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, then
Marcos may be doubtfully perceived as the country’s greatest plunderer. The greatest pillager of all time is yet to
come – and the timeline for that is any day from now or at the end of 2016,
whichever comes first.
However, the end of Noynoy’s term in office
as the timing of this yet most shocking turning point in Philippine history,
may fast-forward once any of the following three events occurs -- depending on
the health of the president who is now reeling under the tremendous pressure of
political turbulence: [1] Impeachment .
. . [2] Resignation or … [3] When resignation may be overtaken by an EDSA
III cataclysmic happening of bloodshed which may be just around the corner.
Because government corruption creates a
hidden rage among the governed, especially among the notorious underground elements
[anti-government haters from both the extreme Left and Right spectrum of a
troubled society], plotters from the dark side including the restive Military
may create a Kennedy-like scenario to end the Aquino regime.
When this fateful Dallas-like scenario –
i.e., in the case of the fallen U.S. President Joseph F. Kennedy that was a
turning point in U.S. history – intervenes in the course of unfolding events in
the Philippines -- God forbids – then the event-determinants for the next
super-plunder cases to come or to be filed against a corrupt head of state that
I have just cited – this turning point in Philippines history that I have just underscored
-- will just become moot and academic.
But none of these three above-mentioned fast-tracking
events would stop the filing of charges of plunder and pillage of public fund
against a resigned president or a president who would survive the famous or
infamous EDSA Revolution, simply called EDSA III, which could take place any
day from now.
Imagine the size of this plunder -- and
the ensuing political apocalypse that would strike down Noynoy Aquino’s regime –
the looting of the Philippine National Treasury is not only in multimillion but
multibillion-peso heist through several years of trillions of Pesos in budgetary
appropriations, a conjoined maneuvering of conniving high-ranking public officials
in one of the most clever, shrewd and publicly-hidden executive-legislative
conspiracies, sans a dictatorship government.
With the iron-clad rule of Political
Dynasties in the Philippines – under a government that is supposedly democratic
created by former President Corazon C. Aquino’s bloody EDSA Revolution, not a
dictatorship form of government that we know – this political gang of families in
the Philippines that the Cojuanco-Aquino family heads and orchestrated by
President Noynoy Cojuanco-Aquino, the plunder of the nation’s patrimony is
[brace yourself] absolutely LEGALIZED.
Unfortunately, how this plunder is
legalized, is hardly within the knowledge and understanding of the massive “bakya crowd” [sandal people] or the common tao that historically would march
down EDSA demanding for a change of the system of governance, and in a painful
reckoning would ultimately decide to change their damaging political belief
system, as well as their harmful or self-destructive way of life.
For example, the PDAF despoliation
proposal [Priority Development Assistance Fund thievery notoriously known as the
Pork Barrel scandal] had been originally blue-printed, recommended and submitted
by Noynoy and his accomplices in the Executive Department, to their co-conspirator-politicians
in Congress who then passed it into law as part of the General Appropriation
Act [GAA].
The conspiring politicians in Congress would
then legislate provisions into that law to see to it that they get the appropriated
money LEGALLY. Once the conniving politicians in Congress passed the year’s GAA
[the “Pig Fat” is a chunk of it] and Noynoy attached his multi-million-dollar
signature to the document, presto [!] the money Bill turns into LAW, and the
stealing is legally complete.
This nascent modus operandi has never been used
before during the hellish regimes of Marcos, Estrada and Gloria, the latter dubbed
as the Filipina “Evita” Peron of Argentina in her halcyon days of glory. It is
just that the hurting Filipino people wanted to see all of them hang in a
nearby tree like what Judas did to himself. In conscience, Judas has REMORSE for his
guilt of betrayal that was why he hanged himself. These guys I am talking about
have neither conscience nor remorse at all. That’s why the people won’t see
them hang themselves in a nearby tree.
In the idiolect lingo or slang language
spoken by the dark characters of the underworld as in New York’s Godfather
protection racketeering family of gangsters or of Chicago’s Mafia during the
post-depression era, and also in the late 60s and early 70s, the symbiotic
connection of crooks from the Executive and Legislative branches of the Aquino
government may be described as a “scratch
my back and I scratch yours” kind of relationship specifically between a devious
president coming from the ruling Political Dynasty and those kinked politicians
in the Philippine Congress . . . it is their legalized coded expression of
milking the people dry in one of the world’s corrupt and chronically corrupted
societies ever recorded in recent time.
This underworld expression of covert
relationship between morally twisted Executive-Legislative officials in milking
the people dry is also succinctly expressed in President Benigno Aquino III’s Disbursement Acceleration Program [DAP]
which was part of Noynoy’s budgetary proposal sent to Congress for funding
approval. The huge amount involved was
lately recorded at more than P146 billions, earmarked for any infrastructure
project Noynoy Aquino and his advisers could think of out of their hat. What
seems to be the clandestine purpose behind this massive appropriation of public
fund was to inject tons of money into the financial system in order to pump-prime
the supposedly sagging economy – a Keynesian theory doomed to fail in a corrupt
society.
So is President Benigno Aquino III’s infamous
Conditional Cash Transfer [CCT] fund
[some P56 billion or so], another pork-barrel-like disbursement fund program of
the president . . . a soon-to-be vanishing expenditures solely at the
president’s discretion. It was supposed
to eradicate chronic poverty in the urban and rural centers, similar to U.S.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s welfare plan benefiting the economically
disadvantaged in the United States. Where the money went, people gasped
asking questions when in fact “in the
first half of Aquino’s term, the number of poor families ballooned by 1.4
million . . .” the Social Weather Station survey reported. The spiraling of
poverty growth-rate upward from then on to the present is in the publicly
released SWS reports, which turned out to be quite tiring for anybody to read
anymore.
The
“Pig Fat” largesse [PDAP] was supposed to fund “development projects” at the discretion of the thieving Congresspersons
and Senators who shared the funding allocations. Some P10 billions of PDAP had vanished in
thin air, thanks to Janet Napoles, the geek-crook-street-mom that made it
easier for unscrupulous politicians to steal PDAF and run away with a truckload
of the people’s money.
Postscript to this unprecedented anomaly
is that the bigger part of the loot or the rest of the stolen amount may yet surface
if further investigations are continued and not stopped. But the investigation
is winding down as it stepped into the next level. Nationwide attention is now
focused on determining the nature of the wrongdoing and for the preparation of
the coming court trial of the culprits, so much so that the gargantuan size of
the amount of pinching and pocketing of the stolen money seemed to have become
irrelevant, otherwise the total amount pocketed when determined, only becomes either
a mitigating or aggravating circumstance in the imposition of penalties.
As of this writing, several Senators and “Tongressmen”
led by former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and their shady entourage who
robbed the people blind had been reportedly caught in the dragnet of conspirators
turning state-witnesses against their masterminds.
And like a playing broken record, the show goes
on. No crook yet as diabolic as those
who are about to face charges in court, had ever been sent to jail in this
wickedly debauched and/or chronically corrupted society ruled and controlled by
Political Dynasties.
In this case of public fund snatchers,
presumed innocent until proven guilty are Enrile and cohorts who are tested
legal combatants, a special breed of Aquino’s cadre of purloining or filching
Political Dynasties.
In
the meantime, as usual, the face of the country is disfigured as the poorest of
the poor population agonized in abject poverty; its visage and countenance
appears unclean and unsightly in the eyes of the world as the Media, like
sharks in a feeding frenzy, breathes foul air in public highlighting the
scandal. Dirt is flying and scattering all around.
This ugliness of the country’s image was
caught in radio and television prime time in a series of broadcast and live public
interviews, and written by poison pens in angry columns and published in flashing
headlines of the print media that for a while seemed unstoppable.
PDAF, a.k.a pork barrel or “Pig Fat” -- the
LAW that legalized the plunder of public funds by greedy politicians -- has
just recently been declared UNCONSTITUTIONAL by the Philippine Supreme Court.
Bad publicity of this judicial declaration also went high wire.
The congressional infamy of the
presidential-legislative conspiracy between the president and cohorts in
Congress to steal the people’s money was first to go accompanied by angry
public demonstrations, like what had transpired in France, in a mini-series
scenery, prior to the Fall of Bastille in 1789.
This sign of the forthcoming apocalyptic upheaval is horrifyingly
ominous to ignore.
Justices of the Philippine Supreme Court
are now tackling the arguments to also declare DAP unconstitutional since the PDAF
that was just struck down by the highest court of the land, was an adjunct or
part of DAP. This so-called anti-poverty program is reportedly Noynoy’s and
cohorts’ “fattest” or heavyweight pork barrel whose gruesome-galore in terms of
hideousness and repugnance defy description in normal or ordinary media reporting.
The other kind of presidential pork barrel
-- the spooky Conditional Cash Transfer
[CCT] – is a multibillion-peso unaudited presidential disbursement of funds out
of government savings supposedly for the poor. This is also being scrutinized
by the General Auditing Office known as GAO, the country’s independent, constitutionally-created
body otherwise also known as the fiscal and financial watchdog of government
transactions involving public funds.
When all is said and done and the enormous sum
of stolen money is totaled, the mind-blowing amount of funds looted would not
have any comparison yet as to how pervasive the plunder and pillage is, in
modern history.
There is a saying that if you make your bed
you must lay in it. Noynoy, the president, had made his own bed so he must now
lay in it with the Sword of Damocles hanging in the ceiling pointing down to his
head-pillow.
Supporters and Malacanang sycophants are
hoping that in a manner of speaking, the string holding the hanging Sword of
Damocles won’t snap and Noynoy will survive his term of office.
The Cojuanco-Aquino political dynasty and
their brownnosers are now drumbeating that the next candidate for president or
vice president is Kris Aquino, Noynoy’s sister, or any member of the rich
Cojuanco-Aquino family. Archbishop
emeritus Oscar Cruz has endorsed Kris at least as the 2016 candidate for VP.
Presidents Corazon Cojuanco-Aquino and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo -- the latter facing the gallows for possible hanging because of the current charges of plunder filed against her – have been “sent by God”, according to Catholic political fanatics, a religious clique that pokes its nose in politics.
Some of the Senators and Congressperson
involved in the theft of public funds – all members of existing ruling
Political Dynasties – had signified their intention to become the next
President of the Philippines.
Manny Paquiao, the boxer, and Kris Aquino, the
entertainer, and the “trapos” of Congress who have been endorsed or had publicly
declared to become candidates for president in 2016, reflect the quality of
national leadership that the people will elect again to lead their country to
eternal damnation.
And for the sake of the morally stricken Filipino
nation that needs to be spiritually exorcised from hell, my regret is we can do
nothing more except pray for the people’s deliverance on Judgment Day. #
© Copyright Edwin
A. Sumcad. Access March 3, 2014.
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