Change not in the horizon over fund scandal

There will be much effort expended in generating change over the PDAF, DAP and Malampaya fund disappearances from the national coffers and their reappearance in the fat bank accounts of thieves in government, especially the Senate and Congress. As it is told in the web journal Post Disaster:

It is difficult to focus on the preparations for the coming nightmare called Yolanda, with a President pretending not to be concerned but pulling strings from all sides to make the sideshow from the haunted CCP-PICC complex a successful zarzuela. A site called omnibusblog called the Senate Hearing that compelled Ms. Janet Lim-Napoles to the witness stand as a mockery of Senate Investigation, instead of devotion to being in aid of Legislation, the writer says it was done in aid of demolition. The site talks about cemetery plots, possible burial grounds for famous legislators and key bureaucrat officials, among other unpleasant figures in society.

An excerpt of the blog article is shown below: 

From the dead to the dead, till death doth us part 

The zarzuela continues. This supposedly "good-intentioned" Senate Hearing, in aid of Demolition, succeeds as a major public relations campaign of world wide magnitude. As a play, the entire production does not rate even a low D grade. It was too transparent to be stage managed, with Madam Janet Lim Napoles talking to her friend-senators as if they were long-lost friends. She does not even use the respectful address of Your Honor and never leads her statements with Mr. Chairman of the Committee.
Madam Napoles was in the Senate at her best element. She even complained that she must be given her free lunch time.

Led by Senators TG Guingona, a known substance abuser and Peter Alan Cayetano, a man insanely driven by the ambition to rise above the person who fed his young models-loving father from the palm of his hand (called Tanda by Sen. Miriam Santiago, ex Judge and former Cory appointee as well as collector of half-million bribe from the lion's share of undocumented 4 million chinese in the Philippines during the 1986 installed revolutionary regime), the drama goes on attempting to be the best Pitong Komikera-Komikerong Itlog show in this part of the globe.

The lady from Lima was also present, hubnubbing with Sen. Santiago during recess with Sens. Cayetano and Trillanes trading ideas from time to time during the interregnum when the Great Madam money giver to presidents, politicians and bureaucrats and money grubber, in the league of Mr. Zaldy Co and Mr. Edwin Gardiola said Time Out, I Have To Eat Lunch. Missing the action was the real lawyer of Madam, Atty. Fred Villamor, for whom the lady of Lima lawyered for Madam Napoles, being an obedient , willing partner with or without her underwear.

On occasion, at least once or twice, it was mentioned that the famous NGO (non-government organization) and PO (people's organization) community organizer, Madam Napoles, even used the dead to populate her NGOs and POs. From her probably great gratitude to the dead, she possibly bought beautiful Heritage Park lots for her benefactors - Senators, Presidents, Congresspersons, the President's top men and women, local officials and national budget bigwigs.

A multi-million several days' partying and catering marks the visit of Ms. Janet Lim Napoles to the Heritage Park in Global City aka The Fort. The Inquirer reports that the Heritage Park mausoleum dedicated to Ms. Napoles' mother even became a tourist spot recently after this same newspaper broke the news on the Napoles fund scam. Read more >>

Aquino's Pain of Divestment

Headlines:

Philippine Star: Noy, Abad Defend Disbursement Acceleration Program Fund

Sunstar: Aquino hits those equating DAP to PDAF

Manila Standard: Media Spin vs. DAP done by pols

Tribune: Noy says DAP attack divert attention from pork abuses

Imagine a President of a Third World country having an unrestricted access and power of disbursement of a good part of nearly United States Dollars Fifty Three Billion (the exact figure is USD52,443,398,257.95), the equivalent of the Philippine national annual projected expenditure of Philippine Pesos Two Trillion and Two Hundred Sixty Billion (PHP2,260,000,000,000).

The article below shows how difficult it is for a politician, a head of state to part with unregulated spending money.

Politicians maximally utilize persons like Ms. Janet Napoles who divert Philippine peso skims to the United States in suitcases without fear of the Anti-Money Laundering laws, Mr. Zaldy Co (who even ran for Congress himself and won), and many other fund fixers later masquerading as filthy rich financiers (outside of the Forbes List) to steal billions of money from the national treasury.

Much of the thievery is done through the pork barrel - discretionary public funds that are hardly accounted and form part of political accommodations, horse trading between the Executive branch and the Legislative, including the Judiciary.

With a public sector motivated by greed and wanton plunder of the national coffers often with the quiet collusion of members of the banking sector, there is absolutely no way for the government to censure and reform the banking industry simply because it has no moral ascendancy at all.The Philippine President, Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino 3rd, does not want the pork barrel to be abolished, as evidenced by his own recent statement over national media in defense of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) that is a creative new name for pork barrel. Mr. Aquino the 3rd is adamant that he announced the DAP two years ago.

Therefore, since the 3rd made a public disclosure of this benign, saintly kind of pork barrel, the spending thereof has to really be just and fair but only for all the horrible looking money making ogres concerned, the 3rd not excluded.

There is nothing in this sanitized, beatified, canonized pork barrel for the small entrepreneurs who need money for developmental projects.

Any intervention that must be done to change the way things are being done in the banking system will be initiated by the citizenry as well as well meaning members of the private sector. The issue is not all about simple patriotism, love for country, but the obligation of the creatures sitting in comfortable niches to return to their host country a share of what they have amassed over the years and decades of siphoning the hard earned money of ordinary people in whose names the Philippine bonds and treasury bills are created, among other debentures that average citizens of the Republic are bound to pay for during their maturity.

No banker will not acknowledge this fact, but they close their eyes due to their all-consuming greed and insatiable lust for more and more money, without looking back to where they came from and who are the source of the incomes they derived from their very expert manipulation of currencies, notes, bonds, bills and all the shit in banking. Click here for the rest of this article.

Clearly, Philippine President Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III is suffering from impending separation. Since this president is single, he certainly cannot foresee severing ties with a partner in life.

Its losing the DAP that he fears most. For one who lived in the Malacanang Palace as a youth with his sisters during the height of his mother's power as revolutionary president, enjoying the numerous boxed, suitcased and crated gifts intended for the First Family, losing the DAP is a nightmare. After the term of his late mother, the boxes, suitcases and crates stopped coming.

At the Palace, the new ruling groups would hardly share their blessings. As the then former First Family lamented, life had become too difficult for them at the time. The late lady president would not stop being best heard, best seen, best read with her PR magician Ms. Deedee Sytangco always at her side and beck and call. Her closest sympathizers, Ms. Corazon "Dinky" Soliman propped the late president up as a champion of social development such that in a huge gathering, she said: "I am Cory Aquino! I am NGO."

Now the contractors, NGOs, together with politician and government bureaucrat BFFs, are making waves in the financial community for reaping huge harvests of monies and caching these away in private vaults and banks.

Like the owner of an enterprise, those riding high in the windfall of profit from exceedingly unexpected sales, Aquino cannot divest himself of the DAP. This president will hold on to DAP with determination.

One of the pundits blabbering in the late night watering holes mused about a hint of retirement.

Pundit said, the dark forces are on the heels of Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima. Mr. Aquino he said, wants his people to get to the bottom of the attacks on his finance secretary and find out if he will eventually be the target of the attacks. Click here for a glimpse of the assaults against Sec. Purisima.

This pundit person said Malacanang ordered the applications for the supposedly legitimized small town lottery to be scrapped as early as May 2013. Most of the applicants are the same persons behind illegal gambling, the real lords of numbers games in person. The applicants lobbied for continuance, but in vain says pundit.

All the upfront fees collected over the last three years, totaling hundreds of millions up to billions have been forfeited in favor of the administration key people and their subalterns. Hundreds of gaming groups lost their bets on this Administration. It will be back to status quo, pundit reported. No more legitimate Pambansang Loterya ng Bayan (PLB). The hidden numbers game is on again. The counter lobby against PLB was made by a Central Luzon gambling emperor that lords over all illegal gambling in that region and even became closely identified with the former lady chief executive, whose nemesis happened to be Mr. Aquino. Central Luzon emperor wins with his generous offer, thus goodbye all to the hundreds of PLB applicants.

Pundit says, it spells hordes, mountains of invisible income for the powers-that-be. Together with the DAP, that strengthens the Palace but could also, as pundit muses, be a signal for a quick get-away.

We, the little ones will never really know until some illustrious event comes up. At least there is a glint of an idea about why there is so much pain in divestment. Too much, unbearable, pain.

Official Statement on Pork Barrel Issue

The global watchdog founded by Peter Eigen former Regional Director of the World Bank Transparency International through its local TI Philippines Chapter, took up media space by releasing its official statement below:

The escalating public outrage against the so-called pork barrel and similar funds, finds justification in the recent COA reports validating media disclosure of massive misuse of these funds.

The enormity of the reported scam amidst the high incidence of poverty in the country, moved Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle to tears as he urged the culprits to repent and let their “good side” shine through.

COA Chair Grace Pulido-Tan was just as appalled describing the uncovered anomalies as “kahindik-hindik”.

That approximates the public’s perception of it: revolting, shocking, atrocious, appalling, shameless.

The public hurt is exacerbated by the fact that many of the intended beneficiaries of the embezzled funds- the victims of natural calamities- were victimized twice over by human predators who have mastered the weaknesses of the system and vulnerability of certain legislators to an offer of say 20% to 60% of the disposable funds with no accountability. Here several billions of PDAF & VILP funds covered by the audit for the years 2007 to 2009, is just the tip of the iceberg, so they say. If we go back to the time of PDAF began under different names and guises, the figures can be staggering and may well be one of the reasons why for decades the Philippines had been the sick man of Asia.

Indeed, this particular specie of corruption, saps the economy by misdirecting scarce resources of the country to unworthy projects that will serve the corrupt officials’ personal or familial gain rather that the common good. It is far worse where, as disclosed in the COA reports, the projects were non-existent, the implementation bogus and the beneficiaries fictitious. In such instances the billions disbursed for the ghost projects are entirely apportioned among the conspirators. In this murky scenario, the reported kickback of 60% for the lawmaker assumes credibility. Read the full statement here.