By Cesar Gorillo
THE recent caper involving Janet Napoles in which billions of pesos of the Filipino people’s money has been channeled into her personal pocket is a perfect way to demonstrate how anybody with ingenuity can withdraw billions of government funds right at the very noses of government.
The ingenuity of Janet Napoles using bogus NGOs has allowed her to dip her very naughty fingers into the billion-peso Malampaya Funds, the pork barrel funds, the agricultural funds and the agrarian reform fundings and in the process dragged along many mayors, senators and congressmen into an avalanche of plunder never before seen in Philippine history. Mayors, allegedly wrote her letters for assistance which they denied ever making and whose funds they also denied ever receiving. And I am sure, the congressmen and senators will also deny ever receiving plundered money. The tentacles of corruption is so brazen that Napoles made the COA who were supposed to pre-audit the release of funds and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) who released the funds the laughing stock in the whole country.
What started as a call for the NBI to rescue Ben Hur Luy because he was detained at the Napoles enclave spawned a parrot in Ben Hur Luy who executed a very detailed affidavit, together with other whistle blowers and told a tale of how Janet Lim Napoles legally withdrew government funds using illegal means in order bilk the country of its valuable billions. What started as a case of Qualified Theft filed against Luy for P350,000 metamorphosed into an expose that left millions of Filipinos gaping at the sheer magnitude of money siphoned by this seemingly innocent businesswoman from Basilan whose stolen money could have feed millions of Filipinos who cannot even eat three decent meals a day. I shudder at the garapalan way in which the entire government was hoodwinked.
The funny thing is that this woman had the gall to go to The Inquirer and talk to the editors and staff only to give them unintelligible answers, crazy facts and unbelievable logic making her interview the butt of jokes among the netizens. To add insult to injury, Napoles gave them a runaround in her answers only to tell them that she cannot talk about answers to their questions because her lawyer was not around.
As of now the whole Philippines is frustrated at the way these types of thieves may even get scot-free from the arms of the law and evade our Philippine justice system. We shudder at the thought that even the smallest thieves in the streets are collared by the police to answer for their crimes, while many who stole millions from the Philippine coffers are still roaming our streets because they can pay the best lawyers in town and file in courts hundreds of petitions in order to delay their cases and then we forget about their crimes only to see them running for public office in the next elections. Ha ha ha ha ha! Katawanan. Or tell the courts that they are suffering from an ailment complete with the doctor’s certification for the usual hospital confinement. Makalagot uy!
Meanwhile, we await for the next kabanata in this sordid caper then wait for the next Jocjoc Bolante or Janet Napoles to grace our papers while millions of our poor citizens are forcibly evicted from their shanties and rummage through the garbage in search for thrown food from either Jollibee or McDonald’s.