A war between branches of gov’t

Congratulations to the members of the 888 News Weekly Forum, which celebrates its 8th Year today. They have been holding this weekly news forum at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel for the past 5 years already and they are now on their 3rd year being televised by MyTV channel 30, Cebu’s only local TV channel, which is also shown on channel 28 in PARASAT Cable in Cagayan de Oro or Northern Mindanao. Kudos to Consul Robert “Bobby” Joseph for conceptualizing this no holds barred weekly News Forum in Cebu. More power!

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Talk about rocking the boat (which was the number one hit song in 1974 by the Hues Corporation) when the Executive Branch through President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III sent his vicious guard dogs, first from Rep. Niel Tupas chair of the committee on justice to investigate the Judicial Development Fund (JDF) created through a Presidential Decree since the days of the conjugal Marcos dictatorship. Now it’s the turn of the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) Kim Henares who wants to get hold of the Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) of our Supreme Court Justices.

There is no doubt that the war between the supposedly independent branches of government has began and as we pointed out many times already the Supreme Court (SC) merely did what it was created to do — interpret the law — whether they are within the bounds of the 1987 Constitution or not. So for declaring the Priority Development Assistance Program (PDAF) a.k.a. pork barrel and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) as unconstitutional, the political elite that rules the Executive and Legislative branches are on an all out war against the Judiciary.

These politicians do not deserve the Filipinos’ trust or support. Yet, they go along their merry way as if we did not know that a great number of these congressmen and senators, including members of the Aquino Cabinet were tagged in the expose of Janet Lim Napoles. Today only three senators have been incarcerated for those crimes, while the others still have to be charge. Why is there a delay in the filing of those cases?

This is why I’ve already suggested a couple of times that the Supreme Court create an ad hoc body in the lines of the Agrava Commission that investigated the assassination of the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. so it can move quickly and effect the arrest of those involved in this heinous crime of pocketing the people’s money for their selfish gains. We must act quickly and create this body because the corrupt and the damn will certainly try to delay the filing of cases involving the political elite.

Incidentally, last Saturday I wrote that report of the visit to Cebu by Atty. Rene Bondal at the 888 News Forum at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel where his critics charged him of doing a demolition job against Vice-President Jejomar Binay when he filed plunder charges against Binay and his son, the Makati Mayor Erwin Binay for that parking building they constructed in 2007 that cost P 1.56 billion…not the P400 million I earlier reported.

As we read in the news the Commission on Audit (COA) supposedly has cleared the Binays in this case. But then let’s ask ourselves… how come the Philippines is on the top of the list of the most corrupt countries despite the fact that we have a COA? Of course, the answer is crystal clear; there are COA officials who are in cahoots with our political elite.

Let me just give one huge example that Atty. Bondal also accused the Binays of doing when they bought mini-cabs from a distributor in Cebu for P230,000 each. All that a COA official needs to do is call up any distributor of these second hand Suzuki mini-cab and they’d be surprised to find out that these used vehicles cost less than a hundred thousand apiece. So in anyone’s book, purchasing a mini-cab at P230,000 is a high-crime and why hasn’t anyone from COA squealed about this potential corruption?

In fairness to the Binays… in these alleged activities. A great majority of our local government units (LGUs), including many barangays from all over the country is using these mini-cabs. P230,000 may sound like a pittance as compared to what the senators got in the hundred millions for impeaching CJ Corona.

But I have no doubt that those vehicles were overpriced and what gets my guts is that, no one has done any full blown investigation on this case. Perhaps my good friend, Maria Ressa of Rappler can assign a special reporter to look into this potentially explosive corrupt deal so we can expose the political elite for their crimes against the Filipino people.

Incidentally, just as I was sending this article via email, a Mr.  Joey Salgado, the Vice-President’s spokesman for media affairs sent me an email to reply to these allegations by Atty. Bondal. Unfortunately, it is quite so long so I will have to put that for our column next Thursday. Abangan!

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