A Happy New Year to our faithful readers!

First of all, allow me to greet my faithful readers all over the country a Happy and Very Prosperous New Year. One thing that I admire in Filipinos is our sense of hope and high optimism that we can expect a better life for this New Year. Perhaps we can attribute the way we look forward to our future from our own spirituality as when we look up to the heavens for our hopes and aspirations, we are also looking up to God.       

The year 2007 was a good year for Cebu in the sense that we had more positive things than negative ones. The economy grew faster than the rest of the country especially after the province hosted the 12th ASEAN Summit exactly a year ago, after a brief month-long postponement due to a typhoon. But the ASEAN Summit brought along numerous issues that plagued Cebu for most of 2007 – issues that could very well slide into the year 2008.

A case in point is the infamous lamppost scam that was uncovered. Yet you can expect this issue to be carried over in 2008 simply because few people know that the people working in the Office of the Ombudsman have the work ethic of snails! Why hasn’t the Office of the Ombudsman made any decisions on this case? Only God knows. This is why I have always said, the reason why corruption is prevalent in this country is the fact that there is a serious lack of justice and the Ombudsman tasked to bring corrupt officials to justice is merely sleeping on the job.

Another passionate issue that could still slide into 2008 is the question on the alleged “overprice” of the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC). In all fairness to Gov. Gwen Garcia, she came up with a presscon months ago inviting all her critics to question her on this issue in full public view. But none of the critics came, but the Cebu media came out quite impressed that she was able to itemize all the expenditures in the construction of the CICC and no one could point out where the alleged “plunder” happened.

The whole trouble is that Mr. Cris Saavedra who was the whistle-blower in the lamppost scam is the same person insisting that there was plunder in the CICC, yet he never gave any details as to how this happened. Hence Mr. Saavedra turned off the Cebu media because clearly, this fellow who claims to be a businessman was really a carpetbagger… one who sells anything and everything. He joined biddings for asphalt projects in the airport, closed-circuit TV and even had a railroad in his pocket when it turned out that he represented the AMA Group when they came to Cebu to sell us a Light Rail Transit (LRT). When Mr. Saavedra loses a bid, he threatens to sue government officials and more often than not, he really sues them.

As everyone distanced themselves from Mr. Saavedra, he went to Manila hoping that “presidentiables” looking for issues would listen to him. He went to Sen. Manny Villar and Sen. Ping Lacson, who without any clear background grabbed the opportunity to take potshots at President Arroyo without realizing that they could get kuryente on this if they didn’t come up with their own due diligence. 

Will we see these issues turn into a political circus? This remains to be seen. But in fairness to Mr. Saavedra, he brought to light the lamppost scam and if he was truly sincere, he should have asked Sen. Lacson to investigate the Office of the Ombudsman as to why it is sitting on this case.

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Perhaps the whole trouble with the Filipino people is that we are all the tsismoso kind. We love hearing about those ugly rumors and magnify them as if it were Bible truth. I have heard so many rumors on that front-page story last Dec. 21 about the seizure of 81 “very hot” luxury cars in a Makati repair shop, where one of the cars belonged to San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito. Thanks to the Christmas holidays (and perhaps a lot of expensive Christmas gifts), this huge story is out of the press!

Who could forget what happened a few months ago in Subic Bay Freeport when the President herself ordered the destruction of those beautiful sports cars and SUVs so they would not fall in anyone’s hands. That would have been the right approach to stop the rampant smuggling in this country. But because that Subic caper was merely for show, it never scared any of the smugglers. But Mayor JV Ejercito a smuggler? This case should be in the news all the time. But I also heard another rumor that sons of the powers that be were also involved in that seizure, hence the deafening silence on this case from both political camps, taking the so-called “code of Omerta.”

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.