EDITORIAL - Prosecute and punish

After several months of inquiries, both chambers of Congress have announced their respective committees’ recommendations on the alleged anomalies involving the COVID supply contracts awarded to Pharmally Pharmaceuticals Corp.

While the same persons were grilled, the two chambers came out with markedly different recommendations. The panel of the House of Representatives, where Pharmally executive Krizle Grace Mago had sought protective custody to avoid further grilling by the Senate, cleared former presidential economic adviser Michael Yang and the former head of the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management, Lloyd Christopher Lao. The House panel merely recommended the indictment of Pharmally executives and several lower ranking officials for syndicated estafa.

On the other hand, the Senate Blue Ribbon committee chaired by Richard Gordon found both Yang and Lao liable together with Health Secretary Francisco Duque III for several offenses related to the multibillion-peso procurements, and President Duterte himself for betrayal of public trust.

While Malacañang insisted that the President gave no special favors to anyone in the Pharmally contracts, it echoed Gordon’s call for the filing of appropriate cases against those named in the Blue Ribbon report. Gordon said persons outside government should initiate the cases since government agencies appeared to be dragging their feet in acting on the reported anomalies.

Yesterday, a Senate panel also recommended the prosecution and resignation of Alfonso Cusi as secretary of energy. This is in connection with his department’s approval of the sale of 45 percent of Chevron’s Malampaya gas field shares to the Udenna Group whose chairman is President Duterte’s supporter, Davao businessman Dennis Uy. Cusi has maintained that the deal was aboveboard.

Malacañang has dismissed Senate inquiries, saying these rarely lead to the prosecution of those accused of wrongdoing. Gordon, however, has stressed that it is not the job of lawmakers to initiate and pursue legal cases against public officials and their civilian accomplices who are found in Senate probes to have broken the law. There are government agencies with this specific mandate, Gordon says; when they shirk their duty, civilians can initiate the cases.

The weakness of the rule of law in this country as well as impunity in the commission of crimes including plunder and murder have been attributed in part to the failure to prosecute suspects, secure court convictions and punish the perpetrators. With the serious allegations hurled in connection with procurements related to the worst crisis the country has faced since World War II, this failure to bring the guilty to justice should not happen in the Pharmally mess.