EDITORIAL - Blue Ribbon recommendations

The last major case tackled by the Senate Blue Ribbon committee resonated with Filipinos: the sweetheart deals for personal protective equipment worth about P9 billion awarded by the previous administration to Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp., a newly established firm with a paid-up capital of only P625,000.

When the draft report was finalized by the Blue Ribbon, however, only nine senators signed it. A majority of 11 refused, with several explaining that they disagreed with the recommendation to include then president Rodrigo Duterte among those who should be held liable after his term is over.

The Pharmally mess is in limbo, and the Senate in the current 19th Congress does not seem to have any appetite to revive the inquiry.

What the current Blue Ribbon panel has wrapped up, meanwhile, is its probe of allegations that laptops purchased in 2021 by the Department of Education through the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management or PS-DBM were “outdated” and overpriced by at least P979 million. The laptops were needed for the hybrid learning mode implemented by DepEd throughout the COVID lockdowns.

This time, 12 senators including the Blue Ribbon chairman and the two minority senators have signed the 197-page committee report, which recommended the filing of administrative and criminal charges for graft, perjury and falsification of public documents against former officials of DepEd and PS-DBM.

Recommended for criminal indictment were former DepEd officials Alain del Pascua, Annalyn Sevilla, Salvador Malana III, Alec Ladanga and Abram Y.C. Abanil; former DBM-PS officers-in-charge Lloyd Christopher Lao and Jasonmer Uayan; members of the Bids and Awards committee from both DepEd and PS-DBM led by Ulysses Mora as well as engineer Marwan Amil.

The Blue Ribbon excluded former DepEd secretary Leonor Briones from those recommended for indictment, noting that based on evidence, she had simply been “used” and unwittingly made to approve the parameters that paved the way for the laptop procurement.

In a 2021 annual audit report, the Commission on Audit had flagged the DepEd for the purchase of laptops that were more expensive than those indicated in its budget. This was partly blamed for the failure of 28,000 public school teachers to have laptops for hybrid education during the COVID lockdowns. The Blue Ribbon recommended that the COA disallow the disbursement of the P979-million overprice for the laptops.

With 12 senators signing the Blue Ribbon report so far, perhaps this probe will see the needed legal follow-through. The nation awaits similar progress in the probe of the Pharmally mess.