So much for delicadeza

WITH delicadeza just so easily dispensed with, the fourth impeachment complaint against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was junked last week and goes to a plenary vote this Tuesday. But it is unlikely that enough votes will be garnered to overturn the House of Representatives justice committee’s ruling declaring the impeachment complaint void for being insufficient in substance.

For one, there is no indication that the rest of the House will be seized by a belated sense of propriety, if not decency, in much the same way that pro-administration members of the justice committee apparently were not.

Based on the Commission on Audit (COA) report, 14 of the 42 members of the committee were among those listed as actual recipients of fertilizer funds — ranging from P3 million to P5 million — from the anomalous Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) program of the Department of Agriculture in 2004.

Six other committee members took over family members who, at the time of the fund releases, were the sitting representatives of their districts. Only the relatives of two committee members, however, received funds of P3 million each. (see tables)

Source: COA

Understandably, minority congressmen tried, albeit in vain, to have their colleagues in the majority disqualified, or at the very least inhibit themselves, from voting on the issue of sufficiency in substance of the impeachment complaint, which alleged, among others, the diversion of P728 million in fertilizer funds to Arroyo allies — 103 congressmen, 49 governors, and 26 city and municipal mayors — during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Source: COA

The Senate investigation in 2005 found former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn ‘Joc-Joc’ Bolante, a close confidante of First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, to have masterminded the fertilizer funds scam. On the same day the Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) for the P728 million in fertilizer funds was released by the budget department, Bolante wrote to various congressmen and local officials to inform them of the availability of funds under the GMA Program.

In its final report on the said funds, the COA likewise noted irregularities, particularly in the circuitous route of the fund releases from the DA central office to the regional offices, and their subsequent transfer to local government units and nongovernmental organizations that resulted in the funds not being fully accounted for even to this day. Some of the NGOs identified by congressmen, governors and mayors as beenficiaries were found to be of dubious legitimacy.

The COA also found out that the fertilizers were grossly overpriced, were purchased from questionable suppliers without public bidding, and did not even reach their intended beneficiaries in at least three regions. The type of fertilizer bought, foliar, was not even among those recommended under the government’s “Tipid Abono” program.

None of these mattered to committee chair Rep. Matias Defensor, whose daughter Maite (then Quezon City 3rd district representative) was in the original list of allocatees appended to the fertilizer funds’ SARO. Denying the minority’s motion, Defensor argued that the committee has no jurisdiction to disqualify any of its members, insisting as well that inhibition should be a voluntary act.

That settled, the plenary voting on the impeachment complaint will therefore be not much different.

Still, it would be worth watching how 60 more administration congressmen, who are linked one way or another to the fertilizer funds scam, would vote. Thirty-six of them were recipients of the said funds, including the current House Speaker, Prospero Nograles, who was reported to have gotten P3 million. Of this number, seven were fund recipients when they were provincial governors.

Seventeen more are relatives — parents, wives, siblings, sons, etc. — of those who received the funds in 2004. (see tables)

At least two incumbent Lakas-CMD lawmakers, Bacolod City Rep. Monico Puentevella and Judy Syjuco of Iloilo’s second district, were linked to NGO beneficiaries — MOP Development Foundation and Tawo Kag Duta sa Kauswagan Foundation.

Curiously, MOP Development Foundation shares the Bacolod City congressman’s initials. His wife, Josefa, was also listed as one of its incorporators. Syjuco and her husband, Augusto, her predecessor in the 12th Congress, were also listed as incorporators of the Tawo Kag Duta sa Kauswagan Foundation.

Seven other congressmen also had their names or those of their relatives whom they succeeded in the list of allocatees, though the COA reported no actual fund releases to them.

Alas, to our representatives, delicadeza, like honesty, as Billy Joel sang, is such a lonely word.

Source: COA

Source: COA

Source: COA