Mercado: Adrenaline bursts

Saturday, July 16, 2011

“ONE swallow does not make a summer,” the old proverb cautions. But when a somnolent Ombudsman suddenly uncorks a slew of overdue charges, you sit up.

“Cases lie there/ And they die there,” Philippine Human Development Report said of this agency. That’s a line from the 1950 pop song: “Mona Lisa.”

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Consider these cases (a) Lapu-Lapu City’s 480 price-padded computers; (b) Girl Scouts of Cebu rip-off: (c) suspension of Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) chairman; and (d) the rigged AFP comptroller plea bargains.

The anti-graft court suspended, for six months without pay, 18 Lapu-Lapu City officials linked to paying Kein Enterprises about P23.5 million for 470 computers, overpriced by 116 percent.

The computers flunked purchase order specifications, Ombudsman’s Portia Pacquiao-Suson wrote. Thirty computers were delivered to high schools in Caubian and Pangan. These two island barangays had no power when the deal sneaked through, an audit revealed.

The Ombudsman took six years to act on charges businessman Efrain Pelaez Jr. filed. Since he was reelected in 2007, former mayor Arturo Radaza beat the administrative aspect of the rap.

After a decade, Acting Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro lodged malversation charges against ex-Rep. Clavel Asas-Martinez of Bogo. She deposited in her personal account P11.5 million sliced from pork barrel intended for the Girl Scouts of the Philippines.

The Girl Scouts fund was siphoned through a Land Bank (Bogo Branch) manager’s check. That was payable to “Girl Scouts of the Philippines or Ma. Cielo A. Martinez.” By an accounting fluke, P1.5 million was erroneously released as part of the [pork barrel] of Martinez, when it was actually for Bayan Muna party. The P1.5 million was returned.

Martinez says the P10 million was refunded to government coffers in 2005. “It still does not discount the fact that public funds were embezzled…” the Ombudsman insisted.

The Ombudsman suspended for six months LWUA chairman Prospero Pichay for using P80 million of LWUA funds to snap up stocks in the troubled Express Savings Bank.

Although the bank was undergoing Bangko Sentral rehabilitation, Pichay got LWUA to plow another P400 million into the troubled bank.

He did so without Monetary Board review or approval by the President.

The Ombudsman implemented a 90-day suspension order imposed by the President on Special Prosecutor Wendell Sulit. Reason: the bungled plea bargaining entered into by former AFP comptroller, Maj. Gen. Carlos F. Garcia (ret).

Under the PBA, Garcia ducked a P303-million plunder case by agreeing to return P135 million worth of properties. He wangled bail too.

These bursts of adrenalin are welcome. See them in the context of the Ombusdman before the threat of impeachment forced Merceditas Gutierrez to step down.

Conviction rates slumped “dramatically to 14.4 percent by first semester of 2008,” Philippine Development Report noted. “Rates (dipped) to as low as 5 percent in March, then 3 percent in May. It was zero by June. Three months later, only 7 percent of the 349 cases brought forward by the Ombudsman resulted in jail terms.

That slide persisted into 2009. There has been parallel erosion in public perception of the Ombudsman’s sincerity.

"Is a great wind blowing"? Catherine the Great asked. “That gives you either imagination or a headache.”

(juanlmercado@gmail.com)