Roperos: Lamppost tale

Thursday, January 26, 2012

I GOT another heckling call from my media friend in Manila early yesterday. He said that in my lamppost piece last Tuesday, I was just skimming the surface like a true blue Cebuano and only wanted to move on by letting the dead bury their dead.” I told him that he was acting, too, like a true blue meddler, wanting problems to generate more problems.

He said that I should read the comments of columnists in Manila dailies if only to appreciate the significance of the lamppost scandal in the overall national political condition when graft and corruption has become a focus of the government.

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Why don’t I just let the story unfold as it did from 2007 to January 2012, he said, and let those who do not read Manila dailies for economic reason, also know the lamppost story?

Anyway, columnist Conrado Banal of the Philippine Daily Inquirer wrote the other Monday that, “for signing a piece of paper, a number of local officials in Cebu are facing arraignment before the Sandiganbayan…They include former local officials in two cities in Cebu--Mandaue and Lapulapu—-who were already indicted for graft, accused of overpricing…”

“The installation was an apparent attempt at beautification of those two cities by the cute administration of Glorietta in time for the Asean conference there in 2007…Cebu had nothing to do with the bidding for the contract for the project. From what I gathered, everything was done at the main office of the DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways), at that time headed by former Public Works and Highway Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane.

But Banal said that, for whatever reason, only the Ombudsman could say if no top DPWH official of the bidding committee was included in the lamppost scandal that is now being looked into by probers.

And since we are in it, hearken to what my friend Neal Cruz, writing in his column in the Inquirer of January 12 pointed out. He said that the “Cebu government did not pay for the project. In fact, because of the uproar, the contractor has not been paid until now. The sole participation of the local government was as project beneficiary and the party that prepared the Program of Work and Estimates (POWE) for budget allocation…

“Since day one, the local officials insisted that they did not directly participate in whatever contracts the DPWH entered into for the installation of the lampposts. The Ombudsman nevertheless filed graft charges against them but not against officials of the DPWH then headed by secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. The investigation was started during the time of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez. Gutierrez and Ebdane were favorites of former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.”

Amen, my political Lord.