"NAULAWAN ako." I was embarrassed. Thus reacted Vice Mayor Vicente Emano to the (anticipated) failure of Scantel to finish the mothballed Telepono sa Barangay project.
Well, he must be, if he is indeed mortified by it. The P49 million project, initiated during his scandal-ridden administration, had all the recipe of doom. It was designed to fail-as if the project's sole intention was to let crooks feast from the P31 million already released from the city's coffers, even in the absence of commensurate accomplishments from the contractor.
Emano, who was then mayor when the project started in 2003, had it all coming even long before. Unless he doesn't know how to read, the Commission on Audit has released voluminous of audit reports even when the project was on its nascent stages.
But Emano knows how to read, and he did read the writing on the wall but chose to be arrogantly ambivalent about it because as he would repeatedly put it: "Mga akusasyon kana sa mga kontra ko sa pulitika."
It was not the Opposition that said the project lacked technical requirements and therefore must be stalled first for compliance. The state auditors did. It was not Emano's political enemies who said that his appointed contractor, Scantel, lacked the technical expertise to set up the ambitious phone project. The Security and Exchange Commission and the National Telecommunications Commission did.
Now Emano is blaming his erstwhile underlings - who, by the way, still enjoy the high, comfy seats at the City Hall to these days-for the scam. Like the quintessential Pontius Pilate, he is washing his hands over the Scantel mess instead of declaring the more acceptable mea culpa.
Of course Emano is to blame for everything-in every sense of the word-in this blatant waste of public funds (a deliberate wastage, that is, as opposed to loss by act of nature). The project had his imprimatur from the beginning. He can't say that he signed the P31.
Scanning the news pages way back in 2003, when the project was still being rammed down the throats of the impoverished masses that needed more food than wireless telephones, Emano was quoted extolling his brainchild and even exaggerated to the point that the botched telephone project may eventually compete with Misortel.
What? The lunacy of the project can only compete with the delusional tendencies of the kleptocrats who initiated it!
The bungled rural telephone system can't even compete with a pool of hand-held, portable walkie-talkies. It never worked and was not put into productive use-if indeed telephones can cure poverty in the hinterlands-by the intended beneficiaries. It is utterly useless, and no amount of denial can hide the truth that taxpayers have been ripped off of their hard-earned money. Emano should stop adding salt to the wound by passing the buck to others. The buck stopped in his hands.
