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Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Malilong: There’s more than meets the eye in vans’ loss
By Frank Malilong, Jr.
The Other Side
It doesn’t take genius to recognize the dire implications of the disappearance of two container vans from the Cebu International Port last week. This is the second time as far as I can recall that seized goods were sprung out of customs’ custody in spectacular fashion, the first one being that vessel, mv Great Faith, which sailed out to sea while supposedly being guarded by customs personnel one December not very long ago.
Quantity-wise, the two vans pale in comparison to the vessel but their disappearance is no less hurting to their custodian’s image than the first. In fact, the second incident should rankle for the perpetrators’ sheer audacity. They made the customs people, who were supposed to have learned their lesson from the Great Faith escape, look totally inept. District Collector Billy Bibit has every reason to seethe with anger.
Incidentally, whatever happened to the investigation on the vessel’s escape? Has anyone been criminally charged and convicted? Or has the case gone the way of other similar cases: gathering dust on some bureaucrat’s desk? I hope not. The perpetrators should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Otherwise, thieves, robbers, smugglers and conniving arrastre and customs men will be bolder as ever, knowing that when they get caught, all that they would get is a slap on the wrist.
Hopefully, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) will not allow that. Sen. Robert Barbers, whose name has been dragged into the scandal by a text message identifying him as the patron of three people allegedly involved in the disappearance of the vans, has been reported as telling the NBI to go deeper and hit the culprits hard. Indeed, there is more than meets the eye in the loss of the vans. Let’s hope that the investigators are equal to the task.
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Sen. Sergio Osmena III has urged Victoria Toh, the First Gentleman’s accountant, to come home. What for? To join the Senate’s fishing expedition?
Osmeña should not take it against Toh for choosing to stay out of the country. Even her accuser, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, is still abroad, choosing to leave at a time when the Senate was conducting an investigation on the charges that he leveled against Jose Miguel Arroyo.
And what are the charges against Toh that Osmeña wants her so badly to come home to and explain? Erstwhile Lacson star witness Udong Mahusay’s claim that Toh and Mike Arroyo had a romantic liaison? Tales of illicit relationships are salacious stuff but they are not worth the Senate’s while.
Osmeña said Toh should not hope for the controversy to die down and for the senators to forget all about it before she returns. I agree that the controversy will probably never die down but I do not see any urgent reason for Toh to come home.
As to confronting her accuser and facing the music, the venue is not the Senate investigation but the courts in an appropriate case or cases. The Senate cannot convict her or clear her name. It cannot award damages for the damages that she sustained, granting that she suffered any. Only the courts can. If Toh does come home to clear her name, she will have to come to court and not to the Senate.
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I do not recall if there was ever any time when the Comelec in Cebu City had a comfortable home. But I am glad that Vice Mayor Mike Rama has finally discovered what we have known for a long time. I‘m sure Mike can do something to spare the Comelec workers and the public who transact business with them the hellish conditions under which they have toiled all these years.
(September 16, 2003 issue)
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