Tuesday, January 30, 2007 Editorials: Gimmickry and honest intention
IN an election season, people need to distinguish political gimmickry from honest intention, like in the filing of complaints with the Ombudsman or the prosecutor’s office.
A “concerned citizen,” in the presence of businessman Jonathan Guardo and assisted by lawyer Salvador Solima, filed yesterday a complaint against Rep. Antonio Cuenco for the supposed purchase of multicabs.
Guardo has announced his intention to run for Congress in Cebu City’s south district against Cuenco, while Solima may run for city councilor under Team Guardo.
That’s where people should look closely at motivation.
Goal
Intention can be gleaned, say, from the timing of the filing of the complaint.
While Solima said they have proof showing otherwise, Cuenco has insisted that the transaction has not been consummated, meaning no money has flowed out of the public coffers, and that the purchase will still be up for bidding.
But while Cuenco laughed off the complaint and his supporters questioned the competence of Guardo’s legal advisers, they could not also brush off political strategy: it was not about winning a case but about popularizing an issue against a rival candidate.
Noise
This does not mean nothing positive has come out of Guardo’s gambit.
While Cuenco may now be using the supposed non-consummation of the transaction in his defense, he could not also easily downplay the suspicions that hounded the project even before Guardo made it a political issue.
Questions involving, for example, the price of the multicab units, the advanced distribution by a supplier of the vehicles to the barangays even before a bidding can be held, and the manner of choosing beneficiaries (Cuenco allegedly chose only his political supporters as beneficiaries) have been asked.
One wonders then what would have happened without Guardo’s noise.
Objectivity
Which brings us to another problem — the loss in the bite of legitimate concerns raised during an election season.
Cuenco can be cavalier in reacting to the multicab complaint because of the tendency of people to get lost in talks about political motivation instead of substance.
The key, then, in distinguishing gimmickry from honest intention is to refuse to be sucked into the rhetoric of both sides and to sift through the evidence presented.
