Sunday, March 25, 2007 Malilong: Ouano’s defense By Frank Malilong The Other Side
THADEO Ouano’s publicist should apply a little more creativity in his defense of his client. No, he doesn’t have to be as colorful or as forceful as when the Mandaue City mayor threatened to uproot one of the controversial lampposts and hit Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña with it.
But he should do better than raise the hackneyed line that the case against Ouano is “pure and simple political harassment.”
The claim is so worn-out, it strains the imagination.
In the first place, the complainant, Crisologo Saavedra, is not a politician but a businessman. They can call him a sourpuss, who filed the complaint because he lost the contract to supply the lampposts, but how can that be political?
Secondly, Visayas Ombudsman Virginia Palanca-Santiago is not the type who will allow herself or her office to be used to harass anyone. The mayor is a key administration ally and it is suicidal for her to consent to doing anything foolish against him. In fact, she may be kissing goodbye her chances of securing a permanent appointment to the position of deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas if she approves the recommendation of her investigators.
Santiago was quoted in yesterday’s papers as saying that she is inclined to do just that, meaning elevate Saavedra’s complaint from a fact-finding inquiry into a criminal and administrative investigation, and possibly, preventively suspend the respondents, including Ouano. The message is that she’d rather lose promotion than her principles. That’s vintage Virgie.
My unsolicited advice is that instead of crying political harassment, Ouano should pursue the defense that he and his fellow Mandaue city officials had no hand in the funding, bidding and implementation of the lamppost project. Never mind if his critics would say that he is doing a Pontius Pilate. Anyway, this is the season of Lent.
If, in spite of the fact that the program of works and estimates was prepared by his people, Ouano succeeds in convincing the anti-graft investigators that he had nothing to do with the lampposts other than allowing their installation in Mandaue city property, he is relieved of the burden of establishing that the project was above-board. That load will have to be shared by the Department of Public Works and Highways and the private contractors.
Incidentally, I received a call the other day from a friend, who said that one of the suppliers, Fabmik Construction and Equipment Corp., is an old hand in the industry.
He said that the people who own Fabmik are the same ones who run a company called Isometrics, which does business with the National Power Corp. (NPC). The company won a number of contracts with NPC, many of them involving huge amounts, according to my source.
There is a principle in law that says that evidence that one did or failed to do one thing at one time is not admissible to prove that he did or failed to do the same thing at another time. But if--–and only if--–the Ombudsman eventually establishes that something irregular took place in the purchase of the lampposts, perhaps, it would not be a bad idea to look into the other contracts as well.
