Wednesday, April 23, 2008 Nalzaro: Only the small fries By Bobby Nalzaro Saksi
AFTER more than a year of waiting, the Ombudsman has come up with recommendations on the overpricing of the decorative lampposts used in the Asean summit held here January of last year.
But while I appreciate the probe, I am somewhat dismayed by the result. It looks like only the small fries were recommended for dismissal from service and the filing of criminal charges.
I don't think some Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) 7 officials were the only ones involved in the anomaly. Transactions of this magnitude usually involve top ranking officials of the department.
I was told those in the central office even poke their fingers into small projects. How much more multi-million peso transactions like the lampposts purchase?
Do you think they were ignorant of what hap-pened here during the Asean summit? Whose idea was it to install the lampposts?
Note that Cabinet secretaries whose departments participated in the Asean summit were here to supervise the preparations. I even suspect some people close to Malacañang benefited from it and that part of the money was used to finance the candidacy of some politicians in last year's elections.
The masterminds could be DPWH officials who connived with some local officials and their engineers. Why? Because the budget was from DPWH and the agency prepared the program of works and estimates (Powe). Local officials and their engineers were merely told to sign the Powe.
In fact, DPWH was the one that negotiated with suppliers without conducting bidding. Local officials were merely in cahoots with DPWH officials.
But we should not rejoice yet because there is still a long way to go in this process. And we know how our justice system works. The accused can hire the best lawyers to defend them.
While we consider this a partial victory in our fight against graft and corruption, we also find it unfortunate that government can no longer recover the millions of pesos lost in the transaction. The decorative lampposts, meanwhile, are no longer in use.
My blood pressure thus shoots up every time I pass areas where the decorative lampposts are installed. The project was total waste of government funds. Those involved should therefore be placed before a firing squad.
