Saturday, November 15, 2008 Editorials: Bottom to top investigation
THERE should be reasons why the such hyped appearance of former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante before the Senate blue ribbon committee last Wednesday turned out to be a dud.
If the senators hoped Bolante would do a Jun Lozada, they were wrong because the former succeeded instead in evading the senators most difficult questions, insults and insinuations notwithstanding, on the P728 million fertilizer fund mess.
The more Joc-joc was grilled, the more it became obvious that the senators had nothing in their guns but blanks and that the Senate, and even the House of Representatives, may not be the right forum to get to the bottom of the mess.
Local level
While Bolante, with his evasive and vague answers, did succeed in making more people feel that irregularities did hound the implementation of the project in 2004, the extent of the scam and the people involved in it remain unanswered.
What got lost in the process was that while there is not much proof as of now to directly pin Joc-joc to the anomaly, there is evidence to be had in some congressional districts and local government units to pursue the probe on the fertilizer fund issue.
The anomaly---the manner it was done and some of the people and organizations involved---can be viewed more clearly in the areas where the money was coursed through, and one can partly credit that to the Commission on Audit.
Prosecution
The problem seems to be that senators were more enamored with Bolante and their power to mount public hearings than pressuring those concerned, like the anti-graft office, to pursue the probe starting at the local level where evidence are available.
What happened, for example, to the reported purchases of overpriced liquid fertilizer coursed through some of the congressional districts in Cebu in 2004?
The local media reported extensively about it but no one seems to bother to proceed from there with the end in view of getting to the bottom of the irregularity.
What happened here may just be the tip of the iceberg called the fertilizer fund anomaly, but just finding the tip means prosecutors can already proceed from there and pinpoint where the main mass of the iceberg is, identify its form and how huge it is.
