|
Friday, May 13, 2005
Sienes: Jueteng strikes twice
By Cris G. Sienes
Different Strokes
"If both the whistleblower and the bishop won't surface and back up their allegations, people will have good grounds to suspect that the jueteng issue being hurled at the administration is mere hogwash."
IF LIGHTNING strikes twice, so does jueteng. Jueteng, remember, became a top issue against former president Joseph Estrada and his ill-starred administration. Jueteng, in fact, was one of several controversial issues that brought down the Estrada administration. Even now the former president is facing charges for allegedly taking bribe money from jueteng lords.
But right now the former president must be secretly grinning like the fabled Cheshire cat. For just as the issue on jueteng was brought to bear upon him and his administration, so also it has again been resurrected and directed at the present administration, like a surface-to-air missile.
The issue surfaced when a still unidentified whistleblower detonated an expose that, like an Abu Sayyaf-planted bomb, shook the nation like a magnitude 9 earthquake. The expose sketched the alleged unholy alliance between jueteng lords and some very influential people close to Malacañang hiding under the code names M1, M2 and JS7. No less than a bishop has reportedly confirmed that the code names M1, M2 and JS7 appear in the jueteng payola list.
To the credit of the present administration, it has no shrugged off the expose as another tale of the tub. It has, in fact, challenged the whistleblower and the bishop to come out in the open, testify, and name names. Which is as it should be.
If both the whistleblower and the bishop won't surface and back up their allegations, people will have good grounds to suspect that the jueteng issue being hurled at the administration is mere hogwash. At best it is a neatly designed whisper campaign, a demolition job intended to discredit the administration and soften it up for a coming knockout blow.
It is basic under our laws for the accused to face their accusers. For this reason, the whistleblower and the bishop, if only for the sake of truth, must come out openly, face the people that they have accused, and present hard and irrefutable evidence to back up their accusations. If otherwise, their accusations are not worth a plugged ten-centavo coin.
To reiterate, there are always two - sometimes even three--sides to an issue: the side of the accusers, the side of the accused and the truth. The accusers have hurled their accusations. The accused have challenged them to come out in the open, testify and name names, and back up their accusations with hard evidence. So what's delaying the whistleblower and the bishop from coming out, if there is truth to their accusations? The people want no less than the truth.
So either they put up or they shut up. And while we're at it, if millions, perhaps even billions, can be held from jueteng lords for the asking, maybe there's no need to impose the 12 percent VAT and the other tax reform measures. All that is needed is to legalize jueteng. Once this is done, the government coffers will be filled to overflowing.
Legalizing jueteng will not make a whale of a difference as far as morality is concerned. Ours is already a nation of gamblers. Casinos, lotto, cockfights, suertres, four digits, six digits, tong-its--name it and we have it. Even little boys, no thanks to the example set by their gambling elders, also gamble using damangs (little spiders) as fighting cocks.
Morality, anyway, appears to be missing in the government service. If a shade of it appears to exist, it's probably only for show or for deceiving the citizenry. Our own experience in the government service convinced us that if a government employee does not swallow his/her principles and moral values, he/she will never go places in the service. Worse, if he/she stands up to dishonesty and other forms of irregularity in office, he/she will be ostracized and treated like a moral pariah.
Wonders, it has been said, never cease. But so do corruption, womanizing, dagdag-bawas, nepotism, favoritism, sipsipism and all the rest of the negative isms in government. They have become inseparable adjuncts of the busy day-to-day existence of unscrupulous government people. Small wonder the country is in a rut and faces a serious fiscal crisis. Pity Juan de la Cruz. His future and the future of his children remains dim and foreboding.
Point to ponder: "The courage of life is often less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less than a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy and tragedy. A man does what he must--in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures--and that is the basis of all human morality." (John F. Kennedy: Profiles in Courage, 1955)
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (May 13, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
