Tuesday, February 19, 2008 Ledesma: Searching for change By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
I BELIEVE in the penitent Jun Lozada except that kidnapping chapter of saga. No matter what the administration does now to prove that the ZTE-NBN deal is above board is water under the bridge.
The more they attempt to prove that the negotiation is above board the more their stand becomes absurd.
It is useless for the government to run those expensive advertisements obviously aimed at convincing the public that there was no overprice in the deal.
The expanded plan to justify the $329-million national broadband network came too late and it only brings the administration deeper into the sinkhole.
Now that the Ombudsman has moved to investigate and prosecute, it is best that the graft court follow through with what the Senate had started. Unless the Senate wants to be the Ombudsman for the rest of the years in this decade. I am sure that the opposition is into economic investigation. Yesterday we have the alleged kidnapping or abduction of Jlo, tomorrow they will try who are involved in corruption behind the NBN contract and other shady collateral negotiations.
They have yet to see what is and who are involved in the CyberEd project which costs almost double the original estimate of NBN. We will have a new set of dramatis personae. Will there be a different Ben Abalos? By the looks of it CyberEd is not as intensive as NBN but the cost is more staggering.
What surprises me is that the Senate is quiet about CyberEd. I suspect that they will dig into the carcass of this negotiation once the NBN contract had been fully exploited in aid of let's face it 'election and 'oh well -legislation.
Last Sunday, the principal players of the NBN caper heard mass in La Salle. I think that only Jun Lozada who had publicly confessed his sins is at peace with the Lord. The rest have not confessed their own sins of commissions and omissions and therefore they are not any different from those who are accused. It's a sad Sunday as the church is desecrated by pretenders who are not any better than those accused by Lozada.
What is our way out here? We have the Lower House where a power grab was staged because the leadership cannot stop his son in testifying against a botched shady deal. We have a senate, which cannot stop the probe because some senators needed it to launch an assault into the 2010 political arena. And then we have an Executive Department, which cannot act on corruption even as these have become so apparent and denigrating.
Is it possible that all three be done away with and just leave the judiciary to rule and govern? The High Court it seems still enjoys a lot of credibility. It is our last stand. And then maybe it can call for the change of our constitution, one that is federal in form, in the hope that the iniquities be stopped. I wish for example Mindanao could be shielded from the grafters of Metro Manila. I wish that on our own we, Mindanaons, can address our problems promptly. We want to chart our own destiny. Things had been so bad even President Marcos is becoming so good by comparison.
