The newspapers on Sunday morning all had headlines on De la Paz taking the fall for his peers and mistahs in the PNP top brass, not to mention the real big fishes in Malacañang, in Saturday’s Senate hearing on the “Euro Generals.” Some of my friends and colleagues in the citizens’ movements kept sounding me off on the infuriating performance of De la Paz, including his inane admission that he doesn’t know the Anti-Money Laundering Act’s prohibitions on transiting huge amounts of cash. I had to feel sorry that I didn’t watch the proceedings at all, since I found those Senate hearings as a useless grandstanding that results in nothing. Now, if somebody there had instead called for revolution outright and started rallying the nation, I’d drop everything and rush over to join.
No one should be surprised of De la Paz’ actions anymore. There is, after all, a much richer reward for protecting his fellow rogues and masters than for him to spill the beans. I know of no willing scapegoat for Arroyo and her cabinet crooks who has paid a price for keeping silent or for running rings around investigations that are ferreting out the truth.
Take Garci for example. Most Filipinos know that this fellow has already tons of money for his “election services” in subverting the people’s will, yet he has not been punished one bit. Even the generals Garci worked with have all been promoted to lucrative civilian posts. Meanwhile, the other Garci, Gen. Carlos Garcia, is behind bars but has already been acquitted of several charges, and his family is still rich beyond imagination.
As for some of the senators grilling De la Paz, they have known the corruption in the regime and in the PNP all along but never did anything to stop them. Take Miriam Defensor Santiago who proudly admits to being Gloria’s supporter nowadays. She, of course, knows that Gloria is allied to one of the worst corruptors of the PNP -- the jueteng lords. But why is she dead silent about it?
Fundamentally, even when there’s a law against illegal gambling, of which jueteng is undoubtedly the biggest, nothing has really been done to end this scourge that rots every fiber of the PNP’s character as an institution. A hundred thousand policemen know their superiors are all raking it in from the jueteng loot. Add to this the hundreds of millions from PNP logistics, and all these amount to much, much more than the euro generals’ stash. So again, why have the senators chosen to pound on a relatively minor issue?
I haven’t really bothered with the Senate hearings even on Joc-Joc Bolante. From the very start, I already anticipated the Arroyo regime’s strategy in this case. While the supposed principal, Cito Lorenzo, is out of reach, all culpability for the gross anomalies in the “fertilizer scam” can be dumped on him, thanks to his absence. Unluckily for us, Lorenzo wasn’t the one who got caught with US entry transgressions. If he had been forced back sooner, we could have more easily gotten to the very core of the crime. For now, Joc-Joc has been showered with VIP treatment at St. Luke’s, complete with a suite reserved by Cerge Remonde, according to Malacañang sources, plus, a plush new manse in Alabang to replace his old BF home.
But really, what else can we expect from lowlifes like De la Paz -- who probably doesn’t have much of a brain to begin with, given the fix that he is in, nor any moral fiber -- to know any better than to follow the common rule, that is, to follow the leader? From the top, the rule is: Be corrupt in order to survive and prosper.
To be honest and strive for what is just, right, and fair, one is ostracized from power or lands in jail -- like Gen. Danny Lim, Sen. Sonny Trillanes, the Bagong Katipuneros, and President Estrada, who was ousted by a conspiracy of the corrupt, and made to languish in confinement for six years and six months, before finally being smeared by a kangaroo court. Which reminds us of several Supreme Court (SC) justices who “convicted” Estrada and have religiously favored their patroness in critical cases such as the MoA-AD and “executive privilege” issues -- SC appointments as rewards for corrupted judges.
Thus, we need revolution in this country as much as the world needs one too. Imagine, the IMF and World Bank being envisioned by western countries in the G-20 to administer the “new world financial architecture,” in spite of their being among the major culprits of our current deepening crisis? The same is true in the
Gerald Calente, CEO of Trend Research Institute, who accurately predicted the 1987,
“…the growing gap better the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean… the world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transitional processes in their own class interest… The middle class could become a revolutionary class.”
Calente sees tax revolts amid food riots, job marches, and squatter rebellions in the US of A. So the world’s middle classes do need to revolt now, as they’re the only hope of restoring balance and sanity in the advancement of humanity in the 21st Century. Let’s start it in
(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.; Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.; Destiny Cable, Channel 3, Tuesday, 8:45 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., with our topic, “The Geothermal Imperative”; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
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