Of traffic and GAA

The rabid critics of former President Rodrigo R. Duterte, who is running for mayor of Davao City, went deliriously gaga when a virtually unknown Tom Tom Traffic Index outfit reported that Davao City had the worst traffic congestion in the Philippines and the 8th in the world. To prove its contention its report was accompanied by a picture.

Whether one is from Metro Manila or Davao City and has stayed in either of the two places for several days, the traffic situation in Metro Manila is more hellish which makes Davao City seem like a paradise for motorists and commuters.

With reference to the picture attached to the report, there was no mistaking that it was taken on the Makati side of the Guadalupe Bridge that connects to Mandaluyong City. The elevated Metro Railway Transit was very visible and so were the advertising billboards on the Mandaluyong side.

Fakery by Tom Tom Traffic Index could be considered one of the products of its gross incompetence and, perhaps given the election period, a paid report to benefit its clients.

In Davao City, black propagandists out to diminish the popularity of Duterte are having a fiesta on the fake report. Their patron who looked like Karlo Nograles never bothered to correct them.

Duterte, on the other hand, didn’t bother answering them because even the ordinary man on the street knows the commentary is a brazen lie. Besides, in a recent survey conducted by Phildata Trends from 3 to 10 January, Duterte enjoys a 76.5-percent preference against rival Karlo Nograles for mayor of Davao City.

Instead, former president Duterte delved into the controversial bicameral budget report and pointed out the scandalous irregularities in the document which had several blank spaces where amounts should have been indicated.

What makes this actionable in court is the fact that the bicam budget report with all those blanks pointed out by Duterte was signed by members of the two chambers of Congress.

Duterte was questioning only the bicam budget report.

However, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. himself quickly denied any anomaly and made the public believe the General Appropriations Act and the blanks in the signed bicam budget report were in fact filled.

PBBM appeared so confident and laughingly branded Duterte a liar. That remark will, for certain, escalate and place Marcos in a dilemma.

People in the know are now asking who filled in the blanks after the bicam approved and signed the report. Was it someone from the Office of the President? If so, what business did the executive branch have tinkering with the bicam report?

Come to think of it, while Duterte exposed and assailed the irregularity, he was actually allowing the bicameral conference committee to correct its report.

The kneejerk reaction of President Marcos and ES Bersamin, however, put them in a crunch.