Split social perceptions over grand money heist

Split social perceptions over grand money heist | Daily Tribune

Against the historical backdrop of no less than a Senate President along with two fellow senators being charged with plunder, only to later be acquitted in the pork barrel scam, history might repeat itself in the present “flood control corruption” case.

Accusing fingers have been pointed at Senators Chiz Escudero, Joel Villanueva, and former Senator Grace Poe, as likely having dipped their hands in the cookie jar, so to speak. Perhaps, at the proper time barring any likely opposition, the probe by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee may shift to high gear to find the proponents of the unconscionable insertions in so-called bicameral conference.

It will be a great intellectual and moral challenge for the neophyte Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, dubbed “senador ng bayan,” to succeed in this herculean job. It’s therefore providential for someone perceived to champion noble causes to be the one to hold even high politicians to account for malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, or what the President referred to as economic sabotage.

At the rate the parallel investigations of the Senate and the House have proceeded, there are two split social perceptions over this grand money heist. Insofar as the public is concerned, no amount of sheer denial, self-serving narrative, or subterfuge could erase their belief as to the real actors, players, operatives, as well as maybe the real masterminds of this fiscal fiasco.

It is not unlikely that this kind of epic crime has its principal authors, more so co-authors, high up the pecking order. On the other hand, insofar as the congressional probes are concerned, on the strength of their respective oversight functions, everything is left for the two chambers to approach the legislative inquiries in accordance with their parochial objectives, as this seems to be the very complexion of the entire process.

There is greater hope the Senate will accomplish this congressional feat consistent with our collective conscience as a people. If Marcoleta fails, a brewing constitutional crisis is just around the bend that might mimic, however sadly, what transpired in a neighboring state, may God forbid.

Given these diametrically opposed perceptions, it might be ill-advised to replicate the Sri Lankan “Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption” since the ongoing congressional probes have already gained traction; neither has digressed from their moral, legal, intellectual trajectories.

For another, a rather “artificially” created office or government instrumentality to be vested with all sorts of authority might become symptomatic of a sheer overlap, duplication, redundancy, or luminous conflicts the commission would be hard put to resolve.

The paramount oversight function of Congress that is constitutionally reposed upon it cannot be overcome, much less overtaken, by a likely inferior issuance of an executive order that clearly arose out of mere expediency.

In other words, this rather transient pivot concocted to be the “silver bullet” may lead to a case of the cure being worse than the disease. There ought to be a more common belief that both the Senate and the House must proceed without interference for the sake of transparency and accountability as their paramount and primordial roles cannot just be set aside.

If no less than the Senate President has been heard to have said that the crime and the criminal must go together, or not one without the other, this might obliquely come as a self-fulfilling prophecy for those who may be identified as involved in this grand fiasco — which only those in the inner sanctums of the Senate and the House can make happen.

Finding the proponents of the projects should be easy, if and only if, a few good men will follow the “paper trail.”