Zaldy Co and his Damascus

Zaldy Co and his Damascus | Daily Tribune

Let’s face it. The Executive and the Legislative branches are damaged institutions. The leadership and functionaries have completely lost whatever was left of their credibility following ex-Rep. Zaldy Co’s revelations which, in more lurid detail, reaffirmed what Marine Sgt. Orly Guteza had revealed before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee.

Co is not just an ordinary witness whom the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and the Independent Commission for Infrastructures had summoned. He was an insider, a member of the triumvirate that conspired and engineered the inclusion of P100 billion of the people’s taxes in the national budget the moment it reached the bicameral conference committee.

It’s not some ballpark figure. Congressman Co bared the details of the list of supposed projects contained in a brown leather bag, which purportedly came from Malacañang and was passed on to him as the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

Of the amount, P25 billion was to be purloined and stashed in several pieces of luggage, then delivered to the house of then speaker Martin Romualdez in Forbes Park and to Malacañang.

While Blue Ribbon Committee Chairman Ping Lacson dismissed Co’s exposé as mere empty talk, the long list of projects and the photographs of so many pieces of luggage said to contain billions in kickbacks spoke volumes. Lacson’s prejudgment diminished his own credibility.

The Palace spokespersons attempted to discredit Zaldy Co, who was not long ago their most trusted man for handling shady deals. They appointed him Appropriations Committee chairman and the point person in the “small committee” which decided what Vice President Sara Duterte had warned the public about all along.

They tried to fool the people by claiming that the kickbacks did not match the dates of the ghost or substandard project completions. They forgot that in earlier probes, it was revealed that kickbacks were released once the projects were entered into the list or were advanced right after the awards were made.

The people are tired of shenanigans. Thousands took to the streets and to the usual protest venues. Some Marcos and Romualdez apologists and propagandists posing as analysts tried to waylay the public, saying the beneficiary of the protests was VP Sara. The attempt, moreover, is irrelevant.

It was not Duterte who divulged where the epicenter of corruption emanated from. It was Zaldy Co, the Appropriations Committee chairman, the action man of the triumvirate, the man who fears he might be assassinated.

Who knows? Maybe Co had his Damascus on his way to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and he is now trying to redeem himself, his family, and maybe our benighted native land from the stranglehold of the corrupt.

Yes, Malacañang has started to crumble. Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, his grandnephew Undersecretary Adrian Bersamin, and DBM Secretary Amenah Pangandaman have resigned.

And Senator Imee had called on her brother to stop and have himself rehabilitated from the debilitating effects of drugs.

She pleads with him to come home with her.