Category: senate

the anti-binay show

it’s interesting, no, intriguing, that we are seeing quite a parade of witnesses who worked with/for the veep back when he was makati mayor now testifying against him in the senate probe.  i wonder how much that’s costing whom.  what ex-deals, trade-offs, quid pro quos, are being transacted behind the scenes.  surely the binays are hurting, but is the veep going to blink and give up his 2016 run for the presidency?  hmm, sana, lalo na’t type pala niya i-chacha ang economic provisions ng constitution, and who knows what else, argh.   samantala, high na high naman ang tatlong senador na matatayog rin ang ambisyon, wheeee, nagbabaliktaran na!  i suppose they think this is winning them pogi points, i mean, votes for whatever whenever, but really it is also evoking reactions like, eh pare-pareho lang naman sila, nakakainis, nagmamalinis!  pro-chacha rin kaya?  i may not see it in my lifetime, but i’m hoping that when next the pinoy public is made to watch a spectacle like this ay tunay nang malinis at kapita-pitagan ang senadong naghuhusga.

national security concerns

while i try to come to terms with rigoberto tiglao’s story that the prez rushed the crafting (behind closed doors) and signing of the enhanced defense ek-ek just so obama would drop by while he was in the neighborhood and not snub the philippines again as he did when he visited indonesia not once but twice… yeah yeah because if he had snubbed us yet again, china would have been delirious with joy…

and while i try to understand where the prez is coming from, giving american troops access to practically any place they might desire to occupy/locate themselves, almost any place — i assume the palace is off limits? — in the archipelago, rural and urban, civilian and military,  with the americans retaining jurisdiction, criminal and whatever, over everyone and everything they bring in and do wherever… i don’t get it, why do the americans want, need, to be all over the place?  what’s the real agenda?  why all the secrecy?

and while i wonder if government knows something we citizens don’t know regarding our status as sovereign nation, as in, we’re not pala, sovereign, akala lang natin, and we citizens are the last to know?  could this be america’s and the aquino admin’s way of telling us without saying it in so many words?

and while i wonder if senator miriam’s promised senate probe would could make any difference, and if taking the question of constitutionality to the supreme court would only bring on another double negative, as in, not unconstitutional, lol, and whether american soldiers are regularly tested for HIV-AIDS and have unlimited supply of top-of-the-line leak-proof condoms to keep our women and children safe from sexually transmitted diseases…

and finally there’s napoles and the pdaf scam, and talk that enrile, estrada, and revilla will be arrested soon.  talaga?  meanwhile i’m intrigued by this mother’s day tweet by malou tiquia :

@maltiq One flew over d cuckoo’s nest n landed on a sanitized list 2 b revealed next week. JN n Cam lost their aces! Circus coming! #pdafblues 

is d cuckoo who i think it is?  but isn’t that what sandra cam was warning about, a sanitized list that would not tally with napoles’s?

and what about ping lacson claiming in a radio interview that the napoles list is explosive, it could bring the senate down, and that’s a national security concern, therefore it can only be revealed to the senators themselves in a secret session.  big mistake.  keeping that list secret from the public would create more of a national security concern.  for sure it would infuriate and galvanize million-people-march-ers to storm the streets in protest, demanding that the list be made public, stop coddling the accused, or else!

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What should the Senate do?  http://opinion.inquirer.net/74438/what-should-the-senate-do 
The normalization of corruption http://opinion.inquirer.net/74408/the-normalization-of-corruption 

nardong kupit

In our Amazing Stories, here’s the Story of Boy Pikap and Nardong Kupit:

Ibinunyag ni Nardong Kupit ang umano’y pagmamaniobra ng administrasyon sa impeachment trial ni dating Chief Justice Corona na kaya sya drinive ni Boy Pikap papuntang Malakanyang para hikayating bomoto na i impeach si Corona.

Nataranta si Boy Pikap na nagpahayag nang, “Dati kaming magkasama ni Nardong Kupit (sa) Senado kaya nang iparating niya na mayroon siyang gustong i-take-up sa Pangulo kasama ang Cityhood ng Bacoor at ang kanyang pagiging Pangulo ng Partido Lakas, gumawa ako ng paraan para magkausap sila,”. And sabi pa ni Boy Pikap, he personally drove the vehicle that carried Nardong Kupit, who wanted to meet Aquino.

NARDONG KUPIT ! putik, ang ganda! was my rave response to reyna elena’s status on facebook.  i wished i had thought it up myself.  so apropos a riposte to actor-senator bong revilla’s o.a. dramatics, professing his innocence, alleging persecution, giving what he must have thought was the greatest performance of his life.  I … AM NOT …. AFRAID !  i thought he was going to say: I … AM NOT … A PIG !  ay mali.

NARDONG KUPIT !  for the non-tagalogs: kupit is tagalog for filching, pilfering.  and an anagram of putik, i.e., mud.  nardong putik was a kabitenyo gangster who seemed to have nine lives, thanks allegedly to a powerful anting-anting (amulet), and who was successfully portrayed in the movies by no less than senator bong’s father, also an actor, and senator (1992-2004), ramon revilla sr. (yes, think dynasty).

NARDONG KUPIT !  it was quite a speech, actually.  the parts calling out the prez on festering issues and questioning his tuwid-na-daan again and again were spot-on, but, really, coming from bong revilla, i can only say, AS IF !  as if he were some exemplar of tuwid-na-daan!  if he were, and if he were truly innocent of pocketing much of his pork barrel funds, he should have used that privilege speech to convince us, prove, that none of his wealth is ill-gotten.

instead of showing us signatures a la jose velarde, i mean, a la joker arroyo, he could have shown us a record of his earnings from all the movies and commercials and tv shows he has ever starred in and/or produced.  instead of showing us a passport and airline records a la freddie webb, he could have shown us his bank records, and revealed the sources of any and all large deposits.

and, really, he shouldn’t have brought his wheelchaired dad to the senate.  alam tiyak ng mag-ama that the last time, the first time, something like that happened was back in 1991, and the wheelchaired one was the venerable lorenzo tanada, there to witness the historic occasion when his son wigberto voted along with senate president jovito salonga and 10 other valiant ones against the treaty that sought to extend the occupation of clark field and subic by US military forces.  i remember tearing up, sharing the old man tanada’s unabashed happiness after decades of struggle.

i felt no such sympathy for the aged ailing revilla whose struggles were for his own ever-growing family, never for country, or so it would seem.  there was no sharing his unabashed grief for a sullied name, if that, indeed is what he was so miserable about.  if anything, his presence only reminded of his many mistresses and some 72 children, and the question of his own unexplained wealth, not to speak of nardong putik, now kupit.

walang kamatayang pork barrel

so, we’ve been had, we who rejoiced when the supreme court declared the PDAF unconstitutional last november and thought we had heard, seen, the last of it.

Pork Barrel is very much alive and kicking! warns prof. ben diokno.  and, like Dracula, the pork barrel is alive, in another guise, bewails neal cruz.

as it turns out, only 15 of the 24 senators gave up their pork barrel.  9 senators — the cayetano sibs, the estrada-ejercito sibs, lapid, trillanes, recto, and miriam — did not, and instead “realigned” their PDAFs with the budget of one or another line agency, or the calamity fund, in the bicam- and senate-approved 2014 budget that the prez signed into law last december.

senator chiz escudero, chairman of the senate finance committee, and very much the pilosopo lawyer, justifies it thus:

Is the realignment legal or constitutional in the light of the high court’s decision on the PDAF?

Yes, says Sen. Francis Escudero, chair of the Senate finance committee. The realignments (Escudero calls them “amendments”) came before the implementation of the P2.265-trillion national budget, he says.

The high court had declared unconstitutional all provisions of the law that allowed legislators “to wield any form of post-enactment authority in the implementation of the budget.”

But Escudero says the identification of beneficiaries of the realigned PDAF “does not violate” the high court’s ruling. “It’s well within our right to review and approve the budget,” he says. “This is preenactment intervention.”

say rin ni bayan muna partylist rep neri colmenares:

“The Supreme Court was not clear on whether lawmakers could realign the funds or not because it is clear that Congress has the power of the purse and has the prerogative where government money should be spent,” says Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares. “What it was clear on was that lump-sum items should be discontinued and that everything in the budget should be itemized.”

Members of the House had realigned a much bigger amount—P930 billion, including the PDAF. 

at parang tuwang-tuwa lang si senator chiz, as in, tipong naisahan nila ang presidente?

“In accordance with the powers of Congress, all of us can introduce an amendment. That’s our legislative power. If the President submits the budget, we can’t skirt our duty to amend it. What are we, a rubber stamp?” Escudero said by phone, chuckling. 

more like, naisahan ang anti-pork people’s movement, as in, nakahanap sila ng legal loophole (salamat sa supremes?) and it’s as if the people’s outcry against all pork-n-patronage fell on deaf ears.  it’s as if two of the nine senators, estrada and revilla, were not facing charges of receiving substantial kickbacks from fake NGOs identified with the notorious accused napoles.  and it’s as if the other seven senators were themselves untouched by any suspicion of similar kickbacks in the past.

of course, it might be that these realignments no longer allow kickbacks of any sort in any way.  if so, i wish they’d come right out and say it, assure us na, wala na pong kickback.  but of course they won’t because it would be to admit na oo nga, dati ay may kickback.

but, hey, jinggoy estrada, who aligned half his PDAF to the budget of the City of Manila of which his tatay, ex-prez erap, is mayor, is the most unrepentant, defiant, shameless, and brazen of them all.  hiyang hiya naman ako for the senate, who allowed him to gift his tatay’s city hall with a hundred million bucks.  hiyang hiya rin ako for erap, who had no idea daw that it was coming, and who doesn’t have the sense to say no-thanks, kahit out of delicadeza man lang.

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pahabol.  say ng grapevine, the supreme court is poised to rule vs erap in the disqualification case filed by ex-mayor fred lim.  if true, it would serve jinggoy right.