We are in the clutches of a sweltering summer helped along by the El Nino phenomenon but Gloria Macapagal Arroyo may have just opened the faucet, the corruption faucet that is.
Thanks to the incompetence-induced Mindanao power crisis, Mrs. Arroyo (whose Lakas-Kampi-CMD combine reputedly controls at least 80 percent of all local government units) issued this message as the weekened began:
The LGUs (local government units) can use five percent of their budget for calamity where they choose to spend it because they have local autonomy.
The one that’s not allowed during the [Comelec] ban is awarding contracts,
The gensets will be the private sector…. In my instructions, aside from the private sector importing gensets, they’re going to rent; they’re going to lease.
Claro que si?
Armed with this presidential wink, it’s now open season for such calamity fund to be siphoned off by ‘creative’ and unscrupulous Arroyo party mates to ease their personal campaign-related ‘financial calamities’.
Her hot-head and imperious Energy Secretary, Angelo Reyes, has said that the calamity funds totaling some P 5.5 billion will be used to procure generators.
Malacanang insists the suspicions are misplaced because the Commission on Audit will guard against the diversion and misuse of the calamity funds.
But there’s a fine print to that: COA is no longer allowed to undertake pre-audits!!!
Oh the needed emergency gensets will be bought alright.
But with the legally-mandated public bidding procedures suspended because of the calamity, the acquisition prices can be generously padded with the SOPs (under the table commission)having the suppliers and their political cohorts laughing all the way to the bank!!!
NOTE:
The authoritative publication MindaNews chronicled how energy authorities had long foreseen the power crisis but ignored it:
http://www.mindanews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7727
Popularity: 1% [?]
Sigh.
I have started to develop a theory of behavior called something on the order of “living in a fun-house of social mirrors where distortion rules”.
My model will be the Philippines, where truth and logic are irrelevant to the goal of cranking up private gain in imaginative ways, including hiding, tricking, fooling, lying to the public. Words sound so nice when issued by the imperial majesty in the imperial palace, who can challenge them, after all, when they are delivered with such a “YOU dare to question ME?” attitude. Looking forward and planning for things is simply not done when more money can be thrown at things after the disaster, thereby providing more untraceable loot, lost because everyone is running around crying the “sky is falling”.
Magicians, after all, use distraction to enhance the sleight of hand.
And it causes one to wonder who the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland might really be. Or the Mad Hatter, for that matter.
Joe
Joe you’ve revived my childhood thoughts about the Wicked Witch of the East and her domain, Munchkinland. :(
I apologize to you if you’re getting progressively disenchanted.
Hi Ding,
Have you guys seen the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland? The Red Queen is short with a big head, waddles, curses and has a mole on her left cheek.
Dean
BTW, guess who’s related to the COA head and under whome the impoerted gensets are scheduled to arrive?
Kwento ka or text me Kuyang…
Well, the Lizard (este, Wizard) of Oz was a tiny little man using a loudspeaker in the end, not unlike our Empress…
Dear Lila,
Heaven forbid that we should hear that grating voice that sounds like an ungreased wooden door creaking be heard over a loudspeaker!
Unless of course it is wailing…Now there’s a thought to cherish.
Dean
No need for electricity. If people feel the heat, maybe we can start walking around in skimpy clothes. I’ve asked my ulama. He said Oki lang nakahubad sa baba basta may hijab sa mukha.
It appears the COMELEC have turned off the UV detection system of the PCOS.
Any time soon the COMELEC will propose manual count of the ballot shadings.
Read here:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100325-260686/Alarmed-LP-meets-with-Comelec-execs
Dear Nash,
I doubt that last one. The COMELEC cannot count beyond their little appendages and that inludes all eleven little protrusions from their bodies.
Dean
What can an incompetent Secretary of Energy do? The man is a soldier; not a technical man who can understand the management of power resources.
Dear Equalizer,
Reyes is proud of the fact that he took a few courses on public administration from the JFK School of Government. He is also proud of the fact that he graduated from the Asian Institute of Management in the same class that had Polly Nazareno, the CEO of SMART communications.
Those should have taught him a thing or two on management. Or at least, he could have copied from his seatmates.
Unfortunately, I think that the fact AIM is in the red and that the JFK School is accross the Charles River from the Harvard Business School attests to Reyes education.
Add his recent actuations and the painful reality that the energy sector, both in the oil and the electricty subsectors, is in deep guano, is proof that Reyes is indeed a grunt more than anything.
Now he will be the representative of the tricycle sector. Never mind that he does not belong to it just as much as Mikey Arroyo does not belong to the party-list representing security guards and night-watchmen. Reyes and Arroyo should have been nominated by the party-list representing those whose IQs are single-digit. Kapanipaniwala pa.
Dean
Manong you’ll agree that the core issue is how laws are bastardized for narrow interests.
Am leaving it to others to open other threads before I contribute this.
For now let me share in this thread:
http://atmidfield.com/2010/03/26/a-law-bastardized-r-a-7941/
Yes, Ding — I’m reading about this now. R u familiar with Emmy Boncodin’s work (may she rest in peace) on the budget process and government spending? She talks about the creative use of calamity funds too…
Emmie was one of the aunts of my wife’s brother in law.
The Boncodin clan is well known in Naga as low key and of most upright values.
Wrote about her here:
http://atmidfield.com/2010/03/16/tribute-to-a-public-servant/
A fitting tribute — thanks…
So Mr. Angelo Reyes has just left the Arroyo Cabinet… preparatory to accepting the nomination o that Party-List group called 1UTAK…
Hi Manong,
Pls see my reply to Mr. Equalizer above.
BTW, 1Utak is pronounced “Awan Utak”. It also means exactly that it now seems.
Dean
Saw that. Your pronounciation is spot on..
Hahahahaha! :D