“Work on the conviction first and when that is done, the loot will be easier to recover”
PART of the demand of an outraged public is the recovery of the stolen loot from those who conspired to steal the funds intended for flood control.
Conspiracy because the money could not have been stolen only by the contractors or the DPWH officials but includes everyone in the money trail.
This process therefore will not only be very tricky but complicated as well.
And to add to the problem, this will divert the attention to the more important effort at hand and that is to identify the culprits and then prosecute them which in itself will take time.
If part of the attention will be focused on recovering the loot, a good guide is the well-researched findings of Senator Ping Lacson, about the distribution of how a particular project fund is divided.
It shows how many per cent of the project fund went to whom.
We have learned, for instance, that after all the shares have been distributed to every participating individual or agency, only about 35 to 40 per cent of the allotted money for a particular project will actually go to the project construction.
So, will the 60 to 65 per cent that went to the pockets of some people be the only amount that will be recovered or the entire amount?
I would think that the ICI’s technical committee will also have to determine exactly how much money will have to be recovered which is the tricky part.
Then they will have to determine how much exactly went to the politician, contractor, DPWH personnel and the other people involved in the processing and release of funds.
How much exactly was spent for the project will also have to be computed unless it is a ghost project wherein all the money all went to the corrupt individuals and therefore should all be recovered.
When it comes to complications, since it is obvious that a lot of lawmakers are into this mess, is the Palace really prepared for the consequences of what will happen like for instance congressional work grounding to a halt?
As I have written two columns ago, the country cannot afford to prolong this drama that is going on because we are already suffering from the negative effects of the investigations.
Our corruption notoriety which is not already the best has gone off the roof affecting our international standing which is embarrassing us to no end.
This flood control brouhaha cannot simply be the focus of the nation’s attention while the country is being wracked with a series of very strong earthquakes from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao which is something that we have never witnessed before.
Furthermore, instead of some kind of unity in the face of all these natural calamities, our warring political factions continue their nonstop political bickerings.
The Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President continue to attack each other which is perhaps one of the reasons why both their approval ratings have gone down.
There should be time for everything.
When the country is reeling due to earthquakes and typhoons, sana, tigil muna ang labanan to attend to those severely affected by the calamities. That is a sign of political maturity. But it seems our leaders are devoid of that and it’s a shame.
We are now reading that the Office of the Ombudsman will investigate suspicious flood control and other infrastructure projects dating back to 2016.
If that is really what the government intends to do, this government will not be doing anything else but investigate.
The current flood control mess is huge and complicated enough as it is without having to take cases going back nine years ago.
This government should first finish what it started before taking additional work.
Maybe the Office of the President should study why the President’s trust rating instead of going up for exposing all these flood control shenanigans, actually went down.
His advisers should therefore as they say “go to the balcony” and take another look at this whole mess and see if a recalibration of the way it is being handled is in order before it does more harm to the President than good.
And how about the loot recovery?
Work on the conviction first and when that is done, the loot will be easier to recover.
