THE antiquated Anglo exclamation – where this editorial gets its soul – picked up and satirized by the Indians, gets an endorsement from many Filipinos, from Batanes up north to Tawi Tawi down south.
While working in their farms or fishing in nearby rivers in the countryside, or while taking a quick space on the latest political developments in high-rise buildings in the metropolis or in other urban centers, they must have felt the right straight on their faces sans warnings during the past few days.
Critical questions were immediately raised when the House Committee om Good Governance discovered from the certification by the government’s Philippine Statistics Authority that 1,322 individuals out of the 1,992 names listed as recipients of the Office of the Vice President’s P500 million confidential funds have no birth records.
The verification chased earlier PSA discoveries that disclosed discrepancies in records tied to a separate P112.5-million confidential funds disbursed by the Department of Education during Sara Duterte’s term as secretary in 2023.
From the 677 names investigated in that case, 405 had no birth records, 445 lacked marriage certificates and 508 had no death certificates.
What takes the cake is one of the names that appeared in the DepEd receipts, Mary Grace Piattos, has been confirmed as non-existent in the civil registry database.
Another name, Kokoy Villamin, appeared in both the OVP and DepEd receipts but with different signatures.
Like Piattos, an amalgam of a popular restaurant and snack brand, Villamin has been confirmed by the PSA as without civil registry record which coherently raised strong suspicions of names of fabricated or faked recipients.
The House Committee on Good Government, chaired by Manila Rep. Joel Chua, is looking into Vice President Duterte’s alleged misuse of her confidential funds, and the panel, which recently rounded off its inquiry will resume next year looking into other questionable disbursements like the DepEd’s acquisition of laptops.
In a statement, Chua said the latest PSA report additionally boosts suspicions the 1,322 names were fabricated
“This certification from the PSA leaves little doubt – if these names cannot be found in the civil registry, it strongly suggests they do not exist. The ARs (acknowledgement receipts) may have been manufactured to justify the disbursement of confidential funds,” he said.
The names were found in acknowledgment receipts submitted by the OVP as liquidation documents to the Commission on Audit to justify the disbursement of hundreds of millions of its confidential funds from late 2022 to the third quarter of 2023.
The developments have unnerved many Filipinos beyond syllables of logic.
But we hope, beyond Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice idiom, the truth will out.
