Patently a Malacañang creation

EDITORIAL

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12/19/2008

While everybody and their respective uncles knew that the P728 million that was thrown into the so-called fertilizer fund scam benefited Gloria’s fraudulent bid to retain the presidency in 2004, the Senate is finally connecting the dots on how the money was transferred from one hand to another.

The dots inevitably are pointing to the door of the Palace occupant as the scam is proving to be but one of the many similar brink jobs that the well-connected Bolante-led syndicate had pulled for so many years that Gloria has been in power.

Bolante, whom the Senate called the architect of the scam, was confirmed to have a long-running relationship with bagman Jimmy Paule, and a host of runners even before the multimillion-peso scam was put into play.

What was common, however, to the testimonies, was that somewhere along the way, the dots seem to get blurred or even worse, even vanish most of the time when these dots have, for Malacañang at least, established a pathway going to the Palace’s direction.

Agriculture Undersecretary Belinda Gonzales, just as the other Department of Agriculture (DA) officials who testified in the Senate inquiry prior to her testimony, affirmed that Bolante and the other key personalities in the fund scam have long known each other, which in turn contradicts the previous repeated assertions of Bolante that he either does not know them or that he has a poor recollection of his meeting with them.

Gonzales, however, digressed a little when it came to the bare specifics of the meeting. According to Gordon, Gonzales told him a different version of the meetings between Bolante and Paule and his group.

Gonzales had previously talked about recovering something from Bolante but the seeming friction between the two was eased when the fertilizer fund was released, where Paule was to be the bagman. Paule was supposedly the liaison or conduit to Malacañang.

Apparently Gonzales may have treaded closer than expected to the fire, which is the reason for a slightly different testimony. But this was still good enough to pin down Bolante and Paule.

What is apparent now is that Paule, Bolante and other members of the scam gang are being primed as fall guys for the scam, with the intent of navigating the issue away from Gloria, who was its main beneficiary.

What is being played up, with the possible help of the cooperative witnesses at the DA, is that indeed Bolante did not act alone, as was his claim, in pulling off the fertilizer fund scam.

Somebody has been pulling the strings on Bolante and it was not Malacañang but a syndicate that has long been preying on government projects or something along such a line which again, is some sort of protective cover for the Palace tenant.

It seems that which is being negotiated through the script is to show that the scam was not all about political dole outs for the supporters of Mrs. Arroyo when it was released woefully close to the 2004 presidential election.

Instead, the money was used for a regular scam job of Bolante using the syndicate headed by Paule targeting fat kickbacks.

It was part of the day-to-day corrupt government deals under Gloria and it purportedly did not have a political agenda like helping her steal the vote in 2004. That’s a hoary story, considering the fact that such huge amounts of money can’t be released without the green light from Gloria.

The ultimate result would likely be Bolante, Paule and the runners getting prosecuted in court for malversation of public funds and the story may end in there.

It is half-expected that Malacañang may even hail the prosecution of the group as proof that the government is serious in its anti-corruption drive after being battered internationally on the dismal level of corruption under Gloria’s administration.

Such horse shit is patently Malacañang-made.

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