Terrible Times in the Last Days

I should have taken to the road earlier. I didn’t expect that this rally would take so long. How could parents who fetch their children take public transport? I think I heard from someone that there was going to be a rally, but I guess I forgot about it or I just didn’t take it seriously. For Naga standards, that was a quite a long march. They did succeed to gather a significant number. For a change, I felt the passion in the yells and chants. I have gotten used to local rallies that fail to make any impact due to very low number of participants and inability to exude the passion of the cause they fight for. Last week’s rally was something else. Later that afternoon, we had to walk because all the jeepneys were full of passengers who seemed to have been stranded when the roads were closed. On the way to Jollibee, I came across numerous college students going the opposite direction, who seem to be going home after marking themselves present on their attendance sheets. A friend told me that his daughter was required to join.

Everyone’s crying out for a stop to the corruption. There are calls for corrupt officials to be convicted and incarcerated. There are petitions for the money to be returned. There are aspirations for further exposure of the real corrupt officials for the public to know and not vote for them anymore. There are loud and silent prayers that the government be cleansed of corruption.

Do the names, Joc-joc Volante and Janet Lim Napoles ring any bell to you? Many people may have forgotten. They were involved in a fertilizer fund scam which was exposed in 2018. To try to put it in a nutshell, it involved allegations that then Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante diverted ₱728 million in fertilizer funds to the 2004 election campaign of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Janet Lim Napoles was among the group indicted for graft and malversation of public funds over PHP5 million worth of projects, including anomalous purchase of fertilizers that She through her firm, allegedly distributed overpriced and diluted liquid fertilizer, so that funds totaling ₱728 million could allegedly be diverted towards vote-buying. In relation to those, then Senators, Bong Revilla, Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, (surprise, surprise) Bongbong Marcos and Gregorio Honasan along with twenty-three congressmen were implicated in the misuse of pork barrel funds with some ₱10 billion allegedly diverted to the government officials along with Napoles. They allegedly diverted fertilizer fund and [priority development assistance fund to “ghost projects”. This was big news back then. Napoles, Enrile, Estrada and Revilla were arrested and detained.

Do these sound familiar? Do you wonder what happened to them? Rather, how did the past got to the present? ? In 2018, Napoles and his former chief-of-staff, Richard Cambe, were found guilty of plunder. In October 2023, the Sandiganbayan’s fourth division granted the motions to dismiss the charges against her and fellow accused, citing inordinate delay in the investigation by the Ombudsman, which took more than six years since the complaint was filed. In other words, she’s scot free not because she’s innocent but because the ombudsman took too long to investigate. In 2015, Enrile’s petition for bail was granted by the Supreme Court citing poor health and old age as grounds (not because he was cleared of any guilt, but because of poor health and age). In 2017, the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court granted Senator Jinggoy Estrada’s petition for bail. However, the Sandiganbayan has since denied his pleas to dismiss graft charges against him. In December 2018, the Sandiganbayan acquitted Senator Bong Revilla of plunder, while still facing charges for 16 counts of graft, for which he posted ₱480,000 bail. In 2021, the Special First Division of the antigraft court granted Revilla’s motion to dismiss the 16 counts of graft against him for insufficient evidence. However, he was ordered to return PhP124.5 million to the National Treasury. If he’s innocent why did he have to return money which should be “clean”? In defense, then Senator Bongbong Marcos claimed that the funds was released by the DBM without his knowledge and that his signatures were forged.

So, you all want accountability? You call for the government to be rid of corruption? You cry for them to return all the money they took? This whole thing of politicians diverting funds, leaving “ghost projects” is not at all new. They have occurred numerous times before. We could even consider it to be institutionalized already.

Yes, the people involved were exposed, arrested, shamed, detained and charged. But, eventually, they had been acquitted, released on bail, and have been elected to public office. You may even have voted for them.

2 Timothy 3:2: “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,”