INSIDE CONGRESS

Question: What do you call a man who puts the left shoe on his right foot and the right shoe on his left foot?

Answer: Mali shoes

The Liberal Party (LP) and Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas may not be malicious in suspending Gov. Gwen Garcia of Cebu but what’s incontrovertible is that the shoe is now on the other foot. Mali shoes?

Rewind to 2007 when the Department of Interior and Local Government, under then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, ordered the suspension of an LP official, Gov. Neil Tupas Sr. of Iloilo for alleged graft and corruption. The election was just a few months away and the LPs were charging political motivation in Tupas’s suspension. The followers of Tupas barricaded the Iloilo Capitol to prevent the serving of the suspension order.

Now, almost six years later, it’s an LP administration that ordered Governor Garcia’s suspension with the election just around the corner. (In a repeat of the Iloilo scenario, Garcia’s followers have barricaded the Cebu capitol in defiance of the administration’s order. Just like Tupas, Garcia also refused to step down.) No wonder, Rep. Toby Tiangco of Navotas, the sec gen of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) charged: “This is Gloria Part 2!”

Tiangco, who is unopposed in his re-election bid, said that just like the former president, the present administration and Roxas were using the powers of government to persecute political opponents. Garcia, now on her third term as governor, was originally tagged as a senatorial candidate of UNA. She later withdrew and decided to run for Congress in the third district of Cebu. (Incidentally, her change of political plans also affected those of former Sen. Sonny Osmena who originally wanted to run in this Cebu congressional district. Sonny had earlier declared his support for her senatorial bid.)

Malacañang and Roxas may deny till they are blue in the face that the suspension of Garcia is politically motivated but they can’t stop such suspicions. They may say that they were merely following the judicial process, but the people had heard that excuse before, during the Arroyo administration. Bumenta na. It doesn’t help their case any that they immediately swore in as O-I-C governor an LP leader in the province, Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale. Magpale, it was revealed later, was a sister of Energy Secretary Rene Almendras.

Oh, I forgot that politics in Cebu is a head spinner. The Cebu governor’s father, Deputy Speaker Pablo Garcia, is a leader of the National Unity Party (NUP) which is one of the coalition partners of the LP. (The other partners are the Nationalist People’s Coalition, the Nacionalista Party and the Akbayan party-list.)  Her brother, Rep. Pablo John Garcia of Cebu’s third district, is also with the NUP but his bid for governor is being challenged by Hilario Davide 3rd of the Liberal Party. How’s that for a coalition “partner?” As I wrote in a previous column, the prevailing condition in many provinces is “coalition above, collision below.”
Magsaysay is My Guy

This collision might affect the performance of senatorial candidates of the administration party.
However, I hope that former Sen. Ramon “JunMag” Magsaysay Jr. would not be affected. He drew the admiration of Senate watchers, including this Senate “Insider,” when he was still a member of that august body.  JunMag or RMJ has many achievements as a senator but one of his most memorable was the investigation of the multi-million-peso fertilizer scam. If he gets back to the Senate, the people can be sure that they have in JunMag an effective watchdog against graft and corruption in high places.

Recently, JunMag suggested that members of Congress should publicly post the disbursement of their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel to promote transparency and discourage corruption in government expenditure.

He recalled that during the term of the late Senate President Marcelo Fernan, senators were asked to make public how their “pork barrel” funds were allocated.

“I posted mine every end of the year. On my last year I posted everything, like it’s a summary,” he said.

He said public disclosure would deter the fabrication of allocations and plug leakages in expenditures. Aside from this, JunMag called for a more thorough audit of how these PDAFs were spent, because “if you really want to fool around, you can really fool around, that’s what I’m saying. But if you want to keep your nose clean, it’s easier because it’s a matter of conscience.”

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

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