Hearsay?
A LAW EACH DAY (Keeps Trouble Away) By Jose C. Sison
Updated February 16, 2009 12:00 AM
With 60 witnesses interviewed and hundreds of documents gathered to back it up, the WB Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) report on “an institutionalized cartel replete with collusive tendering, bid rigging, price fixing and the routine payment of bribes and kickbacks” regarding the bank funded National Road Improvement and Management Project-1(NRIMP-1) can not just be ignored and set aside until forgotten. Bare denials of culpability and angry denunciations that the report is mere “hearsay”, “absurd” and “ridiculous”, by persons implicated therein will not conclusively end the case. As the INT itself said, it had “direct evidence of fraudulent or corrupt practices such as the submission of fraudulent documents or the payment of bribes derived from admission of participants or the direct testimony of witnesses” and or “circumstantial proof of collusion detected through an analysis of the fraudulent bids submitted by the cartel.” Indeed “hearsay” seems to be the most abused and misused word nowadays as the series of corruption and fraudulent practices are coming out one by one. Both the Congressional investigators and those being investigated indiscriminately use the term without fully realizing its real meaning. Even such reputed high caliber lawyers in the Senate like Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Juan Ponce Enrile have been erroneously using the term just to protect their patron in the Palace.
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