Drilon, De Lima throw roadblocks

[Rakizta]

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A determined effort from the alliance of Noynoy has been launched to thwart the revelation of the whole truth behind the Janet Lim-Napoles pork barrel melodrama.
This was what was evident in the frustration shown by Senate blue ribbon committee chairman Sen. Teofisto Guingona III in the Department of Justice (DoJ) lockout of the probe from reaching the whistle-blowers.
The day prior, De Lima was quoted as saying that not all whistle-blowers will be allowed to make an appearance at the Senate inquiry to which Senate President Frank Drilon readily agreed.
Apparently the agreement was cast way before the scheduled appearance of the key witnesses at the Senate since it was unusual for Drilon to immediately agree to an imposition from the Executive branch. But then again, Drilon is a puppet of the Malacañang tenant and will always do as ordered by the Palace tenant, as in covering up the Palace crime by shutting up Janet Napoles or going along with a plan to eventually get her as a state witness granted full immunity from suit.
Drilon incidentally is being incriminated deeply in the scam by some of the state witnesses and the selective appearance of the whistle-blowers is likely the result of the coverup efforts.
De Lima cited the possible interference in the appreciation of evidence in withholding the presence of the whistle-blowers who are all now under the state witness protection program.
Drilon contributed his share by not signing the subpoena issued by the committee on alleged scam architect Napoles and coursing this instead through the Ombudsman to determine whether or not her presence can be accommodated.
Drilon was also overheard as having said that the Senate may terminate its probe on the pork barrel scam once cases were filed with the Ombudsman, thus the confusion among senators on the fate of the inquiry and necessitated some of them to insist that the probe continues despite the Ombudsman’s review of the charges filed, including against three members of the Senate.
It appears that Drilon is much too interested in the Senate inquiry being terminated. Without the parallel probe from the Senate, however, there is that great danger that the public will only know what the government wants the whistle-blowers to reveal in the pork barrel case with allies such as Drilon being conveniently excluded from the testimonies.
Guingona was right in insisting on the constitutional power of the Senate in holding the inquiry and that the withholding of witnesses is an infringement of that right.
What De Lima did is equivalent to the efforts of the former administration to deny the Senate proceedings of testimonies, particularly the controversial Executive Order 464 that required the President’s permission for government officials to attend Senate hearings.
The action of Drilon in effect sought the permission of Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales who despite being a constitutionally independent official remains distinct from the Senate which has its own functions to perform.
Evident was that both De Lima and Drilon are acting with Palace and their interests in mind in denying the Senate a smoothly conducted probe.
The public demands that the whole picture be presented on the pork barrel scam but the allies of Noynoy seem intent on what is equivalent of the cropping a photograph to highlight only what would fit their interests.
The whistle-blowers, all of them, and not just the ones whom De Lima volunteers should recount all they know of the incident for the Senate to act appropriately in designing laws to stop what concerns them most: The use of government funds provided to the legislature.
The dilemma that legislators face now is what funds to use for their constituents if commissions from projects or outright pocketing of their pork barrel stops, thus the impassioned efforts in the House to pressure the Supreme Court to lift the temporary restraining order for what remains of this year’s pork barrel before the Napoles controversy started, which is all of P14 billion still.
Drilon and De Lima should let the ax fall where it may which many in the Noynoy alliance want to prevent.

Drilon, De Lima throw roadblocks

Drilon, De Lima throw roadblocks

klaro na kaayong scattered ninyo "Lie la De lie Ma" og "Pork drilon "

[godwhacker]

^^^ mao nay gihinganlan ug daang matuwid... lols...

[lecreigh]

tabang mga langit! na unsa nmn tawn ni sila oi.. sala jud ni tanan ni jeane... pataka lang ug post! gi ukay na nuon ang di dapat unta mmahibaw-an sa tanan... haha!

[peewee_toot]

eng eng eng... nagka nindot na ang salida dah. hehehe.

kita jud ko sa news ani. grabe nka pangugat c teofisto oi. wa gd nka tingog c de lima.

[amingb]

Ataya ani nga Investigationa oi klaro kaau nga naay nag Director taga malacanyang ....

[psyche54]

Tuwid na daan my @ss....

[Rakizta]

‘Baboy’


By Jojo Robles


To paraphrase someone famous, who was unfortunately not speaking in reference to Senate President Franklin Drilon: “Saan ka kumukuha ng kapal ng mukha?”

How soon people forget. Only a little over a year ago, Drilon started the process of the impeachment and eventual conviction of then Chief Justice Renato Corona by giving a privilege speech on the floor of the Senate calling for the top jurist’s removal from office.

Now, Drilon, as Senate president, cannot even allow his own chamber’s blue ribbon committee to let alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles testify on the very serious charges leveled against her. Drilon can demand that the head of a supposed co-equal branch of government be impeached, tried and convicted, but he refuses to let a private businesswoman already detained by the state explain her role in the multi-billion-peso scam that has rocked the entire infrastructure of governance—and cast a long shadow on Drilon’s own protestations of innocence, besides.

But then, Drilon has always been famous for standing up for his allies— until they become potential liabilities to him. In the case of Napoles, who has long been in an apparently fruitful relationship with Drilon, according to her own former associates, the Senate chief has the unmitigated temerity to ask for the permission of a mere constitutional body, the Ombudsman, if it can let her out to testify in the ongoing public probe of the committee.


As legal analyst Mel Sta. Ana wrote, Drilon’s sudden subservience to the Ombudsman is laughably wrong, because a mere law gave the anti-graft prosecuting agency its powers, while the Senate (as pointed out by blue ribbon panel chairman TG Guingona) has the Constitution itself as its supporter in conducting a probe that includes Napoles’ all-important testimony. “Given the craving of the people to know the truth, the most logical, reasonable and proper thing [for Drilon] to do was to support Senator Guingona and assert the Senate’s constitutional powers which include the summoning of the witnesses in aid of legislation,” Sta. Ana wrote.

And as an interested party in the case, after having been linked by Napoles associates to the businesswoman, the least Drilon could have done was to stay out of the way of Guingona’s committee, if the Senate president truly has nothing to hide. Instead, Drilon held a press conference saying that he cannot, as Senate chief, sign off on a subpoena demanding that Napoles attend the Senate hearings, because the Ombudsman did not recommend it— after Drilon himself had solicited the Ombudsman’s opinion on the matter.


And how, pray tell, can the Ombudsman (wise as she is) tell the Senate how to conduct its independent investigations in aid of legislation? In this upside-down world where political alliances bleed over from one branch to the next, from one department to another, there should still be a limit to what those in power are allowed to get away with.

It is best to describe Drilon’s action in pithy Pilipino: Binababoy na ni Drilon ang Senado.


Over at the Executive, where Drilon obviously gets his orders, as he always does, there is also more pambababoy. The Office of the Solicitor General, acting as the legal counsel of President Noynoy Aquino, has asked the Supreme Court to lift the court-ordered suspension of the release of the remaining pork barrel funds of members of Congress for the current year, saying that the “reforms” it is undertaking will ensure that no hanky-panky will attend their expenditure.

How in the name of all that is legal, logical and proper can Malacanang ask for the release of pork barrel funds when Aquino himself has already declared that the appropriation of such monies has been abolished? What could have possessed Aquino to ask that the funds be released, when the public’s anger over the Napoles scandal keeps escalating and when no reforms have been put in place apart from abolishing the name of the Priority Development Assistance Fund?

I’m sorry. But if that is not more pambababoy, then I cannot tell the difference between an actual pig and the head of the Senate.

And where does Aquino get the gall to say that he has reformed the pork barrel system when the Napoles scandal is only now starting to lap at the riverbanks of the presidential palace and into the living room of the President himself? The story of the wholesale looting of the so-called Malampaya fund, a largely unaudited trove of easily accessible money that only Aquino and his predecessors can disburse (and which they have, often through Napoles and her fellow “business persons” in the past) promises to dwarf even the pork barrel scandal, regardless of what Malacanang’s propagandists and media allies do to prevent that from happening.

(Here’s a hot tip: Nearly all the Malampaya drawdowns have gone to “soft” projects—the same ones that Napoles accessed for “consumable” projects that can never be traced.)

Drilon and Aquino, unfortunately, are way beyond turning a foul pig’s ear into beautiful silk purse that Jeane Napoles could carry. Instead, the expensive bag they made entirely out of pork will soon be exposed as a smelly part of the anatomy of the animal that has become the animate symbol of how our leaders, no matter how self-righteous, have enriched themselves.


http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/09/26/baboy/


grabe kaayo ka baboy drilon ,resign na intawn uy . you stink ...

[peewee_toot]

Ataya ani nga Investigationa oi klaro kaau nga naay nag Director taga malacanyang ....

mao jud sir. grabe pagka hasa sa ABS-CBN ang director. hahaha.

[Rakizta]

tan awa ang news sa abs cbn kay lihis kaayo sa issue sa ilang gipaboran .

[Nardskey]

usa raman n u g tan-aw, wa man mo magtan sa protection sa mga whistle blower.