Another scam? Whistle-blower or a sore loser?

Thursday evening, I was driving back from the Shangri-La’s Mactan Island Resort & Spa and it was raining very hard which made driving quite hazardous because only a few of the controversial lampposts were lighted to guide my path. It’s barely six months since Cebu hosted the 14th ASEAN Leaders’ Summit and the main thoroughfares of Metro Cebu where the ASEAN delegates passed were the best lighted streets in this country – from Shangri-La to the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) up to the plush Marco Polo Plaza in Busay Hills.

Alas, the lamppost scam has tarnished not only the image of Cebu… but saddest of all is that only a few of those made-in-China lampposts are still working. The people involved in this scam did not only overprice those lampposts, but also gave us a very inferior quality lighting system that has broken in just six months.

Last weekend, Manila hosted the 40th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting for the 14th ASEAN Regional Forum. I just hope that none of those ASEAN ministers who were also in Cebu last January slipped out of Manila to visit the province because they would have been dismayed that the majority of those lampposts were no longer functioning.

But another controversy being stirred up in Cebu by the same whistle-blower named Cris Saavedra (who first reported the lamppost scam) is now saying that the Metro Cebu Traffic Surveillance Monitoring Project, a deal involving the purchase of surveillance video cameras and software which were used by the Philippine National Police (PNP) also for the 14th ASEAN Summit, was plunder. We thought that there was no problem in this deal until Mr. Saavedra was given “special” coverage by dyAB. 

In previous columns, I have already warned the Office of the Ombudsman to be wary of so-called whistle-blowers like Mr. Saavedra who really have ulterior motives in trying to expose the shenanigans of the DPWH. I’ve already said that Mr. Saavedra is a carpetbagger who has no expertise on anything, except bidding in any government project he sees fit and if he loses, he files cases against government officials. He did this with the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) where he bid on an asphalt project. Suddenly, he is into selling surveillance cameras?

So now people have an idea why he exposed the lamppost scam and we can only second-guess that it was in retaliation against the DPWH for his losing his deal on the surveillance cameras. If you didn’t know, Pelican Bay Group Inc./Cebesos Development Corp. is a company owned by Mr. Saavedra that apparently won the surveillance project, while the bid of Triton Communications Corp. was disqualified for a technicality because the company submitted a bidder’s bond, not a surety bond. These are bidding technicalities that often corrupt officials of the Bidding and Awards Committee (BAC) would use to disqualify a highly qualified bidder.

However, on Nov. 30, 2006, Triton’s request for reconsideration was granted, but it was still the second highest bidder next to Pelican Bay. But the PNP was pressed for time and Pelican Bay lost the PNP deal because it failed to deliver the necessary materials and equipment on the designated date. Isn’t it obvious that Pelican Bay really didn’t have the hardware needed for that project? Time was crucial as the ASEAN Summit was slated to open in December. Hence, Triton Communications, the second highest bidder, was awarded the project. So Mr. Saavedra went ballistic about the lamppost scam and filed a case of plunder on the surveillance project.

Last Friday morning, a Mr. Sonny Tacardon, managing director of Triton Communications Corp. that won the surveillance camera deal, was interviewed by Leo Lastimosa in his radio program over dyAB and he defended his company against the tirades of Mr. Saavedra that the equipment they had installed was inferior and substandard. He said the brands used in this deal were Sony and Motorola, product names synonymous with quality, and a Mr. Saavedra questioned this deal?

What was revealing was when Leo Lastimosa asked Mr. Saavedra what brand of equipment his company would have installed. Mr. Saavedra replied that the brand wasn’t important. Is this because Mr. Saavedra’s bid didn’t mention any brand in the bid form? Now is a good time to ask, is Mr. Saavedra really a whistle-blower or just another sore loser? Mr. Saavedra may have been right on the lamppost scam, but he has no one to blame but himself for losing the surveillance camera deal.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.