Is Borra going to be the scapegoat or ‘fall guy’ of Comelec?

PGMA is rushing home from Spain, but even if she gets here this morning, she’ll probably not make it to the Pacquiao-Larios tussle at Araneta – in fact, she mustn’t. Too much danger for her, and too many unfriendlies out there. Anyway, she’s pledged – win or lose – to give Manny the Pacman a medal as our national sports hero.

As for me, I’m sorry I had to give away my ringside seat. Made a friend very happy: but now who’ll shout out to Manny P. when to feint and when to dodge, and when to unleash his Sunday punch? If anything untoward happens, you can’t blame me then for not being around to backseat "coach" the champ.

If you ask me, though, those TV publicity poses and smiling photographs showing Manny and Larios-Hermano looking too sweet towards each other were an example of poor PR coaching.

The two gladiators ought to have glared fiercely at each other, with menacing snarls, their pugnacious body language proclaiming to the pre-fight public: "Punyeta, I’ll moider da bum!"

In contrast, the two appeared like they were ready to waltz with each other. Sanamagan. I hope this won’t happen!

What a contrast to Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier facing off, grimly vowing to pulverize one another. As Ali "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" proclaimed, it would be a chilla, a thrilla, a killa in Manila when he got that gorilla Joe.

The sweet glances Manny and Oscar bestowed on each other didn’t generate enough heat to melt a milkshake. When that bell sounds, let them shoot from their benches and prove me wrong. A knockout? But of course. Anything short of that would be only show biz.

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I’m disappointed with Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and the Office of the Ombudsman for nailing the smaller fry – yes, even Commission on Elections Commissioner Resureccion Borra is one, a career bureaucrat – and not going up to where the decision making lies. Has Borra been earmarked to be the "fall guy" in the outrageous P1.2 billion Mega-Pacific deal and those 200 flawed ballot counting machines? What about Comelec Chairman Ben Abalos, etc.? What's the score on them?

All the morning dailies yesterday spoke of the Office of the Ombudsman’s recommendation for the impeachment of Commissioner Borra. As if he were the main culprit. But wasn’t it the poll body’s collegial awarding of the multi-million peso ACM (automated counting machine) to Mega Pacific which is in question?

Graft charges were also recommended for filing before the Sandiganbayan against five subordinate personnel who comprised the poll body’s bids and awards committee. The action taken by the Office of the Ombudsman was in compliance with a resolution of the Supreme Court directing Ombudsman Gutierrez to determine "probable cause" in the complaints against Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos and company for the Mega Pacific contract filed by former Senate President Jovito Salonga and Senator Aquilino Q. Pimentel.

The action taken against Commissioner Borra, a poll body career official who retired as Executive Director and was drafted back into the service as Commissioner is supposed to be the "Day of Atonement" for the Comelec’s sins to the nation. If you read the Bible, it's perhaps similar to the Israelites’ Yom Kippur, an annual day of fasting and atoning for the nation’s sins which falls in September or October, ten days after the Jewish New Year festival of Rosh haShanah in obedience to Biblical instruction.

The Jewish Yom Kippur included the careful "cleansing" of the temple’s High Priest and the tabernacle itself. On the occasion of the celebration a goat is traditionally let loose into the wilderness as the scapegoat for the sins atoned.

Is the action of the Ombudsman’s office similar to sacrificing Commissioner Borra and five acolytes for the sins to the nation of our own corrupt poll body?

And is the "temple’s High Priest also being cleansed along with the temple itself"?

Remember once again, that the scandalous award of the Mega Pacific P1.2 billion deal required collegial approval, which most likely was initiated with a suspicious trip to South Korea by certain high officials of the poll body with their wives. The junket was purportedly to play golf.

Comelec employees know who sponsored and paid for that luxurious all-expense paid-for "golfing expedition" to Seoul – just before the Mega Pacific contract was processed in the poll body.

The Ombudsman must mercilessly investigate further – or has that graft-busting office already "absolved" the bigger shots involved?

This cannot be.

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The report we get is that when La Presidenta arrives today she will announce the retirement of Philippine National Police Director General and PNP Chief Arturo C. Lomibao – and the identity of his successor (which most people, by now, have surely guessed).

In sum, Lomibao is retiring on his birthday, as scheduled. It’s sad that he was able to serve as Police Chief only 479 days! Would you believe. He led our police forces just a year and five months . . . well, almost a year and a half. Isn’t that frustrating? His successor, worse, will only have eleven months. If you’re an honest cop, that’s disgraceful. If you’re not, well, there’s enough elbow room in there to grease your sunny retirement.

Lomibao – PMA ’72 (the outgoing "ruling class") – honorably served 34 years in uniform and dealt forthrightly with every challenge. He didn’t even get to enjoy a turnover ceremony and parade or deliver an inaugural policy address. His first day saw him and everybody scrambling to put down a bloody attempted jailbreak in Bicutan, pronged by detained Abu Sayyaf bravos who paid the price of their desperate caper. La Gloria didn’t even get to swear him in until late that exhausting night without fanfare. As for reforming the police force, what can a guy do in less than a year and a half? But Art waded in, a hands-on top cop, zooming from one place of incident or violence to the other, sometimes three destinations in a single day. He didn’t hesitate – sometimes rashly – to send cops into the fray when angry demonstrations, or stab-in-the-back plots surfaced. If there is anything for which he can be faulted, it was his too-generous and idealistic belief that "bent" cops could be influenced to return to "good" by retraining and "values formation." As for me, a painful kick in the butt, and being marched off to the calaboose in handcuffs and irons is the best remedy for a felonious, dirty policeman. But then, alas, nobody made me Chief of anything except a parking lot or its equivalent.

There are a number of options the Chief Executive is prepared to offer Art Lomibao, but I’ll leave that to her. Let me just say to Lomibao: You did your best! And that’s an accolade coming from an old grump like me. I wish the President though, would offer Lomibao some two-fisted agency and turn him loose like gangbusters on the ungodly. There’s more than just a little fight left in that combat officer and intelligence expert. After all, he led, as PC officer, the operation that bagged the feared New People’s Army chieftain, Commander Dante (Buscayno), who had struck again and again with deadly efficiency then faded into the wilderness like a will o’ the wisp. With the late Rudy Aguinaldo as his mailed fist, Lomibao grabbed that almost legendary enemy – and put him behind bars. (Dante’s now free, of course, and leading a peaceful life).

I don’t believe that putting Lomibao in National Security, even if overseeing the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) is the task for him. That’s more clerical than physical. For our sakes as a threatened people, why not the NBI? Acting National Bureau of Investigation Director Nestor Mantaring, a career man, might have filled the bill, but he’s being bullied by his subordinates. By golly, in the USA, old J. Edgar Hoover (even if rumored to have been "Brokeback" and all) would have hung out the hides of those complaining agents to dry, after a painful tanning naturally.

The trouble with the NBI, once so great under Fred Lim, has become too politicized, too fraught with factions – and, should I say it, too crooked. It needs a big broom to sweep it clean: and a Director with the guts to wield that broom.