EDITORIAL - Christmas is in the air, even at the Inayawan landfill

Some three million pesos in dollar-denominated cash were found in a bag by scavengers at the Inayawan landfill. If money can make most public officials lose their poise, how do you think scavengers would react on seeing that kind of money?

But the Christmas that came too early for the scavengers may not be a Christmas that will last long enough. Already the police are sniffing around. They have a legitimate reason to do so.

Clearly the money did not just arrive at the dumpsite on its own, as if willed by God.

There has to be an owner for that kind of money. And surely it was not the intention of the owner for his money to end up in the hands of scavengers.

According to the official line, the money ended up in the dump when a garbage collector picked up the bag of cash along with several bags of trash waiting to be picked up outside a foreign exchange outlet.

If you think that is a cock-and-bull story, you are absolutely right. No one just dumps a bag of cash along with the trash. There is more than meets the eye here. In fact something here stinks more than the garbage.

Part of the money has already been returned because one scavenger, out of several who divided the money among themselves, apparently chickened out after the authorities took a particular interest in the case.

It is not clear if the others who shared in the windfall will also return theirs. But the case should move on from who got the money to how the money ended up where it ended in the first place.

Many questions remain unanswered regarding the case, especially about the improbability of lumping a bag of cash with the trash. That just doesn't happen in real life, unless the bag was really meant to be picked up with the trash, by maybe a different set of hands.