Pin the tail on the donkey

In the political food chain of the Philippines, the lowly government employee gets eaten first.

In terms of Senate investigations, the blame for the anomalous pork barrel scam will soon be pinned on the ass of lowly implementing agencies and ordinary employees! Just like in the children’s party game, once the “donkey” aka government employees gets pinned with the blame, the Senators, Congressmen and high ranking government officials will soon be jumping in joy and enjoying their prizes such as “Don’t go to jail” card, “Pass Go and Collect 200 million” and still play “Monopoly - the Power Version.”

In case you’re clueless how this will happen, all you have to do is listen to the on-going investigation of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee where Senators as well as high government officials seem to agree on one point: the implementing agencies and their personnel should have taken due care to determine that the NGOs that received the PDAF or pork barrel funds were legitimate. In other words, blame it on the small unknown government offices, dissolve them, go after Napoles and forget this ever happened.

 It is interesting to note that no one, except Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, had any interest to expose the participation and culpability of Senators and Congressmen. In a classic Filipino “iwas pusoy” move, department level officials like those from the Department of Agriculture were quick and happy to concur with the Senators that the lowly bottom feeding implementing agencies that are below bureau level, should have checked and made sure that the NGOs were legitimate. In other words, it’s not the fault of the legislators, cabinet members or bureau directors.

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While listening to the erroneous investigation being conducted by Senators regarding the pork barrel or PDAF, two things have become very obvious: The first is that policemen and Senators don’t investigate crimes the same way.

Cops normally deal with the scene of the crime, the victims and possible suspects involved or still at the scene of the crime. In murder cases and theft, the police don’t exclude anyone, not even family members because it could be an inside job. So if we were to use the same approach, the cops would first view the Senators and Congressmen involved as the victims because they were the one who actually “owned” the money on behalf of the Filipino people. But then again, since they are also the ones who worked with or agreed to give the PDAF to the ghost NGOs, that automatically makes them the principal suspect to a possible inside job.

On the other hand, the Senate Blue Ribbon committee is investigating representatives of COA, DA who are referred to as the professional witnesses and not the primary victims and possible primary suspects. In fact, from the looks of it, the investigation and testimony of the Senators and Congressmen will only be considered if they voluntarily submit to the committee. This is strange! Why go through the difficult and complicated process of establishing the facts through second hand testimony when the Senators and Congressmen knew first hand about who they gave their PDAF to, why they gave their PDAF, and where is their PDAF now?

And the million-peso question of the day is: Why is the Blue Ribbon committee doing the investigation and not the “victim-Senators”?

One would imagine that given their investigative powers as well as being the initial victims, the concerned Senators and Congressmen would be lining up to grill, drill and lynch the people responsible for placing them under such intense and embarrassing suspicion? But so far all I’ve heard or read from them is that it’s not their job to know how billions of pesos got stolen, or they feel like chopped liver under the public scrutiny and suspicion. The most uncharacteristic behavior of the victims is their lack of anger and indignation or embarrassment of being made to look like chumps. Somewhere among the donkeys, jackasses and the chumps we have to figure out who the ringleader is.

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The second obvious fact from this investigation is that the Senators should not be investigating the matter because several Senators stand accused by the public along with numerous members of Congress of being co-conspirators to defraud public funds through their PDAF. I admire the initiative and alleged determination of the Senate Blue Ribbon to investigate the matter but anything they say or do will greatly impact the way the Pork Barrel Scam investigations develop.

In the first place, if any investigation should be done by the Senate or Congress it should be in connection with an official charge against members of the Senate and Congress with the mythical ethics committee of both houses, mythical because the usefulness and achievements of ethics committees remains a myth to this day. As it stands, the legal investigative bodies under the Department of Justice and the Ombudsman are still investigating the matter quietly and officially. What the Blue Ribbon committee is achieving is pre-empting the investigations, unnecessarily publicizing sensitive information and possibly compromising the value of facts and evidence in future cases. At the very least, the publicized investigation is tipping off guilty parties where their weak links are.

It may seem politically foolish “To grab the tiger by the tail,” but considering what the public has expressed, it would be a serious mistake to stand behind the donkey while sticking the blame on them. The last thing we want are for several thousand lowly government employees staging their own anti-pork barrel marches. On the other hand it may become a blessing in disguise because once government employees wake up to the sad truth that crooks will always make jackasses out of them, they in turn may choose to end the Fiesta in the Pigsty.