SC to checkmate Malacañang and Congress?

Yesterday’s headline news in The Philippine Star was quite embarrassing for the folks still selling the idea of Daang Matuwid especially the slogan espoused by no less than Pres. Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III, “Kung Walang Corrupt, Walang Mahirap” and if you looked around the metro cities of Manila or Cebu, you cannot but notice the squatter colonies in all its glorious squalor still very much around five years into the Aquino presidency.

If indeed, the Daang Matuwid that P-Noy was selling to the nation is a huge success, then we shouldn’t be seeing the great multitude of our poor people still living in shameful shanties…something that you do not see in countries like Singapore of Japan. Using the often-repeated Aquino slogan has boomeranged on his presidency… that if the poor are still with us today, it can only be because corruption has never been checked! Worse for Aquino, the corruption under his regime has not only spread to the low-ranked government bureaucrats, but close to home in Malacañang itself!

Do we need to remind you of the corruption being pinned on former Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Alan Purisima, the President’s closest friend, literally his man Friday? Do we need to remind our readers of the debacle that happens every single day at the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) then under General Manager Al Vitangcol who gave the maintenance of this nation’s foremost mass transit system to a new company that had no track record of handling trains harassing hundreds of thousands of commuters daily?

That is one corruption that PNoy cannot blame to his predecessor former Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who by now should be allowed to post bail, thanks to the case of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile. In short, to many of us, Daang Matuwid means selective Justice at its worst… where the allies of PNoy are protected and his enemies incarcerated.

It is also for this reason why no matter how Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales portrays herself as an upright woman of substance and justice, but when she cleared P-Noy of any liability in the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), she betrayed her oath to uphold the Constitution and defend it for the sake of the Filipino people… and not protect the corrupt especially the person who appointed her into that office.

I personally like Mrs. Morales, but she like most Filipinos just cannot get rid of that “utang-na-loob” crab mentality, especially when someone like her holds a very sensitive position. No wonder despite our constitutional bodies designed to expose and catch corrupt government officials, the Philippines is still on top in the most corrupt nations list. For the sake of the poor Filipino people, the Office of the Ombudsman should not protect the high and mighty, but chastise them to shape up or get out or be jailed!

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has ordered the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch to answer the allegations of lump sum and discretionary funds that the Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa), together with former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, former Sen. Francisco Tatad and three Catholic prelates, Archbishops Fernando Capalla, Romulo dela Cruz and Ramon Arguelles filed a week ago before the SC to petition against budgetary lump sum in the 2015 national budget. Philconsa was represented by its President Rep. Martin Romualdez.

As the STAR report goes, the high court gave the respondents in Malacañang Palace and Congress 10 days from receipt of notice to comply with the SC order. Philconsa was seeking for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on the alleged anomalous sections of the 2015 General Appropriations Act. Is this how the SC checkmates Malacañang and Congress?

Philconsa president Martin Romualdez also asked the SC to order the Commission on Audit (COA) to issue notices of disallowance on all disbursements and releases from the highly questionable GAA provision and requested the SC further to issue a show cause order against both Congress and Budget Secretary Florencio Abad for its “Flagrant disobedience, resistance and disregard” of the SC decision in declaring the DAP and the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) as unconstitutional.

 This means in ten days we shall find out what kind of excuses Congress and Malacañang would give to the SC for disobeying its order. I will not call this a constitutional crisis…but rather at the very least, we know that the checks and balances of our democratic form of government are still working. So far the Supreme Court has shown the Filipino people that it is not beholden to the powers-that-be and May God bless them for that. Alas, this is the legacy of Daang Matuwid… that people in power would blatantly disobey the Supreme Court’s order in order to pursue their political agenda’s using taxpayer’s money for their nefarious schemes to fool the people.

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