Abaya railroading P4.25-B deal for Liberal Party-mate

For some queer reason, the Ombudsman has not dared touch him. So the transport chief goes on his merry dubious ways?

Newsflash: Transport Sec. Joseph Abaya is soon to grant a P4.25-billion rehab of the MRT-3 to his very Liberal Party-mate who had wrecked the Metro Manila commuter rail to begin with.

Abaya, the LP acting president, has completed his secret negotiations for the irregular deal. With everybody distracted by the election campaign, he is now ready to announce his pick – none other than the company fronting for his LP fundraiser.

Abaya in Sept. had invited five prospective contractors to participate in closed-door negotiations. Invoking supposed confidential proprietary information of the invitees, his U-Sec. Jose Perpetuo Lotilla refused to identify them to investigating congressmen.

But sources at the Dept. of Transportation and Communications whispered the names here: Korean Railways (Korail), Singapore Metro Rail Transport (SMRT), David M. Consunji Inc. (DMCI), CommBuilders and Transport Corp. (CB&T), and Busan Metro Railways.

Korail and SMRT subsequently opted out. Only the remaining three submitted financial-technical credentials to Abaya’s designated screeners.

That was good enough for the DOTC scam artists. For, they can feign compliance with the Government Procurement Reform Act of 2004 that requires more than two participants for a bidding to be legit.

There was of course no bidding in the real sense in this staggering P4.25-billion deal. Instead of a public and transparent process, what transpired was secret and opaque. Abaya even justified the negotiating in lieu of public bidding on the pretext of “unforeseen emergency.” Yet the rehab budgets had been presented to Congress as far back as 2013 and 2014; meaning, very deliberate and well foreseen. Such are the irregular ways for which the DOTC under Abaya has become notorious.

At any rate, Abaya appears to have found a way to bump off the solid DMCI, despite its tie-up in this deal with the equally distinctive Hamburg Metro Railway System. Similarly eased out was CB&T, which partnered with BBI and will have nothing more to do with Abaya’s LP-mate that used to be its associate.

So who “won” the contrived bidding and how?

For details, stay tuned to this same column on the same Monday-Wednesday-Friday editions.

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Small town mayor NelIanto Bihasa probably didn’t know any better. In griping to the national media about his political turf of Baler, Aurora, on Luzon’s Pacific rim not getting any typhoon relief goods, all he meant was that he was being bypassed. Administration presidential candidate Mar Roxas had flown in and, in coordination solely with his local Liberal Party leader, distributed food packs straight to victims of Typhoon Lando. That’s not how things are done, one has to go through the local political kingpin, Bihasa must have thought; and Roxas should know that, being the immediate past Sec. of Interior and Local Government.

Feeling slighted at being left out of the picture on such a momentous barrio event, Bihasa attributed it all to partisanship. He’s with Aurora province’s dominant PDP-Laban and not with Roxas’ nationally ruling LP, Bihasa ranted unabashedly. Such petty politics ravages the country worse than do natural calamities.

Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda probably didn’t know any better either. When he castigated Bihasa, also on national media, all he meant was for the small townsman to lay his dirty farming hands off Roxas. Although Lacierda keeps denying to be an LP squawkbox, he sure sounds like one. And he’s not even good at it, as seen once again in this post-typhoon affair.

Lacierda had meant to project Roxas as above it all.  So unlike the petty politicking Bihasa, the “Daang Matuwid” standard bearer for Election 2016 does not play partisan games. Quoting the LP campaign video – and photographers, Lacierda said all Roxas did was to pose with vice presidential running mate Leni Robredo handing out disaster aid. Pictures don’t lie. “In the first place, who is more important here? To give the relief goods to the mayor or to the people?” Lacierda sneered. “And also PDP-Laban is not an opponent ... It is part of the (administration) coalition ... Why would they put political color on one thing that should not have any political color?”

That question is now something not just for Bihasa but more for the supposed champions of “Straight Path” must explain. Why indeed must typhoon-stricken folk be used as backdrop for either local or national electioneering? Why are politicos so callous, even as their children weep on TV that they’re not?

Elsewhere, Vice President Jejomar Binay, another presidential aspirant, also was alleging disaster-relief politicking by Social Welfare Sec. Dinky Soliman.

It appears that the latter, while distributing warm clothes and blankets to families in evacuation centers, had said such generosity would end if the Noynoy Aquino-style of Presidency does not extend beyond June 2016.

Binay took that as practically an endorsement of and premature campaigning for Roxas. And Soliman did it supposedly expending government time and resources. Binay’s political spokesman reminded Soliman that the campaign period for national candidates has yet to start in Feb., so she could be held criminally liable for electioneering. Moreover, the law requires government appointees either to resign or take leaves of absence if they wish to campaign; otherwise, they could be charged with partisanship and breaking political neutrality.

Lacierda was too busy warding ppoff Mayor Bihasa for Roxas, that he couldn’t come to the aid of the beleaguered Ms Soliman.pp

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Then  again, electioneering no longer is a crime. The Supreme Court made sure of that in Nov. 2009.

Ruling then in the case of “Peñera vs Comelec,” it said that prohibited acts of pcampaigning shall be deemed prohibited only during the, uhm, campaign period.

So there’s no more such offense as electioneering, or premature campaigning. Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista, a former law dean, claims that his agency is helpless. The SC supposedly effectively has repealed the laws on  prohibited campaigning acts. It is allegedly now up to Congress to enact a new law that would skirt the SC ruling. (Gee, what a crazy government with a crazy legal system! It even has an Immigration Bureau that’s deporting an American GI as persona non grata for murdering a Filipino, while a court that’s superior to it is trying that very foreigner precisely for murder.)

Candidates and supporters, even those in government, prematurely can campaign all they want and not go to jail for it – spending at will with no need to report to the Comelec, putting up posters of any size anywhere until the common-poster-area rule comes into play, and givjng away any kind of publicity paraphernalia like watches, hats, T-shirts, bags, or tablets yet not be accused of vote buying. They could even hold fundraising cockfight derbies or a-go-go discos featuring the twerking Playgirls, for all the Comelec cares.  All those, till the national campaign period officially commences 90 days, and the local 45 days before Election Day.

That’s why all the aspirants for President, and some for VP and senator, advertised their purported accomplishments on radio-TV, to up public awareness about themselves. They were under no compulsion to obey any law. All the Comelec could do was advise the electorate “to shun candidates who were breaking no laws.

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