Few days ago, I read of the report that Sen. Peter Allan Cayetano came here in Cebu and visited my birth province of Bohol. Since the news clips did not mention of the lawmaker saying anything about his aspirations for the presidency in 2016, (kay layo pa man gyud kaayo tong sunod election), I gratuitously assumed that it was not political exposure that he came here for. He must have another agenda in his mind.
It is not every day that we feel our elected government officials try to feel our pulse and attempt to understand our bottomless concerns. Our actuarial experience is different for, we mostly see them, almost in a blur, during the election period. During their campaign sorties, they make that laudable though fleeting and forgettable effort to shake our hands and quite unfortunately, that is about all. It is thus, rather unusual for them to show their faces in our community, in times we do not expect them to come such that each occasion they mingle with us, we cannot help but endeavour to look for that other purpose than their plain visit.
This Senator Cayetano is probably of a different breed. On the TV coverage of the Senate Blue Ribbon sub-committee investigation in aid of legislation that we see every now and then, he and two other senators appear bent to tack corruption to the image of Vice President Jejomar Binay. Politics underscores every question they pose. They are seemingly more engaged in an interminable quest for explosive bits of information on the corrupt practices of the country's second highest ranking officer than in filing remedial legislative measures.
But, the detailed account of the senator's recent visit, even if, perhaps it was supplied by his information officer, admittedly touched my heart. When he came, Sen. Cayetano was not the brutal TV nemesis of the vice president. Instead, he was, to me, generosity personified. That could be explained as obvious when the good senator distributed almost a million pesos to four cooperatives in these two provinces. It could be very possible that he, being a rare kind of politician, had also been visiting his other constituencies in different places where he could be as generous as he was with us here few days ago.
What struck me as important in the report of his visit was the fact that there was no mention where the money (that he gave) came from. By my modest personal standard, it was a huge amount. Without any identification of the source of that fund, it was safe to conclude that it was his own. Wow, the almost one million pesos that Sen. Cayetano gave to four cooperatives here in Cebu and Bohol came from his pocket!
That led me into some thinking. I could just imagine that if he were to visit us twice a month, he could gift our fellow Cebuanos and Boholanos with almost two million pesos. Repeat, that is two million pesos in one month! That kind of fund can mean a lot to most of us ordinary citizens so that we must exert effort to let him come as often as possible.
Certainly, Cebu and Bohol should not be the only provinces this generous senator visits. It is understandable that he, as rara avis of a politician, also sees his constituencies in other provinces. When he does, he cannot be stopped from demonstrating, by his generous deeds, that he, indeed, differs from the rest of our elected leaders. For sure, when he draws from his personal pocket and gives to his fans, the kind of money that he gifted us recently with, he endears himself all the more to his voters because then, he will have shown that he is willing to share his economic blessings. I am afraid however that if he is that generous consistently throughout his 6 year term, his personal wealth might be seriously affected.
It is however possible that the fund that he gave away few days ago was donated by private backers. Or it could be part of his perk as an elected official. In other words, it could be tax money. In either case, why was there no effort exerted to clarify the source of the money?