OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT
(Part II)
Notwithstanding the sustained decline in the daily COVID-19 cases, the Pharmally scandal will never be moot and academic. Pharmally represents the corruption of our health.
Its ghosts will continue to haunt us.
Our health authorities always blamed lack of resources for their weak pandemic response, yet they wasted billions of pesos spending on soiled and expired health protective gears and signing up on undelivered items. Since money is fungible, the Filipino taxpayers effectively financed the purchase of exotic luxury cars of Pharmally’s top executives who never bothered to pay taxes to the government, and God knows who and what else.
What the future holds for justice in the Pharmally case depends to a large extent on the Senate Blue Ribbon chairman Senator Dick Gordon who continues to fight off death threats for his relentless efforts to get to the bottom of this anomaly. He was very forthright with his replies to the rest of my queries.
Q: What will you do with the final report? Submit this to the Ombudsman?
I would like to think that the Ombudsman, the Department of Justice, and the AMLC are monitoring or watching the proceedings. They should be able to pick up leads and act on them right away if they are serious about their work.
We worry, however, because we have seen that some moro-moro cases were filed, designed or bound to fail, and dismissed due to undue reliance on technicalities.
In the cases of Bureau of Immigration Deputy Commissioners Al Argosino and Robles, the Committee assisted the Ombudsman in the sense that what we were able to collect as evidence were used to convict them.
As with previous reports, we send those to the Ombudsman. The Constitution has assigned to that Office the prosecution of malfeasance, misfeasance, and non- feasance committed by public officers. We have to trust that system; otherwise we change it.
There are many issues that need addressing. If the president was serious in his “mere whiff of corruption” test he should be helping us. He should make Michael Yang and Atty. Lao appear and cooperate in the hearings. His subordinates at the Department of Justice should start looking into Michael Yang’s permanent resident status, i.e., whether his continued stay in the Philippines is warranted by the circumstances unveiled.
Q: Is there enough evidence to establish the involvement of some high-ranking government officials? How high does it go?
We believe so. We discovered documents, and several circumstances that, when put together, are enough to hold several people accountable for this horrible mess.
The links reach to positions in government to as high as the President himself: He appointed Lao and Liong to, first to the Presidential Management Staff, and then to PS-DBM. They were the ones in charge of that office and they, as executive director and procurement head, respectively, set into motion and consummated the anomalous contracts.
He appointed Michael Yang as economic adviser even if he was not a citizen of this country, allowing him access to state secrets. Michael Yang, despite initial denials of participation in the Pharmally deals, he later on was pointed to as having introduced Pharmally to Chinese suppliers, guaranteed Pharmally’s ability to pay the said suppliers, and financed Pharmally’s operations He, admittedly, ordered Duque to transfer P42 billion of DOH funds to PS-DBM in pursuit of purchasing supplies for use against the pandemic When he could not present coherent answers to the issues validly raised, he’d go into ad hominem attacks against the chairman and the members of the committee The Blue Ribbon committee is here to act as protector of the people and their interests.
Q: What kind of threats or obstructions have you encountered in the course of this investigation?
The President himself threatened the senators investigating the anomalous deals.
He even threatened the chairman, saying that the senator will not be in office forever and that those who were investigated could get back at him; he spews a crass “bababuyin kita hanggang mamatay ka” addressed to the chairman of the committee.
He had an order issued by the Executive Secretary to prohibit the attendance of all officials and employees of the Executive Department from participating in the investigations.
Other probable resource persons are in hiding: the subpoena cannot be served because the persons we are seeking do not supposedly live or hold offices in the addresses they supplied SEC when they filed their incorporation documents.
Some have supplied addresses to the SEC that do not exist at all; some people who supposedly are incorporators, seemingly have disappeared.
Usec Lloyd Christopher Lao is in hiding and has not appeared before the Committee in the recent hearings.
Pharmally officials have refused the directives of the Committee to submit crucial financial documents which would show that their transactions with PS-DBM were legitimate and to prove that these were not ghost deliveries
Let the cause of justice be served now.