Trail leads to Alvarez

THE mysterious ir­regularities in the budgetary distortions worth billions of pesos discovered by House law­makers after weeks of combing the proposed 2019 national budget seem to show a clear trail to where they may have all originated.

Current House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. calls the misrepre­sentations as “miracles” which involve, among others, the pre-budget approval of government projects in favor of the Bulacan-based CT Le­oncio Construction and Trading, a single propri­etorship venture.

As noted, the approval of the projects took place during former Speak­er Pantaleon Alvarez’s watch, and the ‘winning’ contractor, who cornered eye-popping project ini­tiatives, is not even a triple ‘A’ firm. Worse, there were no biddings done since there no ap­proved budget yet.

Months earlier, Alvarez was also on a crossfire for hiring 124 consultants, excluding congressional staff and, presumably, other favored individu­als. There was even the alleged squandering of billions of pesos of an account with only the House speaker having sole discretion.

Amidst the litany of exposes hounding Con­gress, there’s a reluc­tance by the present House leadership to invite to a public hearing the former Speaker, who has not been attending ses­sions since his ouster, to account for the discrep­ancies uncovered.

This seems not an easy proposition for House Speaker Gloria Macapa­gal-Arroyo since Alvarez was her former Transpor­tation and Communica­tions secretary, but the scandalous arrangements inherited from the previ­ous Speaker should not be set aside for partisan or other reasons because, if true, public interest is seriously jeopardized here.

It is ironic that in public hearings, legislators pres­ent themselves as public defenders against corrup­tion. When one of them is exposed as fraudulent, however, there is no col­lective effort to probe the suspect, even for pur­poses of clarification.

Alvarez is now part of the ‘silent majority,’ but upright legislators retain the responsibility to en­courage parties corrupted and victimized by the co­ercive efforts of the pre­vious leadership to show up and spill the beans of the supposed anoma­lies committed when the House was under the grip of terror.

It seems obvious the declarations and com­ments so far made in print and broadcast, in­dicate that the trail of questionable deals leads to the footsteps to Alva­rez. If only for that, Ar­royo should start probing the allegations. By doing so, she will leave a legacy that can help restore Con­gress’ image.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all our DEAR READERS.