More details, please

Batas Mauricio

DID you notice the virtual silence of President Aquino and of the Office of the President about the accusations made in the “true State of the Nation Address” of Vice President Jejomar Binay?

It seemed to me that Malacanang is trying to deliberately ignore Binay’s latest rants, and is choosing not to say anything in reply, except a terse “he was part of the government for the last five years and he was one of  those who gleefully applauded the President in previous addresses to the nation”.

What does this indicate? Many things, of course. The first meaning of that silence maybe that, ignoring the accusations would shoo them away. Second, it could be that Malacanang knew only too well that what Binay had been ranting about are all correct,  and that talking about them some more would only be counter-productive.

Some administration hacks have been saying however that Binay did not have any right to be castigating the President and his government, particularly on the issue of corruption, since he, the Vice President himself, is also facing a host of corruption and plunder charges which he has not bothered to answer.

This is a funny and desperate argument, if you ask me. The fact is that, assuming that Binay is himself guilty of the corruption and plunder accusations being hurled against him by Malacanang and its allies, that does not remove Binay’s right to speak out against Aquino and the graft, corruption, and plunder, among his friends and allies and, if we are to believe a foreign ambassador, even among his relatives.

After all, Binay remains a citizen of this country, and, like the rest of us, he is still entitled to live under a government free of graft-prone and plunderous officials, especially those who have been farcically espousing the so-called “righteous path” doctrine.

Of course, what Binay is doing is clearly against what Jesus, our God and Savior, said in Matthew 7:1 of the Bible: do not judge, so that you will not be judged yourself, for the measure you use in judging others will be the same measure that they will use against you when they judged you, too.

But then, is not the President himself the principal exponent of judging others about their performance in government, particularly his predecessor, the now-detained and sickly former President Gloria Arroyo? So, true indeed, when one judges others in violation of what the Bible admonishes, he gets the same treatment or the same fate of being judged, rightly or wrongly.

As far as I am concerned, I am for everyone in government blaming one another, for that is the only way by which the citizenry can come to know of wrongdoings which are usually hidden from public view, particularly when the officials involved are up there at the top where many are covering up for them. I hope Binay can come up with much specific details against Aquino as election nears.

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Labor Arbiter Patricio Liboon, the grand archon when I joined the UP College of Law Sigma Rho Fraternity in 1978, sent a reaction. Liboon, who is usually passive about many occurrences in government, said: “This should be investigated.”

Indeed, Arbiter Liboon is right––the scam should be investigated, considering that, from all indications, supposed payments of benefits to unsuspecting government officials would seem to be a widespread anomaly at the Home Development Mutual Fund (HDMF).

Through this scam, hundreds of millions of government money would appear to have been disbursed for government employees as payment for one benefit or another, without them having applied for such benefits and without them having actually received even a single centavo of those payments or benefits.

I called the Makati City head office of HDMF in the afternoon of Monday to get the agency’s side of this story but, as usual, I was referred to the HDMF chief executive officer who, allegedly, could answer my questions. When I tried dialing the number of that referred officer, nobody answered my calls, even if I had been calling for two hours straight.

Either I was given a bum number, or the telephone operator who referred me to the officer already got to that officer first, and told him or her that I would be calling in relation to the anomaly, and that my calls should no longer be answered.

True enough, I had not been able to get the side of the HDMF. I also missed the opportunity to follow-up on the letter I sent to HDMF detailing the experiences of two retired public school teachers from Taguig City who complained that when they were asking for their retirement pays, they were told that the amounts allegedly received by them as “maturity benefits” in thousands of pesos from HDMF would be deducted from their pays.

Of course, the teachers are up in arms. Their common complaint is that they did not apply for any “membership maturity benefits” from the HDMF while they were still in the service. And neither did they receive anything by way of such “membership maturity benefits”.

They therefore rejected the demand of HDMF that they should reimburse what they were supposedly paid as “membership maturity benefits”, but then, being the ordinary school teachers that they were, they weren’t able to do anything about the insistence of HDMF to be reimbursed the amounts it allegedly paid to them.

I am therefore concurring with Arbiter Liboon in his suggestion that this matter be investigated. It is not possible that this scam will happen without the participation of HDMF employees or officials. These are the people who make President Aquino’s program of “straight path” a mockery of the highest order and who should be fired by him!

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com