First word
WITH the arrest and certain extradition of Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co from the Czech Republic, the nation can breathe a sigh of relief and finally piece together the jigsaw puzzle of the multibillion-peso flood control funds conspiracy and plunder that has plunged the country into a crisis of confidence and worries about insolvency.
The administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is extremely lucky to get this news from Prague at this time when the government is finally moving to arrest, indict and punish the perpetrators and mastermind of the fraud and prove its capability to bring this wretched and shameless case to resolution.
The physical presence of the elusive Zaldy Co to answer charges and questions will not automatically provide all the answers to the many questions and headaches that have arisen from the fortuitous discovery and exposé of the plunder. Zaldy in the flesh is only the embodiment of the evil and corruption that has infested our government since time out of mind.
The authorities and the public must be thoughtful and astute in their questioning and public flogging of the man, for all his skulduggery.
The first question that must be asked and answered is how and why the government could be easily and totally fooled and robbed of billions of public money without the alarm bells and sirens ringing out to stop the pillage.
It was for the purpose of getting an explanation that the government embarked on several formal investigations into the scam, notably the inquiry of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure and the hearings conducted by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee. These have been wrapped and concluded without producing satisfactory and enlightening results, after so much publicity and breast-beating by the probers.
After the hubbub and the big claims of wrongdoing and the finger-pointing, the inquiries ground to a halt without giving the nation a clear and plausible explanation of how and why such massive fraud could take place under the presumably watchful and alert eyes of the public authorities.
The second question that must be raised is how so many high-ranking members of the government, including no less than the speaker of the House of Representatives and the president of the Senate were enticed to join the conspiracy to defraud, and how.
They wantonly and greedily pounce on the opportunity to rob the government blind without being exposed by our government system.
A third question that must be asked and answered is how a lowly party-list member of Congress like Zaldy Co with no credentials or know-how for lawmaking and lawgiving could rise to the very top of the appropriations process and call the shots in the allocation of resources.
It must be asked how the party-list system, which is supposed to be the means to provide representation to the marginalized, wound up marginalizing the entire country. It is really time to consider constitutional reform to bring the party-list system under control.
Finally, the nation must reflect long and hard on how the ethical and moral safeguards in the government service concerning integrity and public trust were set aside by public officials so they could themselves loot the public coffers.
“Government gone utterly wrong” is the fitting caption to describe how our government failed and was hoodwinked by its own top officials.
Then also, the postmortem must examine the role that Filipino politics played in this national disaster. In the Western world, politics is widely regarded as a means of remedy to political and social problems. In our case, politics itself appears to have been the perpetrator and mastermind of the corruption of our public service and public life.
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