Deny, lie and destroy

EDITORIAL

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02/27/2009

The routine among Gloria and her cabal is to deny and later on launch a counter-attack, usually funded to high heavens, against the accusers, which, however, serves no other purpose but to sustain their political survival.

This daily grind in Malacañang was what caused the unpopularity of Gloria and her administration and not the supposed “hard decisions” she claims to have had to implement for the economy.

A prime example of the deny and destroy tactic is the current World Bank (WB) road project scandal in which, as a course of nature, First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo was identified as a central character.

A referral report of the WB on the bid-rigging investigations on the National Road Improvement and Management Program 1 that The Tribune obtained, with a few other papers, unequivocally named Big Mike as a main participant in the collusion practices in the bidding of government infrastructure contracts.

The WB’s investigative division or INT even ventured to say that the cartel it caught manipulating the auction for the road project has been a fixture in the government biddings.

Big Mike’s lawyers, the other day, were all over town talking to broadcast and print media to attack the credibility of the WB report and the senators who wanted a new investigation after an earlier railroaded hearing of the bid-rigging scandal.

Imagine how much more would Big Mike and his richly-paid battery of lawyers assault media with their bare-faced lies if the Right of Reply Bill would become law. Instead of news, the public will be bombarded with front page denials and outright lies from Big Mike’s lawyers.

The atrocious demand of Big Mike’s lawyers is that the WB should present its witnesses to issue sworn affidavits to be presented to the courts even if nothing prospers in the local courts when Gloria and Big Mike’s interests are at stake.

The WB report on the bid-rigging scandal has been with the government since November 2007 and prior to that, WB officials met with Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez in early May 2006, or more than a year before the report was submitted, to brief her in advance of the institution’s findings on the bid-rigging allegations.

Two years passed and Gutierrez during the Senate said it was still in the preliminary investigation stage on the report, which time was more than a year after it was submitted to her.

Either Gutierrez wanted to picture herself as a pure idiot or she was obviously stalling and that the best alibi she could give was that she cannot use the WB referral report as evidence because of the disclaimers by the institution and that its contents cannot be revealed since these were classified.

It would be common sense for Gutierrez to deduce that the WB may have a purpose in giving the government the referral report with an offer of assistance if she pursues an investigation to establish a criminal case from it.

The WB had a hard time putting across the message that it cannot recommend but only provide the leads to the government, primarily Gutierrez, to act in accordance with its findings in the bid-rigging allegations.

The reason for Gutierrez’s playing dumb was that Big Mike was clearly the biggest name among those that the WB investigation had pinned down as part of the corrupt practice.

Worse, the railroaded Senate investigation into the mess, made it look like it was the fault of the WB to make public the result of its findings or in probing the rigging of bids after Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who was at the helm of the inquiry, started to hit at the WB officials for withholding internal reports on the investigation while the referral report was for two years in the hands of government.

The heavily-documented fiasco appears designed to make any of those who attempt to save the hide of Big Mike look extremely stupid.

The WB fiasco would be hard to refute because of the heavy documentation that went into it plus the reputation of the investigator.

Big Mike’s only option is to ride out the controversy with the usual media bombardment of denials and smokescreens which his lawyers had already started by issuing statements that the attacks on the First Gentleman are coming from those with electoral ambitions.

Lies and denials would be constant until hopefully forever which can only happen if Gloria is perpetually in power.

That option appears to be already being worked on.

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