Focusing on the small stuff

EDITORIAL

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07/17/2010

Administration executives are really something else.

Instead of focusing on the important issues related to their respective tasks, they center their attention on really minute stuff, dig up their predecessors’ claimed anomalies or mistakes, merely to get media mileage.

A case in point is the new Justice chief, Leila de Lima. There is hardly any question about De Lima’s legal experience and expertise. She certainly is qualified to head the Department of Justic (DoJ). But why does she waste her time running after former Justice Secretary Alberto Agra and former National Bureau of Investigation chief Nestor Mantaring as well as the chief of the NBI’s Counter Terrorism Unit, Ricardo Diaz, on the matter of their being questioned on the issue of their having failed to initiate an investigation into the claim of an NBI official that a retired Air Force official attempted to bribe a witness in the Maguindanao massacre case?

Is there a need to probe them when she, who is now in position and authority within her realm of responsibility, can check on this matter herself, without necessarily making it appear that something sneaky went on and that her predecessor is guilty of not having this investigated?

A bribe offer is not the easiest thing to prove even in court, especially if it cannot be proven either that money — in the amount of P10 million — changed hands and especially if the so-called bribe was not quite couched in so a crude manner, and moreso if it cannot be proved that the recantation of a witness was made on account of his having been bribed.

Just what is it then that De Lima wants to do in this case? Fish for more evidence with which to strengthen her agency’s case against the Ampatuans? At this point, the DoJ should already have more than enough evidence and witnesses to pin down the Ampatuans and that’s probably what she can focus on, instead of sweating the small stuff.

But it is not only De Lima who suffers from this — for want of a better word — administration executives’ malady.

Take the case of the Finance chief, Cesar Purisma, and his Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) chief, Kim Henares, filing a case of tax evasion against an owner of a pawn shop who had declared a zero income in the year he had acquired a P26 million Lamborghini sports car.

That’s all well and good. But why focus on a pawnshop owner and his acquisition of the Lamborghini, yet do nothing about the tax evasion and tax avoidance of all those big businessmen who rake in a lot of profits but pay so little in tax, whether for their corporations, or their personal incomes?

Stated differently, why are they running after the relatively small fry rather than the big fish in business?

Even during Purisima’s time as Finance chief under the Arroyo administration, he hardly focused on the big fish — especially the fish variety known as the political and business biggies. True, he ran after some celebrities, but they can hardly be compared to the bigger political biggies, especially some of those who are said to be into drug-trafficking and yes, big time jueteng operators as well as the known smuggling lords and even gun runners. These persons are more or less known to the BIR and even the Malacañang tenant — whoever is occupying the Palace then and now.

Even more telling is the fact that there are those the Finance and the BIR chiefs never touch — such as the allies of the whoever sits in Malacañang.

But it appears that all these administration executives, in desiring media mileage, want to hold up such small time as examples of their “seriousness” in running after scoundrels, whether in the Justice department or the Finance department, and so they focus on the small stuff and the small fry.

In the case of Noynoy Aquino’s Finance department’s announcement of no negotiations, that seems pretty dumb. Charging these so-called tax evaders and getting them tried in court takes years, and for such a small amount — in comparison to the biggies in society. And the money they want to raise by way of increasing revenues won’t be there.

Before hitting at the small fry, start on the big fish, then maybe Filipinos will take note of it and start shaping up.

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