Gordon cool to minority’s eyed ‘dissenting report’ on fertilizer fund mess

02/27/2009

After exchanging tirades with the members of the minority bloc over his committee’s report on its probe into the P728-million fertilizer funds controversy, Senate Blue Ribbon committee chairman Richard Gordon yesterday said he will accept whatever “remedial legislations” are raised in the minority’s “dissenting report.”

“All initiatives to address loopholes in our laws, particularly in curbing corruption in the government, are most welcome,” he said.

The minority bloc has said it will come up with its own report on the issue on Monday, to be “penned” by Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, the former chairman of the Blue Ribbon panel before Gordon took over its helm following a leadership reorganization in the Senate last November.

The move was apparently prompted by the findings and recommendations presented by Gordon’s panel in its re-investigation of the fertilizer funds controversy as some of the findings did not sit well with some of the members of the minority, particularly over its statement that it found no evidence of President Arroyo’s direct involvement in the alleged anomaly, although it stressed that she should nonetheless be held accountable for the mess.

Those who signed and approved the report were Senators Gregorio Honasan, Ramon Revilla Jr., Edgardo Angara, Panfilo Lacson, Jamby Madrigal, Manuel Roxas II, Loren Legarda, Lito Lapid and Jinggoy Estrada.

Gordon said he welcomes the submission of the “minority report,” which he deems shows that the minority is one with the majority in fighting corruption in government.

“Such plan reaffirms that the Senate is indeed a deliberative body under our modern democracy,” he said.

Gordon said a number of his colleagues from the majority and even a few from the minority concurred with the findings and recommendations contained in his panel’s report.

In coming up with a separate concurring and dissenting opinion, Sen. Joker Arroyo commended Gordon for the straightforward manner of his handling of the inquiry into the fertilizer funds mess.

Arroyo, former chairman of the Blue Ribbon panel who, along with former Sen. Ramon Magsaysay, former chairman of the Senate committee on agriculture and food, first conducted an inquiry into the controversy during the 13th Congress.

Arroyo, however, disagreed with the Gordon panel’s proposed amendment of the Anti-Money Laundering Law, saying the problem was not the law itself but in its enforcement.

The Gordon-led Blue Ribbon panel submitted a 130-page report last Monday which contained recommended charges against former Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante, the alleged chief architect of the purported diversion of the funds, as well as those against businessman Jaime Paule and his group.

The report also proposed amendments to four laws, including the Omnibus Election Code and the Government Procurement Act, to discourage the commission of the same alleged diversion of the funds to electoral campaigns.

Angie M. Rosales

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