Thursday, December 8, 2011

A corrupt lady solon and a corrupt DPWH chief?

BY MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

A Local Government Unit (LGU)in Pangasinan is going to apply for an almost P100 million loan in a government bank.
The mayor is optimistic that a resolution empowering him to negotiate with the bank for the loan would be unanimously approved by the members of the Council (Sanggunian).
My insider told me that the members of the August Body forego any meticulous scrutiny how the multi-million-peso loan would be utilized by the mayor for his projects.

He told me that five percent (or about P5 million) of the loan are intended to be divided as bribe among the ten members of the Council. It means each of them including the Vice Mayor would receive a whopping almost P455 thousand each.
Who says elective position like a dad in an LGU is a bane?
**
News headlines screamed recently that Taiwan is deploying missiles on her claimed territorial islands and water at the Spratly Islands.
After Taiwan deployed her missiles, Mainland China follow suits.
The rest of the claimants like Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines would react, thus the arms race rush there.
With the proliferation of superior armaments in the Islands, I saw the United States smiles.
Arms race in the Spratly bode well for the sluggish American arms industry.
With the increase demands among the claimant countries to buy modern weaponries from Uncle Sam, the lethargic U.S economy perks-up.
Who says that war is not good for ones economy?
***
A mayor in the Luzon area has been comparing a congresswoman to a former congressman.
The congressman would not take part even a portion of her pork and congressional initiatives that runs to hundreds of millions.
The mayor said that he agreed with the observation of his fellow mayor (who liked him has a construction firm) that their former congressman was kind and selfless.
The former solon shared with them some actions for his government funded projects and was already satisfied to get eight percent from them on the entire cost of any project as SOP (Standard Operational Procedure in the name of corruption).
The chief executive said that sometimes the former lawmaker would not accept the SOP whenever he gave the envelop that contains the money in the solon’s house in Manila.
“He would instead treat me for drinks in clubs at his own expense.”
He said the present congresswoman is too greedy with her projects. She would allegedly pockets 25 percent from the construction of dikes and 40 percent allegedly from the dredging operation that made her district vulnerable to flood – a bane to her constituents.
What was worse according to the source, the solon would ask her bag woman (a high official of the DPWH) to get about 25 percent and 40 percent SOP from the dike and the dredging project even they were only half- finished.
“That’s how greedy she is.”
He said he could only shake his head as the DPWH chief wanted to get her portion too of SOP from the entire cost of the project.
He knew many of the shenanigans of the solon and the already super rich DPWH chief because he has some dummy construction firms that won the bids for the solon’s much abused projects.
Kibitzers in the district see that in the 2013 election, the streak of this solon in pocketing government funds would finally end as the son of a very powerful politician in the province challenges her.
As for the fate of the DPWH top honcho? God has His own way to punish her.
(You can read my selected intriguing but thought-provoking columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com).

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