For: Everyone
From: History
Subject: What fairness?

This memo is being issued for those who have forgotten their history and/or think the Arroyo administration is fair.

Remember Jocelyn Bolante and the Fertilizer Fund scam? The Senate Committee on Agriculture and the Blue Ribbon Committee finished their investigation, and issued a report March 1, 2006. They recommended that charges be filed against Bolante, who is now incarcerated at the United States for entering the country with a cancelled visa. February last year, the Ombudsman began investigating the fertilizer scam. Nothing has been heard about this case since.

There is no excuse for the delay. The Senate Committees had already forwarded their findings to the Ombudsman. All the Ombudsman needs to do is to verify the facts. It should not take a year to file a case. Maybe because Gloria Arroyo is linked to the scam.

Then, there’s Hernando Perez and the IMPSA deal. While the CBK-IMPSA deal has been in the works since 1992, the deal was approved four days after Gloria Arroyo and cohorts booted out Estrada. Here is PCIJ’s expose and timeline. The Ombudsman took 6 years just to find out that Perez is liable. The case is languishing in the Sandiganbayan ever since, as it had languished at the Ombudsman for 6 years.

That’s just two cases. Here is Dean Jorge Bocobo’s Google search queries for all the scandals and scams under the current dispensation.

Compare that with the speed at which Joseph Estrada’s case was dispatched. After his ouster as President in January 20, 2001, the Ombudsman filed cases of plunder and perjury against Estrada April 4, 2001, using the evidences presented in the aborted impeachment trial. (Heck, PCIJ even complained that Estrada’s trial would last ages!) The articles of impeachment were transmitted to the Senate in November 13, 2000, a month after Luis Singson’s allegations were publicized.

How’s that for fairness. FYI.

Reference:
The iniquity of selective prosecution