Lupanar

Hole of Justice

By Peter G. Jimenea

Lupanar – a house of ill-refute

The tract record of the Office of the Ombudsman speaks for itself. In one of our Sky Cable TV talk show,  Atty. Romeo Gerochi, an Ilonggo lawyer, called this office once headed by Merceditas Gutierrez as The Office of Monalisa.

For young people who knew nothing yet about Monalisa, she is a legendary painting, a beautiful woman obsessed by men that a beautiful song was composed in her behalf. In one of the lines dedicated to her it says; “Many dreams had been brought to your doorstep, they just lie there and they die there.”

So is the story of the Pavia Housing, a low-cost housing project of the Iloilo City government for lowly city hall employees. It was a hand-over project of the outgoing Mayor Mansueto Malabor to the newly elected Mayor Jerry Trenas for implementation in 2001.

On what misfortune, the P137 million for the construction of 413 houses which started in 2001 ended in the last term of Mayor Jerry Trenas in 2009 without a unit built. The contractor, Ace Builders Enterprise was found using substandard materials that the city council resolved to suspend the project and sue the contractor.

The contractor has no other recourse but to abandon the project. Yet, then Mayor Trenas ignored the city council and continued paying the contractor’s billings in millions.


Worse, the city was forced to pay a P17,000 daily bank interest due to the slippage. Another discovered mess is the transfer of the city loan obligation from the PNB to PVB which documentation alone cost the taxpayers P12M (kuno).

So in 2004, two city councilors filed a case against the mayor and the contractor for violation of RA 3019.  But the case brought to the office of Monalis… ehe, este Ombudsman Gutierrez only lie there and seems to die there until she resigned due to threat of impeachment by Congress.

Funny indeed, the superwoman who pledged to give a good fight against impeachment eventually left hurriedly as if a passenger catching the last plane out. Our tragedy is not her going away but leaving us no guarantee that when she steps down all crooks will go with her.

And curse of Maria Labo’, it was her Overall Deputy Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro who took over the investigation of the Pavia Housing Scam. What a surprise too, he indicted former Mayor Malabor and former subordinates while giving plenty of leeway for Mayor Trenas to roam around with smiles to the ears when evidence of his unauthorized payments is embraced on RA 3019!

The approval by Casimiro of this Pavia Hao Shiao case was done right after Monalisa, este Ombudsman Gutierrez stepped down from office. This gives us an impression without affirming the perception that his decision to go fast on Malabor not on Trenas was done in exchange for – you know what!

Lowly employees at the Office of the Ombudsman are most sorely tempted to accept bribe by slipping under the voluminous files the case folder of the giver to delay investigation but don’t.  Casimiro should know that it is easy for a discreet and prudent fish-vendor to believe that an offense charged has been committed by the persons named and sought to be indicted.   


On why Malabor failed to get out of the mess as Trenas does, we have yet to know. We do not question though, such demonic ehe, este Solomonic decision on cases like this. But natural moral law dictates that one’s discretion must be a sound one to be exercised in accordance with the tenets of justice and fair play!

I hope my temper would not go beyond calling this costly-house oficina de los ladrones – an office of thieves. Why? They are giving us false impression of a speedy disposal of cases while actually resulting in more delay - if not a miscarriage of justice!


Well,  let’s see now on how the honorable Orlando Casimiro deals with this new case filed at his office – the relocation site for displaced squatters which came out in a local newspaper to have been valued at P2.7M, yet purchased by the city government at P63.2 million pesos. God knows, SALUS POPULI EST SUPREMA LEX – “the welfare of the people is the supreme law!”