Christmas, the calm before the storm

Between the poorly attended Trillion Peso Protest March and the Christmas holidays upon us, there is a legitimate concern that Filipinos may end up cooling down with indifference to the greatest robbery in Philippine history.

- CITO BELTRAN

In fact, the national government, PBBM and associates seem to be back to the “business as usual” mode, often being dismissive of suggestions to empower the ICI or create a more powerful and credible People’s Independent Commission.

I cannot help but assume that the ghost projects, corruption and theft from the national treasury will end up just like those police raids on houses of prostitution and drug warehouses.

Remember those “police reports” where cops raid a “casa” or a massage parlor, arrest the women along with janitors, dragging some of them into vans half naked and parading them to the media.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, the owner or operator got away because he or she was tipped off. The same thing happens in many raids on drug labs and warehouses.

They always manage to arrest the houseboy, caretaker, “sekyu” or hired help but never a big fish. You almost want to think that such raids were “fictional.”

The same goes for POGO operations where the real owners, partners or operators are never seen, named or mentioned by the raiding teams. Yes, they got Alice Guo for large-scale human trafficking, but not the crime bosses or politicians involved.

So it is no surprise that the people who will be tried, convicted and jailed in the DPWH ghost project scams will mostly be low-level officials of the DPWH. Any so-called high-ranking officials will be a fall guy who will be sued but eventually cleared for lack of evidence.