Is ICI doomed from the start?

The business community is becoming highly skeptical about the viability of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) created by President Marcos to look into the massive corruption in flood control projects.

- MARIANNE GO

In fact, the business sector has expressed the belief that the ICI probe may be doomed from the start, with a nebulous goal, funding, manpower and legal authority to mete punishment on those it is supposed to investigate.

As Presidential Communications Office Undersecretary and Palace Press Officer Claire Castro had previously said, the ICI is merely a fact-finding body that is not supposed to mete punishment on any person who does not attend the hearings of the commission.

Sources in the business community point out that the scope of the investigation by the ICI is a logistical nightmare alone in hiring clerical staff, investigators, lawyers and competent assessors to help collect, check, verify documents and records, and then to compile and safeguard all testimonies, documents and paperwork submitted and gathered by the commission on the numerous flood projects that involves several government agencies.

The investigation, business observers note, could very well cover at least 10 years, and would therefore take even more time to validate and check.

While they are glad that former DPWH Secretary Rogelio Singson is part of the ICI, sources say that he was only prevailed upon by President Marcos to join the commission, even as he had previously rejected a return to government.

Singson’s corruption-free stint at the DPWH during the term of former president Benigno Aquino III has earned him the respect of international financial and aid organizations.