Institutional corruption

All the despicable corrupt schemes of our public officials with private contractors are nothing new.

- BOO CHANCO

These have been going on for a very long time. We have tolerated it.

But our corrupt officials have become too greedy. Some of us might have thought that a 10 to 20 percent kurakot is the price to pay for having a road paved or a bridge built. But perpetrators of ghost projects where 100 percent of a project budget is stolen should be punished by death.

Our tragedy is we cannot even properly investigate and make the obvious culprits account for these grievous acts against the nation. The Senate investigation led by Sen. Ping Lacson was forced to stop because the trail led to several senators.

The ICI created by BBM is acting like it is walking on eggshells, afraid to find sacred cows. So, it is holding closed door hearings which only make people extra suspicious of a cover-up.

BBM said the investigations should not be rushed because he wants airtight cases. A plausible excuse, but the truth is, the powers-that-be are nervous where the light of truth leads.

The government needs a pragmatic legal strategy that focuses on getting quick results. There are easy pickings to satisfy the public’s clamor for blood amid the thousands of cases that must eventually be dealt with.

Everyone realizes our legal system grinds slowly. But the public is angry and impatient. People want to see some people punished now, not ten years from now.

Not all the cases are complicated. Some are open-and-shut. Years of getting away with plunder have made some of the bad actors careless.

We can start with the ghost projects. Kim Henares, who was a candidate to be Ombudsman, lays down the strategy on how to do this: