March 28, 2000
$10 million of funds for Philippines' poor
Allegedly Diverted By President Estrada and his family/friends
Just another part of the massive corruption of PI
Edwin Tuyay for Asiaweek
Tan serves the poor and takes on the powerful
Tan's letter, also disseminated via the Internet, contended that some 430 million
pesos ($10.5 million) of the lottery's funds for the poor went to projects of
President Joseph Ejercito Estrada, First Lady Maria Luisa "Loi" Ejercito and
their eldest son Jinggoy Estrada, mayor of suburban San Juan, as well as other
officials. That left just $1.6 million for the charity's regular beneficiaries.
The claim has prompted a review of PCSO procedures and put the First Family
on the defensive.
The letter also spurred the opposition member of the cabinet, Vice President
and Social Welfare Secretary Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to criticize Estrada publicly
for the first time. She has likened the PCSO scandal to the BW case, in which
Estrada is accused of interfering with a stock market inquiry. "It will result
in the waning trust of people in the government," she told reporters. The antigraft
Senate Blue Ribbon Committee is conducting a probe, for which the First Lady,
her son Jinggoy and Tan testified on March 22.
The brouhaha began on Feb. 28, when the president replaced four of the PCSO's
five directors, including Tan and respected former Supreme Court justice Cecilia
Muñoz Palma, who was the chair. The new board includes lawyer and former Securities
and Exchange Commission chief Rosario Lopez, who was elected chair; Cirio Santiago,
Estrada's moviedom friend; accountant Manuel Reyes, the president's neighbor
in his suburban home; youth leader Cesar Chavez, a protégé of another presidential
son, and physician Gregorio Moral, Lopez's brother-in-law. Tan complained that
she found out about the board revamp only when she asked the board secretary
about the next directors' meeting.
In July 1998, newly elected President Estrada installed Palma's group in the
PCSO "to clean up the agency," previously under Manuel Morato, an arch-critic
of Estrada who ran against him in the May 1998 presidential elections. Sister
Christine recalls: "I accepted the job because I wanted to help channel funds
to the truly poor . . . I had tried my best, doing more than expected, cheating
no one, padding no prices of medicine, recommending no ghost employees, stealing
not a single peso from this multi-billion-peso agency."
But after a few months in office, Tan's letter alleges, "requests from congressmen
and mayors, from the president and the First Lady were becoming more frequent,
while funds for our regular hospitals and institutions were becoming extremely
difficult to secure." She adds: "We were ordered to send all ambulances to Jinggoy
Estrada . . . I learned to object to such requests, to question, to stall, to
defer resolutions." In conclusion, the nun wrote: "Why was I removed? Elections
are coming, and I have not learned to steal."
Estrada fumed. "There are no thieves in my family," he declared. First Lady
Loi Ejercito called her first press conference ever to detail just how much
the PCSO disbursed to her office. "Not a single centavo of funds I requested
and received has resulted in any personal gain for me or my family," she later
told the Senate. As for presidential son Jinggoy's more than 100 ambulances,
he distributed them as the elected head of the mayors' league.
If anyone should be accused of graft, says new PCSO chief Lopez, "it should
be Justice Palma and her son Tady." Lopez alleges that Palma's administration
spent $4.87 million on "expired and ineffective" medicines for the failed Drugstore
of the Masses project. Lopez also alleges anomalies in the procurement of billboards
and an elevator. She says Palma and her directors were removed "because the
PCSO has incurred losses."
"There was no corruption during my administration," counters Palma. "We purchased
only 14 million pesos [worth of medicine] and they went to 15 hospitals to benefit
15,000 indigent patients." She blamed the losses on huge debts incurred under
her predecessor Morato.
Palma concedes that projects funded by the 430 million pesos "were all in accordance
with the PCSO charter. So Malacañang did not misuse the funds." Tan herself
told the Senate: "I never used the word wrongdoing . . . my complaint is the
disproportionate allocation of funds for projects of the First Family."
Jesuit priest James Reuters believes "the charges she [Tan] made will have no
factual support." Maybe so, but Vice President Arroyo notes: "Charges have been
raised by a very credible person, and that cannot be ignored." Estrada himself
said on radio:"I never thought a nun could also be a liar." Yet with all the
scandals around, many Filipinos are having a hard time taking his word as gospel
truth.
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