Mayor Vico Sotto of Pasig City has warned about the “many outright lies” and attempts to muddle the issues surrounding the flood control scandal, specifically in the testimonies of Pacifico “Curlee” Discaya and his wife Cezarah “Sarah.”
Neophyte Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, who had been replaced as chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that initiated the legislative inquiry, accused newly elected Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III of bias for questioning the credibility of the Discaya couple’s statements, citing that the mayor of Pasig is his nephew, who was Sarah’s political rival in last May’s election. The Senate leader, he said, should have recused himself from the issues to avoid a conflict of interest.
In turn, netizens were quick in pointing out Marcoleta’s apparent partiality in conducting the initial probe by highlighting only the allegedly anomalous contracts from July 2022, skipping those under the Duterte administration and earlier.
Officials from the Department of Public Works and Highways have also given inconsistent statements about the questionable contracts and the lawmakers and other persons they have identified as having allegedly received kickbacks from the projects.
So many accusations have been thrown, followed by denials and counter-accusations, obfuscating the already complex issues involving the budget process and government contracting.
The public is also distracted by a former actor’s social media post threatening to expose Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s supposed “double life” if he does not resign in the wake of corruption allegations involving flood control projects.
After the so-called bombshell testimonies of the Discayas and DPWH district engineers from Bulacan before the separate probes by the House and Senate, how deeper will the lies be? How will the legislators, some of whom are allegedly involved in the anomalous contracts, react?
When the Independent Commission for Infrastructure, created on Sept. 11 under Executive Order 94, conducts its own probe, how will it untangle the complex web of untruths and distortion of facts by personalities perceived to have benefited from the anomalous deals?
We can expect more attempts to muddle the issues as the investigations dig deeper and cover more projects that could mean the involvement of more personalities. At this point, it is apparent that crisis public relations are already at work to manage public perception and defend the reputation of businesses and people mentioned in the congressional investigations and news reports.
Many of these attempts and efforts may be deliberate to establish reasonable doubt to avoid conviction when the cases reach the courts. In criminal cases, the courts require a high legal standard of proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning the prosecution must present enough convincing evidence to convince a judge of the defendant’s guilt to the point where there is no other logical or reasonable explanation based on the evidence presented.
That was why former senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. was acquitted of plunder by the Sandiganbayan in 2018 in connection with the P10-billion pork-barrel scam. Only Revilla’s former chief of staff, Richard Cambe, and businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles were found guilty of the charge and sentenced to reclusion perpetua and absolute disqualification from public office. However, all three of them were “held solidarily and jointly liable to return to the National Treasury P124.50 million allegedly pocketed in kickbacks after channeling his priority development assistance fund allocations to bogus NGOs controlled by Napoles.
If Revilla was able to get away with plunder, some moneyed personalities embroiled in the ongoing flood control scandal may be thinking that they could be free by “investing” in an elaborate plan to obfuscate the issues early on and create reasonable doubt about their involvement.
When Vico Sotto appeared before the House tri-committee hearing on the anomalous flood control projects last week, he spoke about his experience with the Discayas, who, he said, “are people who are really capable of lying without batting an eyelash.”
How about the 17 lawmakers and seven DPWH officials who were named to have allegedly demanded kickbacks of up to 25% from government contracts?
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
This column also appeared in The Manila Times.
