The Duterte administration is reviving some dying dreams.
Through its Office of the Solicitor General, the administration recently moved to acquit Janet Lim Napoles of her serious illegal detention case. By tainting the integrity of whistle-blower Benhur Luy, Napoles’ acquittal will indirectly benefit former senators Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla in their pork barrel scam cases. To recall, during the campaign season, candidate Rodrigo Duterte assured the Cavite voters of Revilla’s “right to bail,” if he became president. As for the Estradas, the President is “God-given from heaven.”
The same is also happening in the House of Representatives, where Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez is seeking to transfer the functions and duties of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to the Office of the Solicitor General. For the past years, the PCGG has recovered billions of pesos of the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth; and it has tirelessly promoted methods to combat and prevent corruption in government service. Now that someone from the administration will oversee it, will it be like the Senate justice committee which suddenly steered away from the possibility of implicating President Duterte in thousands of drug-related killings, after Sen. Dick Gordon started leading it?
Rumor has it that former senator Bongbong Marcos will soon head the Department of the Interior and Local Government, a powerful political machine that could catapult him and his family back to power. It will indeed benefit him that a Duterte ally will head the agency that has long been after the so-called Marcos ill-gotten wealth.
So President Marcos and Senators Estrada and Revilla again in 2022?
REJINEL GAMBOA VALENCIA, rejinelgvalencia@gmail.com