Will Pharmally case be brushed under the rug?

President Duterte campaigned against the re-election of Sen. Richard Gordon and got his way. He had minced no words about destroying Gordon for exposing the shenanigans of his Pharmally friends. With Gordon out of the Senate, Pharmally people must now be really jumping with joy at the prospect of being able to keep the loot they were accused of hoarding from the Department of Health funds intended for the COVID-19 pandemic under the watch of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III who continues to play dumb about what to many observers looked every bit like highway robbery!

With Mr. Duterte’s not-so-secret choice for Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as his successor, what are the chances that those Pharmally scammers will get prosecuted and the money they were said to have stolen recovered? Given Marcos Jr. and his family’s utter lack of moral ascendancy — being themselves named plunderers in previous Supreme Court decisions that ordered them (all in vain) to surrender to the government ill-gotten wealth aggregating about $660 million (P33 billion-plus) as of 2002 plus interests, let alone billions of dollars more still hidden in foreign accounts, a big fat zero!

Unless Marcos Jr. is disqualified by the Supreme Court on account of his conviction for tax evasion with perpetual disqualification from holding public office as explicitly provided in the law — never mind for the love of God and country — Filipinos will go down in history as probably the most stupid people in all of Asia, all thanks to Mr. Duterte and his millions of followers who himself said were stupid enough to believe all the lies he told them in 2016. And despite all the lies Marcos Jr. himself was dishing out during his own campaign, that stupidity apparently lingered on until May 9, 2022, and beyond. How pathetic Filipinos have become in the eyes of the world.

ROSE ANNE BARTOLOME
roseannebar88@yahoo.com