Bagatsing wary of vilification drive vs Pagcor project

This is in reaction to the news item titled “Another House panel to probe Pagcor payoffs” (Inquirer, 12/2/12).

Sad to say, the article gave the false impression that Representative  Amado Bagatsing has been unwilling to summon Efraim Genuino, the former chair of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor), to attend the hearings of the House Committee on Games and Amusement on the payoffs allegedly made to present and past officials of Pagcor.

Allow us to emphasize that Representative Bagatsing, as chair of the committee, is ready to hear out any and all resource persons and parties who could shed light on the allegations that had been made in relation to Pagcor’s Entertainment City project, so that the appropriate legislative actions like amending pertinent laws or crafting new ones may be undertaken, if so warranted.

Representative Bagatsing welcomes any congressional investigation that may be held parallel to the hearings being conducted by his committee. He firmly believes that all investigations, whether legislative in nature or otherwise, would or should always arrive at a single universal truth when putting a singular issue under the microscope.

Nonetheless, Representative Bagatsing has serious misgivings  against the holding by different congressional committees of separate investigations on the Pagcor brouhaha because that would be tantamount to wasting taxpayers’ money. This is more so in the light of the apparent effort by some quarters to derail the Pagcor project by subjecting some personalities associated with the undertaking to a trial by publicity.
This early a seeming pattern has emerged, all pointing to a well-concerted and well-funded vilification campaign intended to delay if not to scuttle altogether the construction and opening of Pagcor’s Entertainment City project.

Like a movie with a bad storyline and a script being made in the fly, the attacks on the project have been unrelenting.

Indeed, with the pressure seen by Representative Bagatsing’s committee to set aside due process of law and allow unsubstantiated allegations to be passed off as the truth to an unsuspecting public, his concern is that a separate House probe may be used as an avenue to bring to ruin a project of Pagcor which would create much-needed jobs for our countrymen and additional revenues for the government.

—BERT JURADO,
chief of staff,
Office of Rep. Amado Bagatsing