Who bribed Garcia?

IF SOME AFP suppliers’ names are necessary to convict former Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia of plunder, aren’t the names of the bribers necessary to his plea of guilty to direct bribery? Did it not occur to Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez that the bribers must have a reason to bribe Garcia, and therefore she and her prosecutors should have asked what was the bribe for, and who gave the bribes?

If the case of Garcia was still pending when Gutierrez became the ombudsman, why did she not ask the prosecutors to further investigate the case, say, for the purpose of identifying the suppliers by simply going through payment vouchers at the comptroller’s office? This step is so commonsensical that a freshman accounting student would have done this to fill in the blanks, so to speak!

Yet, Gutierrez’s prosecutors can go into great detail and cite the legal and technical faults of the complaint in explaining what made Garcia’s case “weak.” Did she ask her prosecutors what happened to the balance of the P303 million after Garcia surrendered the P135 million?

—EDMUNDO LEDESMA,
[email protected]