First were the stories that President Aquino, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Janet Napoles, the alleged pork barrel scam mastermind, were friends. Then came the pictures of the President with both Napoles and her daughter Jeane. All these unraveled after Napoles, who had gone into hiding for days, “reappeared” in Malacañang with Mr. Aquino himself. Napoles even got first-class treatment from him. In fact, she was brought to the Philippine National Police headquarters at Camp Crame, with the President himself as her escort.
There was also talk that daughter Jeane had said Mr. Aquino and Secretary Roxas have been family friends of the Napoleses since their days in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Juxtapose these developments with the delay in the filing of the cases against Napoles and the continuing preferential treatment she continues to receive while supposedly being detained; plus the fact that among those implicated in the scam are ranking officials of the Aquino administration, like Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa and Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala, except that not one among them has been included in the Department of Justice’s charge sheet.
I’m not saying that President Aquino is involved in the also-called “Napoles scam.” But to say the least, all this casts Mr. Aquino and his administration in a highly suspicious fix. And especially with Napoles supposedly in detention receiving special treatment, it’s hard to see that all this is tied together as a mere coincidence.
—MICHAEL LOWREY,
det.mike.lowrey@gmail.com