Arithmetic of sleaze

Hemmed in by deadlines, we captioned that Inquirer column as “Perennial irony,” then hit the transmit key… Viewpoint on May 25, 2013, focused on “Naty”—a 53-year-old beggar who looked a haggard 80.

Naty never read about senators and their aides who’ve snitched from the pork barrel in the name of paupers like her. What mattered was even leftover food, she shrugged. Alms cadged from passersby tided Naty and grandkids over to the next day. Walang tutong sa taong nagugutom. There’s no burnt rice to the hungry.

Now and then, the wife slipped to Naty sardines, rice, plus a few bucks for medicine because tuberculosis had ravaged her frame. Naty huddled in a squatter colony. That’s a universe away from Jinggoy Estrada’s P120- million-plus mansion in Wack Wack subdivision.

From Los Angeles, Jinggoy early this week dismissed the Ombudsman’s charge that he had ripped off P231.8 million in pork allocations. “That’s an April Fools’ Day joke.” Nobody laughed.

Within squatter hovels, tuberculosis spreads like fire in a dry cogon field. Despite health program gains, the incidence of TB here remains the highest in Southeast Asia. It kills 75 Filipinos daily. In this squalor, little gifts can bring a shaft of joy. Last Christmas, Naty preened in a new red polka dot dress that the wife had gifted her.

But last week, thieves stole the few things that Naty had while she scrounged for food. “Everything,” she wailed. “Even that red dress that you gave.” The only resort she could think of was flight. But she didn’t have anything to buy a ferry ticket to Negros.

Tickets were no problem for Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr., who is charged by the Ombudsman with filching P514.9 million from the pork barrel, for bogus NGOs. He left, with his family, on Emirates Airlines flight EK335 on March 29. He’ll spend Holy Week in Jerusalem, “to seek divine intercession” on what his office gingerly calls his “present predicament.”

Revilla’s departure triggered a flurry of questions on the Net. Haven’t we learned from Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s former chief of staff, lawyer Jessica Lucila Reyes? “Gigi” didn’t fly back from Hong Kong but vanished instead. So did auditor Yolanda Ricaforte, who oversaw jueteng contributions, when the Estrada impeachment trial lurched forward. Reyes is now among the Senate chiefs of staff indicted by the Ombudsman.

In July, Revilla met with Sen. Panfilo Lacson over a Japanese dinner. He asked how the one-time fugitive had evaded arrest over the still-unsolved murders of publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito.

“Revilla was straightforward in his questions to Lacson,” the Inquirer reported Thursday. When is the best time to leave? How does one dodge arrest warrants? The reply was: “When the resolution of the case is ready for submission, the preliminary hearing had been completed, and during that time there is really nothing to do but wait.” And when is that? Yesterday.

Nonsense, Revilla’s spokesperson snapped. The senator will return on April 19. Or was it Easter Sunday? In any case, Naty has already left.

“When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief,” Basil the Great wrote. “Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked [but] does not?” Will Imelda Marcos, who abandoned 1,220 pairs of shoes when she and her family fled Malacañang, agree that “shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes”?

By happenstance, the Supreme Court this week “affirmed with finality its 2012 ruling forfeiting the almost $40-million Arelma assets of former president Ferdinand Marcos.”

In 1972, Marcos secretly stashed $2 million with Merrill Lynch Securities in New York under Arelma S.A., a Panamanian corporation. The fund has increased to P1.8 billion at current exchange rates, which Ferdinand Jr. (Bongbong) and Imelda claim as their own.

The “totality of assets and properties acquired by the Marcos spouses were manifestly and grossly” way beyond their declared incomes, the court said. Bongbong and Imelda failed “to overturn the prima facie presumptions of ill-gotten wealth.”

Yearly, the country loses about P200 billion to corruption, Transparency International asserts. That’s almost 2 percent of economic output. That could have eased the ravages of hunger. “Among developing Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines has the second biggest undernourished population, next to Indonesia,” states the Food and Agriculture Organization’s World Food Insecurity Report.

Beyond price tags is the theft of hope from ordinary people, like Naty. That is the real cost of this scam. And that brings to fore the blurred

issue of restitution—or the return of what was swiped from others. Beyond a jail term, how much will those ultimately found guilty be compelled to pay back?

Recall the taxpayer Zacchaeus’ arithmetic. “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor,” he said. “And if I cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house.”

The arithmetic of sleaze is reflected in “splitting of the loot,” Sen. Teofisto Guingona III said. Half went to the lawmaker and 5 percent to the chief of staff. Ten percent was grabbed by conspirators in receiving agencies. Janet Napoles, now in detention, allegedly kept 35 percent. “And zero percent goes to the claimed beneficiaries.”

In a 1955 award-winning movie, the kid Marcelino offers a small loaf to the Crucified and says: “Tiene cara de hambre.” You have the face of hunger. Just like Naty.

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