How truthful is Ruby Tuason?
Alarmed and angry, that’s how I felt on reading the Inquirer’s report on this week’s Sandiganbayan hearing on Sen. Jinggoy Estada’s bail petition (“Tuason has 89 accounts—AMLC report,” News, 7/7/15).
Whistle-blower Ruby Tuason, at the witness stand, was to tell the Sandiganbayan the truth, the reason why the senator should not be granted bail.
It turned out she has 89 bank accounts of her own, in foreign and local banks, and several houses in the United States. From all indications, most of this cash came from her expertise in “fixing” government projects. It is a fact that she owns a P250-million mansion inside Dasmariñas Village in Makati. Speculations are, her cash and houses run to about a billion pesos but she offered to return P40 million and a story on two senators in return for not being jailed.
From reports in the hearings, Tuason could not be further from the truths she says she has told and will tell; she would not even admit ownership to these 89 bank accounts in the Anti-Money Laundering Council’s report. Why should the justices and the people believe her “confessions”?
The whistle-blower law should be revisited and amended. Right now we see this law serving as an escape route for the likes of Tuason and Benhur Luy, both having in their banks hundreds of millions of pesos.
What is alarming is how a law is being used to shield criminals. What makes us angry is these whistle-blowers are glorified as saviors of the republic, given government-sponsored 24-hour security, and allowed to keep their loot of hundreds of millions of pesos.
In exchange for keeping their hundreds of millions of pesos and not serving time, they have to “confess” they served as conduits to lawmakers who are suspected of stealing government funds. Outside of their “confessions” no evidence is worth the reason for keeping these senators and former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from serving the people.
In these hearings on alleged anomalies involving the Priority Development Assistance Fund, we see the reason people accept the fact that there is no equality in our justice system.
—MANDY MANALOTO, Center for Equality in Justice, South Cembo, Makati City
