‘It is plain to see for all Filipinos…that Duterte wants the Senate to end the DOH-PS-DBM investigation, not to touch his favored former undersecretary Lloyd Lao, his friend and business adviser Michael Yang, and his BFF Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go for after Go, the trail will necessarily lead to him.’
THE Senate as a body, and certain senators, have been at the receiving end of insults and invectives from President Duterte. On the surface, the reason is that the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee is vigorously following up on the exposé made by the Commission on Audit (COA) that the government has been squandering billions of pesos in face masks, face shields, personal protective equipment, and COVID-19 test kits since last year, to favor certain suppliers.
While the Senate is just doing its job of investigating anomalies and irregularities in government, the President is busy disparaging the senators for such, especially Sen. Richard Gordon, the chair of the Blue Ribbon Committee, and Sen. Panfilo Lacson.
Both the Department of Health and the Department of Budget and Management are under him, and he has the power to hire and fire its top officials, from the secretary to the undersecretaries and bureau directors. These two agencies of the Executive branch are now in hot water, mainly because former DBM Undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao bought billions of pesos worth of face masks, face shields and personal protective equipment that were way above the market price, and from a nondescript importer at that.
With billions of pesos of government funds at issue, President Duterte chose to do “ad hominem” and mind the trifles — how talkative and fat Senator Gordon has become, and how Lacson changed his “hairdo” along with “all” the senators.
Instead of tackling the most important issue of the DOH-DBM, Duterte drove home a point — his belief that the Senate investigations are all for show, that nothing positive has come out of it, and nobody was thrown in jail after the hearings. While the grandstanding part might be true, especially now that the elections are near, the record of the Senate in digging up official corruption is quite worthy of praise. Minority leader Sen. Franklin Drilon off-hand mentioned that the “pastillas” scandal in the Bureau of Immigration resulted in the dismissal from the service of many personnel, and the filing of charges against them. The investigations on the National Bilibid Prisons and drugs smuggling at the Bureau of Customs are productive, too.
Lacson’s retort to the President’s observation is classic: “I don’t know what he is talking about. I haven’t changed the way I comb my hair since long before he had lost his mind.”
Gordon’s reply is somewhat childish but also makes sense: “Bakit tatawaging mataba ako?
Eh, di naman tayo nagpapagandahang lalaki, palagay ko mananalo naman ako sa inyo ‘pag nagpagandahang lalaki tayo.”
It is plain to see for all Filipinos, not just the senators and congressmen, that Duterte wants the Senate to end the DOH-PS-DBM investigation, not to touch his favored former undersecretary Lloyd Lao, his friend and business adviser Michael Yang, and his BFF Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go for after Go, the trail will necessarily lead to him.
The more reason, then, for the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, and the Senate as a whole to rise to the occasion and defend the legislative chamber from the insults, and do what it needs to do.
