IN the past 19th Congress, the Senate Committee on Government Accountability which is more popularly known as the Blue Ribbon Committee had been a venue for bombastic revelations and searing inquisition, but the Senate as a whole had been remiss in passing relevant legislation coming out from these investigations.
The Blue Ribbon panel is now under its new chairman, Sen. Francis Tolentino, who implemented various procedural reforms and has made a dent in the conduct of official inquiry.
The result is a faster and more productive public investigation, which we saw in the panel’s recent probe on the sugar importation mess that involved key officials of Malacañang and the Department of Agriculture which President Bongbong Marcos heads.
A second issue handled by the Blue Ribbon Committee is the controversial purchase by the Department of Education (DepEd) and Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) of slow and overpriced laptops which were distributed to teachers for their online or hybrid teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘There was no browbeating here, just plain and simple documents Tolentino produced before the committee…’
After several hearings, Tolentino’s committee has established that the laptops supplied to public school teachers (Dell Latitude 3420 BTX) cost around P27,000 from its source in China but were bought by the Department of Education for about P58,300 apiece, or a markup of nearly 50 percent.
There was no browbeating here, just plain and simple documents Tolentino produced before the committee, saying he did not want to reveal this information but was compelled to after lawyer Bong Bernas of VST Tecs Philippines Inc. tried to justify the price of the laptops supplied to the DepEd during the presentation of the Commission on Audit findings on the “pricey and outdated laptops.”
Tolentino terminated the hearing after five meetings and said any resource person who felt alluded to during the inquiries but were not given the chance to refute them will be given a chance to submit a memorandum to the committee, with the assistance of their legal counsel, to rebut the allegations. He gave them until today, November 4, to submit the memorandum.
Senator Tolentino promised that on November 19, he will come up with a committee report. His leadership in the Blue Ribbon Committee could be cited for accomplishing some results without the customary bulldozing and intimidation.
