DOES former President Fidel V. Ramos have the moral ascendancy to frequently criticize President Duterte?
I asked this question because every time Ramos raves and rants on Duterte, he gives us the impression that he has the moral authority over him on issues of politics, economics, foreign policy, governance, national security, public safety, and graft and corruption, among others.
At his inaugural address on June 30, Duterte acknowledged the presence of Ramos, saying: “President Fidel Ramos, sir, salamat po sa tulong mo [thank you for your help] making me President…” Many political observers doubted this, though, because Duterte lost in Pangasinan, Ramos’s vote-rich home province, where Duterte got only 338,644 votes behind Poe’s 559,571 who was at No. 1.
Last Friday was the latest Ramos rant, when he slammed Duterte’s threat to impose martial law and warned him “against inevitable abuses under military rule”.
Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, Ramos’s boss and mentor in the Marcos nine-year martial law (September 1972 to January 1981), promptly defended Duterte, thus: “The President has to be harsh in implementing martial law because he has the monopoly of legitimate, legal violence through the police and the military.”
“The current firefight in Marawi City is more than a rebellion because we are dealing with an ideological and, worst, a religious problem which is Washhabism, a kind of fanatical Islamism followed by Saudi Arabia that is being taught in madrassas in Mindanao,” Enrile revealed, adding, “the martial-law decision is based on strategic intelligence information in the President’s possession and that he was elected by the people to represent the general will”.
As the 12th president (1992-1998), Ramos was credited for a number of accomplishments but his term was also known for its legacy of perfidy, having been the only head of state in contemporary history to have been recommended by the powerful Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to be prosecuted along with his five Cabinet members in connection with the multibillion-peso Centennial scam.
As one senator commented then in the book, Power Grab, 2001: “The Ramos government may emerge as one with the most number of big-time scams in the country’s history.”
The senator cited as an example the P30-billion PEA-Amari deal; the P9-billion Centennial scam; the P7.8-billion missing AFP trust modernization fund; the P42-billion housing scandal between 1997 and 1999; the P30-billion tax-credit certificates scam from 1995 to the first half of 1998; the mismanagement of the P3.5-billion soldiers’ trust funds; the nonremittance of P14-billion national government employees contributions to the Government Service and Insurance System (GSIS); and lately, the highly scandalous and irregular deals involving the National Steel Corp. and the National Power Corp., which then-Senator Enrile had unearthed.
The Senate committee found out that the multibillion-peso project was grossly overpriced and had used substandard materials and unaudited government and private funds.
Ramos, then, was apparently trying to make a lasting impression to the world of his term by window-dressing the country’s image during its first centennial.
The Centennial project housed the largest amphitheater in Asia, with a seating capacity of 35,000, and mini exhibits featuring the different regions of the country.
It includes a giant Freedom Ring and was intended as the centerpiece of the 60-hectare Philippine Centennial Exposition that cost the government P1.2 billion.
Documents submitted to the Blue Ribbon Committee showed that government funds and private donations that went into the whole project reached a whopping P9 billion.
The Ramos administration raised this mind-boggling amount from the special allotment release order or Saro of various state agencies for P4.7 billion; the general allotment release order or Garo for P350 million each from the GSIS, Social Security System, Land Bank of the Philippines and the Development Bank of the Philippines; P75 million each from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office; and P2.1 billion through the government budget, funds of the Office of the President and the Department of Public Works and Highways.
The whole structure remains today as a monument to the excesses of the Ramos administration.
The Senate Blue Ribbon and Government-owned Corporations and Public Enterprises Committees that investigated the PEA-Amari deal found evidence pointing to the involvement of key officials of the Ramos administration in the scam.
The fraud involved the transfer of a government property to a private firm under highly questionable terms. Then-Blue Ribbon Committee Chairman Sen. Franklin M. Drilon said the conveyance of the piece of reclaimed land along Roxas Boulevard to the Amari group was “disadvantageous and injurious to the government”.
The state agency, Philippine Estate Authority (PEA), under a joint- venture agreement with the Thailand-based Ital-Thai Development Corp. Ltd.-led consortium, obligated itself to convey the title and possession of the 1.578-million square-meter property for P1.89 billion or a giveaway price of P1,200 per sq m.
According to the zonal valuation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the value of land in the area then should have been P7,800 per sq m.
The Municipal Assessor of Parañaque City, where the property is located, pegged the market value of the property at P6,000 per sq m.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.
source: Business Mirror
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