Days of swine and ruses
Posted on April 5, 2008 - Filed Under Governance
Hogging the headlines in the past few days is another scandal that has something to do with sort of ‘rerouting’ around P2.2B in Quedan and Rural Credit Corp. (Quedancor) funds. There are allegations that most of this government lending agency’s 2004 budget to assist farmers in boosting swine production went instead to Pres. Arroyo’s presidential election campaign war chest in 2004. But in response to Sen. Chiz’s demand that the Palace make public the beneficiaries of Quedancor’s loan facility, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol pointed out yesterday that disclosing the identities of the borrowers would run afoul of bank secrecy laws! Besides, why can’t we busybodies out here not wait for the results of an internal audit that’s being conducted by the Department of Agriculture?
But that ruse pales in comparison to the subterfuge that accompanied the Supreme Court’s favorable decision on Romulo Neri’s petition to clam up on 3 key questions that could have shed more light on key details of Pres. Arroyo’s alleged direct criminal complicity in the ZTE-NBN scandal.
As reported by Newsbreak, the majority’s decision, which was penned by newly-appointed Associate Justice Teresita de Castro and concurred in by eight more of her colleagues, was pre-cooked.
Justice de Castro reportedly had a draft of the 35-page decision on March 24th . . . which was the day before the high court went through the motions of rendering an en banc verdict. The justices voted 9 to 6 at around noontime of March 25th, without reading the final draft that was only submitted by ponente De Castro some 3 hours afterwards
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