The truth is that there is nothing complex about the P728-million fertilizer scam. It is garden-variety corruption. It did not require a genius to design it. What it required rather was a blanket clearance from the most powerful office in the land – the Office of the President, or of the presidential spouse.Around August 2003, the secretary of agriculture, Cito Lorenzo, is verbally instructed by somebody above him to mobilize the fertilizer fund of his department. He knows what the fund is for, but does not take direct responsibility for its actual use. He assigns his undersecretary, Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Bolante, instead, knowing that Malacañang placed Bolante in the department not for his knowledge of agriculture but precisely to look after the political interests of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Together with the cash, token bottles of diluted, overpriced, and generally useless fertilizer are distributed by the regional offices of the department. Some politicians in the Bolante list turn down the offer of fertilizer but they negotiate to get the full value of their allotment in the form of other goods. Technically, this is still misappropriation of public funds. As brazen as it is, this practice that lies at the heart of our political culture no longer shocks anyone in government service. The fertilizer scam closely follows the template of the pork-barrel system. In general, the system corrupts, implicates and silences everyone, even if, in a few instances, one or two exceptional politicians may be able to summon enough self-esteem to snub the offer from the start. The Senate investigation will never be able to get Bolante to validate this narrative. His testimony appears to have been methodically crafted with the aid of lawyers. The senators can use the televised occasion to project their own undying commitment to the highest values of public service, and to dramatize their disgust over the shameless lies of underlings like Bolante. But they will not be able to squeeze the truth out of him. In an ideal world, the function of dealing with people like Bolante belongs to the investigative and judicial offices of government. But the public has no choice but to turn to the remaining forums in which the clamor for truth can still be heard – the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the mass media, among others. The politicization of the Department of Justice and of the Office of the Ombudsman under Mrs. Arroyo represents only the most glaring instance of this systematic undermining of institutions. But the biggest casualty of all is the government bureaucracy – the one element that must remain steady and focused if a nation is to survive the destabilizing outcomes of prolonged political battles. The credibility of the bureaucracy is what lends legitimacy to political outcomes. If the bureaucracy is compromised because it has itself become an auxiliary to political conflicts, then everything is up for grabs. — Randy David, Inquirer |
