by Lito Banayo
from MALAYA
This week or next, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee will release its findings and recommendations on the highly anomalous ZTE-NBN deal. We shall all compare that with the Ombudsman’s decision to prosecute only Romulo Neri and Benjamin Abalos, and leave the masterminds scot-free.
Jun Lozada, the reluctant witness forced by circumstances to reveal what he knew about the deal that was negotiated in the golf links of Wack-Wack and Shenzhen and forged in Hainan in the wee hours of the morning, like “a thief in the night”, …

by Frank Wenceslao
When First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo boasted before a Filipino gathering in New York City in their last visit that President Gloria M. Arroyo (GMA) and he had no illicit assets and bank accounts in the U.S., he thumbed his nose at Pamusa and the FBI to belie our accusation he’s being investigated for money laundering and violation of various U.S. anticorruption statutes.
 
Our investigators doubled their efforts to prove Arroyo’s lying. They focused on GMA’s 15 foreign trips this year invariably with large entourage since January up …

by Ellen Tordesillas
Gloria Arroyo is becoming a frequent visitor of Dubai in recent months, especially since the financial crisis in the United States that hit hard her family’s favorite investment firms, Lehman Brothers and Merryl Lynch.
Serge Remonde’s spin is that Arroyo is on a two-day visit to Dubai to “ seek more job employment for the country’s expatriate workers.” What has become of her labor officials that taxpayers are subsidizing with billion of pesos in salaries and allowances?
After fleeing Thailand’s protesters, Malacañang said Arroyo went to Dubai accompanied by “ …

by Atty. Ernesto B. Francisco, Jr.
This latest move of the Office of the Ombudsman (“Ombudsman”) to spare First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo and other individuals prominently mentioned in the World Bank reports from preliminary investigation and from the risk – no matter how remote – of being charged before the Sandiganbayan, coupled with the ploy of passing on its job of investigating them to the National Bureau of Investigation (“NBI”), is totally disgusting and sickening. This is too much. This also proves that the Ombudsman really takes 80 million …

EDITORIAL
from  Tribune 
 
When it comes to media exposure, First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo definitely hits the headlines more than President Arroyo, his wife, and not for good reasons.
Mrs. Arroyo’s public acceptability is considered to be the worst ever for a president of the country and her poor image is partly the result of her own doing, such as the now infamous conversations she had with a poll commissioner where she told him to make sure her votes would be padded by over a million, for her to win the presidential elections …

AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR
by William M. Esposo 
from Philstar
“So are they all, all honorable men.” This was the line of Roman Marc Antony in the famous Julius Caesar funeral oration written by William Shakespeare. It referred to the cabal that plotted and staged the assassination of ancient Rome’s greatest military hero.
In our country, we are used to seeing our public servants being addressed as HONORABLE. Congressmen and Senators who are undertaking an inquisition in aid of desired personal political positions have to be addressed as “Your Honor” by the very …

AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR  By William M. Esposo
from Philstar

“So are they all, all honorable men.” This was the line of Roman Marc Antony in the famous Julius Caesar funeral oration written by William Shakespeare. It referred to the cabal that plotted and staged the assassination of ancient Rome’s greatest military hero.
In our country, we are used to seeing our public servants being addressed as HONORABLE. Congressmen and Senators who are undertaking an inquisition in aid of desired personal political positions have to be addressed as “Your Honor” by the …

COMMENTARY BY PERRY DIAZ
Ever since Gloria Arroyo became president in 2001, I don’t remember her going on a junket abroad without her husband, Mike.  Why not?  After all, it’s free — paid for by Juan de la Cruz.
However, ever since Joc-joc Bolante was deported by the US, Mike had been avoiding going to the US.  He even missed the Pacquiao-De la Hoya boxing bout — a “no miss” event for an aficionado like Mike.  Makes me wonder if Joc-joc had spilled the beans on his pal Mike to the US authorities. 
The rumor that has …

Get Real
Syndicated corruption
By Solita Collas-Monsod
Philippine Daily Inquirer
02/07/2009
All I have are 18 pages of what has to be a more than 124-page document (the last page of what I have is page 124) studded with at least 433 footnotes (the last footnote on page 124 was numbered 433). But what these pages contain is more than enough to convince me that:
(a) they are indeed taken from the investigation report of the World Bank’s Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) regarding fraud and corruption surrounding a major World Bank-assisted project, the Philippine National …

WB witnesses link FG to bid riggingBy Aries C. Rufo
abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak
02/03/2009
It was a rude baptism of fire for the Japanese contractor. Right before him, “(They) first discussed bribes. They had a rough approach.” From that meeting, it was impressed on him that “(bribe) money was important to do business in the Philippines.”
This was how the Japanese contractor described his meeting with First Gentleman Miguel “Mike” Arroyo and a former senator to World Bank
investigators who looked into alleged collusion and rigging in the Bank’s funded road projects.
On another occasion, the Japanese executive …