Senator Imee Marcos is right–her brother should not be in “usual business mode” but must appear like he hits the ground running. Yes, these are extraordinary times and requires extraordinary courage on the part of the President. He should lead and lead the crusade against these unscrupulous individuals who milk the public dry with their nefarious activities.
Imee identified syndicates operating inside the Department of Agriculture. Make their names known, humiliate them and their families in public, charge them and see to it that the decision for them to rot in jail happens. It is not enough just to identify these unpatriotic segments of our population–what they deserve is public chastisement so that their families would be ashamed enough to sashsay in public with their Louis Vuittons or Hermes bags and shoes and their luxury rides. No.
My proposal is really for the president to launch his own version of tokhang, with corrupt members of the bureaucracy as his main targets. Knock at their doors. Tell them that the government knows what they are doing. And afterwards, if you think that they are unconvinced, leave. When you leave, make sure that something will happen to these corrupt men and women, and their families. Make them pay.
The President may be serious in putting the economy right and improving social conditions yet if some of his appointees are also dead serious in their quests just to enrich themselves at his expense, BBM must do the right thing and expunge them from public service. It is yet too early to say this, but, knowing how government works, this is but a certainty.
Public officials would always be tempted to work together with entrenched syndicates at every line agency of government, especially those who got their posts politically. It takes extraordinary will power to say no to those who offer you the moon and the stars but if these appointees are indeed dead serious in helping BBM, they must say no.
The President must appoint a team who will go after these grafters. This team should be special and confidential and must report directly to the President. Those identified should be shamed, humiliated in public, charged and hauled to court. Getting even a cent from the public coffers is a public crime, and these people, when identified, should get what they deserve– a kubol inside the New Bilibid prisons.
Why? Every cent should have saved some person’s life or family. That’s why I am commending our new DSWD secretary Erwin Tulfo for having the courage to streamline the number of beneficiaries to the PPP program. There is now an existing syndicate composed of local government officials who toy with the people’s monies allocated under this program. Tulfo will never be able to sleep until he identifies these scumbags and throw them into the fiery pit.
How about those commissioners inside the Department of Health? Imagine, these people are enriching themselves at the expense of millions sick and deprived of monies to heal themselves of their sickness. These people must surely get the boot and charged.
How about these people getting millions every year manipulating the line up of books that are required reading by our sons and daughters. I heard our Vice president Sara Duterte has a tall order before her as Education secretary. She must prioritize a review of these erroneous books out there being sold or given for free to our children. She is now responsible for developing the cognitive abilities and skills of the next generation. Our future is in peril if we don’t address the present crises affecting our educational system.
Heaping the blame to the personnel of the Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is old hat. The thing is, even under the Duterte administration, these two bureaucratic agencies remain incubators of corruption. Even if you make a sample of one, the rest are just too freakishly jaded. They refuse to behave. Less than firing everyone, the new Customs chief should undertake a special military operation there just to tell everyone to stand and take notice.
All of these corruptions lead to one result: deprivation of needed and necessary assistance to the poor and destitute upon us. Every cent that these scumbags take from our public coffers mean thousands deprived of their meals and millions more of their rights. Am I hoping for BBM to succeed in cleansing the bureaucracy of misfits? All hell yeah! Hope, though, is nothing without action.
I ask BBM just this once— move against these corruptors and you would have made your legacy rock solid.
