All it took for Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano to expose the strong possibility of corruption in the construction of the Makati City Hall building 2 was to ask lawyer Rogelio Peig, assistant vice president for legal affairs of Hilmarc Construction Corp., about the prices of steel during last Thursday’s Senate hearing.
Cayetano: “Did the price of steel affect the building?”
Peig: “The fluctuation of prices could already be imputed…”
Cayetano: “That’s irrelevant to us. What’s relevant to us here is why the building is expensive. Either you’re using that as a reason why it’s expensive or not. But if you absorbed it, then good. If you didn’t, good. My question is, why is the building tremendously expensive?
Then Sen. Cayetano repeated the question to Peig: “Did the prices of steel affect the cost or not?”
Peig: “Probably.”
Cayetano: “A while ago you said it did not. What’s your answer?
Peig earlier justified the high cost of the Makati City Hall Building 2 at P2.28 billion by saying that it was comparable to the costs of other projects built by Hilmarc, like the Mitra Building of Congress.
But he talked about the cost of the building in terms of land space or by per square meter which would indeed be comparable to other projects and not the actual cost of constructing the building which are two very different things.
How does the ongoing Senate investigation into the Makati City Hall building 2 controversy concern Cebuanos, not a few of whom see this as probably yet another exercise in aid of reelection or as in the case of Sen. Cayetano, as political capital for an openly declared 2016 bid to the presidency?
One need not look further than the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) that was built a few years earlier than the Makati City Hall building 2 in time for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in 2007.
While not exactly claiming that the CICC is “world class,” then governor Gwendolyn Garcia boasted that the CICC was comparable to similar structures in Manila and was good enough to host leaders of various Asian countries.
It took last year’s earthquake to disprove her claim but glaring signs of decay already showed even before the Big One hit Bohol and Cebu.
As Cebu province and the Mandaue City government discuss what to do with the obviously overpriced CICC, we ask that the current Cebu City Hall administration, which is also planning to build a “world class” Cebu City Medical Center and is entertaining offers from investors for the South Road Properties (SRP), ensure that everything is fully transparent and every centavo accounted for.
As we saw in the Makati City Hall Building 2 case, a public “bidding” is not a fool-proof guarantee that any construction project is corruption-free.
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