While we hope that all ends well for students of the flood-prone Sapangdaku Elementary School that Cebu City Mayor Rama ordered padlocked, the man on the street can’t help blame this sorry state of affairs on the nation’s grafters.
Mayor Rama ordered the public school closed around the same time Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales indicted Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada and Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr on charges of plunder and graft.
Sapangdaku teachers, students and their families are a microcosm of many sectors from whom officials stole money to enrich themselves and gorge on the comforts of life.
The corrupt bleed the nation’s coffers in a frenzy of misrule with no heart for their suffering constituents.
How dare they preside over national budget deliberations? These hearings are a farce. Every time they insist that there is no money for services like education that the Constitution prioritizes, the subtext is in fact: There is not enough for your needs and my greed.
Greed, indeed. According to the Commission on Audit (COA), the amount of pork barrel funds diverted from services runs up to at least P1.8 billion. How many school buildings, chairs and books can that amount of money do?
No wonder angry citizens are coming up with creative suggestions for penalizing the indicted legislators. One: Let them cross the Sapangdaku river every time it brims over so that they will realize how they have deprived a community and many others of a bridge, a disaster-prone school location, a disaster-proof school building.
Many more have been shut out of opportunities due to corruption—the women, the elderly, our military, our public health system, our disaster resiliency efforts—but experiencing the effect of their own thievery on the quality of life of innocent children should awaken their consciences. Such dampening realities possess the authenticity that was wanting in the circus of a swan song that Revilla delivered.
That privilege speech that made a a variety show stage of the august Senate floor will not appease millions of Filipinos who now understand the whole pork scam: A horror story of officials passing themselves off as working for the country while robbing it blind.
COA chairperson Grace Pulido-Tan has ordered the three senators to return the misspent money. Nine other senators were ordered to do the same.
The prosecution of Enrile, Estrada and Revilla should only be the start of jailing the culprits and wringing back what they took. Then, thieves will feel the fear of God and children like the students of Sapangdaku as well as the poor and marginalized everywhere will witness justice from which they can draw hope.
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