Press statement of Senator Loren Legarda

On plunder for Joc-joc, et al

The Arroyo administration and the Ombudsman must act swiftly and decisively on the report of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee recommending the filing of plunder charges against former Agriculture Secretary Jocelyn "Joc-Joc" Bolante and others implicated in the P728-million fertilizer fund scam.

While the report of the committee is only recommendatory, it has a great persuasive power on public opinion. The administration is already reeling from deep-seated perceptions both here and abroad of tolerating and coddling grand-scale corruption. This strengthening perception is not only undermining the faith and confidence of our people in their government, it is also discouraging the flow of development aid and loans to our country from the international community, particularly the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The administration and the Ombudsman, Merceditas Guitierrez, as well as the Department of Justice should also act on the other multi-million-peso scams involving government officials. They cannot just turn a blind eye to the numerous graft and corrupt practices involving government officials, siphoning billions of public money to private pockets while millions of our countrymen suffer from poverty, unemployment and the rising cost of living.

On Radioman in Mindanao killed

I strongly condemn the murder of radio broadcaster Ernie Rollin in Misamis Occidental, the second journalist to be killed this year. This shows that the threat to press freedom in our country has not abated in spite of widespread condemnation by our people and by the world, represented by the United Nations.

The free press, including print and broadcast, is one of the institutions in our country that are keeping democracy alive and is striving to clean our government of graft and corruption and making it accountable to our people.

The assault on the press is an attack upon our people's freedom and constitutional rights.

The failure of the administration to prosecute and convict the killers of our journalists is encouraging the enemies of press freedom to attack them. It is lamentable that while just 34 journalists were killed during the period of dictatorship from 1972 to 1986, according to figures compiled by the Philippine Movement for Press Freedom, about 100 Filipino journalists have been murdered since then, many of them under the present administration. The New York Times has commented that more journalists have been killed in the Philippines than in war-torn Iraq.

On finance to trim customs, BIR goals

According to a news item, the Finance Department "is set to significantly slash the collection targets of the Burean of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs this year due to weak economic conditions."

Before doing so, the Department of Finance must determine how much is being lost in BIR and customs collections through graft and corruption, and how much is a result of the downturn in economic conditions arising from the global financial crisis.

As far as the public knows, there has been no sustained and effective drive against graft and corruption in the BIR and Customs that are the biggest revenue collecting agencies of government. Our grapevine says that corruption in the two agencies, unlike the economy, has not experienced a downturn in the percentage of collections going into private pockets.

Secretary of Finance Gary Teves should first require the customs and internal revenue bureaus to make a full report on the progress of their anti-corruption drive and whether or not graft in those offices have been reduced before estimating realistically their collection goals for the year.