i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
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the Office of the President. Those<br />
town hall meetings would have<br />
been part of the normal discharge<br />
of the president’s functions,<br />
except they also became automatic<br />
public relations events that<br />
upped Arroyo’s visibility.<br />
In the scheme of things, however,<br />
the DSWD was not that vital<br />
to the campaign. For fund-raising<br />
purposes, the agencies that mattered<br />
were those awash with cash<br />
and could serve as channels of patronage<br />
from Malacañang to local<br />
officials who could be called upon<br />
to marshal the votes <strong>for</strong> the president.<br />
In fact, early in the Arroyo<br />
presidency, some government<br />
officials were already saying that<br />
Gloria and Mike Arroyo were strategically<br />
placing their most trusted<br />
lieutenants in the most cash-rich<br />
and well-positioned government<br />
agencies in preparation <strong>for</strong> a 2004<br />
campaign.<br />
AGRICULTURE FUNDS<br />
Among the first of the Arroyo<br />
couple’s friends given a crucial<br />
government position was Jocelyn<br />
Bolante, friend and confidante of<br />
First Gentleman Mike, who was<br />
named undersecretary <strong>for</strong> finance<br />
of the Department of Agriculture<br />
soon after the government came to<br />
power in 2001. In October 2002,<br />
the president appointed her <strong>for</strong>mer<br />
student, Arthur Yap, administrator<br />
of the National Food Authority, an<br />
agency under the DA.<br />
In July 2004, DA whistleblower<br />
Marlene Esperat filed charges<br />
against Yap and Bolante <strong>for</strong> allegedly<br />
conniving to defraud the<br />
government of P428 million. The<br />
amount was to be used to purchase<br />
fertilizers under the 2003<br />
GMA Rice Program. Esperat questioned<br />
the huge amount that had<br />
been released, considering that the<br />
program’s officer in charge had requested<br />
only P28 million. The contract<br />
was also given to a favored<br />
company to purchase fertilizers at<br />
a cost Esperat said was bloated.<br />
Esperat did not live long enough<br />
to see the case prosper. She was<br />
gunned down in her home in<br />
Sultan Kudarat last March.<br />
The fertilizer fund was not the<br />
only questionable transaction at that<br />
time at the DA, a huge organization<br />
with huge allocations, regional offices<br />
and decentralized operations,<br />
and a variety of programs and<br />
projects whose expenditures were<br />
difficult to account <strong>for</strong>.<br />
Some of those expenditures<br />
include allocations <strong>for</strong> the use<br />
of congressional districts, towns,<br />
and cities. According to <strong>for</strong>mer<br />
solicitor general Frank Chavez,<br />
there were two huge amounts<br />
funneled to local governments<br />
just as the election campaign<br />
was getting underway. One was<br />
the P728-million-fund supposedly<br />
intended <strong>for</strong> farm inputs,<br />
while the other was the P1.1 billion<br />
fund <strong>for</strong> the GMA Rice and<br />
Corn and Livestock programs.<br />
The two amounts were released<br />
within eight days of each<br />
other, the smaller amount on<br />
February 3, 2004, and the bigger<br />
one on February 11.<br />
Chavez said that the P728<br />
million was disbursed to 105<br />
congressmen, 53 governors, and<br />
23 city and municipal mayors.<br />
He also revealed that some of<br />
these recipients received actual<br />
cash and not the farm inputs<br />
they were intended <strong>for</strong>.<br />
“It appears that the modus<br />
operandi is this: there is a ranking<br />
official in the DA who is linked<br />
to Ms. Macapagal-Arroyo’s husband,<br />
Jose Miguel Arroyo. This<br />
DA official has ‘runners’ who approach<br />
local government officials<br />
who will extract a commitment<br />
from the local officials that they<br />
should get these ‘fertilizers’ in<br />
liquid state from them,” Chavez<br />
said in the plunder case he filed<br />
against the president last year.<br />
Chavez added that the amount<br />
is shared among the DA officials,<br />
Mike Arroyo, farm input suppliers,<br />
and runners. The Arroyos<br />
and the DA denied these allegations<br />
last year.<br />
In response to the plunder<br />
charges, the Ombudsman has<br />
asked the Commission on Audit<br />
Praying <strong>for</strong> victory. El<br />
Shaddai leader Mike Velarde<br />
(in checked skirt) supported<br />
the Arroyo campaign,<br />
which was oiled by massive<br />
infusions of state funds.<br />
(COA) to report on how the DA<br />
funds were spent. COA sources<br />
say they are still tracing the flow<br />
of money and are trying to determine<br />
which officials did get<br />
their shares and how. COA’s 2004<br />
annual audit of the DA, however,<br />
was already peppered with comments<br />
of undocumented expenses<br />
and unliquidated cash advances.<br />
“Disbursements out of (Priority<br />
Development Assistance Fund allocated<br />
to members of Congress)<br />
and GMA Rice Program totaling<br />
P41.2 million and P6.250 million,<br />
respectively, were irregular and<br />
excessive,” said COA.<br />
When she started her new term<br />
of office in July 2004, Arroyo promoted<br />
Yap first as undersecretary;<br />
in 2004, he became agriculture<br />
secretary. Bolante, meanwhile, was<br />
named to the board of the Government<br />
Service Insurance System. In<br />
July, Yap quit his post after the Bureau<br />
of Internal Revenue charged<br />
his family with tax evasion.<br />
MARCOS WEALTH<br />
The Department of Agrarian<br />
Re<strong>for</strong>m was another agency<br />
with money that made disbursements<br />
during the campaign<br />
period. DAR is the lead agency<br />
implementing the Comprehensive<br />
Agrarian Re<strong>for</strong>m Program<br />
(CARP), and money <strong>for</strong> this<br />
program comes from portions of<br />
the Marcos wealth that had been<br />
returned to the government.<br />
On January 30, 2004, the <strong>Philippine</strong><br />
National Bank remitted<br />
to the National Treasury $624<br />
million, equivalent to P35 billion,<br />
representing the biggest amount<br />
recovered so far from the Marcoses’<br />
wealth. Just days earlier, the<br />
Supreme Court had declared with<br />
finality that the amount belonged<br />
to the government, denying an appeal<br />
from the Marcos family. Under<br />
the law, this money is to be used<br />
only <strong>for</strong> CARP and specifically <strong>for</strong><br />
land acquisition and other activities<br />
to help farmer beneficiaries. Part of<br />
it eventually went to the DA.<br />
A hearing conducted by the<br />
House Oversight Committee<br />
earlier this year found that as of<br />
October 2004, nearly P9 billion<br />
of the Marcos money had already<br />
been spent. The bulk of this went<br />
to buying land from landowners,<br />
while the rest went to program<br />
beneficiaries and expenses under<br />
the nebulous DAR-Fund 101.<br />
Farmers’ groups, however,<br />
say there were two questionable<br />
disbursements made from the<br />
Marcos wealth.<br />
On March 8, 2004, then DAR<br />
officer-in-charge Jose Mari Ponce<br />
signed a Memorandum of Agreement<br />
with Agriculture Secretary<br />
Lorenzo allowing the DA to use<br />
P544 million from the Marcos<br />
wealth supposedly <strong>for</strong> “seed assistance”<br />
to agrarian re<strong>for</strong>m beneficiaries,<br />
again under the Ginintuang<br />
Masaganang Ani (GMA) Hybrid<br />
Rice Commercialization Component.<br />
On April 28, the amount was<br />
released by the DBM.<br />
14 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT