This is another view on the C-5 controvery:
by Rene B. Azurin
BusinessWorld
More credibility, probably, would attach to the Senate committee report on its so-called “investigations” into the C-5 road project controversy if senators — most politicos, actually — were not widely perceived as being distinctly unshy, brazen even, about using their considerable power to influence government decisions on public works and procurement. That said, I would certainly give great weight to the C-5 allegations being leveled at Senator Villar if I were satisfied that they were true. I am not.
On an issue precisely of ethics, objective observers must wonder how senators — like presidential candidate Aquino’s Liberal Party partymate Mr. Pangilinan — can first affix their signatures to one resolution clearing Mr. Villar and then about-face 180 degrees to affix their signatures to another one censuring him, just because “it’s the party stand.” Well, that, at least, is an explicit admission of how “honorable” senators define ethics.
Although Mr. Villar has actually already made a point-by-point rebuttal in the Senate itself of the charges of “ethical misconduct” against him and has clearly taken pains to make available to the public — through media — documents supporting his answers to each allegation, he is, alas, simply not media’s darling. Thus, media outfits whose bias for his rivals is obvious to observers constantly detail the allegations against him in their stories on the controversy and formulaically just include his denials but not his specific answers to the allegations. Such is life in these politico- and elite-dominated islands.
