The comments made by US Ambassador to the Philippines Frank Ricciardone last Monday to the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) have caused a tidal wave of outrage among Filipino politicians. The ambassador noted that many foreign investors were turned off by the corruption in the Philippine judiciary and in areas outside the courts.
Now, I agree Ricciardone may not have been diplomatic in his remarks, but it doesn’t detract from the sorry fact that he was correct. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop politicians whose pride had been dented from lashing out at the envoy, Sen. Blas Ople being one of the most vehement. Ople demanded that Ricciardone officially apologize for his behavior, which he likened to “a two-cent radio commentator”.
Luckily, cooler minds prevailed, with Archbishop Oscar Cruz calling on politicians to stop yelping at Ricciardone and acknowledge the truth of his statement that corruption is rife in the Philippine government. “Corruption has been in the Philippines since I was born, which was sometime in the 1930s,” said Cruz.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo admitted on Wednesday that there was corruption in the judiciary, but claimed her hands were tied when it came to cleaning up the court system because of the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers. She said it would be up to Congress to devise mechanisms to deal with corruption and weed it out.
If you doubt that corruption is rife in the judicial ranks, think again. Supreme Court spokesman Ismael Khan released astonishing figures on Wednesday detailing action taken against bent judges since 1999: 22 judges have been dismissed, including one justice from the Court of Appeals; 19 other judges have been suspended or relieved, while 43 others were reprimanded for inappropriate behavior.
Although corruption in government has been present in the Philippines for decades, lurking around like a nasty low-grade fever that refuses to go away, this doesn’t mean that it can just be ignored and accepted as an inevitable part of Philippine life. Some critics of Ricciardone’s remarks make it seem like corruption is of concern only to greedy multinationals, which allegedly stand to gain more from the Philippines if corruption is severely curbed. This illogical opposition to anything proposed by foreigners, even if what they say is true, will only mire the country in the obscurity and denial of never-never land.
Foreigners often have a clearer view of a country that is not their own. Looking in from the outside, they can see things stripped of any personal involvement or emotional baggage. While admitting that corruption is endemic to the Philippine way of life may be painful for some politicians, the sooner they do so the better it will be for the nation.
EIGHT LONG months after the bloody and sensational murder of actress Nida Blanca, whose beaten body was found in the back of her own car in Manila, one wonders why it took the National Bureau of Investigation so long to charge her husband Rod Strunk with her murder.
From day one he was the prime suspect. Now, new evidence gathered by the NBI over the past several months points even more heavily in his direction. According to press reports, Strunk hardly worked to support himself after he married Blanca in the 1970s, opting to live off her and her showbiz earnings. He had an extravagant lifestyle, at one point racking up a bill of eight million pesos on his American Express card. Not only that, but he apparently paid scant attention to Blanca, taking her for granted and assuming that she would continue paying his bills forever, no matter what. In short he was a user of the worst kind.
One can only speculate why Blanca stayed with him for as long as she did, but according to her friends, up to a year before she was killed, Blanca had been mulling the possibility of divorcing Strunk. Not only that, she also transferred the ownership of all her real estate to her only daughter and cut Strunk out of her will of 65 million pesos. The final act, short of divorcing Strunk, was when Blanca had his American Express card canceled. This must have set alarm bells off in Strunk, warning him that his gravy days of milk and honey were quickly coming to an end. This must have triggered the murder plans, which culminated in that fateful November night last year when Blanca’s life was brutally snuffed out. The NBI now faces the problem of getting Strunk back to the Philippines. A US citizen, Strunk was allowed to leave the country last January to attend to his ailing mother in California, who has since passed away. Strunk’s lawyers had assured Philippine authorities that he will return to face whatever charges are pressed against him. Now that the NBI has charged him with murder, I hardly think Strunk will jump on the first plane to Manila.
The Philippine government may end up having to ask the US government to extradite him. But then the US government may ask for an exchange: Strunk for Manila Rep. Mark Jimenez, whom you may remember is wanted in the US for illegal political party contributions and mail fraud. The problem here is that Jimenez enjoys congressional immunity from such pesky things as extradition orders. Although it is possible that the House of Representatives could vote to lift his immunity, it is highly unlikely that it would do such a thing to one of its own members.
The NBI’s whole case rests on the since recanted confession of gunman Philip Medel Jr., who claimed he was hired by a Mike Martinez to kill Blanca. Martinez has since disappeared, leaving the NBI with a recanted confession and circumstantial evidence that Strunk masterminded the whole thing. Whether this will be enough to convict Strunk in a court of law remains to be seen.
THANKS to all of the readers who wrote to me last week to offer suggestions on how to eliminate cockroaches after reading my column. (“What’s that buzzing in my ear?” July 12).
Many of you suggested I try roach motels. I had forgotten about those contraptions, having last used them a year ago. I first tried the American Combat version years ago (“the roaches check in, but they never check out”). They then disappeared from Saudi supermarket shelves until a Japanese version appeared in shops last year. Called “Trap-a-Roach”, the Japanese versions consist of little cardboard motels with smelly bait placed in the middle of a sticky floor. The roaches, attracted by the bait, venture into the motel and get stuck on the sticky surface. Once it is full, you just pick up the whole contraption and throw it away, roaches and all.
I have now bought several of these motels and deployed them in strategic areas of my apartment. One of them caught several roaches but also snared a little lizard that was probably hoping to feast on the trapped bugs! I had to throw away that motel, lizard and all.
Other readers suggested I try boric acid powder, which is allegedly relatively safe to use around pets. Cockroaches eat the stuff, and then these white dust particles have microscopic sharp points that pierce the insect’s exoskeleton and kill them. This way the roaches have no way building up immunity. The problem is I have no idea where to find this powder in Saudi Arabia, so if any of you readers know where I can buy some, send me an email.
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