Vice President Noli de Castro, who is about to step down from office this coming Wednesday, June 30th, together with President Arroyo when both their terms officially expire, has just been slapped serious graft raps — alongside such outgoing Arroyo government functionaries as Finance Secretary Margarito Teves, National Housing Authority general manager Federico Laxa, Home Guaranty Corp. president Gonzalo Bongolan and controversial businessman Reghis Romero II of R-II Builders — before the Ombudsman in connection with the multi-billion Smokey Mountain low-cost housing project in Tondo, Manila whose intended beneficiaries are thousands of squatters who are long-time residents of one of the most depressed areas in the country. For the Veep, as with the others presumably, the case was quite a bummer. Totally unexpected, because it had materialized literally during the “last two minutes” of the Arroyo administration, for they (except for Romero) were all expecting to leave the government service peaceably and retire gracefully into the sunset. Characterizing it as one of those midnight deals meant to line the pockets of departing Arroyo government officials as their pabaon or going away gifts, former Cavite newsman Ligorio Naval, who claimed to be merely acting as a concerned taxpayer, had filed a suit before the Ombudsman saying he wanted to thwart the designs of De Castro, Laxa, Bongolan and Teves to have the government release at some P6 billion for the Smokey Mountain Development Project (SMDP) which was allegedly grossly overpriced, not to mention the fact that it remains unfinished after more than a decade of construction work. Source: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100627com4.html |
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29. Alam n'yo kaya na ngayon ang ika-115 na pagdiriwang ng pinakaunang
labanan ng Himagsikan bago pa man ang pangkalahataang pag-aaklas? Ngayon
unang lum...
12 years ago
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