On PCGG: It’s about time
| C.R.O.S.S.R.O.A.D.S |
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| Jonathan De la Cruz |
\"It’s about time.” This was the collective reaction of legislators led by no less than the leaders of both chambers, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., to the proposal of PCGG Chairman Andy Bautista and his fellow commissioners to close shop within two years and assign the agency’s remaining tasks to existing institutions, i.e., the investigation and prosecution of cases to the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the care and preservation of sequestered and/or surrendered properties and assets to the Department of Finance (DoF). This is welcome news indeed and we commend Bautista and his colleagues for finally realizing it is time to phase out what most observers have come to regard as a failed, undemocratic adventure in the “settling of scores.”
As Speaker Belmonte noted, the PCGG was meant to be a “temporary thing” but it has been there for more than 20 years already that it is time to give it rest. The agency which was created under Executive Order 1 of the then revolutionary government of President Cory Aquino will celebrate its 25th year of checkered existence this year. Over that period, the PCGG has been involved in many controversies and was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as having contributed to the enveloping “culture of graft and corruption” in the country rather than a beacon light of good governance which was its raison d’etre in the heady days of Edsa l. No less than the Senate Chief bewailed the fact that the PCGG “has deviated from its original mandate to go after the alleged ill gotten wealth of former President Marcos and his cronies... and became an instrument of injustice and oppression rather than an instrument for justice and good governance.” Indeed, the performance of the agency over the years has been so tainted it has earned the unsavory tag of being the “Pangkat Cawatan Ganid at Gahaman (PCGG)” which roughly translates into “The Agency of Greedy and Insatiable Persons” — an appellation which has gained currency over time. The stink associated with many PCGG operations from the time of its first chairman, then Senate President Jovy Salonga to Bautista’s predecessor, lawyer Camilo Sabio, has been such that even those who originally approved of its decidedly unorthodox and irregular if not illegal practices have come to lament its fall from grace..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110112com4.html
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