Will Congress investigate its own members?

A few months back, Solicitor-General Jose Calida filed a manifestation with the Court of Appeals recommending the acquittal of alleged pork barrel scam architect Jeanette Lim-Napoles for the crime of serious illegal detention of her erstwhile trusted aide and whistleblower Benhur Luy.

According to legal experts, while it may not have a direct impact on the pork-barrel cases pending before the Sandiganbayan, questions might be raised about the integrity of Benhur Luy’s testimonies against Napoles.

Some say that this legal maneuver by the office of the Solicitor General was intended to cast doubt on the credibility of Luy, who is the prosecution’s main witness against Napoles.

Was this a deliberate ploy to weaken the government’s case against Napoles? We do not want to speculate. However, interested parties in this case should be more vigilant in order to avoid miscariage of justice.

Although Napoles is already detained at the women’s correctional in Mandaluyong City, we must not forget the vast collection of wealth she allegedly accumulated through the multi-billion-peso pork barrel scam.

If media reports are true, Napoles’ embarrassment of riches—28 houses, 30 cars, 400 bank accounts—placed against the backdrop of rising poverty in our country is a sad testament to the government’s losing fight against corruption.

It seems the level of thievery in government has gone up several notches higher under the past few administrations. Nothing happened to the battle cry “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” of Former President Noynoy Aquino.

Who knows what other assets and properties Napoles has stashed away abroad? A daughter living a lavish lifestyle in the U.S. with no apparent source of income inadvertently provided us on the internet with a peek at her fancy digs in Ritz Carlton, designer bags, jewelry and pricey Porsche cars.

Those involved in what Cardinal Luis Tagle calls an “intricate web” of corruption could not have feathered their nests without the connivance of a massive network of cohorts and accomplices in the government.

That’s why it is so frustrating to see the past leadership of both the Senate and the House of Representatives doing a Pontius Pilate by washing their hands off the alleged misuse in the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF), Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), Congressional insertions or whatever term they use now, by some lawmakers and bogus non-government organizations (NGOs).

We hope incumbent Senate President Koko Pimentel will investigate its past and present members. Pimentel should get to the bottom of this mess. We demand to know what can be done to fix the system and to institute checks and balance in the disposition of funds allocated by members of Congress for themselves in the yearly budget.

We recall former Senate President Frank Drilon disparaged the integrity of the Senate when during his term, he said that the public would doubt the fairness and impartiality of such a probe anyway.

What the people will not believe is if Drilon were to say that nobody in Senate or House was at fault. It is clear that some people have been remiss in their duty to safeguard the peoples’ money.

After all, if our lawmakers decided to look into the allegations of convicted drug dealers and criminals who testified against Senator Leila De Lima, whose backgrounds and motives were questionable, we don’t understand why our lawmakers can’t delve deeper into the murky allegations involving this scandalous misuse of taxpayers’ money.

Unless, of course, they have something to hide and are trying to avoid being caught.

We also cannot let members of the House of Representatives off the hook. A number of representatives have said they merely identify the projects to be financed by their pork barrel funds and that they have no way of checking if the funds did indeed go to the intended beneficiaries.

They point to the Department and Budget of Management, and line agencies like the Department of Public Works and Highways and Department of Agriculture as the government offices holding the documents that can be used for regulating the proper use of public funds.

This is rubbish. We know for a fact that these representatives personally handpick district engineers and agricultural officers to implement their projects in their congressional districts.

Ordinary taxpayers like you and me demand that our public servants guard the sanctity of our money. These funds came from our hard work and sacrifice, unlike those who have been living high on the hog and pigging out on the pork barrel.

Let’s watch closely how President Duterte and his allies will deal with this corruption issues that used the poorest of the poor among our countrymen as pawns in their schemes.