Corruption in the small country of the Philippines is very very prevalent and sometimes its the way of life there. It is a considered normal for high government officials to get very rich during their tenure of office and then their spouse,children or their relatives will run for and elective postion if they can no longer run for office and the process of taking over and corruption goes on.
Except for the conviction of former president estrada for plunder,one of the news that is taking much space in the newspapers as the proposed National Broadband Network project by the government with the partnership of ZTE corporation of China.
The scandal erupted when a losing bidder for the project went to the media and complained that the deal by the government with the winning bidder ZTE is full of anomalies and that the supposed deal was brokered by Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos. Comelec is the government agency in charge of all local and national elections. The whistle blower was the son of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He claimed that Abalos was wined and dined in China and was given women for his pleasure and that Abalos will get a hefty commision from the deal. Joey de Venecia,the whistleblower also claimed that he was oofered a bribe of ten million dollars for this silence and cooperation. The ZTE deal is worth more than 300 million dollars while deVenecia's(AHI) losing bid is only 130 million dollars. The Philippines is I think the only place where this can happen hahahaha. Wow a lot of people has a lot of explaining to do.
Yesterday, Joey de Venecia face the Senate for an investigative inquiry regrading the scandal and he testified that no less than the husband of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even told him to back off when they supposedly met in an upscale golf course.
First Gentleman Mike Arroyo is no stranger to scandal. He was supposedly the holder of the infamous Jose Pidal account. A bank account supposedly the repository of a multimillion( hundreds or maybe billions) deposits which is undeclared in the BIR and a lot more. I will enumerate them in my next article.
Lets find out in the days to come what will be the developments in this sordid and shameful events in the state of affairs in the Philippines.