Senate should probe passport-printing scam, not just passport data breach
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2019 16:29:02 +0000
UNLESS the Senate is prepared to pursue the passport controversy to full resolution, we submit that the Pimentel-led inquiry will be a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money. It will miss the opportunity to unravel the truth.
A congressional inquiry is an expensive and time-consuming process. It has subpoena powers, and it can compel individuals, both high and low, to give testimony and submit themselves to questioning by the Senate.
In the case of the passport controversy, it will not do for the Senate to stop at just determining the facts about an alleged passport data breach, which may or may not have occurred.
It must also look into the truth of an allegedly anomalous passport-printing contract perpetrated during the administration of President Benigno Aquino 3rd.
Senator Pimentel’s determination to hold an inquiry appears to have been whetted by the cryptic statement of Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Locsin Jr. that the information affected by the data breach was not “run-away-able.”
The way most people understood this strange language, there was no breach of the information data of passport applicants. There was no way for anyone to run away with the data.
But there is more to the passport mess. The Aquino government executed two contracts for the printing of passports.
And this led to a P38-billion scam, involving high officials of the Aquino government, and a dubious corporation owned by a billionaire.
The Senate must be bold enough to ask what one of our columnists has asked: Why did the Aquino government hand over to a private firm without bidding the lucrative monopoly to print the country’s new electronic passports? And who benefited from the multi-billion profits from the venture?
The chamber should not fail to summon to the inquiry the big names who are apparently involved in the passport-printing scam. Where in past inquiries, the chamber summoned with abandon lowly members of the government service, this time equal attention should be given to the testimony or liability of the high-positioned and privileged.
The Senate should prove to the nation that it is an equal-opportunity inquisitor.
The Commission on Audit has estimated that the passport-printing contract would involve P38 billion in sales of passports to the foreign affairs department in 10 years. This would exceed, if not dwarf, the other anomalous deals during the Aquino regime.
The anomaly and violations are not ‘run-away-able.”
For the sake of publicity and because of the May elections, the country’s senators are perennially looking for an excuse to conduct an inquiry. They covet the TV cameras and the spotlight.
In the passport-printing scam, there is a crying need for an inquiry. In this scam, they will truly have plenty of questions to ask and much to inquire into. And they will have plenty of personages to grill. Will they do it?
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