Opinion: Talks About Virginia Palanca-Santiago

NOT ONLY THE SC. The ongoing Senate Impeachment Court trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, indicates that there is much to question the actuations of top government officials insofar as how they perform their functions are concerned.

There are more who should be subjected to scrutinize because if irregularities continue, the nation won’t progress as others have. Earlier, the Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas, Pelagio Apostol, commented to members of the deputized “Serve the People Movement” as an anti-corruption Unit body, that he was hobbled by the activities of a woman in his group because she had been close to Mark Jalandoni, who dismissed all the complaints filed against Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia, against whom so many issues have been hurled and faces a slew of complaints from whistleblowers Sarah Teresa Esguerra and retired police officer Victor Eduardo.

Inspite of the fact that Jalandoni had nothing to do with any complaints here, he took pains to dismiss the cases filed by both Esguerra and Eduardo against the Bacolod City Chief Executive.

CLEANSING PROCESS. When President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, undertook a cleansing process in the main Ombudsman in Manila, he targeted former PGMA’s appointee, Merceditas Gutierrez. Mercifully, Gutierrez resigned before she could be ground to dust. Jalandoni soon followed his boss and avoided the ignominy of being dismissed from the anti-graft body.

It was not a well-known fact but Apostol remarked to officers and members of the “Serve the People Movement” the Negros Occidental anti-graft body that as assistant Virginia Palanca-Santiago was the millstone around his neck. She had been, he said, transacting with government officials on complaints filed against them. The woman concerned, had strong links with Jalandoni and Gutierrez and because of this, the Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas, was largely ineffectual.

It was inutile in acting on anti-graft and corruption cases brought before it and that somebody really wielded the real power making him very ineffectual, Apostol told the anti-corruption unit. There appears to have been a confirmation of Apostol’s claim because on February 14, Valentine’s Day, we came across an Iloilo-based daily newspaper and what did we find, a column written by a good friend of ours, Pete Mellisa. The name of the column was The Bookkeeper and in it he wrote about the Ombudsman in Iloilo City. He also mentions a lot about Virginia Palanca-Santiago, whom he said had now been replaced where, she was assigned in Iloilo and who sported the title of “director.”

SIGH OF RELIEF. In his write-up, Melliza seems to heave a sigh of relief that Palanca-Santiago was no longer there. He also pinpointed what Palanca-Santiago had achieved and it was nothing.

If she has indeed, been reassigned to Cebu City, then she would be the headache of Apostol who has not yet gotten over her lousy performance when she was in Cebu City. We do not know what Apostol plans to do with her.

When she was President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, carried out worse plunder and “mayhem” both in terms of human rights violations and categorically in robbing the country blind. The legacy she left behind still are a spectacle to behold in the people she left behind.

But, indeed. Tell you me!*