Handwashing
Posted on October 1, 2007 - Filed Under General |
TRY as they may now so piously do, former members of the city council in the Lim administration — at least those who voted for approval of the Awai land purchase in the February 11, 2002 and February 14, 2002 resolutions ratifying it — cannot so easily wash their hands off the whole mess.
To a certain extent now, this Awai imbroglio takes on an eerie similarity to the bad, very bad NBN ZTEdeal now hounding various department secretaries.
The paper trail, of course, will tell the tale and even as the present city legal office appears to brand the two resolutions as worthless and void ab initio (from the start) because the then Vice Mayor, now City Administrator, Alvin Fernandez, purportedly did not sign it, the councilors concerned cannot escape guilt for at the very least, not exerting due diligence in scrutinizing the million-peso deal.
As in the ZTE broadband project, the whole legislative approval process appears to have been set in motion way ahead of the actual sale or contract. Resolutions stamping approval or ratification of the lot purchase came as early as February 2002 but the deed of sale was signed only in April, 2002. Cart ahead of the horse.
Everyone, except those who have never done business with government, probably know the reason for the unmitigated haste—and we have no intention of spelling this out for the uninitiated now.
Now that the winds of fortune have changed, it is time to account for one’s actions in that Awai issue. Blame-tossing is not the demand of the hour; contrition is.
Comments
Leave a Reply