House of dishonour

SELECTIVE JUSTICE is injustice.

Ululated the Honorable Jinggoy Estrada, citing 371 lawmakers were tagged with PDAF “irregularities” in the Commission of Audit report, but only Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Bong Revilla and himself have been “singled out.”

How about the P1.2 billion in LGU transactions funded from PDAF that did not comply with the Procurement Law, some of which were sourced from the PDAF of Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Alan Peter Cayetano, Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan and Manny Villar?

So the Honorable Estrada asked, furthering: Why were (these honourable senators) not mentioned (in the hearings, in the media)? Is it because they are allies (of the President)? I am not saying that they have sinned. This is based on the COA report that there were irregularities in their allotments.

Yet another instance of discriminative justice: How about the PDAF allocations…of the second highest official of the Lower House, Rep. Neptali “Boyet” Gonzales Jr. of Mandaluyong?

Were his PDAF properly used? It doesn’t appear so because according to the COA special audit report, 28 suppliers of Mandaluyong City denied having undertaken 167 transactions amounting to P28.744 million. It means there were 28 suppliers of Mandaluyong who said they had no transactions worth P28.7 million in the city of Mandaluyong so it could be said that they were also ghost projects.

Meron pa ngang nakita ang COA na P6 million worth of transactions sa Jollibee! Ano ito? P6 million worth ng Chickenjoy, hamburger at Jolly hotdog? Langhap na langhap ang sarap, hindi po ba?

And then still more: The COA report also said that it was not able to establish total releases for each legislator. Is this the reason why only P2 million was audited for Congresswoman Henedina Abad? P178 million for Congressman Niel Tupas? P197 million for Congressman Isidro Ungab? P351 million for Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano? P5 million for former Sen. Mar Roxas? P3 million for Senator Trillanes?   

Selective and blatantly incomplete. Thus, the Honorable Estrada damned the COA report, and trained his tirades on COA Chair Grace Pulido-Tan: Gumising ka na! Mukhang lagi po kayong may jet lag kaka-biyahe nyo sa ibang bansa: Five times out of the country travels in 2010, nine in 2011. At noong nakaraang taon (2012) sampung beses! Halos buwan-buwan wala sa bansa si Chariman Pulido-Tan. At sa kasalukuyang taon lamang, as of August 2013, nakabiyahe na sa labas ng bansa ng siyam na beses si Chairman. Kahindik-hindik, di po ba? At mukhang mapapahagulgol din tayo dito.

Pulido-Tan’s very words thrown back at her with biting sarcasm there. 

With such a scale and scope of sin obtaining – the Honorable Estrada arrogated unto himself the words of the Christ: “Kung sino mang walang bahid ng ano mang kasalanan, kayo ang unang bumato sa taong ito.” And then some: “Huwag naman kayong mag-malinis at lalong-lalo na, huwag naman kayong masyadong ipokrito!    

It was the Bard himself that said “the devil can cite Scripture for his own purposes.”

So who was it who said “religion is the last refuge of a scoundrel”?

A dud. The listening public readily dismissed the Honorable Estrada’s pre-publicized “”bombshell.”

A vain, if failed, attempt to bring the whole house down with him.   

Rather than reasoned arguments to disprove the charges ranged against him and his cohorts, the Honorable Estrada resorted to a number (ir)rationalizations found in the body of Material Fallacies of Reasoning any student of my day learned in Philosophy 101. 

The Honorable Estrada and the equally Honorable Revilla are being singled out because they are strong candidates in the presidential derby of 2016. This, he not so subtly implied in his speech.

This is an instance of the post hoc fallacy or finding consequence in sequence. So they are puffing up their pretensions to the highest positions in the land, so they needed to be shut, if not shot down? PDAF irregularity is the issue at hand, not presidential illusions and hallucinations.    
Then, by dragging his peers into the PDAF scum, by raising questions on the integrity of the COA and its chair, the Honorable Estrada exampled the fallacy of tu quoque – “you yourself do it” so what right have you to judge me?.

This closely adheres to the Kapampangan wisecrack “Pare-parehu tamu mu king akbak nang Hudas (we are all the same in Judas’ skewer.)”

Precisely what the Honorable Estrada did accomplish in his “The Untold PDAF Story that the People Should Know” speech.

At the expense, aye, the very negation, of that witticism about honor obtaining among thieves.

The senator’s speech proved it is the (dis)honorific “Honorable” that takes honor out of thieves.     

Shame. Have they got any?