At least, it’s a welcome move on the part of the Office of the Ombudsman in Manila to implicate some ranking officials and employees of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). Had it not been for the unwanted killing of one of its undersecretaries for an unknown motive, the Office of the Ombudsman would just sit down and let time passes by until all the records related to the World Bank assisted projects’ mess gather dusts in the shelves.
The question is why only now? Some ranking officials of the DPWH had been doing this shenanigans for a long, long time. I hate the idea of thinking it dirty. But what could a sinister mind like me does but to infer something negative against those government vultures whose only reason why they are in juicy positions in government was because of influence and connections. Rather than make and honest job as public servants, these government officials do not have the temerity to be ashamed of what they are doing by getting involved in some irregularities in government projects.
I knew that some government officials take advantage of their positions, especially those whose signatures have become weapons to earn more than what they regularly earn as public servant. I couldn’t imagine many of them have luxurious lifestyles, which any ordinary public servant cannot afford. As the saying goes, "money begets money". But in this case, ‘power begets money. With this development, perhaps, the Office of the Ombudsman can now proceed of dipping its mighty hands on the wrongdoings at the Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Then, we can aptly say that the government is serious in its efforts to weed out those unscrupulous government officials who make it more doubly difficult for the economy to pick up because of rampant corruption in government.