The country’s Catholic bishops have joined the calls for thorough investigation into the alleged corruption into the government’s flood control projects, as they urged the faithful to press for the creation of an independent body to probe the controversy and demand accountability from those involved.
“Let us insist on legal action, including criminal charges against those guilty of systematically plundering public funds,” the bishops said in a pastoral letter.
The letter comes as both the Senate and the House of Representatives are in the midst of investigations into alleged anomalies in flood-control projects. However, the men of the cloth have questioned the credibility of the inquiries, noting that numerous lawmakers are themselves implicated.
“How credible are these inquiries when the very institutions conducting them are themselves implicated?” they asked.
The pastoral letter warned that corruption threatens the country’s future as much as natural disasters. “If floodwaters rise because public funds are stolen, the greater flood is corruption itself, drowning our nation’s future,” the bishops said.
As revelations of corruption, for now focused on government flood control projects, continue to hound our government, it has become clear that the investigations and inquiries conducted by the same institutions that are hounded with allegations of corruption, no longer have credibility and an independent body to be formed, given the necessary powers to do its work, and then allowed to root out all the parties involved in this systematic plunder of our nation’s coffers.
That investigation must be followed by the filing of the appropriate charges, arrests, seizure of ill-gotten wealth and assets, a fair trial, and the corresponding penalties for those found guilty of what is essentially organized plunder.
How many more sectors of society have to demand for a proper investigation, instead of the zarzuela in the legislature, before our government acts on the clamor to act decisively against the corruption that has been allowed to plague our nation’s highest public offices?*
