No Death Law to Plunderer: A Congressional Hypocrisy

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The nerve of these thick faced Filipino congressmen who decided to strike- off the crime of plunder (P50 million above loots) as one of the offenses in the proposed death punishment law that they would be voting by finality this coming March.

A congressman with an annual half-a- billion pesos project for his district that has more than 250 thousand population as constitutional standard could pocket up to 20 percent of S.O.P  (euphemism for cut) or one hundred million pesos through his favorite supplier or contractor say of medicines or infrastructures.

Deprived by medicine or threatened by a substandard bridge or building because the hundreds of millions of pesos budget was plundered by the solon could cause death to his constituents.

Because of this gall, the thieving members of the House of Thieves, er, Representatives could be worse than the murderer, kidnapper or narcotics seller because they could kill a few while congressmen could murder a multitude because of their avarice.

Just look how millions of marginalized and dying Filipino rice farmers are cursed to wallow into morass of poverty in their once a year harvest while their counterparts in Vietnam and Thailand enjoy twice or thrice a year harvest of palay because of their ubiquitous water systems were generously given by their public officials.

The cursed to live dirt  poor and pathetically die slowly happened to our farmers because the billions of pesos budget   Congress allocated to them had been stolen since time immemorial by the same members of Congress, son of a gun, in cahoots with the likes of scammer Janet Napoles and those behind the fertilizer scams.

Except with the controversial Plunder, Treason, Qualified Piracy, Qualified Bribery, Parricide, Murder, Infanticide, Rape, Kidnapping and Serious Illegal Detention, Robbery with Violence or Intimidation of Persons, Destructive Arson, Importation of Dangerous Drugs and or Controlled Precursors and Essential Chemicals, Sale, Trading, Administration, Dispensation, Delivery, Distribution and Transportation of Dangerous Drugs and other narcotics cases have been packaged by the congressmen as part of the deterrence to cripple the unabated spates of criminality in the country.

Some of the congressmen have the temerity to justify the non-inclusion of Plunder as “just a money matter” anyway,” according to Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali, the justice committee chair who defends the bill at the plenary debates.

Because of this congressional hypocrisy, netizens and citizens were up in arms. Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez frantically wanted the almost three hundred members of the House to reconsider their stance on the non - inclusion of plunder in the 21 major offenses for the Grim Reaper Law.

These congressmen are no different to the seven congressmen that political commentator Michael Moore confronted in the documentary’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11. The 2004 flick was about a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush and his War on Terror particularly in Iraq.

Moore in that film wondered why out of 535 members of the  United States' House of Representatives only one had a soldier son fighting in Iraq side by side with those sons and daughters of the poor Yanks.

Accompanied by a recruiting Marine corporal named Anderson, Moore confronted the first seven congressmen he met at the Capitol Hill by giving them first a recruitment brochure and asked each of them point blank if they want to send their children in Iraq because only one son of a congressman was waging war and dying there.

All of them were caught on the spot by the crew's camera and were tight lipped while some immediately jumped off and shunned the fat Moore like plague.

But I could forgive the hypocrisy of the American solons while I puked to the duplicity of Filipino congressmen who want to solo the loot while avoiding the death injection.

You thick faced hypocrites, nakakasuka kayo!

 (You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)