BY ROMMEL YNION
NO, we are not yakking about Injap Sia’s laundry shop but about a money-laundering haven simply called Iloilo City. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Or, do we need to help you see why? Now, we see you nodding in agreement.
Let’’ immerse ourselves then in a sight-seeing tour around the city to see how money from national coffers meander through a modus operandi as labyrinthine as a puzzle maze, resting in the pockets of piranhas at the end of the day.
Piranhas? Oh yes, we didn’t use any other word from our dictionary to describe them. For crying out loud, how else can we aptly depict characters that gorge our flesh to the bone until there is nothing left in us but our skeletal remains?
Our first stop in this tour is the Iloilo City Hall. Wow! Can you believe it is worth over P800 million? Oh, we all know an edifice as small as that can’t be even worth over P400 million. Not even the most be-medaled architects like Oca Peñasales can even believe it. But who cares? Nobody cares about believability in this city!
As we saunter around the city, we won’t miss them. You bet there they are now, rising before our eyes like the World Trade Center in 1969 at the start of its construction in New York City brick by brick, floor by floor, but since they aren’t as tall as the Twin Towers before Al Qaeda “nuked” them into smithereens, we see them now in their entirety.
Oh yes, they aren’t tall at all. Just as drab as the restrooms of those two historic buildings that collapsed into a cloud of dust 13 years ago, perhaps. But their histories are equally convoluted. While the collapse of the World Trade Center still boggles the minds of conspiracy theorists deep in the bowels of Langley, Virginia, the rise of the twin flyovers along General Luna St., barely a kilometer in length, still enthralls the spirit of Ali Baba.
Perplexed, Ali Baba once wracked his brain, squeezing from the bags of tricks slung on the shoulders of his Forty Thieves ideas in the hope of finding the reason why the two-lane flyovers, traversing along University of San Agustin and University of the Philippines Visayas across Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Ave. could have cost the national coffers a whopping P900 million.
“Are these guys better than me?,” Ali Baba asked himself and his Forty Thieves, wondering if the twin flyovers could knock him off the pedestal of being the world’s most fabled “thief” executive. “They can’t outwit me but it seems they actually can.”
Engineers, swearing on their mothers’ graves, pegged the prices of those two flyovers at a maximum total of only P400 million. Why they skyrocketed to more or less P1 billion has kept them in a daze, bewildered no end, their minds scraping barrels of possibilities just to eke out the certainty of theft, its magnitude better left to the judgment of history.
So now, we can sense the adrenalin rushing through our veins as we begin to see the stories behind these so-called developments in our city that is craning its neck to be recognized as one of the world’s wonder cities. But that’s alright, isn’t it? No problem with being a wonder city as long as there is a Wonder Woman at the helm of it. But that’s another story.
Oh, wow! As we now cruise along the newly-widened Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. Ave., we meet an avalanche of reports that this has cost taxpayers over P500 million on top of the other equally overpriced road projects now dotting the city’s landscape. All these – and more – have allegedly ushered in a roaring decade of the newest boomtown on the block. Congratulations, Iloilo City!
But before we trudge on farther afield, let us stop by Injap Tower and relax at their Singaporean coffee shop way up there at the top of the tallest building in the city. This brand-new condotel is actually only 21-storey high, but in this city where low profile is admirable, it is already considered a “skyscraper”.
As we savor our Singaporean coffee, we can marvel at that Esplanade along the Iloilo River. No doubt it’s a thing of beauty. But at what cost? Or simply how much? We heard it’s at least over P100 million. Oh well, quite acceptable but still on the high side.
Gazing now at the panoramic view of the “modern” Iloilo City, we can conclude that this erstwhile Queen City of the South is definitely on its way up as others cities electrified by billions in Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds do. But is this is really development or an envelopment of a monumental loot that can put Ali Baba to shame?
No doubt any student of economics can only tell us that this is just a bubble that will let the truth pop out as soon as it bursts. Sad to say, everything that shines in Iloilo City now is like a pregnancy artificially induced by modern science. In plain and simple language, its economy is afloat only because it is buoyed by DAP funds which now temporarily circulate around the city, its multiplier effect deluding us into an illusory sense of security.
Growth hormones only lead to artificial growth. And that’s what DAP does. It leads us to artificial growth, elevating us to a level that only dreamers could dream only to leave us eventually high and dry. Like a bolt of lightning, it will eventually unravel the facts – as they are as, not as we want them to be – as soon as DAP outlives its purpose in our city.
And why is DAP here? Over P2 billion in DAP funds have reportedly meandered through government agencies before circulating around our local economy. Based on the history of Iloilo City where, in the eyes of astute observers, overpriced projects have branded it as the nation’s capital of corruption, we can only look at them with jaundiced eyes, knowing full well that thievery is at the core of its purpose.
The pattern is clear: There is always a Mr. Labada who gets approval from Malacañang to fund projects in Iloilo City, its funding eyed as dirty money. And like all dirty money, it goes through multiple stages of cleaning. In this case, it will be cleaned through government agencies that implement scandalously overpriced projects that perplex us, its nightmarish effects leaving lasting imprints in our minds.
Who is Mr. Labada? What is he up to now?
At the rate DAP surges across our economic pipelines, we can sense something big that is about to unfold. Do they need billions of pesos to buy the presidential elections in 2016? Is there a plot to hijack our government necessitating a war chest that will make Fort Knox look like a pawnshop?
Why has Iloilo City been chosen as one of the biggest laundry shops for their malevolent designs? Is it because national media seldom trains its sights on this seemingly innocuous city that corruption can easily go unnoticed? Just asking.
But we know Mr. Labada is at it again, now more sinister than ever before./PN
