“Plundemic”. Or plunder in the time of pandemic. That’s the new word that Sen. Manny Pacquiao said he came across as he joined Monday’s Blue Ribbon hearing on how the low-capital startup Pharmally Pharmaceuticals Corp., linked to a friend and ex-adviser of President Duterte, had cornered over P8 billion in contracts for pandemic supplies.
Taking his turn to pose questions at the sixth committee hearing, presided over by Sen. Richard J. Gordon, Pacquiao took time out to “salute” the Commission on Audit (COA), whose 2020 report flagging “deficiencies” in Department of Health (DOH) fund management had sparked the Senate inquiry. Speaking mostly in Filipino, he praised state auditors “for doing their duty despite risks; performing their mandate and . . . doing the right thing. It’s only right that they share their findings because it’s the people’s right to know.”
Corruption, said the boxing icon, has been “our problem since time immemorial, but that doesn’t mean we should just accept it.”
He added, “We can do something,” and cited the “Blue Ribbon investigation” as an important move “to ensure checks and balances.”
Pacquiao said, mostly in Filipino, “We won’t play blind or stay silent. We won’t allow crooks in government to keep stealing from the taxpayer’s coffers. Our dream is to see in jail all the crooks.”
The senator lamented that, “many of our countrymen are hungry and suffering, more so because of the pandemic,” and it is but just to catch those who steal at their expense.
Pacquiao, a Duterte ally and fellow Mindanaoan and partymate, had a falling out with the President in recent months after the latter took offense at his remarks that there is corruption in this administration despite Duterte’s dramatic claims about not tolerating “even a whiff of corruption.”
Part of the fallout is the split in their PDP-Laban party into two factions: Pacquiao’s wing and another one led by Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, whom Duterte supports.