Author: Alex Vidal

WHOEVER is maintaining the “Jerry Treñas” Facebook or Meta account is doing both Iloilo City Mayor Geronimo “Jerry” Treñas and his Ilonggo constituents a big service.

EVEN if Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio will hire the best accountants and spin masters in the Philippines to help her wiggle out from her present predicament, the P125 million representing the “confidential funds” her office had “spent” for only 11 days, according to the Commission on Audit (COA), is hard to justify.

THE many restrictions imposed by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for the “temporary” reopening of the much-vilified and defective P680-million (plus P200-million for the “repair”) Ungka flyover (UFO) in Pavia, Iloilo can be compared to a newly built but poorly constructed house turned over by the builder to the homeowner and his family for a short-term use.

VICE President Sara Duterte-Carpio probably thinks the taxpayers money grows on trees, and it is in the behest of high-ranking public officials like her who want to custody a big chunk of it “confidentially.”

IF the late Iloilo Senator, Dr. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, was alive today, the furor over the abusive and brazen requests by the country’s second highest elected official for the sordid and astronomical “confidential” and “intelligence” funds or CIF, would have been “settled” right away.