MAGLANQUE, Rene Former DOTC Assistant Secretary now mayor of Candaba, Pampanga Years Covered 2006-2008 Estimated amount of money received through conduits P108.24 million Remarks: Does not include amounts received for Nasser Pangandaman and Narciso Nieto. Other commissions cannot be determined as of press time.
An entry in the resumé of corruption highlighted in the infographics The Benhur Luy Files accompanying the fifth part of Nancy Carvajal’s special report headlined “Gov’t execs’ loot: P820M” in the Philippine Daily Inquirer last Friday.
Of Maglanque, the story said: “…Nasser Pangandaman, DAR secretary from 2005-2009, received at least P94.1 million through a conduit, Rene Maglanque, according to Luy.
A “Rene Maglanque cash for Nasser Pangandaman” and “SEC c/o Rene Maglanque full payment of commission charge to RAD project” were how the supposed kickbacks were described in the records… …Rene Maglanque, a former DOTC assistant secretary and incumbent mayor of Candaba, Pampanga, allegedly received P207 million from Napoles. Maglanque in the records of Luy also served as conduit of commissions for Pangandaman and Nieto for DAR projects.
Maglanque’s entries in Luy’s records are classified into three—”Usec Nieto c/o Rene Maglanque,” “Rene Maglanque full payment of commission charge to RAD project” and “SEC c/o Rene Maglanque – full payment of commission charge to RAD project.”
Conspicuous in his absence from the socalled “Napolist,” Maglanque is most visible in the Benhur Luy Files.
Which, with its details, has become the more credible document. Credibility here – to the detriment of Maglanque – buttressed by an Inquirer front page story on July 13, 2013 written by the intrepid Tonette Orejas. Read that story in part:
“…In 2012, the INQUIRER learned that Maglanque had allegedly tried to bribe a leader of a fishermen’s group in Masantol town in an attempt to silence the group about an irregularity involving the distribution of farm equipment.
Some 2,500 fishermen in Masantol were reported to have received farming tools and seeds worth P89.2 million from the Department of Agrarian Reform. The supposed benefi ciaries, however, claimed that their signatures had been forged and that they did not receive anything from the DAR or its listed partner, the Kaudpanan para sa Mangunguma Foundation Inc. (KMFI). KMFI is one of the fake NGOs Napoles reportedly set up…
…Maglanque, one source claimed, had asked a leader of the Masantol fishermen to keep mum on the issue in exchange for P1 million. The amount was rejected.”
Really, now, it does not take an editor to see a complete story here, merely by integrating the italicized accounts above of Carvajal and Orejas: credibly sourced, with enough supporting facts to stand on its news merits. Not to mention fi nely written. In its brief entirety, a damning indictment of Maglanque.
Come to think of it though, was it not Maglanque that damned himself in the Napoles scam from Day 1? Dead give-away were the streamers Maglanque strung all around Candaba town for his installation as new mayor on July 1, 2013 – “Mabuhay at Maligayang Pagdating Madame Jenny, Jimmy and James Lim Napoles from Mayor Rene E. Maglanque at Pamilya” – a photo of one even meriting the most prominent spot on Page 1 of the Inquirer, juxtaposed right with the paper’s masthead.
No amount of high-pitched denial by Maglanque then of knowing, much less dealing with, Napoles could convince anyone of his professed innocence. No amount of quietude in Maglanque – he has virtually hermetically sealed himself from media – can now extract him from putative guilt. Actually, Maglanque has long been preceded by his not-so-flattering reputation.
Okay, perceived notoriety, to be precise. In 2005, then Department of Transportation and Communications Assistant Secretary Maglanque was fingered by jueteng whistleblower Sandra Cam as “one of the bagmen” of then Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo.
This, in a Senate hearing. Long reported too that Maglanque failed a subsequent lifestyle check, his white mansion most ostentatious, and certainly garish, amid Candaba’s rusticity.
How Maglanque was able to wage two expensive, albeit losing, congressional campaigns could only point to “a bottomless war chest” that could have come only from some source other than an honest, if legitimate, one.
It is to Maglanque’s misfortune – mainly of his own making – that the usual suspect in pulp fiction readily assumes his character, nay, subsumes his very person.
Guilt at face value. Need I still ask: “Anyone?”
