WE EXPECTED a bigger decline.”
So pooh-poohed Toby Tiangco, United Nationalist Alliance’s interim president, of the ten percentage-point slice off the lead of VP Jejomar Binay over all other presidential pretenders.
“They have been relentless in their attacks, but the people still believe that (Binay) will still be the one to respond to their problems,” Tiango said, noting the VP’s 31 percent is still up over the combined ratings of his closest pursuers in the survey: Interior and Local Governments Secretary Mar Roxas with 13 percent, and Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago with 11 percent.
The survey was conducted immediately after the Senate Blue Ribbon sub-committee started a probe into the alleged overpricing of the P2.7-billion Makati City Hall building 2. Unrelenting, indeed, are the exposes of more alleged corruption in the Binay fiefdom.
Last week, it was the turn of COA Commissioner Heidi Mendoza to regale the Senate Blue Ribbon Sub-Committee and the Filipino people of “documented” thievery in Makati that would make even Ali Baba’s thieves and Captain Hook’s cut-throats look like Fagin’s pickpockets, to wit:
| Equipment | Makati purchase price |
COA audit price |
Overprice amount |
Overprice in percentage |
| Autoclaves/sterilizers | P1,465,000 | P16,000 | P1,449,000 | 9,056% |
| Fetal monitoring system | P2,680,000 | P538,000 | P2,142,000 | 398% |
| Regular hospital bed | P148,000 | P9,032.76 | P138,867.24 | 1,537% |
| ICU bed | P545,000 | P34,123.76 | P510,876.24 | 1,497% |
| Orthopaedics bed | P480,000 | P24,087.36 | P455,912.64 | 1,893% |
| Ultrasound machine | P7,980,000 | P1,299,750 | P6,680,250 | 514% |
| Hospital Cabinets | P17,850 | P2,258.19 | P15,591.81 | 690% |
Mendoza said the special audit report discovered an overpricing of P61.2 million out of the total purchase price of P70.56 million in various medical equipment from a single supplier.
The breadth and depth of this alleged corruption, given gospel truthfulness by the credible COA, impact even harder in the national psyche. As it is the health and wellbeing of the people that is stake. It cracks, aye, it absolutely negates the very foundation upon which the Binays built their political stock – service to the poor.
Reports of the overpriced Makati parking building sliced 10 percent off Binay’s lead in the polls. Most certainly, the COA report on these overpriced medical equipment threatens to carve an even bigger chunk off Binay’s rating.
