“If Satan appears to me and gives me money, I will accept the money and spend it all for the poor.”
by Ducky Paredes
It is part of the genius of Celso de los Angeles that he has effectively deflected the public’s attention from the scam that he pulled on us all by dropping hints that certain officials helped him do his evil on society. Suddenly, the focus is on the regulators and one congressman.
The participation of one congressman who obviously took in several donations from Celso is actually a veiled threat against the other legislators who are investigating the Legacy criminal enterprise. I even suspect that Congressman Ed Zialcita may have been the least guilty in the House and that this may have been the reason he was offered as the sacrificial lamb as a warning to the others. Celso has more revelations up his sleeve and he will use these at will and with great effectiveness. No one among those in Congress who dealt with him is safe from a drowning Celso. He will pull you all down with him.
With the next election just around the corner, Paranaque Congressman Ed Zialcita is being played for a patsy using the donations he had received from the Legacy Group, for and on behalf of his constituents, as ammunition.
The goal is to spread the evil and make us all believe that Zialcita directly benefited from the donations made by Legacy, and not his constituents who had received free burial assistance, among other benefits, from these donations.
It is up to the congressman to explain. He has been doing that and says he is ready to prove that he did not spend a single centavo of the Legacy largesse for his own benefit. This can be verified. Zialcita can make a listing of the persons he helped, (I only hope for his sake that he has signed receipts for every burial, doctor’s fees and whatever else he spent the donations on.)
In his press statement that broke his silence on the accusation, he swore that he did not use a single centavo of the Legacy donations for his own benefit.
Of course, any politico aspiring for the congressional seat of Ed Zialcita will use Celso’s revelations to advantage. Ed can expect even more below-the-belt blows to come his way. I would not discount the possibility of Zialcita’s detractors producing paid witnesses against him to say that the congressman actually conspired with Legacy to defraud investors and that he actively used his position to protect the company.
The fact that retired disgraced SEC commissioner Jesus Martinez is a second cousin of Zialcita, and the few lunches and coffee they shared have been used to paint a picture of a conspiracy by the cousins to protect Legacy, as a quid pro quo for Celso’s generosity.
Still if Congressman Zialcita erred, it has to be that he was too trusting of the people he met, so much so that he may not have done due diligence on Legacy before accepting its donations. This is the danger that comes from donations.
If the claimed irregularities against Legacy had escaped the radar of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Insurance Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), can someone like Congressman Zialcita be expected to suspect that there’s something so rotten with Legacy, that he will refuse its donations?
Of course not. Even the church does not ask whether a donation being made came from a shady undertaking. To it, a donation is a donation is a donation. The important thing is that it gets to alleviate the plight of the poor. As the late Cardinal Sin said on October 25, 2000: “If Satan appears to me and gives me money, I will accept the money and spend it all for the poor. It is not the practice of the Church to ask donors where their donations come from. Our duty is to make sure all donations go to the poor. The devil remains my enemy but I will use his resources to feed the poor.”
On hindsight, it may be argued that Legacy made the donations in an effort to ingratiate itself to Zialcita, even with the latter not knowing the agenda, if any, behind them. But that would be according a congressman’s office with too much power, more imagined than real.
As to the few meetings between Zialcita and Martinez, it is natural for cousins to take lunches together. It cannot be assumed that they did this to plot their evil just because they shared a meal.
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A letter from a Pinoy in the U.S. reacting to the letter of Lilian de Vera: “I received this letter a few weeks ago and I was outraged by the callousness and arrogance of Philippine law enforcement officials. This and other incidences have led me to believe that there is no justice nor law enforcement in the Philippines where authority comes from the barrel of a gun. The officials of the country’s law enforcement and the GMA administration cannot or will not put their money where their mouths are. After all, it works for them.
“I have apprehensions about visiting the Philippines again because there are absolutely no assurances that the police, the military or some arrogant politico will not shoot me and my friends for no reason at all and then say that I am a suspected carnapper, or drug dealer or whatever else they can think of to justify their acts. I am also discouraging my friends from visiting and/or investing in the Philippines.”
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I share your apprehensions and disgust?
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hvp 03.19.09)
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