Virginia Palanca-Santiago's Exercise of Raw Power (16)

The Beekeeper
BY PET MELLIZA

Virginia Palanca-Santiago’s exercise of raw power (16)

Our neighbor Gerry Escatron nearly lost his life due to the man who sports the title “doctor”.
He had diabetes, his right leg was swelling but the usurper thought it was s simple infection and prescribed heavy doses of anti-biotics. His condition worsened; the gangrene crept up to his thigh but the quack doctor, a public official of the town of Igbaras, 40 kilometers south of Iloilo City, continued to saturate his body with anti-biotics.
A timely intervention by Mayor Jaime Esmeralda, a real doctor of medicine, saved Gerry’s life. He referred him to the Western Visayas Regional Medical Center. Gerry’s lower right was amputated it was necessary to save his life.
This usurper of the title “MD”, incidentally, is a pillar of the animal called “people’s graftwatch” whose members are like him, charlatans masquerading as graftbusters.
None of these charlatans, led by a perpetual bar flunker and a cleric whose looks reminds us of our affinity with primates, ever realized that the continuing criminal act of usurpation by the quack doctor is corruption itself putting to risk that it does the community as the list of his victims lengthens.
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We grieve with our good friend, retired P/CSupt. Nonoy Esteba who lost his mother last December. His mother had a lingering heart problem but the quack doctor diagnosed her to have indigestion or ulcer.
A public doctor issues a certification of death for NSO records. In this case, mayor Jaime Esmeralda, initially declined to certify the fact of death stated above because of the wrong diagnosis by the quack doctor.
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The quack doctor and his wife foist themselves as anti-corruption crusaders.
They are campaigning against Esmeralda and company who they brand as “corrupt”.
The quack doctor is running for a higher office while his wife for the local legislature, both of them sporting the anti-corruption platform.
Corruption is more than stealing the people’s money or property. It is much more complex than that.

A corrupt public officer does more than stealing. The corrupt also sells out the people’s rights. It deliberately inflicts harm on people by various ways using the public office or what purports to be one.
Pretending to be a medical doctor as our hero here does, robs not only money but human lives and limbs as well. He profits from using his non-existing competence. He flexes that same incompetence to enrich himself at the expense of the innocent whose lives and limbs are placed in peril.
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Jaime Esmeralda is now in his third and final term as mayor of Igbaras. He now eyes the vice-mayoralty in tandem with vice mayor Edmund Esporas who is rooting for the highest office in the town.
Far from the noises of the charlatans who are coddled and backed up by the embalmed version of Mommy Dionisia disguised as Assistant Director of the Ombudsman (Visayas), Esmeralda’s administration delivered a cornucopia of services that his predecessors never dreamed of.
He completed the concreting of all municipal roads in the poblacion. For the first time in Igbaras, and under his watch, the town has established a learning center for special children, erected a public library, a water system, a class “A” abbatoir, a fire station, and a clinical laboratory for diabetes, dengue and typhoid.
Today, parents need not go to Iloilo City to find out whether their children children are infected by the above-named ailments.
In other words, in Esmeralda’s nine years, the people of Igbaras enjoyed the blessings of a clean, responsive, transparent and efficient governance. Like a basketball team, the local leadership under him might have also incurred fouls but his team kept on scoring to victory.
The charlatans, abetted by the embalmed version of Mommy Dionisia disguised as Virginia Palanca-Santiago, sued Esmeralda and two subordinates for corruption in 2005, for the so-called P1-million ghost road gravelling project.
The complainants, the quack doctor included, attached thick wads of affidavits and other documents all attesting that there was zero implementation at all.
The ocular inspection and report by investigator Roderick Blazo belied the ghost project yarn. There was implementation, Blazo wrote, only that the work was substandard.
The complaint should have been dismissed outright. The Commision On Audit (COA) also inspected it and did not disallow it, that is, it did not find any irregularity otherwise, it might have notified .the public officials concerned to explain for the poorly implemented disbursement.
However, the embalmed Mommy Dionisia ignored the COA findings and went for the Blazo investigation which was done five months after the implementation when the re-gravelled roads were already damaged by the rains.

Blazo, further, applied the standards for road concreting or asphalting to the extreme point of idiocy that faulted Esmeralda et al because the graveled surface fell below one inch thick and some spans of the road were narrower than the standard width.
Succeeding events showed that the embalmed Mommy Dionisia rigged her decision. The confrontasi between Libat Uno and Libat Dos at the house fronting the PNP station during the 25th anniversary of the murder of Benigno Aquino, Jr. merely confirmed the lingering public suspicion that cash was delivered and some palms in the camp of Mommy Dionisia were greased.
That’s why your beekeeper reiterates what he has been calling in this space: investigate Virginia Palanca-Santiago for corruption. She should not be allowed to exit into retirement surreptitiously.

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