Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos lost hard-earned money in Legacy’s fraudulent investment firm and rural banks. Can they actually forgive Noli de Castro’s role in their worst-ever experience? These people lost their life savings to someone who campaigned for Noli and was rewarded with a high post in Noli’s housing programs.

Of course, the Vice President is now distancing himself from De los Angeles after the latter’s grilling by the Senate for the questionable operations of the Legacy group and his companies’ investigation by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But no matter how De Castro disowns Delos Angeles, the damage to his squeaky-clean image has been done.

Noli De Castro admits that Delos Angeles financed his 2004 vice presidential campaign, caused the printing of his campaign materials, and even bought a tabloid to help sell him to voters.

So, immediately after De Castro assumed the vice presidency, he promptly endorsed De los Angeles as head of the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation (NHMFC).

By paying a political debt to De los Angeles, De Castro not only epitomized everything despicable about traditional politics. De Castro also helped De los Angeles lure more unsuspecting investors and depositors into putting their money in Legacy.

How does the Vice President connect to the Legacy mess by his acceptance of the 2004 election funding from Delos Angeles and his endorsement of the businessman to NHMFC?

Simple. When De Castro endorsed De los Angeles, he vouched for the latter’s integrity, leading people to conclude that De los Angeles and his Legacy Group must be clean for having been given a seal of approval by De Castro, no matter how indirectly.

In fact, although Noli had no qualms dropping De los Angeles like a hot potato, it may not have been because of complaints to Gloria Arroyo that Celso was the worst thing to happen to her housing program, we hear that the two friends had already reached a state of enmity over a pretty young thing. Of course, the TV talent chose the more powerful of the two (and refused to return the jewelry that the other gave her as gifts).

How ironic that they were both working in the Pag-ibig program. Ang pag-ibig nga naman!

With the discovery of the dubious operations of the Legacy Group, shouldn’t the Senate do what it should have done a long time ago – investigate De los Angeles’ stint as head of NHMFC to uncover possible anomalies? In fact, isn’t it about time that they take a hard look at their former colleague’s work at Pag-Ibig and the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council?

Are they afraid that they may find that the foundation of our Housing Program is infested with termites like Celso and other Noli friends?

***

Why do the opponents of House Bill 5043, or the Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008 resort to lies in defending their position?

Ramon San Pascual, Executive Director of the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development Foundation, Inc. (PLCPD), says: "Rep. (Roilo) Golez is deliberately misleading the public, especially his colleagues in Congress, by using distorted data and passing off unofficial data set as official. By persistently relying on manufactured and misrepresented data, Rep. Golez obviously just wants to derail the passage of the reproductive health bill."

During the interpellation on HB 5043 in the plenary Tuesday last week and again yesterday, Rep. Golez presented data that he claimed came from official sources such as the Department of Health (DOH), National Statistics Office (NSO), and Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI). But when Rep. Edcel Lagman read the official letters from these agencies denying Golez’ claims, Golez had to admit that his source was a book published by Social Watch.

"We do not discredit the alternative report by Social Watch, an NGO of fellow advocates on debt, reproductive health, and other pro-poor issues. But for purposes of the plenary debate on RH Bill, we wish that oppositors and authors will stick to use of data from official sources, data that come from government agencies," San Pascual emphasized.

Edcel Lagman had the last say: "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (False in one thing, false in all). I refuse to be further interpellated by Rep. Golez as I cannot anymore respect his intellectual integrity."

***

According to an insider at the Land Transportation Office (LTO), Stradcom, the firm that does the data-gathering and computerization at LTO, has another deal in the works – stickers that will contain basic information about vehicles registered with the LTO – the same information that is already in our registration documents that all of us must carry in our vehicles. The sticker will merely duplicate the vehicle registration papers.

The bad news is that these useless stickers will cost you an additional P300 every year. The sticker plan has already been approved by the LTO but still awaits the final blessing of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC).