ACE Builders Enterprises, on one hand, is in tantrums for another P26 million payment from the city government and, on the other, Mayor Jerry Treñas is acting like a frightened dog with its tail between its legs.
We smell rat here.

The contractor is not alone in that zarzuela of huff-and-bluster, threatening suits on Iloilo City government to collect payment for an undone or half-done contract called “housing scandal in Pavia.”

It is not alone in resurrecting the monumental thievery we thought is already lost in the dead files of the Ombudsman.
Three graft complaints were separately filed with the Ombudsman in 2003 for the unfinished, substandard and overpriced housing units that Ace Builders erected in Pavia for city employees.

The project, financed by the P130-million bond flotation, began in 2001 and was supposed to be completed in 2003. In 2002, however, the grand thievery was exposed because even non-carpenters sensed that the housing units, smaller than backyard pigpens, were substandard and overpriced.

Treñas’s first act in office in 2001 was to release P16 million to pay Ace Builders. The contractor’s shenanigan hugged the headlines in early 2002 and the city council subsequently created an investigation committee led by then Kgd. (now Rep.) Raul Gonzalez, Jr. However, like a blind donkey, the mayor still pampered the delinquent contractor with timely installment payments while investigation was going on.

In 2003, the investigation committee released its findings and recommended, among others, the rescission of the contract and the filing of criminal and administrative charges on those involved to include Ace builders and Treñas.

However, Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, confirming her reputation as a moral pygmy and imbecile, simply sits on the three complaints. Her subordinates like deputy ombudsman for the Visayas Pelagio Apostol and WesternVisayas director Virginia Palanca-Santiago, are as inutile and disappointing. Like supine and spineless eels, they readily cower before their big boss whose first act in office is to defy the constitutional principle of transparency in public office.

If you asked Ombudsman Gutierrez on developments of the charges filed against Treñas et al, she won’t even bother to answer your query, in violation of the Code of Ethical Standards for public servants that orders public officials to respond to inquiries in 15 days.

Her lieutenants in the Visayas also betrayed public trust as they meekly allowed themselves to be gagged. They succumbed to Gutierrez’s two whimsical orders, the first, to keep all matters within the Office of the Ombudsman a top secret and, second, the power to release information to the public is now the monopoly of Her Almighty, the Ombudsman.

Treñas is just lucky the Ombudsman is a moral pygmy and an imbecile. A glimpse of the circumstances surrounding the housing scandal shows his participation in the conspiracy writ all over. He continued paying Ace Builders despite recommendations to the contrary from the sanggunian investigation committee. He defied the sanggunian by not rescinding the contract and sue Ace Builders for damages.

Instead of confiscating the performance bond, which would answer for deficiency and slippage in the construction of houses, Treñas, a lawyer and former law professor, simply let Ace Builders flee and laugh its way to the bank. Despite reminder from regional director Virginia Palanca-Santiago in 2006 that to continue paying the contractor would put the city government to disadvantage, he still released the payment of P16 million. The performance bond is at least 30 percent of the total cost, or around P40 million from the P130-m project cost.

The city government already paid P75 million. If Treñas and his cabal of racketeers in the city council acquiesced to Ace Builders’s demand of P26 million, he and his ilk cannot escape public suspicion that he is in cahoots with the erring contractor. The housing scam alone bleeds taxpayers P17,000 daily in interests alone.

Iloilo City recently witnessed yet another attempt to pull off a similar zarzuela, this time, with another co=actor, Megaworld. Earlier, the buyer of the 54-hectare Old Iloilo Airport, offered P3,000 per square meter to the city government which wanted to buy 4,500 square meters.

Racketeers in city hall egged Megaworld to jack up the cost by P500, making it P3,500 per square meter. The developer was already thankful at the P3,000 costing, however, bandits addressed to as “honorable” blew that, and with it, its big chance of attracting investors.

Earlier, Megaworld sounded off it may even donate a piece of land so long as city hall relocates to the Old Airport. Enough of Trenas shouting “Bangon Iloilo!”

Thanks to Kgd. Eldrid Antiquera for preempting the plot to rob Ilonggo taxpayers blind with Megaworld as unwilling accomplice.

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