The truth and nothing but….

W HEN Joey, the son of Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., blew the whistle on the now cancelled NBN deal with China’s ZTE, not everyone readily believed him. The political connection is too telling. And his company was a failed bidder in that project. The motivation could not be easily assumed to be sparklingly clean.

But when Pampanga Governor Ed Panlilio raised a howl over a P500,000 cash gift he received from Malacañang, no one had cause to doubt him. He absolutely did not fit ‘the boy who cried wolf’ character.

Governor Ed, after all, is a humble Catholic priest who defied even his Church superiors when he decided to jump into the political arena and went on to convincingly defeat his well-entrenched political opponents in the May election. He won without resorting to guns, goons and especially gold, an almost indispensable weapon in Philippine elections.

He has no ax to grind. He is simply on the side of truth, transparency, good governance, and a return to public service as a public trust.

But now it is his word against everybody else’s because everyone else, except for Gov. Ed’s neighbor, Bulacan Governor Joselito Mendoza, is denying having received such generosity from Malacañang.

Adding to the seemingly incredulous situation is the manifestation of the local leaders here in Pangasinan of feeling “hurt” about allegations that they were recipients of the manna from heaven, which is what it could very well be since no one is admitting to have funded the gift.

So now if that is indeed the case, what makes Governors Ed and Jon so special that they were the only ones handed such an endowment?

Nothing makes them special in that sense. They are special because they are telling the truth. And surely they would say the same thing even if put under oath.

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz did not mince words when condemned this contemptible yet still unresolved incident, particularly zeroing on the person who steers the helm of Malacañang.

He said, “The way someone thinks and acts, it appears that there is no more distinction between right and wrong.”

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