Ping offers to act as guide to ‘bridges to nowhere’

After getting dared by Tiglao, Bunye and Ebdane to prove his claims na may corruption sa paggawa ng mga "bridges to nowhere", Lacson steps to the plate and takes the challenge.

SEN. Panfilo Lacson is willing to accompany Malacañang’s "lying Thomases" to the areas where the "bridges to nowhere" hurriedly built by the Department of Public Works and Highways in time for the 2004 elections, are located.

He also said the Sinag Foundation, chaired by former Rep. Carlos Padilla, will file plunder charges with the Ombudsman anytime this week "to prove that such unconscionable projects exist."

He said the complaint would challenge the Arroyo administration to explain how it paid exactly the same amount for different bridges in different locations of different lengths.

During his True State of the Nation Address (TSONA) at the Manila Hotel last Friday, Lacson said the bridges, which fall under the P8.3-billion President’s Bridge Program, cost P16.853 million each.

He said some bridges in Zamboanga Sibugay are sited in the middles of rice fields.

"How can they explain paying exactly the same amount for different bridges in different locations and with different measurements?" he asked.

He said the "bridges to nowhere" were but the latest in a string of corruption which includes the five-kilometer P1.1-billion Diosdado Macapagal boulevard; the use of the P2-billion road users’ tax for street sweepers wearing "Pangulong Gloria" T-shirts during the 2004 presidential campaign; and the use of up to P15 million in the same road users’ tax to bribe some congressmen into rejecting an impeachment complaint against Arroyo.
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The Bailey bridge construction project was implemented before the 2004 elections during the term of former Public Works Secretary Florante Soriquez. Checks for the project were all released April 2004.

Ermin Garcia, Sinag Foundation executive director, said they started checking out the bridge project after Lacson discovered during the deliberations on the proposed DPWH budget that the cost of the bridges – whether long or short, finished or unfinished – were the same. Each bridge cost P16.853 million.

"The Sinag ng Bayan Foundation is standing by the report it has shared with Sen. Panfilo Lacson regarding the state of a number of the Bailey bridges installed in 2003-2004," he said.

Garcia said DPWH officials have refrained from providing documents related to the anomalous project.

On Malacañang’s insistence there was nothing anomalous about the bridges project, Garcia said: "We have no reason to doubt the claims of the officials of Zamboanga del Norte and Zamboanga del Sur on the usefulness of the bridges in their provinces. Fortunately for them, their bridges are unlike like those installed in Zamboanga Sibugay and in Agusan del Sur."

He said most of the unquestionable Bailey bridges could be found in far-flung areas in Mindanao.

"We challenge Secretaries Roberto Tiglao, Ignacio Bunye and Hermogenes Ebdane to inspect even just the installed bridges in Zamboanga Sibugay alone and prove our report wrong," he said.

He said his group would release a more comprehensive report on the actual state of the bridges based on DPWH’s January 2005 progress report. The report, he said, will cite mismatching of resources, substandard construction of approaches to the bridges, installation of bridges in non-existent roads and access to and from communities

This is where your taxes go, peeps. What a waste.