Before and after August 3, 2006

I GOT this letter in my e-mail, sent to the Inquirer editor in chief by Philippine Health Insurance Corp., or PhilHealth:

"We wish to emphasize that there is no truth to what Mr. De Quiros claimed that the P530M was transferred by the Owwa [Overseas Workers Welfare Administration] to PhilHealth in 2004 for 'patent electoral purposes.' In fact, the said amount was transferred to us only in March 2005, long after the national elections in 2004. The first tranche worth P300M was transferred on March 16 and the second and final tranche worth P230M was transferred on April 15."

The letter is signed by Lorna Fajardo, acting president and CEO. The rest of her letter enumerates the things PhilHealth has done for the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) since their Medicare funds were entrusted to it. "We invite Mr. De Quiros to visit us at his convenience so that we can show him our records pertaining to the transfer of the Owwa Medicare funds."

I have no need to visit your office at my convenience or inconvenience. I am absolutely certain your records will bear out the fact that you received the checks only last year. Accounting hat tricks are the easiest thing to do in this country. None of that supports your argument that, one, Owwa Medicare funds were not used for purposes other than what they were intended, which was health care for the OFWs, and, two, that theywere in fact used to fund Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's election campaign. If anything in my contention is wrong, it is probably only the word "patent." The use of Owwa money by PhilHealth to campaign for Arroyo wasn't just patent, it was blatant.

The very proposal for the transfer of the funds was premised on it. The proof of it is quite literally in black and white. The proposal was made by Francisco Duque, then-president and CEO of PhilHeath, on Nov. 20, 2002. He said in a memo to Arroyo: "Respectfully submitted herewith for her Excellency's consideration is an Executive Order which shall effect the transfer of the Medicare functions and the health insurance funds from theOwwa to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.. The rationale for the transfer is discussed at length in the attached Executive Brief."

That brief gets to the heart of the matter: "It is respectfully requested that the proposed executive order be approved by her Excellency before the year ends. The proposed transfer will have a significant bearing on 2004 elections . May I ask that we meet personally? My direct line is 09178132072 or 6181684."

I can only hope Duque hasn't yet changed numbers so the OFWs can tell him what they think of what he did.

But there you have it straight from the horse's mouth -- my profoundest apologies to horses. Duque's justification for the fund transfer is about as innocent as Arroyo's conversation with then-commissioner of elections Virgilio Garcillano. Of course, the part about it having a significant bearing on the 2004 elections can always be bent to suit harmless interpretations. Arroyo's own conversations with Garci have undergone thatmetamorphosis. The part where Garci tells Arroyo "'yun hong pagpapataas sa inyo. maayos po naman ang gawa nila" has been interpreted facetiously as Garci telling Arroyo that the shoemakers who made her elevator shoes did a good job.

Fortunately for Duque, he realized that things written down on paper can be very incriminating and decided to leave further explanations verbally in private. Unfortunately for Arroyo, she never realized how phone conversations with "a Comelec official" can be very incriminating and called up Garci again and again.

Arroyo did sign the executive order -- numbered 182 -- not before the end of 2002 as Duque suggested but shortly thereafter, on Feb. 14, 2003, well before the May 2004 elections. And the Owwa passed Resolution No. 005 "approving the transfer of P530,382,446 from the Owwa Medicare Fund to PhilHealth" on Feb. 2, 2004, still well before the May elections. Corazon Carsola, the only land-based representative who refused to sign the resolution, said shortly later on March 15, 2004: "Since the start, I have always been against the transfer of the Medical Fund to PhilHealth. I feared that transferring the fund to a business-oriented entity would in the long run prove detrimental to the future of medical services to the OFWs."

She was right. The transfer proved detrimental to the OFWs' physical health even as it proved beneficial to Arroyo's political one. Owwastopped the medical reimbursements of OFWs on Jan. 16, 2004. The dating of the checks, which was after the elections, and the amount, which is P530,000, do not exculpate PhilHealth, they only laud the efforts of the migrant groups to expose the iniquity. Duque's original request was for the entire P4 billion Owwa Medicare fund. That met with violent protests from the migrant groups and several lawmakers, which led to the amount being scaled down. As to the checks landing in PhilHealth's coffers onlyafter the elections, they can say anything they want but Executive Order 182 and Owwa Resolution 005 guaranteed them the money well before the elections.

The final proof of the pudding is in the eating. Or specifically in this case in the completely inedible cards that PhilHealth issued voters before the elections. Indeed before the official campaign period, a patent -- there's that word again -- violation of election rules, though that would be the last thing to bother them. Unlike before, where PhilHealth cards did not carry the picture of any politician, the cards that were handedout before the official campaign period carried the picture of Arroyo cradling an infant. You wondered who the beneficiary was since Arroyo dwarfed the recipient -- by itself a feat worthy of Ripley's -- until you realized that indeed the card accurately depicted its true beneficiary.

But as Burns says, the best laid plots of mice and (wo)men oft go astray. Sublimely ironically, all this went for naught. In the end, Arroyo still had to hello Garci.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=13154