Admissions, admissions; corroborating Jun Lozada

 Right-clicked from www.ops.gov.ph

You don’t need lie-detector tests, you don’t need game shows and botox injections  and dog-and-pony exhibitions: You just need to listen. Jun Lozada’s testimony is being corroborated. You  just need to research and to listen.            

         The Deputy Executive Secretary of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo  today corroborated  the testimony of Jun  Lozada that indeed he gave P500,000 to  the witness last February 4, 2007 but explained he gave the money because Jun Lozada texted him he ran out of money and “was cold” and needed winter clothes.        

        Who is Presidential Deputy Executive Secretary Manuel Gaite? His name first figured in this incident when Jun Lozada testified that Gaite as Deputy Executive Secretary gave him antedated papers to travel. As everybody knows, when government employees travel on official time and purpose they always need an authority to travel (and i think they use  their red passport for official  travel, let’s ask the custodian of Jun Lozada’s passport to produce his passport). As i understand it, sometime during FVR’s time, in order to cut down  on junkets, the Office of the President had a memo centralizing the form for authority to travel of the entire bureaucracy to an office in Malacañang itself and the form had to be signed by a factotum in the office of the Executive Secretary (don’t worry, if you know a lawyer in Malacañang, it doesn’t get buried, it gets signed right away in time for your flight.)     

          How close is Manny Gaite to the Office of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo?

      

             A heartbeat.        

       

      Executive Secretary Ed Ermita who sits next to the President admitted last February 9 (www.inquirer.net by Michael Ubac) that : quote “Even before he (Jun Lozada) left for Hong Kong, I had information that he was being invited to the Senate hearing and that he didn’t want to attend. It’s the legal division under Gaite who attends to this matter of this nature. That’s my only instruction,” said Ermita. (from www.inquirer.net )     

        Ed Ermita again:  quote “ I told Gaite, (he) being the one in charge of legal division, to get in touch with (Environment) Secretary (Jose) Atienza because he is the immediate superior of the head of a subsidiary under the supervision of the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources).” Closed-quote. (ibid)     

       In other words, Deputy Executive Secretary Manny Gaite is the trusted errand lawyer (that’s alright, my friends and i sometimes refer to ourselves as errand lawyers, we run  errands for  senior lawyers) of the Executive Secretary who sits right next to the President.        

         

      The website of the Office of the President shows him as an “honourable” Deputy Executive Secretary  of the Presidential Staff (the Palace factotums put “Hon.” as titles before their names, cheap thrills.)    

          Here is his working relationship in connection with Gloria, based on the website of the Office of the President:     1.)Her Excellency, Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Right below that: 2.)His Excellency Vice President Noli de Castro. Right below that: 3.) the Executive Secretary (Ed Ermita), then, 4)names of Cabinet Secretaries. 5)Then Presidential Advisers and Assistants. Then the Office of the President Staff which includes the 6)Honourable Deputy Executive Secretaries. Being Deputy Executive Secretary, Honourable Manny Gaite is under the direct supervision and control of the Executive Secretary; he takes his orders from Ed Ermita, and the latter, the Little President  of course sits right next to the President.    Right-clicked from http://www.ops.gov.ph(of course we already illustrated how close he is to the Office of the President with Ed Ermita’s extrajudicial admissions).     

    A quick Google search of Manny Gaite (see? I told you, you don’t need klieg lights and botox injections for this, just research) showed that Manny Gaite’s career as Palace factotum spans more than nine years in Malacañang. He had been trusted enough with money, enough to make him handle grants and donations in the range of tens of millions of pesos. Based on a 1999 press release of the Office of the President  (www.ops.gov.ph ) Gaite in 1999 was  undersecretary of Presidential Committee on Flagship Projects and programs , and  was in charge of 6.6 million pesos worth of relief assistance to Sulu . From the Office of the President website in 1999: quote  “Well, as of now, a total of P6.6 million has been used to provide relief assistance to evacuation centers in Sulu,” he (DND Usec Conejos) said on JEEP ni Erap: Ang Pasada ng Pangulo, the radio-TV program of President Joseph “Erap” Ejercito Estrada.    

        Quote “Undersecretary Manuel Gaite of the Presidential Committee on Flagship Projects and Programs said that aside from providing relief assistance, the government also sees to it that other priority needs of displaced Sulu residents are taken care of. “ (from www.ops.gov.ph  )  There are also press releases in the Naga City Journal of his infrastructure projects in 2002 for Baao, Camarines Sur for Mayor Mel Gaite.        

         In other words, the trusted errand lawyer of Malacañang,  of Ed Ermita who sits right next to the President, trusted to handle funds in tens of millions of pesos for more than nine years in the Palace, was trusted enough to handle P500,000 to give to Jun Lozada; sure it’s impossible to trace fungibles like cold cash to the national treasury because you can turn around the paper work.  He said it was to help Jun Lozada for his conference in London. This (the payment or “loan”) after the Senate had issued a warrant of arrest for Jun Lozada. The trusted errand lawyer thought he would be on the clear with that. Hold on just a minute: You and Jun Lozada are not relatives, not BFF’s (best friends forever) and all your dealings with him have all been in an official capacity. Why would Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s Deputy Executive Seretary give half a million pesos to help someone for a conference in London, does the explanation make sense in the ordinary experience of people? You think? You’re on the clear?

         (And you don’t need botox injections  for that. You just need to listen.)