Let me just add one more item to conclude my treatise on Richard “Dick” Gordon. I have consigned him to my list of few frustrations since at one time when I looked up to him as a presidential timber. I preferred him over Benigno Aquino Jr. in the 2010 Presidential elections but lost. He was on top of my list senatorial race in 2016 made it landing 5th in the race.
Dick was Chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross at the height of the Covid pandemic concurrent to his being a Senator. We all knew how impossible it was to procure personal protective equipment for our medical practitioners and frontline personnel but whatever means the government was able to procure these from China. This was to be followed later with millions of Sinovac vaccines.
In the aftermath however Gordon questioned the government transaction as anomalous. Records of Aquino administration moreover showed the contrary for in truth what the Duterte administration procured was 50% cheaper. At that point I didn’t know what his motive was.
In the present melee of investigations over the unprecedented corruption happening under the incumbent administration of BongBong Marcos, Gordon came out from the cold and demanded anew for the investigation of what he claimed were anomalous transactions the Duterte government made during the pandemic.
But wait. What had Dick Gordon done as Chairman of PNRC at the onset and during Covid-19 pandemic? Many, including Gordon, have forgotten that at the onset of the dreaded coronavirus virus, thousands of our Overseas Filipino Workers cannot go home to the province and were stranded in hotels because PNRC Chaired by Gordon demanded ₱3,500 for a swab test which was a requirement then.
As Senator was there any effort on his part to look for suppliers of the much needed PPEs and vaccines? As I pointed out in my previous articles, the US and the EU had developed vaccines and had stocks of PPEs but there was simply no way to procure these items as their respective government imposed a strict embargo.
At the onset of the pandemic Davao region was not spared. A couple of Covid-diagnosed victims were admitted in the Southern Philippines Medical Center. SPMC quickly ran out of PPEs and medical personnel have to use blankets as improvised protective gears. They were getting sick with no source of PPEs to procure from.
A small group, that includes my neighbor Fides Castaneda, however found a link to a supplier somewhere . We never bothered from where and who the source but decided we have to get them in whatever means. We pooled our meager resources together and purchased several sets of PPEs and promptly upon arrival were loaded on a military plane and then turned over to SPMC.
It is this personal experience and shared knowledge of what happened during the crucial period before, during and after the pandemic that I find Gordon’s call to investigate what he had already probed into over five years ago. He wants his claims of anomalous transactions during the pandemic be reopened at the time when the country is reeling from the virus of corruption arising from scandalous ghost and substandard flood control projects under the administration of Marcos and his ilks.
I find his case irrelevant and it begs the question: Why he suddenly resurrected from anonymity to divert the investigation and the nation’s focus on the involvement of highly entrenched politicians in the broad daylight heist of taxpayers money in the government treasury.
