Nowadays, it’s getting increasingly harder to sift fact from fiction, or unembellished news from hype. As the intensity of the election fever slowly builds up—the political panorama seems to be in a constant flux—swirling in patterns one can’t quite make out or make sense of at any given time.

This is simply to say that with the May 2010 elections less than seven months away, a lot of the “news” we may be getting from the media—unless properly attributed and fully documented—may be nothing more than pure crap or unadulterated hype.

Here’s one nice example of what crap can sometimes be made of. The Philippine Daily Inquirer in yesterday’s issue carried a story (page 17) with an across-the-page headline, “Gov’t workers hit Tesda finding exonerating Syjuco.”

The story was in reference to a plunder charge filed by an Iloilo-based group against Augusto Syjuco, director general of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda), in connection with the procurement of P302.1 million worth of training equipment under the Tesda’s nationwide Ladderized Education Program or LEP, participated in by vocational schools.

In a nutshell, Syjuco allegedly overpriced this particular batch of equipment by at least P60.9 million. The story of the overpricing charge and the case filed with the Ombudsman by the Iloilo-based group broke out earlier this year.

Syjuco, after flatly denying the charge, formed an eight-member investigating panel headed by Deputy Director General Rogelio Peyuan  to look into the details of this transaction. He also stopped the payment to the supplier of P39.8 million that the latter was trying to collect from Tesda at the time.

It was only recently that the Peyuan investigating panel came out with the following findings: First, the transaction was not disadvantageous or did any damage to the government. Second, the supply contract was awarded to the V.G. Roxas Co. Inc. (VGRCI) after the latter had submitted the lowest offer in a fully transparent public bidding. Third, there was no overpricing. Fourth, the Tesda inter-agency bidding committee awarded the contract because it was within the agency’s budget estimate and the government stood to save P4.96 million from the equipment purchase.

Peyuan told reporters yesterday that this was clearly a politically motivated smear job by Syjuco’s political enemies in Iloilo. Syjuco and his wife are the so-far-unchallenged political kingpins of the Second District of Iloilo, he says. “It’s very clear,” he says. “All the anti-Tesda stories that have found their way in the newspapers have all been datelined or filed from Iloilo City.”

The PDI story yesterday was filed in Iloilo City by that paper’s Inquirer Visayas correspondent, Nestor P. Burgos Jr.

The story was mainly based on statements made by Annie Geron, secretary-general of a group that calls itself the Public Services Labor Independence Confederation (PSLink). It was PSLink that had filed a plunder case against the Tesda head before the Ombudsman.

By an uncanny coincidence, the Iloilo-datelined story also generously quoted the supplier, Vicente Roxas, president of VGRCI. Both Geron and Roxas railed against the investigating panel’s findings that, in effect, implicated 14 Tesda employees (mostly from the technical groups) and the supplier—and effectively absolved Syjuco from any irregularity.

Peyuan told reporters yesterday that coincidentally, Roxas hails from the province of Iloilo. It was explained, however, that this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that VGRCI won the supply contract fair and square because it had submitted the lowest bid.

The Peyuan panel ruled that “there was no overpricing because the bid price of the said supplier covered two lots of equipment that was well within agency estimates.” On paper, the panel ruled, the government saved P2.9 million from Project LEPTES-02, and P1.929 million from the second project.

The panel said, however, that it found a number of delivery lapses on the part of Roxas’s company. Based on the technical specifications in the bid documents, some of the equipment actually delivered by the supplier were below standard. “The team observed that certain specifications used for some items were inadequate or vague. This afforded the bidders unreasonably wide latitude in the costing of their respective bids and allowed for arbitrary exceedingly high prices for certain items, and low prices for other items.”

The panel cited the case of dough cutters—yes, dough cutters—implements commonly used in bakeries. The bid document specified that each cutter should be made of steel, flexible blade, straight cut, 4 3/8” long and 4 and one half” wide. Tesda’s estimated cost was P50,000. Roxas delivered dough cutters worth less than P50 each! (The Tesda’s resident auditor, however, priced it higher at P120 each, which is still a far cry from the P50,000 that Tesda was willing to pay for each implement.)

Peyuan stresses that as soon as he was informed that there could be irregularities in this supply contract, Syjuco stopped the payment of P39.8 million that Roxas was trying to collect. The amount would have covered undelivered equipment and other items found by the panel to be below specifications. Tesda, moreover, has applied penalties (for “unliquidated damages”) amounting to P10.48 million as of October 19, 2009.

To top it all, Peyuan announced that Tesda has requested the Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate and sue Roxas and the 14 Tesda personnel for their involvement in this attempt to defraud Tesda; that is, if the facts should warrant it.

If this is a smear job with a political motive, why are we not surprised? It’s one of the sure signs that the election season is heating up. We’ve gotten used to this. It is that time in our national life when political strategists and spin doctors of all stripes and shapes get to work everywhere—not excluding the province of Iloilo, the home province of Sen. Mar Roxas, vice-presidential candidate under the Liberal Party banner.

Like bugs in a flood, they crawl out of the woodwork in full force. Many of them think nothing of inflating, twisting or fabricating issues to please their clients. They have only one quest—to make their clients look good or make the client’s political foe look bad.

It’s a veritable circus, I tell you. With the May 2010 elections only less than seven months away, you can almost see the comical and the not-so-comical characters parading in the streets before your eyes. They are marching to the beat of blaring brass bands to announce their coming with a flair. I leave it to your private imagination to sort out which ones are the clowns, acrobats, magicians or the sorts of odd characters (such as bearded ladies, fire-eaters, escape artists, human cannonballs) that come straight out of a Barnum & Bailey extravaganza.

But beware of the dirt their spin doctors are dishing out through the media.

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