King Crab (Map)

CORRUPTION RAISES ITS UGLY HEAD ANEW IN THE PROCUREMENT OF DEFENSE WEAPONS FOR THE PHILIPPINES

News reports are now coming out of Davao that some Israeli companies are trying to get an appointment with President Rodrigo Duterte in order to set a presentation of their products to him. The curious thing is that these companies are not even in the top echelon of Israel’s defense industry and are mostly little known companies with largely unproven products and dubious systems.

Now, they are reportedly flying to Davao to make a sales presentation of these dubious products to the President. They are actually making a fool of the President by making him a Technical Working Group and Defense Acquisition Committee rolled into one. This unethical act by these Israeli companies and their Philippine representative is a major insult to the Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines as it not only bypasses them and disregards their technical expertise, but also tramples upon set procedures to ensure that our soldiers who lay their lives on the line for our protection will always get the best weapons systems in the most efficient and transparent way.

The current procedure, which ensures efficiency and transparency, is for presentations to be made first at the level of the end-user, and based on the expertise and experience of the end-user operating units, the end-user’s Technical Working Groups would make their thorough evaluation of the presented weapons systems and make their informed recommendation to their superiors who will eventually elevate and refer these recommendations to the President based on the parameters recently established by the President himself, which is to go government-to-government on such deals and eliminate the participation of corrupt vendors.

This is where the plot thickens. The presentation is being spearheaded by one JOCELYN MAGCALE of JOAVI who was earlier exposed by the Tulfo brothers. In his Manila Times column last April 5, 2015, Erwin Tulfo gave the sordid details about Magcale and her involvement in shady deals in the DND and Philippine Coast Guard. His article, titled “Lady contractor seduces officials to win DND, AFP deals” is quite informative: