FIVE months of overexposure and we now see Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste projecting himself as an anti-corruption crusader within the halls of a corrupt Congress — a narrative now exploding right in his face.
What collapsed his own narrative was his refusal to make public the so-called Cabral files, which in one of his many quixotic episodes he admitted having no knowledge of, but only the manner he had obtained and his threat to expose their content.
Only that he set the protasis that it needs authentication by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for the list to carry weight.
If it is not a legal document signed and authenticated by the late DPWH Undersecretary Catalina Cabral, or a video deposition made by her before she died off that Benguet cliff, then there are no Cabral files.
Neither Leviste nor the DPWH or/and the Ombudsman could claim veracity of the alleged list of contractors and their lawmaker sponsors.
On Leviste’s part, he had milked the files of narratives that bolstered his intended public image until his own ghosts, as a beneficiary of past government contracts, surfaced.
From hunter to being hunted, it now feels for the very young lawmaker.
Senator Ping Lacson exposed how fellow Senate member Loren Legarda had sought advice for her son, who just years before needed her (and some friends’) push to win a government franchise for his solar energy ventures.
Government franchises are hard to obtain. We have seen how ABS-CBN, then the country’s top media outfit, had lost its own.
It was easy for the still very young Leandro. All he needed was to overpromise as the then Duterte leadership needed a whiff of fresh stories to deodorize the evil of the madman Digong’s killing spree via his so-called drug war.
That “green” solar push surely helped cover the thick crimson splattered on slum pavements.
Only that he did not deliver the thousands of megawatts he had promised, traded, and made money of. For that the Department of Energy (DoE) penalized Leviste’s Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings Inc. P24 billion for its failure to meet commitments under more than 30 government contracts.
Also terminated were 163 projects awarded to various companies, with more than half handled by Solar Philippines, many of which were made years before Leviste had sought and won a congressional seat.
Those were contractual failures that ordinary citizens now pay for.
Not a few say that Leviste had seen them coming, however.
His congressional slot, they say, could offer him some protection but his critics were quick to allege that his anti-corruption stance would not cover for the accountability demanded from his office.
The Cabral files he brandishes could not serve as his bargaining chip because it has no legal value. For now and maybe ever.
Showing his political inexperience, Leviste also dragged other members of Congress by challenging them to prove they had no financial interest in contracts or franchises granted by the government, as prohibited under the 1987 Constitution.
It’s defense mechanism, they say, as it’s now Leviste’s turn to prove he has none. That will be a tall order, not a few stressed.
Now the buzz going around is that Leviste may soon face expulsion from Congress for not being “a good boy.”
They’re discussing it louder than whispers.
