PCSO chief says sorry for Pajero tag on bishops

PCSO chief says sorry for Pajero tag on bishops
By Christina Mendez (The Philippine Star) Updated July 14, 2011 12:00 AM Comments (27)

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) chair Margarita Juico apologized yesterday to the Senate and the Catholic bishops for the controversy generated by her pronouncement that some bishops received Pajero sport utility vehicles (SUVs) as donations during the term of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“I am so sorry for whatever this may have caused. I really do not know where that came from. In fact, I have already said that there was no Pajero here and in fact, I enumerated the cars,” Juico told the Senate public hearing on the PCSO anomalies.

Throughout the hearing, Juico maintained that she did not mention that Mitsubishi Pajeros were given to the bishops.

“I don’t recall saying Pajeros. It was, I think, an information that was given to us by one of the managers in the PCSO when they said utility vehicles were given to bishops,” she explained.

Juico compared the use of the word Pajero for utility vehicles to how some Filipinos generically refer to refrigerators as Frigidaires.

Senators grilled Juico after the bishops were able to explain that the utility vehicles they purchased out of the funds donated to them by the PCSO in 2009 were used in helping the poor in their respective dioceses.

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada lectured Juico about the need to be careful in her public pronouncements because this latest exposé dragged the entire Catholic Church into the controversy.

“You have to verify first the results because our bishops are being put in a very, very bad situation. And as devout Catholic, it pains me to hear that our bishops are involved in anomalies here in our country,” Estrada said.



Estrada did not accept Juico’s claims that she was misquoted by the media because her story about the Pajeros was published by at least three media outfits.

“Your honor, Mr. Chairman, I think somebody from within PCSO told me it was a Pajero, and maybe that got spun around. But I think I made a correction when I finally got the documents that the Pajeros weren’t Pajeros. There were no Pajeros, and instead there was a Montero Sport, there was a Grandia, there were other cars. No Pajero, I think I made that correction several times,” Juico said.

PCSO manager Ferdinand Rojas II tried to rescue Juico from the intense grilling and told the senators that she might have been misquoted.

“How can Mrs. Juico be misquoted when three news agencies carried this news?” Estrada asked.

Estrada joined Senators Panfilo Lacson and Vicente Sotto III in asking the PCSO to let the bishops retain possession of the vehicles since they were used to help the less fortunate anyway.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said he leaves it up to the PCSO to decide whether the vehicles will be given back to the bishops.

Enrile said he does not want to think that the PCSO officials were irresponsible when they leaked the COA report to the media and insinuated that certain bishops were given Pajeros.

He noted that the COA report and the issued checks reflected financial contributions.

“There was no word Pajero but utility vehicles were in the checks. That’s the problem when they based their pronouncements not on the documents at hand but on what they wanted to say to the public, which is why the public is now confused,” Enrile said in Filipino.

Asked if he thinks the bishops were “unfairly maligned” by the wrongful pronouncements, Enrile said he thinks they were “unfairly accused of receiving expensive vehicles” which was rather incorrect.

“And I think the matter was clarified already,” Enrile said.

After hearing the side of the bishops, Senate Blue Ribbon chairman Sen. Teofisto Guingona immediately terminated the hearing and said that senators requested for more time to question the resource persons in today’s hearing.

Former PCSO general manager Rosario Uriarte and ex-PCSO advertising officer Manuel Garcia are expected to be grilled when the hearing the resumes today.