email: bg31650@yahoo.com

Where's the P5,000 Salcon Group payola?

ooAll week long, this Bglante was in suspended animation regarding the wild accusation of former governor David Tirol that we are one of two mediamen who received regular payola from the Salcon Group. The supposed bribe, if this BGlante may say so, rendered the honorarium of the directors of the power utility firm Salcon Group, present owner of the Bohol Light Co. and Bohol Water Utilities Inc., miniscule. Thus, during a recent rally whose aim was to wrest the ownership of the twin utilities once owned by the provincial government, Tirol who is a minority member of the Salcon board of directors went to town to denounce this Bglante for the alleged payola. According to Tirol , the grapevine is awash with talks that as director, the fee became a pittance because a sizable part of the operational cost of the utilities went to media payola. A serious accusation no less, if you are one of the unfortunate recipients. Really? Does the Salcon director have the goods to pin us down? If what he got was mere hearsay, then what he was saying was pure hogwash.

All week, we have been waiting for Tirol to substantiate his claims, say, by coming up with corporate records detailing the paper trail of the payola. After all, as director, it is presumed that he has access to all corporate records. But there was none. All we heard from his end was nothing but deafening silence. This led us to pose this challenge to the outspoken director. If you feel that the director's pay is too small for your stature, then why waste your precious time any minute longer as member of the Salcon board? Resign and look for other lucrative enterprise elsewhere. Rather than perorate about alleged payola that you can not substantiate with hard evidence. Why are we so agog about the accusation? For one, if there was truth to what he was saying, this Bglante would be more than willing to accept with pleasure if indeed there was that grease money that we supposedly were a recipient of. And the reason why we would like to confront Tirol about the allegations is because we want to use the information to support our claims for payment.

That explains why we called up Engr. Noel Alingig, operations manager of Bohol Light Co. during our radio program Cuentas Claras last Monday, if at all, he has the documents of the media payola so that this Bglante would not lose no time in collecting my monthly due which was pegged at P5,000. So where's the P5,000 payola money, this Bglante asked Alingig. But guess what? Alingig was in a quandary where in hell would he get the P5,000 to pay for my money claim. Since there was no money to claim as payola payment, what is there to expect but conclude that the Tirol insinuation was nothing but a big hoax.