An eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between two powerful entities—media and two Sangguniang Panglungsud committees, resulted in the law-making body buckling to media pressure. The two committees of the SP, in a sharp turnabout, caved in last week under the sheer weight of a media juggernaut. The bone of contention of the two warring groups was the investigation of the so-called Blue Card anomaly. Looking like a throwback of the recent Senate investigation where a hearing was held behind closed doors, the two SP committees –public accountability and investigation and health and sanitation backtracked from their previous position not to allow media coverage of the proceedings. When Kagawad Leonides Borja, chair of the committee on health and sanitation was asked to confirm if indeed there was a “gag order” for media not to cover the investigations, he said there was a previous agreement among committee members to hold the sessions behind closed doors. Earlier, Kagawad Anne Mariquit Oppus, chair of the lead committee—public accountability and investigation, argued that the closed door proceedings were intended to protect witnesses from being exposed to the glare of publicity.

The committee members agreed that if media were allowed to cover the proceedings, witnesses might clam up thereby preventing them from giving substantial information needed by the probe body. At the first sign that the investigations would not be open to the public, radio programs of the city's two stations went to town to denounce the media discrimination. The investigation on the Blue Card anomaly touched off a sensitive chord among city residents after it was discovered that claims were bloated uncovering what appeared to be a conspiracy between personnel of the Coop Hospital and possibly some city hall employees.

TURNABOUT

The SP turnabout came in the form of an invitation sent to all media outlets signed by Oppus and Borja. The invitation did not mention any change in tact given the SP investigations scheduled on October 15-16 but it was enough cue for mediamen to go ahead with the coverage. The same invitation said that the series of inquiries on the Blue Card issue sees the presence of officers of the Coop Hospital and the Blue Card office of the city mayor's office. An initial finding uncovered by a task force created by City Mayor Dan Neri Lim showed a big discrepancy in total billings of the Coop Hospital as against the claims made by the Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital . Since the program's implementation, Gallares Hospital had a total of 173 Blue Card patients while Coop Hospital had 199. Three personnel of the coop hospital were dismissed after they were found to be a party of a conspiracy to defraud the Blue Card program of the city government.