Call him morag mayor, mystery man or master mind of the Blue Card mess and it all mean one person-- double M as in Mark Monton. Yes Virginia, Monton is in the news the past days after he was allegedly implicated as the mastermind of the much-publicized Blue Card anomaly. Except for nasty text messages, no hard evidence was shown to link Monton to the anomaly, now the object of investigation by at least two committees of the Sangguniang Panglungsud. The most common text message that filtered into the text lines of the city's two radio stations were the supposed statement of Dr. Grace Araneta, chair of the board of director of the Medical Mission Group Hospital or coop hospital. The Araneta statement came about during one of the hearings of the two committees where she was summoned as a witness. The statement was amplified even more when Kagawad Zenaido Rama, a committee member went on air to repeat Araneta's statement. Rama's foray into the Blue Card picture inflamed the sensibility of the controversial Monton. Rama used to be a faired-haired boy of City Mayor Dan Lim when he fell from political grace after the elections. Monton is a dyed-in-the wool protege of Mayor Lim. Friends no more, Lim and Rama parted ways with the Blue Card issue widening the political divide even more. Rama has since allied with V-Mayor Jose Antonio Veloso while Mayor Lim vowed never to “touch him with a 10-foot pole”. Just to show how close Lim and Rama were to each other, the last elections saw the city councilor ran under Lim's ticket. Rama was even Lim's running mate in the 2004 elections.

HITTING BACK

Interviewed during DYTR's Cuentas Claras, Monton minced no words in castigating Rama for his role as “spokesman” of the two committees. Hitting back at Rama, Monton challenged the two committees to investigate Rama for having installed a refrigerator and airconditioning unit in his office. While Monton appeared to have no qualms if Rama owned the two appliances, he was asking if it was the city councilor who paid for their electric consumption. As to the allegations of Rama and Araneta arising from the committee investigation, Monton went to town to defend his person of the alleged insinuations that he was the mastermind of the Blue Card scam. The scam was triggered by reports that claims of the Blue Card Program of the city government were bloated at the Medical Mission Group Hospital. Monton's name cropped up in the investigation after it was alleged that she called up a certain Lourdes Suarez, the hospital's billing clerk to charge a back account incurred by his son when he was hospitalized early this year. The telephone call purportedly gave instruction to include the same account to the hospital bill of Monton's father who was hospitalized in the same medical facility sometime in April 2007.

But in the statement of account of Nemesio Monton, Mark's father, there was no showing that the entries of the hospitalization of the son were included. A discrepancy, however, was discovered in the elder's Monton hospital bills. A clear example of a fraudulent claim made by the hospital indicated that the actual expenses of the elder Monton's bill were pegged at P4,928.00. But when a claim was made by the hospital to the city treasurer's office under the Blue Card program, the expenses ballooned to P11,614.65. The Blue Card mess blew up into the open after a hospital employee identified as Anastacia Bertumen a cook, was said to have incurred hospital bills amounting to P57,000. As another case of bloated claim, the cook's actual expenses were only P4,000. The bloated Bertumen claim caught the prying eyes of the two SP bodies—committees on public accountability and health. The committees are chaired by City Councilors Anne Mariquit Oppus for public accountability and Leonides Borja for health. As to the two hospital employees, Suarez and Bertumen, they were already terminated by the hospital for their involvement of the Blue Card anomaly.