Baguio group insists cheating was nationwide

First posted 07:29pm (Mla time)
Oct 13, 2006
Inquirer

BAGUIO CITY -- The group that exposed cheating in the June nursing licensure examinations here met and tried to convince Labor Secretary Arturo Brion that the test leakage happened nationwide.

Ruth Thelma Tingda, nursing school dean of the Easter College and a governor of the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA), said the meeting on Friday was meant to introduce evidence supposedly ignored by the National Bureau of Investigation.

The group’s lawyer also submitted on Friday the same evidence to the Department of Justice, which is conducting a preliminary investigation of the fraud case that the NBI filed against the owners and teachers of nursing review centers in Baguio City and Metro Manila.

The NBI report showed that cheating occurred only in the testing centers in Baguio and Metro Manila where 18-page photocopies of test questions were circulated during the exams on June 11 and 12.

The group’s evidence included testimonies and affidavits from examinees in some provinces in Mindanao to prove that the test leakages also reached them.

Tingda on Thursday said isolating Baguio was the scenario the whistleblowers feared would happen when they decided to complain. She said the group feared the NBI report reinforced a whitewash that was meant to protect government officials involved in manipulating the examinations.

But while Brion listened to group, he remained silent about what he would recommend to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, she said.

“Brion sealed his mouth [when we asked about] his inclinations regarding the retake issue. He assured us [that an administrative order] will be released by Monday,” Tingda said in a text message sent from Metro Manila.

But another member of the group said Brion immediately called the NBI to determine why the evidence they presented was not included in the final report to the President.

The R.A. Gapuz Review Center and the Pentagon Review Specialist Inc., which operate Baguio branches, are included in the NBI charge list.

The Baguio examinees said people wearing R.A. Gapuz jackets circulated photocopies of the test leakage that were later traced to two members of the Professional Regulation Commission’s Board of Nursing.

The same examinees later informed the PNA about test leakage turning up among clients of Pentagon.

The Baguio group included in their DoJ documents a sworn statement issued by Dennis Bautista, the Metro Manila examinee who linked R.A. Gapuz and former PNA president George Cordero to the cheating in a Senate inquiry.

Bautista’s testimony, according to the group, intended to “disprove allegations that the leakage did not reach the Visayas and Mindanao,” by relating that the final review coaching conducted on June 10 by Ricarte Gapuz, owner of R.A. Gapuz, was broadcast simultaneously throughout the country. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon