What about Martinez's Meralco caper?

Now that the Senate has determined that SEC Commissioner Jesus Martinez had a questionable regulatory relationship with Legacy, deeper investigations by the SEC itself, the Ombudsman and DOJ should also look into his other official actions including that Meralco caper last year. After the Senate revelations, we can now reasonably suspect he probably had very similar ulterior motives.

It will be recalled that the SEC official hastily issued an order that disrupted the annual stockholders’ meeting of Meralco last year. The order was drafted in secret, contrary to the adversarial nature of SEC cases where both parties are allowed to give their sides. Its special handling betrayed the intention to favor one of the contending parties. Luckily it was also sloppily done which made it easy for Meralco lawyers to cite such basic infirmities in the document like the absence of a docket number, date and official seal as reasons enough to ignore it.

It is inconceivable that the five star super special service Martinez granted one interested party in the Meralco case was motivated by a sheer desire to deliver public service. The Legacy hearings suggest there is a more pressing motivation for the likes of the SEC commissioner.

Since the SEC is investigating anyway, it is best that they look into Martinez’s entire tenure at SEC and not just his Legacy links to exorcise the ghosts of Martinez’s reputation that is now causing some serious damage to the credibility of SEC as a regulatory agency.

On second thought, the entire SEC virtually if not actually validated Martinez on Meralco. They apparently took a commission stand which effectively supported Martinez when the case was brought to court. The SEC may be suspected of just trying to cover embarrassing shortcomings in the wake of the Martinez mess. This was one time Chairman Fe Barin, who I believe is a rare morally upright public servant, should have taken a strong stand.

The revelations at the Senate were shocking but not surprising. I am sure a lot of people who have had some dealings with government offices in general would think what was revealed were sadly normal. But now that we are lucky enough to apparently have some smoking gun evidence of the brazen acts of corruption, something must be done. And going on leave and pro forma investigations for press release purposes only are not going to do it.

The ironic thing about Martinez is the report that he got his job on the recommendation of a born again Christian group whose political arm is called Citizens Action Against Corruption with the acronym Cibac. Cibac has since disowned him but Brother Eddie must to do a better job of making sure the people he recommends for public office are people he will not have to disown later.

And the weirdest thing was this report where Martinez admitted sending inspirational and religious text messages to De los Angeles for about a year before the Legacy scandal broke out. “One of the reasons why I sent him a text message every morning was I felt something was not going right,” the Manila Standard Today quoted Martinez.

Do I detect here some pangs of conscience? Or just a fear that he is about to be unmasked? Is a Road to Damascus experience a reasonable expectation for Mr. Martinez? This heathen writing this column has heard stories of these supposedly born again Christian leaders who are living high and using their mass influence to get favors from politicians. The last one I heard involved this lay religious leader getting special treatment from government.

Oh well… facts of life in our country. But we have to give thanks that once in a while, Divine Justice perhaps, the worse of them fall flat on their faces and exposed for who they really are. Our sleeping and clueless Ombudsman should pick up the trail from where the Senate left off. Or maybe, this supposedly born again Commissioner Martinez will truly repent and tell us who his other principals are in the Meralco and his other capers at SEC we don’t even know about.

His fellow born again believers are obligated to encourage him to come clean. This is not just between him and his God. Even the Bible says he must go and repair the damage done to his fellowman before he goes back to the altar to offer a sacrifice of atonement for his sins. Otherwise, he should change his name because keeping it sounds pretty sacrilegious.

Underground economy

From Jay Guerrero of Lipa City:

Re your recent article on the country’s underground economy.

There are two reasons why the underground economy proliferates or why small entrepreneurs prefer to go underground. One is the cumbersome procedures for securing business permits and the other, the burdensome regulations and monitoring done by various government agencies – both national and local.

A small entrepreneur with say, only P10,000 capital has to secure several signatures, about 36 or more, to get the necessary permits and registration, with the attendant grease money for each step of the registration procedure. Some moneyed people wanting to go into business and even foreign companies are deterred by these cumbersome procedures. What more of a small entrepreneur.

After having endured the cumbersome procedures to get a business permit, a small entrepreneur will have to comply with numerous regulations and constantly deal with the monitoring teams from various regulatory agencies, both national and local, like the BIR, fire department, engineering department health department, barangay, etc. For complying with the various regulations and for each visit from these agencies, one must of course, an entrepreneur will have to spend money that reduces the small profits he gets from his small business.

So with all these burdens and problems, ironically caused by the government, there is no reason for a small entrepreneur to go legitimate. By being in the underground, he does not have to issue receipts, maintain books of accounts, prepare monthly, quarterly and annual tax return, pay taxes.

Is the increasing number of those in the underground economy good for the country? Definitely not, but our unconcerned government does nothing about this.

SSS advertising

From Dennis Garcia:

Why is SSS spending millions on multi-media image advertising at a time of belt-tightening? The expensive campaign is not saying anything new... or exciting... or compelling... or relevant. I resent it because it’s our hard-earned money that’s being spent... and worse, I can’t even get a stinking P10,000 loan from them after decades of contributing without a complaint.

Winnie da Pooh

From Billson Koa.

When Sen. Boy “KNOW IT ALL” Herrera said that GSIS sold its Meralco stocks for P83 per share which is 55 percent less than its historic high of 129, did he ever consider that the stock would never have reached those prices in the first place if the shares hadn’t been sold to San Miguel? If I’m not mistaken, until the shares were sold to San Miguel the price hovered only around P60 or even less. So GSIS actually got a huge premium on top of the market price at the time.

The recent price increase was probably caused by speculation of a power struggle or bidding war between Manuel Panglinan, the Lopezes, and San Miguel or probably because investors thought that ANY new owner could do a better job other than causing chaos like what Mr. Garcia was doing which incidentally was the only thing he was doing.

In short, Winnie Da Pooh was the cause the stock price was depressed. Once GSIS was out of the picture, the stock suddenly looked valuable again. That’s how the capital market works. You get what you pay for and we are willing to pay if we think it’s worth it.

New name

A text message going around:

In lite of senate query U get security onli in exchange 4commission.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]