So, why is the President Commission on Good Government trying to queer this massive investment? To protect its own 27 percent "sequestered" shares in San Miguel? To begin with, the PCGG does not own those shares. The Supreme Court has declared them public funds, but categorically points out that the Sandiganbayan will have to decide the case with finality.
The PCGG’s contrary stance, in the face of widespread rejoicing in the business community and Malacañang’s happy acceptance of the deal is beyond belief. And besides, those "coco levy" shares the PCGG votes in San Miguel – claimed to be worth P51 billion – would be enchanced in value by KIRIN’s entry into the company. Remember: Shares are worth P51 billion only if you can find somebody to buy them at that price. If San Miguel were to sink from its present level of success and profitability, the PCGG-held shares could even plunge to P10 billion, with nobody, anyway, eager to purchase them.
The PCGG must let the San Miguel Corporation alone to forge ahead and form strategic alliances which will mean more success for it, heighten our national morale in a time of worldwide economic distress, and gratify, of course, the firm’s legitimate stockholders.
The worst-case scenario would be that KIRIN, irritated and amazed at the PCGG’s opposition, decides to give up and retracts its investment. Then, how will PCGG Chairman Heidi Yorac and her bunch of wise-guy hit-picking lawyers explain that to the Filipino people? Our name, as a nation, would be mud among foreign investors. Here we have half a billion bucks coming in – and one government agency snarls that it’s wrong to accept it. Some people must have a screw loose in the head.
And, besides, doesn’t the title of the PCGG begin with the words "Presidential Commission"? If the President welcomes the deal, why should one of her subordinate agencies reject it?
The recent socio-economic summit averred that one of our priorities is to remove deterrents to foreign investment. What about the PCGG? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. That failed commission should have been scrapped long ago – or at least retired owing to senility.
* * * That "amateur" videotape of terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden laughing in glee over the devastation of the World Trade Center with a trusted visitor from Saudi Arabia came as no surprise to most people all over the world. By this time, almost everybody — and I underscore "almost" – had come to believe bin Laden was the mastermind of that outrage which killed 3,300 people (the death toll had been revised downwards).
In the captured videotape aired worldwide, bin Laden announced he had four day’s notification of the suicide airliner hijackings, and had been waiting by his radio for news they had been carried out. Bin Laden, indicating his being cold-blooded and callous, even quipped that some of the hijackers were not aware of the nature of their mission – meaning their suicide-attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon – until they had boarded their planes.
He confirmed what had been speculated all along, that the attacks were led by the Egyptian-born Mohammed Atta who piloted the first plane that smashed into the Twin Towers. And all along, bin Laden, who had previously been pictured looking solemn, serious and dedicated in all his previous videos, laughed and laughed merrily.
"We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower."
This damning videotape was obviously never intended for televising, but the tape was discovered stashed away in a house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and handed over to the Americans.
* * * Of course, many in the Muslim world, including Pakistan, are rejecting the videotape as "an American fabrication". Let’s face it: the fanatics, fundamentalists, and "devout" Muslims will never accept it. After Mohammed, it seems, bin Laden is their prophet.
This kind of Islamic extremist (and there are more than you think) will always hate America, too, and want Israel, for that matter, to disappear. They will never be party to any "peace process." Have you ever viewed one of these mullahs, sheikhs, or Koranic scholars in television? You cannot argue or reason with them.
As for Israel, I guess the Palestinians and Arabs have met their match. The Jews can match them fanaticism for fanaticism — and have more firepower, even if they don’t have the numbers. Like the Islamic extremists they burn with the belief that Israel has been their homeland since thousands of years ago, but only half a century ago they managed to return to reclaim it.
And how, in turn, can you argue with a people whose "real estate" and torrens title book is the Bible? The Bible, they insist, called this piece of real estate theirs three thousand years ago (even those encroaching on the West Bank), ergo, it’s theirs, period. They have the helicopter gunships, jets, and tanks to enforce their "ownership."
Their Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers wear a patch commemorating the last stand of Israeli zealots who defended their last redoubt, the mountain fortress of Massada (near the Dead Sea) against the Roman Xth Legion to the last man, woman and child. The shoulder patch declares: "Massada shall not fall again!"
* * * All the major newspapers yesterday – with four banner-headlining the story – reported the Supreme Court’s 10 to 5 decision, penned by Justice Artemio V. Panganiban, on the petition of the PCGG questioning the Sandiganbayan order allowing the Philippine Coconut Federation (Cocofed) and other private parties to vote the sequestered shares United Coconut Planters Bank (Cocobank) registered in their names at the annual stockholders meeting last March.
In the PCGG petition, filed by the Office of the Solicitor General, it was asserted that the Sandiganbayan had committed grave abuse of discretion in depriving the government of its voting rights by allowing the private parties to vote the sequestered shares. The stand of the government was that the sequestered UCPB shares are government-owned because they were purchased by the Philippine Coconut Authority with coco levy funds. These shares, however, the Silicitor General underscored, landed in the hands of private parties like the Philippine Coconut Federation and others.
Lest many in the public may be misled by the 10-5 High Court ruling issued last Friday, let me remind our readers that the main issue in the case is still pending resolution by the Sandiganbayan. The anti-graft court must still decide on the government’s complaint seeking reversion of the sequestered UCPB shares, on the ground that the said shares belong to the government. And, therefore, the government should have voted those shares for the election of the bank’s Board of Directors.
The Supreme Court directed under pain of "contempt" the Sandiganbayan to resolve that 14-year-old case within the next six months.
By declaring the funds public, therefore, did the High Court in effect preempt the Sandiganbayan on the issue of ownership of the bank’s shares of stock? According to the Supreme Court itself, the ruling has not preempted the anti-graft court (and said so in its decision) because its ruling pertains only to the issue of who should vote the sequestered shares in the meantime.
If so, then the private parties in whose names the sequestered shares are listed can still adduce evidence before the Sandiganbayan to prove they are the actual and real owners of the sequestered shares in the bank. Pending submission of proof that private parties "own" those sequestered shares, the prima facie conclusion is that these are owned by the government because public funds (coconut levy funds) were used by the Philippine Coconut Authority to purchase them. That’s what the High Courts stated.
As for me, how can the High Court not preempted, even it says so, the Sandiganbayan? Even if the anti-graft court, as the High Court orders, resolves the case before mid-year 2002, I’m certain that the appeal will finally land in the Supreme Court.
As for the poor coconut farmer and the dying coconut industry, what can they expect? Nothing but the forlorn hope that the lawyers and justices will not take another eternity to untangle the mess – and that at least a trickle of those coco levy funds will, at long last, go to them.
In a country with more than 43,000 heat-seeking lawyers, how are we to progress?