Lacson’s fund-raising / Unfelt 5 percent GDP growth

"It’s simply overwhelming and heartwarming," Sen. Panfilo Lacson said of the fund-raising by Filipino-Americans to help him pay $3 million in civil damages to a defense contractor. He might find it overfrightening and heartbreaking to find out, though, that he could face more lawsuits if he accepts the money.

A human-rights lawyer is now quietly investigating how much the beleaguered senator has received so far. He says the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards forbids public officials from soliciting or accepting gifts and donations. More so under Presidential Decree 46, which specifies jail terms "when such gift, present or other valuable item is given by reason of his position."

Upon his return Sunday from a speaking tour of California, Lacson enthused over the offer of the Caviteños of Los Angeles to pass the hat. A newsbit quoted the association head as saying the first donor was a nurse who gave $100. Lacson’s military academy classmates who are now living in America reportedly will also pitch in. The newsbit stated that Lacson needs immediate cash to pay lawyer Michael Cardozo in getting a reversal of the court award of damages.

The California Superior Court on Jan. 13 had ordered Lacson to pay $3,031,262 for slandering and intentionally inflicting emotional distress on Alameda county businesswoman Blanquita Pelaez. In the trial ignored by Lacson, Pelaez testified that the senator had called her "a scam artist and smuggler" during a talk with Filipino community leaders in Alameda on Sept. 12, 2001. Deep hurt and humiliation prevented her from working.

Witnesses swore that Lacson also admitted during the talk that he blacklisted Pelaez as PNP supplier when he was its chief in 1999-2000. This led to a third civil suit for intentional interference in her business relation with Smith & Wesson, which had appointed her in Alameda as sales agent for the PNP. Pelaez narrated how Lacson withheld payment of 31,262 handcuffs that the firm delivered as far back as 1997 and for which she should have earned sales commission of $1 apiece. She said Lacson gave her the runaround after she turned down his demand to sue 123 PNP officers who had approved her sale and whom he wanted to replace with his own men.

Pelaez’s lawyer Rodel Rodis added that Lacson eventually released only 80 percent of the Smith & Wesson collectible. This deprived Pelaez of her commission since her sales appointment specified full payment before she gets it. Rodis said Lacson would need a good lawyer, with retainer of $50,000, for the uphill work of getting a court decision reversed.

The California judge had ordered Lacson to divulge all his assets and appear in court on Mar. 5. The senator claimed he has no deposits in the US, but Rodis has proof of Bank of America accounts.

The new fund-raiser was meant to show that Lacson has no dollar hoard. But the human-rights lawyer is sharpening his knives against it. He said that if Lacson accepts the $3 million, roughly P160 million, in a series of donations, he will sue him for plunder. The law states that if an official receives more than P50 million via a series or combination of prohibited acts, he can be sentenced to life imprisonment.

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So the economy posted 4.6 percent growth in gross domestic product in 2002, but how come we never felt it? Thus groaned labor leaders who said they felt even poorer despite government efforts to keep inflation at its lowest three percent.

The grumbling is understandable. Last year’s GDP growth may have been the highest since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, but wealth hardly filtered down to the poor majority. More than three million workers have no jobs and ten million have no decent homes. Two out of every five of 80 million Filipinos still live in poverty. By contrast Singapore and Malaysia’s economies were flat in 2002, but their people remain contentedly wealthy.

Economists are wont to blame it on pessimism and population. If Filipinos believe themselves poor and helpless, then they will be so. The economic law of self-fulfilling prophesies will ensure it. Is it really all a matter of the poor’s perspective? If so, why are bankers and businessmen also bitching about bad times?

Economists also say the population growth rate of 2.3 percent is simply too fast to feed people with a mere 4.6-percent GDP. For them the culprit is the Church for opposing government’s attempts at birth control. But is population really to blame? France had a galloping population rate too during the Industrial Revolution 150 years ago. Its people were poor and largely uneducated. Neighboring Germans, British and Swiss were inventing new machines to free themselves from manual labor. The French hardly had innovations. But France did not let its population be a burden. It capitalized on it instead. It mass-produced its neighbors’ inventions and sold them back to them and to its slowly rising people as well. France thus spurred domestic spending and earned enough wealth to educate its people and build a strong middle class.

France was in a unique situation at the time, though. It was going through upheavals to build a just and humane society. Liberty, equality, fraternity were the buzzwords. They set up a system by which wealth could be redistributed quickly to all. France today doesn’t aim for 4.6-percent GDP. Given only half of that, its citizens would be jumping for joy.

In short, it is the system. RP’s Constitution, laws, institutions, form of government and very culture breed a system where the rich get richer and the poor poorer. The Constitution calls for free education for all, but government allocates less for it than to debt servicing. Revenue collections have been falling in the past five years, yet senators and congressmen scramble for multibillion-peso porks and perks. Vested interests such as sugar barons are subsidized not only by law but even with state agencies. Income taxes have a cap of 32 percent, so much so that mid-level earners pay the same rates as jet-setting tycoons.

An heiress last year sold her personal helicopter to buy a new one, which she refurbished further at the cost of P100 million. Around her in the big city, slum-dwellers were eating only twice a day, and only cheap instant noodles to top wee scoops of rice. Domestic tourism was up last year, with more Metro Manilans than foreigners flocking to Baguio and Subic. Yet in central and western Mindanao, people were evacuating from war-torn villages. Electronics and microchip exports were high, too last year. But a big chunk of the population has yet to touch a computer.

These examples show that figures can lie. GDP may have been 4.6 percent, but the wealth remained in the hands of the elite or repatriated to overseas headquarters of multinational firms. Metro Manilans may have been better off, but millions of countryside folk had to forage for food in forests and swamps.

Advocates of constitutional amendments see solutions in switching from unitarian to federal and from presidential to parliamentary form of government. The political reforms, they say, would also prod changes in the way of life and sharing of wealth. Others wish to scrap the 60-40 rule in foreign investments in utilities and natural resources. It forces Filipino capitalists to come up with 60 percent of zero, when foreigners can well afford to put up everything to create jobs.

Change in the system must surely come in many forms: charter amendments, new laws, more responsive government and institutions. But change should also start with individuals. Filipinos must relearn the meaning of sharing not only part of their earnings for alms to the poor, but also in accepting structural economic changes.

In the ’60s the Focolare Movement of small and big ways of sharing spread in the capital. The country was then on the brink of revolution. The Communist Party was reestablished with a growing New People’s Army. Youths were marching in the streets to protest growing poverty while the elite ostentatiously was displaying its wealth. Effort were made by priests and nuns in exclusive schools to knock on the conscience of their wards. Students began to dress simply, donate the collections for their proms and cotillions to nearby slums, and find out how the masses lived.

That led to change all right. But not for the better. Martial law was declared. One man decreed everybody to live with austerity while he amassed hidden wealth. When dictatorship was dismantled 14 years later, the newfound spirit of sharing was gone.

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Catch Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, Saturdays, 8 a.m., on DWIZ (882-AM).

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