The Makati mess is what turns off foreign investors

If the DILG and the GMA Government don’t really have the goods on Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay – who "refuses" to be suspended – they’d better "whisper" to the Court of Appeals that it quickly resolve the issue and get Makati City defrosted from its present paralysis. Courts, alas, are like leviathans that move in slow motion and there are many "lawyer’s tricks" to delay or derail cases. Every abogado de campanilla has a lot of Whereas and Wherefores tucked in his or her old kit bag.

With Jojo Binay defiantly barricaded in his New City Hall, and newly-imposed "caretaker" OIC Rodolfo Feraren trying to get the business of Makati going again in his bunker in the Old City Hall, nothing can move in Makati. Like our traffic jams, Makati is gridlocked.

Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronnie Puno, no Shining Knight himself, must have convinced La Presidenta that Binay must be punished for his transgressions (the biggest transgression being that he opposes the President). This, from what I’ve been hearing, is the public perception.

Sure, Binay’s rusty armor – after 20 years of his lording it over Makati – may not be shiny either, but will Puno’s "man" Feraren be better? I don’t mean to scoff at him, or insult him, but the fact is that nobody I know, myself, included, ever heard of him. Yet, he’s being tasked to run one of the country’s richest and most pivotal cities – the virtual Financial Heart of the Philippines.

My unsolicited advice is that our government resolve the Makati Mess pronto – sooner rather than later. The spectacle of Jojo B. holed up in his mini-fortress, and an alternative City Hall attempting to conduct business – a difficult if not impossible proposition since almost every Makati employee and bureaucrat was appointed by Jojo Binay during his two decades of hegemony – demonstrates our political instability to the rest of the world.

Foreign investment? Who’ll want to throw away his money, or the portfolio entrusted to him by pension funds and other investors, on a country where nobody’s sure who’s Mayor, or is plagued by coup threats, or people loudly shouting the President should "resign" for cheating, or red-banner waving demonstrators calling for the downfall of the establishment (their puny size magnified by TV cameras), or an entire slew of mayors under suspension, or a series of extrajudicial killings conducted by the Right and the Left. And to top it all, the gateway to Manila is our fly-spected no-generator international airport where the ceiling of PIATCO Terminal 3 is falling down even before the terminal can be made operational.

To compound matters, there’s a Global Forum on business and investment going on in a Makati hotel where the delegates are being lectured on what "incentives" and goodies we have to offer, but are discomfited, as they emerge from the lobby door and find themselves enveloped in actual and political pollution.

Alas, even to the casual, just-arrived observer, investing in the Philippines is beginning to look more and more like a Leap of Faith.

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Another disappointment, I fear, may be the upcoming ASEAN Summit in Cebu City this coming December.

This early, the existing hotels and limited rooms in that fair city of the south have been fully booked. With more than 2,100 foreign correspondents slated to stream in to cover the approximately 14 chiefs or heads of state expected to attend (three or four aside from the chiefs of the 10 existing members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) I can anticipate some arrivals having to be placed in emergency accommodations or sleeping in tents.

Cebuanos, of course, are always charming and hospitable, but a Summit conference is no joke – there are serious considerations of security, agenda and logistics to be addressed.

One of the most glaring questions is the obvious fact that the ambitious Convention Center is not finished, and it seems dubious that it will be roofed before the December Summit. I asked La Gloria about it, expressing my misgivings, more than three weeks ago. She told me that she had been assured by Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia that it would be completed "in time."

But what if it’s not? I persisted.

To which GMA smiled and said: "I guess we’ll have to turn to Plan B." Checking it out, I discovered that Plan B might entail putting up a huge tent on the magnificent lawn of the Mactan Shangri-la Hotel – sounded intriguing, but would Presidents, Prime Ministers, a sultan, and their ministers and aides feel "safe" in a tent in this era of Global Terrorism?

I wrote earlier that US State Secretary Condi Rice, who’s now on a swing around Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing to plug for credible sanctions against "nuclear" North Korea, might bring her own warship, probably an AEGIS-class Destroyer or even Cruiser, for the sake of safe housing and other conveniences for the American delegation.

But back to the conference site. There’s Plan C, too, I might mention – the possible use of the Ballroom of the Waterfront Hotel & Casino, which is the only other possibility.

Anyway, I saw Governor Garcia on television two days ago reiterating her pledge that the Convention Center would be ready by the December date. I was inclined to give the good Governor the benefit of the doubt. The trouble is that she was speaking in front of the Convention Center construction itself, and, by gosh, it looked like just even to pave the stairs, put in the flooring, walls, ceilings and lights, there was still too much to be done.

True, the engineer was flashed on TV, too, explaining that much of the building is pre-fab and its component parts, slabs, and other physical facilities were practically ready to be put together. "Pasted together" it seems more likely – hopefully not with just Mighty Bond.

Oh well. A Mystique once allegedly told former President Fidel V. Ramos that he (like Christ?) was descended from the House of David and that we Filipinos belonged to one of The Lost Tribes of Israel. (The "lost" part I can believe, but a Tribe of Israel? We Saluyots may have the same "frugal" habits, but that’s not the reason most Filipino males are circumcised).

The formidable David Ben-Gurion, one of the Founding Fathers of Israel whom I interviewed in Tel Aviv just a couple of years before he died – he’d come in from his Kibbutz in Sde Boker – said that "to believe in Israel, one must believe in miracles." That doughty Old Testament Prophet Ben, and even his tough wife Paula, who sternly warned me to wipe my shoes on the doormat before entering the house, truly impressed me.

However, the only miracles we’ve witnessed in our own country is how some big shots can siphon money from the Treasury without being caught – and, even if caught, go unpunished.

Even ordinary bigtime swindlers and embezzlers get away with it. Remember the old saw: "In America, if someone gets caught, he goes to jail. In the Philippines, if one gets caught – he goes to America."

I’m not referring specifically to Joc-Joc Bolante, who’s begging for US asylum, and whose lawyers even tried to subpoena Senator Ramon "Jun" Magsaysay to go to the US to "testify" in Bolante’s ridiculous "asylum" hearing. Jun Magsaysay indignantly rejected that silly subpoena out of hand.

As for Joc-Joc, why doesn’t he just give up this farce? (The NPAs are willing, I think, to testify that they don’t wish to kill him since he’s too good a propaganda gambit for them in the "fertilizer" scandal.)

The Asylum many people think of when they are reminded of former Agriculture Usec Joc-Joc B. is not a political asylum.

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A unanimous 15-0 Supreme Court decision, penned by Justice Angelina S. Gutierrez, has deflated the arrogance of the Chairman and members of the Presidential Commission on Good Government. The landmark ruling burst the bubble of the PCGG commissioners’ claim of "immunity" from "any judicial, legislative or administrative proceeding concerning matters within its official cognizance."

The High Court junked the PCGG officials’ insolent argument that they and their staff are immune from judicial, legislative and administrative inquiry, with Justice Gutierrez in her ponencia citing several compelling reasons, namely (1) The broad power of Congress to conduct inquiries in aid of legislation which cannot be limited by a mere provision of law; (2) The principle of public accountability which, if disregarded, as posited by the PCGG, would have institutionalized irresponsibility and non-accountability instead of encouraging public accountability; and (3) The constitutional injunction to promote transparency in policy-making.

Justice Gutierrez hit the mark in her 28-page ruling when she asserted that the only merit of the PCGG officials’ refusal to appear before the Senate Blue Ribbon committee and other Senate committees hinged on Section 4 (b) of President Cory Aquino’s Executive Order No. 1 creating the PCGG, which had said that "No member or staff of the Commission shall be required to testify or produce evidence in any judicial, legislative or administrative proceeding concerning matters within its official cognizance."

The controversy had its origin in Senate Resolution 455 introduced by Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago on February 20, 2006, directing an inquiry into the anomalous losses incurred by the Philippine Communications Satellite Corp. (PHILCOMSAT), the Philippine Overseas Telecommunications Corp. (POTC) and the PHILCOMSAT Holdings Corp. (PHC).

The Senator’s resolution alleged that "in the last quarter of 2005, the representation entertainment expenses of the PHC skyrocketed to P4.3 million as compared to the previous year’s mere P106,000; some board members established a wholly-owned PHC subsidiary called Telecommunications Center, Inc. (TCI) where funds are allegedly siphoned; in 18 months over P73 million had been allegedly advanced to TCI without any accountability report given to PHC and PHILCOMSAT; The Philippine STAR, in its 18 February 2002 issue reported that the executive committee of PHILCOMSAT has precipitately released P265 million and granted a P125 million loan to a relative of an executive committee member; to date there have been no payments given, subjecting the company to an estimated interest income loss of P11.25 million in 2004."

Indeed, what Senator Santiago cited in her Senate Resolution 455 could be a mere drop in the bucket compared to the huge amounts of which PCGG-sequestered firms have been plundered during years of PCGG "management."

If the Supreme Court had upheld the PCGG’s claim to judicial, legislative and administrative immunity, the members of the High Court would have institutionalized legalized pillage and plunder in this country and castrated itself and all courts of judicial power to resolve judicial controversies.

Well, it did not. The Supreme Court shot down the PCGG claim. Chairman Camilo Sabio and the PCGG commissioners and lawyers are planning, it’s said, to appeal for reconsideration. To be sanguine, how can such an appeal succeed? The Supreme Court’s decision was unanimous.

It’s time Sabio and his commissioners submitted themselves to the Senate inquiry and bared the misnamed Commission’s records for inspection. I say again, we must abolish the PCGG. I won’t say that after two decades, it has outlived its "usefulness." That would be giving it credit for something it never accomplished. What it may have been useful for, it’s apparent, was to enrich certain members and nominees.

The problem is that now that the Senators have been authorized to subpoena, and even "arrest" PCGG officials, the Senate has gone to recess – and won’t be back to work for weeks.

Whatta life!!