Same old names

Reading through the list of the business delegation invited to join President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III in his official visit to the United States gave me some feeling of deja vu. Many of the names of these businessmen were the same ones I saw in the past several presidential visits abroad that I have covered for The STAR while still covering the Palace beat.

If the list of businessmen delegation in the US as released by the Palace press office was correct, they included Ramon del Rosario, Manuel Abellada, Ramon Aboitiz, Ramon Ang, Jose Antonio, Joselito Campos Jr., Francis Chua, Antonio “Tonyboy” Cojuangco, Isidro Consunji, Jose Cuisia Jr., Jose Roberto Delgado, Manny Dimaculangan, Antonio Go, Francis Enrico Gutierrez, Doris Magsaysay Ho, Domingo Lim, Roger Lim, Alberto Lina, Eugenio Lopez III, Oscar Lopez, Romeo Mercado, Aurelio Montinola, Rizalino Navarro, Cirilo P. Noel, Manny V. Pangilinan, Enrique Razon, Tessie Sy-Coson, Jesus Tambunting, Antonio Tan Caktiong, Alfonso Uy, Myla C. Villanueva, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala III, and, Mark Opulencia.

As I gathered, many of these business leaders went ahead and took their own flights to the US days ahead of P-Noy who left Manila Monday night.

At a glance, the high-powered private sector delegation could be considered the “Who’s Who” in Philippine business, trade and industry. They are the presidents and the chief executive officers (CEOs) of their respective companies and multi-billion peso conglomerates in the Philippines that have operations, joint ventures, and business tie-ups in the US and elsewhere in the world.

The business delegation was our traditional source of good news that the Chief Executive could bring back home with him as accomplishment of these presidential trips abroad. So there are always rhyme and reason why a particular businessman or business leader is invited to join presidential trips abroad. Aside from government-to-government memorandum of agreement that usually highlights an official or state visit, there are the traditional co-venture business and investment deals that provide dollar revenues as fruits of a particular presidential foreign trip.

Many of them were the same old faces I have seen in the presidential trips abroad all the way from P-Noy’s late mother former President Corazon Aquino to former Presidents Fidel V. Ramos, then Joseph Estrada, and most recently Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

In particular, I could point to Razon as a permanent fixture in all the foreign travels of these past four Presidents and now also with P-Noy. Razon owns the International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) that have port operations not only in the Philippines but also in Poland, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, Japan, and Madagascar. As chairman and president of ICTSI, Razon’s influence thus travels far and wide. There is nothing wrong with that if a business leader like Razon is invited or included in each and every foreign trip of the President. After all, he represents a company in the Philippines that has broken barriers through tough competition in the international business arena.

“Some guys have all the luck, some guys get all the pain, some guys do nothing but complain,” goes the popular song of rock star Rod Stewart. 

As far as these business leaders were concerned, they were paying for their travel and accommodation arrangements. That is, of course, the standard operating procedure observed in the same way members of private media who cover the presidential trips abroad have to do — pay for their own.

These businessmen don’t get any tax rebates from the government even if joining presidential trips abroad come from out of pocket expenses for them. If we are to look at it this way, they were, in fact, doing this out of patriotic duty to show before the host country and international community their support for the President.

But it’s not all charity and love of country that motivated them to join these presidential travels abroad. It’s really a hassle for these businessmen, if you ask some of them who have joined many presidential travels abroad already. They will tell you in all honesty it’s not business-friendly to be traveling with a presidential party.

This is especially true for those foreign trips with Ramos and Arroyo who are both known workaholics and 24/7 Chief Executives.

At any rate, it could not be denied it also pays well for businessmen to be seen up close and personal with the President who call them on first name basis. These are the intangibles that come along with being invited as member of the presidential party in travels abroad.

I do not know personally all these business leaders in P-Noy’s delegation to the US. I came to know some of them later on in their being a usual member of the business delegation in these presidential foreign trips. But a few of them, if I’m not mistaken, were first-timers in a presidential foreign trip.

Some of them who I could identify included the President’s brother-in-law (Abellada) who is the husband of elder sister Pinky. He was included in the business delegation but I just don’t know what his business is.

Speaking of business of the illegal kind, we are seeing and hearing also the same old faces and names being mentioned again on jueteng operations all over the country. Two lists came up one after the other this week and there were some common names in both.

Retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz mentioned 12 names classified into three categories, jueteng lords, collectors and ultimate recipients. The next day, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago also came out with her own list and more and bigger names of government and police officials who are either jueteng operators or on jueteng payola.

The feisty Senator conceded that these pernicious jueteng operations have been deeply embedded in Philippine society. Time and again exposes have been made against alleged jueteng lords and those who were supposedly on the take from jueteng operators. They have become the so-called “usual suspects,” the same old names immortalized in the jueteng history in the Philippines. So what else is new?

And as Rod Stewart sang, “some guys have all the luck, some guys get all the pain, some guys do nothing but complain, ho ho ho!”