Another case for Truth Commission to probe

So the Philippines did snub the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo. President Noynoy Aquino saw it vital to free five Filipinos in death row in China for narco-trafficking. But couldn’t he save the five other than by sacrificing state principle? Was a prisoner exchange — of convicted Chinese shabu makers or fish poachers — broached to Beijing, “your criminals for our criminals”? The families of those convicts miss them as much as the five Filipinos’ kin do.

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Having the Presidential Commission on Good Government probe Gloria Arroyo’s alleged sleaze is legal and feasible. Cory Aquino in 1986 decreed the PCGG after dissolving parliament, and it remains in force. The Supreme Court in 1990 upheld its constitutionality. These satisfy the present SC’s contention that the Truth Commission that was to go after Arroyo must be legislated and does not single her out. Noynoy Aquino can order the PCGG to expand its present prosecution of Marcos and cronies to include Arroyo et al. The PCGG can in turn subsume the TC to do the job.

But then, the issue is not legal or operational. It is political, as Justice Sec. Leila de Lima and Sen. Francis Pangilinan say. Arroyo’s point men can again question Aquino’s move before the SC. And the ten of 14 Arroyo-appointed justices who struck down the TC can find ways to reverse their 1990 predecessors. They’ve done it before, notably last March on the issue of Arroyo appointing a Chief Justice during the constitutional ban.

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Here’s another case for the PCGG-TC to look into, along with the Bangko Sentral and the Securities and Exchange Commission. That is, if the agencies are given a chance to enforce justice and order:

A group allegedly manipulated the stock pricing of publicly listed Philex Mining Corp. for a huge windfall but in breach of banking laws.

Sources in the Philippine Stock Exchange aver that Philex share prices suddenly spiked four-fold in a matter of weeks last year. This was after the state-owned Development Bank of the Philippines loaned P800 million to an obscure firm to buy and sell Philex stocks. The loan was given sometime mid-2009 to the firm that had no track record or collateral, but well connected.

It is highly irregular, and against BSP rules, for a bank to lend even one centavo to an unknown, un-collateralized borrower. But the DBP was notorious for similar dirt, like its $1-billion purchase of MRT-3 bonds worth only $760 million, for false benefit to the government. In the Philex case, DBP money was used to earn billions of pesos from shares of the country’s most profitable miner, but at no profit to the bank.

Prior to the loan, Philex shares were trading at P5 apiece. Upon the DBP borrower’s purchase of P800 million worth of stocks, the rate kicked up 36 percent within a week. By August 2009 it had risen 108 percent to P10.75.

It didn’t stop there. The influential firm egged the SSS to sell its 22-percent hold on Philex. When the government-run private provident fund agreed and announced so, Philex prices further soared to P19. When the SSS finally unloaded at P21 per share in December 2009, the powerful firm piggybacked on the sale to the same businessman.

Reportedly the borrowed P800 million grew to at least P3.2 billion; PSE sources say it could be double. At any rate, the borrower merely returned the P800-million principal and paid no interest. Only a group with links straight to the top can pull such a trick.

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This early announcement allows those abroad to plan ahead: the Lourdes School-Quezon City high school Class of 1971 will hold a reunion on March 19, 2011, at the Corinthian Gardens Clubhouse, Quezon City.

For details, e-mail any of the following batch mates: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

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Reader Manuel P. Abejero of Minien West, Sta. Barbara, Pangasinan, writes: “I read your column about prohibitive penalties that credit card companies charge delinquent clients. Ours is an agrarian reform area. Most beneficiaries are now dead and their estates subject of extrajudicial partition among the heirs. The BIR-Calasiao is charging them P6,000-penalty for failure to notify it within 30 days of the death of the registered owners, plus another P6,000 for failure to register the partition within six months. The heirs are small tenants who can hardly pay monthly amortization on the land. We want to know if, in the computation of these penalties, agricultural lands distributed under the Operation Land Transfer and ordinary lands outside of this program are treated the same. We consider the penalties prohibitive.

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 “He has the opportunity of being a great saint who realizes he is a great sinner.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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E-mail: [email protected]