We have a President, but still no Governor!

Finally, after a long, bitter and often senseless debate, Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) and her vice-presidential running mate Noli "Kabayan" de Castro were proclaimed by Congress as the winners of the last May 10th elections and the news reverberated down to Cebu especially when it was finally decided that Pres. Arroyo wanted her oath-taking in front of the Cebu Provincial Capitol. To Cebuanos… this is going to be historic because never ever in the Republic of the Philippines has a President been sworn into office outside Metro Manila.

Of course, we know that there are so many people in the nation’s capital who are questioning why the President won’t be taking her oath of office in the traditional way. But then, the elated Mayor Tomas Osmeña who was being interviewed on DyAB Radio by Leo Lastimosa, said over the air… knowing that her oath-taking would get worldwide publicity, wanted to emphasize saying, "It’s about time that the whole world knows that Manila is not the Philippines and the Philippines is not Manila".

I fully concur with that observation that there are many cities in the Philippines that the whole world ought to know and from the way it looks, Pres. Arroyo wants the world to focus on Cebu which she plans to transform into a Tourism, Industrial and Information Technology Center. That Pres. Arroyo plans to set up a Malacanang in the South is a big boost to us who live in the south who for so long have felt neglected by Imperial Manila.

Meanwhile, now that Pres. Arroyo and "Kabayan" have already been proclaimed by Congress we must acknowledge that there is something terribly wrong with our system of elections and must work hand-in-hand to fix this problem. There have been claims and counter claims of massive cheating and mostly, you heard this from the sore losers, however in the end… everyone agrees that there’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done with the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Many pundits insist that everyone cheated in the polls as they have always done since time immemorial. Those who lost were the ones who just didn’t shell out enough money… after all, in politics money more often than not makes you win, except in Isabela where Gov. Faustino Dy lost to Gov. Grace Padaca a poor physically disabled candidate. So, if we need to fix this country, then we should first fix what’s wrong with our political system and the Comelec and we can only hope this would happen before the next polls.

So while the Presidential proclamation is already finished, this leaves us with the biggest cliffhanger of all… Cebu’s governorship… who really won this race? Again, the Cebuano population is starting to be restless… while we’re elated that we made Pres. Arroyo win the Presidential race… we’re saddened that we still don’t have a winner for the governor of Cebu. Many of us in Cebu are hopeful that this issue would be resolve before the end of June.

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We’ve written about the on-going controversy between the Balamban-based Tsuneishi Heavy Industries (THI) and Negros Navigation, Corp. (Nenaco) in so many columns and apparently this issue refuses to die. Yes, at the end of last year, we were surprised that Nenaco posted a hefty profit when it had a huge debt with THI. Later we found out that this debt amounted to some P1.5 billion from their other creditors… P440 million of which is taxes.

Suspicions are ripe that Nenaco officials literally cooked their books ala "Enron" in the United States and they were caught with their pants down… virtually lying to the public about the financial state (including the stock market) of this once prestigious shipping company. Because Nenaco wasn’t able to pay its debts… it is now under receivership and the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 46 appointed Mr. Sulficio "Jun" Tagud, Jr. as its court appointed receiver. When the news of Jun Tagud’s appointment came out… I reserved my comments about his appointment, after all, we personally knew Mr. Tagud when he was with Ayala Land here in Cebu.

But there’s another surprise about this issue when we learned that Judge Artemio Tipon of (MRTC) Branch 46 issued an order last June 18 relieving Mr. Tagud as the court appointed receiver of Nenaco after it was found out that Mr. Tagud failed to disclose that he was a former director of the Fort Bonifacio Development Corp. since 51 percent or the majority owner of this company is the Metro Pacific Corp. Now if you ask me… this sounds unbelievable. If you think that scams or questionable deals only happen in the government, then say hello to today’s reality… that private companies are just as wicked! Hey, hasn’t United Nation’s Secretary General Kofi Annan just made announcements about Global Corporate Governance… that globalization can only work if the corporate world behaved properly?

Good thing that Judge Tipon found this out… and had Tagud replaced by corporate recovery lawyer Monico Jacob. I gathered that one of the creditors of Nenaco, the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) has been questioning the court for appointing Tagud who had no experience in running a shipping company… especially one that is in deep financial crisis. That Mr. Jun Tagud kept this information from the court only proves that he may have some sinister plans to help his former bosses in Metro Pacific Corp. Yes, you can say that when Tagud was Nenaco receiver… Metro Pacific Corp. had a mole to help them.

Now if you recall, this is the same Mr. Jun Tagud who was supposedly the "whistle blower" on the Public Estates Authority (PEA) scam that is the Pres. Diosdado Macapagal Ave. which cost the resignation of the entire PEA Board. Why that happened… we still don’t know. What we do know is that Mr. Tagud’s expertise is in Real Estate Development, where he raised a lot of eyebrows when the Ayalas purchased their properties in Busay which included a huge part of Cebu’s Watershed. In the bidding for Camp John Hay, Baguio City, he overbid for his company and they lost the bidder’s bond rather than pay the hefty price they overbid for.

Clearly, Mr. Tagud cannot be trusted in his field of expertise… how much more in shipping which he doesn’t know anything about? At this point, I can only suspect that someone with the right connections put Mr. Tagud as Nenaco receiver and now their plot has been uncovered! Again, we would like to know who put up Mr. Tagud’s name as court receiver? Maybe some executives in Metro Pacific Corp. know the answer to this.

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow entitled, "Straight from the Sky" shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8:00 in the evening.