Senate’s real agenda

The Senate opened last week an inquiry into the Philcomsat controversy. The inquiry, conducted by the Senate committees on government corporations and public enterprises and on public services, purportedly seeks to look into the alleged dissipation of assets of listed firm Philcomsat Holdings Corp. (PHC).

PHC is a subsidiary to the Philippine Communications Satellite Corp. (Philcomsat) which in turn is 100 percent owned by Philippine Overseas Telecommunication Corp. (POTC). Both Philcomsat and POTC are sequestered companies, taken over during the Aquino administration by virtue of the now-famous Executive Order 1.

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) controls 35 percent of POTC. Hence, its nominees in the POTC and Philcomsat boards. These nominees now are under fire from the Senate for their alleged role in the purported dissipation of PHC’s assets.

Insiders believe that the Senate’s foray into the Philcomsat mess was instigated by Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, an original incorporator of the telecom firm during the Marcos dictatorship, along with known Marcos cronies like Roberto S. Benedicto, Ambassador Manuel H. Nieto, Potenciano Ilusorio, and the Poblador and Africa families.

It will be recalled that in PHC’s stockholders’ meeting last May, Sen. Enrile was rebuffed by the PCGG when it struck down the good senator’s arguments against the renewal of PHC’s corporate life. That rowdy PHC stockholders’ meeting at the Manila Golf Club in Makati saw Enrile trade barbs with PCGG commissioner Ricardo Abcede.

So what is the real score in the current battle between the PCGG and the Senate?

To have a better understanding of the controversy, one has to look back to August 1998, when Philcomsat held a special stockholders’ meeting to install the nominees of then President Joseph Estrada. PCGG nominee Ronaldo Salonga was elected chairman while Ambassador Nieto was elected president.

The group of minority stockholders led by Victor Africa and Erlinda Bildner (daughter of Potenciano Ilusorio), having lost in the board elections, called their own elections and elected themselves officers of POTC and Philcomsat. Cases were filed in different courts (including the lower courts, the Sandiganbayan, the Court of Appeals and even the Supreme Court), and then in 2002, the Africa-Bildner group forcibly took over the POTC and Philcomsat offices and barred the PCGG’s nominees from entering the premises.

So now POTC and Philcomsat have two board of directors and two set of officers. The PCGG, according to Commissioner Abcede, had repeatedly demanded the Africa-Bildner group to allow them to conduct an audit since the group has had physical control of the two companies since 2002. The last audit the PCGG had of the two firms was in 2001. And at that time, POTC and Philcomsat had hundreds of millions of pesos in cash and assets.

So what’s the Senate’s real agenda if it be held true to its word that it wants to know, "in aid of legislation," just exactly how much assets sequestered companies still hold? After all, sequestered assets belong to the Filipino people.

It is puzzling that the Senate should just focus on PHC, a listed firm whose finances can readily be gleaned from stock exchange records. After all, the real dissipation of assets may be happening at this very moment at the two sequestered companies which the Senate seems to have overlooked.

Marketing award scams

The Department of Trade and Industry, itself a victim, has began its investigations into the so-called "marketing award" scams issue.

The Philippine Marketing Association or PMA, the country’s official marketing award-giving body, joined by the other "victims", has filed a formal complaint with the DTI legal division against the activities of a certain Manuel Oyson, the owner of the award-giving bodies, asking that a cease-and-desist order be issued and that the corresponding penalties be imposed.

Included in the complain are the Philippine Marketing Excellence Awards, National Shoppers Choice Awards, National Products Excellence Awards, Global Excellence in Marketing Awards (Symbol of Agora Excellence), Star Brand Awards, People’s Brand Awards, International Management Excellence Awards, and The National Consumers Quality Awards.

Sources disclose that the DTI, particularly Secretary Peter Favila, is sympathetic to the plight of the PMA considering that the trade department itself had to issue a public disclaimer, saying it had nothing to do with a certain Philippine Quality Awards for Business Excellence, said to be a brainchild of Oyson.

According to the DTI, the name of the awards is confusingly similar to the Philippine Quality Awards, a DTI-administered national quality award program established through Executive Order 448 in 1997 and institutionalized through Republic Act 9013, created to help local companies improve their productivity, service and product quality to gain a competitive edge and increase profits.

The PMA is also asking the House of Representatives, particularly the committee on trade and industry, to investigate this awards-for-sale scam. The association believes that Congress should regulate the activities of award-giving bodies, especially if it is proven that some groups are indeed misleading hapless individuals and companies, or at worse, giving out recognition for a price.

For comments, e-mail at [email protected]