PCGG official twits Pimentel on fears of 'midnight sale'

MANILA, Philippines - A ranking official of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) twitted Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., over the concerns he raised on the “midnight sale” of government assets to raise funds for the coming elections.

Lawyer Ricardo Abcede, PCGG commissioner for litigation, said that Pimentel’s fears were totally unfounded, pointing out that government undergoes a long period of study as well as goes through a laborious process of auction or bidding to sell a particular government asset.

“There is no midnight sale of government assets, and Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel may hit the bed and sleep well,” Abcede said.

“The road to selling government assets is a long, tedious, and at times, even exasperating one. There simply are no shortcuts that allow selling in haste- no matter how far down the sun has set,” Abcede said.

“It takes an unusually long time to sell a government property, and if the sun has sunk on items for sale as they gather dust on the shelf, it is precisely because the seller insists on too high a price tag. In short, the government is notorious for refusing to undersell,” Abcede said.

Abcede issued the statement to react to Pimentel’s criticism of the series of asset sale conducted by various government agencies of certain property such as the prime land in the Fujimi district in Tokyo, Japan which houses the Philippine ambassador’s residence, as well as government’s stake in the Manila Electric Company and Petron Corp. (Petron).

In a related development, a coalition of Filipino and Japanese artists, members of the academe and cultural workers, has asked Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, to stop the bidding for the 50-year lease contract of the government’s real estate property in upscale Fujimi Cho, Japan. — With Iris Gonzales