Senator seeks probe on new ‘wildlife’ banknotes

MANILA, Philippines — Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III is pushing for an investigation on the issuance of new polymer banknotes that feature the country’s flora and fauna, doing away with the original paper notes with images of heroes and martyrs.

In an interview over dwIZ, Pimentel said the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has a lot of explaining to do about its redesign of banknotes instead of focusing on curbing inflation.

He assailed BSP’s “crazy idea” of choosing “plastic” over paper money made of abaca and cotton.

Pimentel said he will file a resolution urging the Senate committee on banks, financial institutions and currencies to look into the matter.

“BSP should explain to lawmakers how much it spent for the redesign and the results of its trial run when it released the P1000 polymer notes in 2022,” Pimentel said, adding that paper money is more practical to use than polymer.

He added the BSP should explain its shift to educating the public about flora and fauna from featuring the faces of former presidents, war heroes and martyrs.

The Philippine Eagle and sampaguita are featured on the P1000 bill, Visayan spotted deer and Acanthephippium mantinianum on the P500 bill, Palawan peacock-pheasant and Ceratocentron fesselii in the P100 note and Visayan leopard cat and Vidal’s lanutan on the P50 note.

Three World War II martyrs were featured on the P1000 bill – Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos, who was executed for refusing to collaborate with the Japanese; Brig. Gen. Vicente Lim, who was part of the resistance against Japan, and suffragist and Girl Scouts founder Josefa Llanes Escoda, also executed by the Japanese for helping guerrillas.

The late former presidents Manuel Roxas and Sergio Osmeña are on the P100 and P50 bill, respectively.

Pimentel reiterated that the BSP’s use of polymer for the bank notes would also adversely affect the abaca industry, which supplies the materials for the old paper money.

He pointed out that the polymer cash is printed in Australia even though BSP has its own printing press for the old banknote series.

The most controversial change was the release of the new P500 polymer note which features the Visayan spotted deer on the front, in lieu of the faces of the late president Corazon Aquino and her husband, slain opposition senator Ninoy Aquino. The two were central figures in the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship.

“For more than two decades, the dictator’s family has been hard at work trying to rewrite history and erase from our collective memory the heroes who bravely fought for our freedom,” said the August Twenty-One Movement (ATOM), which was formed in the aftermath of Aquino’s assassination that fueled the 1986 People Power and toppled the Marcos regime.

The group said the issuance of the new polymer notes with Philippine plants and animals is “even worse than the Bagong Lipunan bills released during martial law where our heroes and leaders were retained.”

“Do we really want a country devoid of heroes? Are we better off forgetting them? Are they trying to make us forget that the blood of heroes runs in our veins so they can replace it with the blood of slaves and let tyrants rule again?” ATOM said.

Pimentel, the son and namesake of the late Senate president and opposition figure Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr., said the political angle can also be tackled in the Senate investigation.

“We can ask that to the BSP decision makers. Maybe for the sake of fairness, they removed all personalities. We should ask why they are featuring flora and fauna now, from previously generating interest on history and heroes,” Pimentel said.

“That seems to be a deep take on it,” Pimentel said when asked if the BSP project was intended to revise history and downplay the Aquinos’ role in history under a second Marcos presidency.

“But we should ask the practical questions first – what was BSP’s thought process on this, what was the result of the trial run, who pushed for it and how much was spent in this experiment,” he added.

In a statement, Ninoy and Cory’s grandson Kiko Aquino Dee castigated President Marcos for “changing our bank notes, a move started by the Duterte administration, so they don’t have to look our heroes in the eye while betraying their sacrifices.”