An insider's report card on the PCGG

Public perception on the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) is in the main a product of media reports, which in turn are churned out by commentators and observers who are on the outside looking in. Not only that, but these sporadic media accounts on the PCGG come in trickles, are random and disorganized, and treat each episode in the life of the PCGG as isolated beads scattered on the floor, as it were, rather than strung together by that institution’s history and sense of purpose.

I intend to supply what heretofore has been sorely lacking: The view from the inside.

PCGG commentators have thus far been passing on the PCGG based only on what meets the eye. That perspective is of course as convenient to take as it is expedient: Journalists could hardly be expected to fathom the “soul” of the PCGG to enable them to render a more well-rounded account of it. They simply have much to report on, day in and day out, like itinerant point-and-shoot tourists ever on the go with their instamatics.

But the PCGG, despite itself, despite its unique and uncommon powers, is also embedded in a context, in an environment, that can be so inexorable it overwhelms and overrides the institution — such as what happened when, in its desire to live and breathe within the democratic framework, it made itself subject to due process.

Plunging its ship onto the erratic and at times murky judicial waters, PCGG floundered, tossed here and there by the changing currents, apprehensively dropping anchor while waiting for the authorities to finally allow it to touch port. To-date indeed, the PCGG is very much at sea.

The backdrop

The cronies are back in power, and they want to knockout the PCGG dead. Every news item that tars the PCGG, every analysis that concludes it’s time to pull the plug on the PCGG, every investigative report that pictures the PCGG as a dismal failure or as a hotbed of irregularities — whether those reports and evaluations seem accurate or not, seem reasonable or not, seem well-intentioned or not — should he held against that backdrop.

Marcos crony  is a phrase that has lost much of its sting, and is fast losing currency. The current generation of young adults could tend to regard anything linked to the Marcos era as history, something their elders love to prattle about and recall, but is of little relevance to them. The older ones who lived through the martial law years might have strong memories of that period in time, but either they now dismiss those years with a wave of forgiveness, or they in fact find those years to be much better times compared to later regimes.

Because Marcos is gone, there should no longer be characters called Marcos cronies. But something else has replaced closeness to Marcos as the defining characteristic of erstwhile cronies, and that characteristic is their common hatred of the PCGG, which persists to these days.

Losing cases

Like any party to any litigation, the PCGG wants to win its sequestration cases, without however losing sight of its ultimate North Star, which is that justice must prevail. In the concrete, and as possibly a disturbing reminder to many, the PCGG should only be happy to lose a case if winning such a case will result in injustice.

During the first days of sequestration the PCGG had too big a task with too little time and resources in its hands. Whatever it had to do, it had to do with haste. Knowing beforehand that it would subsequently subject its acts to the scrutiny of our judicial system, the PCGG went into a frenzy of sequestration, if you like, marking as ill-gotten wealth whatever belonged to the Marcoses and their cronies that were of questionable or suspicious origin.

The PCGG could go wrong. We should worry more if the PCGG won all its cases, than if it lost some, as indeed it does. At best, the PCGG was never arbitrary during the period of sequestration, and exercised greater caution as that sequestration period approached its end.

Nor should we deny the reality that, as a rule of thumb, private lawyers compared to government lawyers are under greater pressure to apply themselves fully and diligently to their task of defending their clients, or that lawyers in the private sector are better paid than those in the government.

There are bright and heroic lawyers in the service of the government, to be sure, but they go against the grain, and are therefore exceptional, in that they choose to stick it out with a bureaucracy that neither rewards nor gives support lavishly.           Cronies get the best lawyers money can buy. And if that’s not enough, it should come as no surprise that they are not above using their vast resources to go around our judicial system to defeat the government in these cases. That the PCGG should at all win any cases against these cronies, is a pleasant surprise enough. As it is, the PCGG continues to emerge victorious in legal fights, winning for the government billions of pesos in assets and funds.

A parade of Commissioners

The public tends to view the PCGG as a static organization peopled by Commissioners who have been there since the birth of the institution.

Unless you tap people on the shoulder to remind them that PCGG Commissioners come and go, they soon lull themselves into thinking the current crop of Commissioners deserve praise or blame for developments that have roots in the decisions or policies of earlier sets of Commissioners. During Congressional hearings, for example, PCGG Commissioners in attendance are interrogated or scolded as though they had been with the Commission since 1986!

Commissioners are mostly lawyers —and yet the PCGG faces more than just legal questions. It is doing oversight work over businesses it has sequestered, hence business questions that must be expertly confronted and answered abound. I have always believed that what is needed are lawyers with a business sense.                                    

Litigation vs. settlement

I welcome opportunities for settlements because beneficiaries should not wait another 20 or more years for our courts to finally resolve sequestration cases.

And remember, when the courts say this fund belongs to A and not to B, that’s just another step in the long and tedious judicial process. Actually putting money into the pocket of A is another process altogether.

If you are a coconut farmer, would you rather get P10,000 now, or wait another 10 years to possibly get 20 or 50 thousand? When do you want to send your children to school, 10 years from now? That’s what settlement is all about, you get something and lose some. If you don’t settle you will still lose — because you suffer while waiting, you miss out on opportunities while waiting.       

If it’s okay to settle or reconcile with the MILF and with the NPA, especially for the leftists, why is it wrong to do so with the Marcos cronies, or the Marcoses themselves?

Less than 15 or 20 years after the Japanese brutalized us, President Garcia flew to Japan offering peace, in return for reparations funds (remember REPACOM?). Was that wrong? Why can’t we be at peace with the Marcoses and their associates 20 years after?

Litigation rules are necessary, if litigants are not to end up in a nasty brawl. But litigation itself is not a necessity, it is only an option.

The Supreme Court itself, in a long line of decisions, has encouraged litigants to pursue settlement. There is also the Barangay Law where opposing parties are asked to settle their differences at the barangay level (family problems, neighborhood disputes and the like). Years back, the Supreme Court ordered lower courts to conduct mediation proceedings on cases pending before them. All of these have lead to the unclogging of cases in courts all over the country.

The Westinghouse claim against the government for the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is a colossal case in point: Westinghouse offered to settle, willing to only receive a portion of what it was collecting. We chose to litigate. We lost the case, and ended up paying not only the entire principal, but penalties imposed by the courts on us. And of course we also paid the expensive foreign lawyers who did the fighting in our behalf.

Many of our sequestration cases have been dragging for a decade or more, with no resolution in sight — and worse, with no reasonable assurance that the long-delayed resolution will be in our favor.

But let anyone mention the word settlement, and you will hear howls of protest, settlement being moronically and morosely interpreted as meaning we are bound to be short-changed.

Coconut farmers want to send their children to school now, they need to pay for medical bills now, they need to put food on the table now. Very often settlement is closer to now — offering a little less perhaps, but NOW, rather than everything when all is too late.