Long overdue, Senator Pimentel realized the need for legislating on business reforms in order to strengthen business confidence in the Philippines. Common perception consistently and so damagingly persists that we are a country devoid of a business friendly climate.
Senator Pimentel in his preliminary statements and notes on the bill, zeroes in on the fact that the country may have good laws but these are not properly implemented. He points out very knowledgeably that "legal loopholes" seem to be everywhere, and these are exploited by the unscrupulous "white collar crooks." As examples, he cites the fact that nobody has been jailed for violations of the Revised Securities Act or the General Banking Act which have far too many times been violated. Investors enter the Philippines and invest under a seemingly firm set of rules. Somewhere down the road, however, something keels over, and the rules are changed without prior notice and consultation.
Because personal connections specially today are perceived to matter and to count heavily, people in business end up with the feeling that the playing field is so disgustingly "not even" at all. If you retain very powerful lawyers for your business, you are bound to melt down one barrier after another and shepherd your business project to success! And the courts seem to take forever to arbitrate disputes and have in fact occasionally interfered in business decisions which should have been left to the sound discretion and good judgment of management.
Nene Pimentel knows wherefore he speaks for his government career spans a number of exciting decades already, consistently being cited as one of the most outstanding senators of the country, and capped by becoming Senate President on the 13th of November 2000 to the 23rd of June 2002. And immediately I can’t help but remember some lines of old: "Written laws are like spider’s webs...they will catch, it is true, the weak and the poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful." Within the confines of the draft legislation therefore are found concrete safeguards so that abuses can be eliminated or at least considerably minimized.
A necessary corollary to this is the fact that presently public governance has not been working well. There is a dismal failure of any form of inspiring leadership. There is absolutely no way one can draw one inspiring thread from the presidential leadership. It is perceived as unreliable, unproductive, uncaring on virtually all fronts. People have forced themselves not to look beyond the horizon of the present. They don’t dream dreams anymore.
Because of all the above, Senator Aquilino Pimentel, one of the independent-minded senators in the country today, whose resignation from the senate presidency at the spectacular impeachment proceedings is as vividly depicted in my mind as it was then, has formulated a piece of essential legislation realizing the grave need to clarify the roles that "Government" performs and that "Business" plays, in order to contribute to accelerating the pace of economic development. The senator sees it so clearly and critically – that need for government to regain the confidence of business which is no easy task, so that business can be induced to expand their operations in the country and can be seduced to invest in new ventures, given this new reform legislation which spells out in very specific and categorical terms, the rights and obligations of Business on the one hand, and on the other hand, the kind of protection that Government is committed to give it. This "Magna Carta of Business" is intended, as Senator Pimentel puts it, to be the social compact between government and business. Right now, the draft bill is going through public hearings in the senate.
When an investor starts to do business in the Philippines, it commences to acquire the necessary permits and clearances, the bureaucracy has to respond efficiently without guile or sin, meaning, devoid of any form of corruption. This, by the way, has to be elementary. Business also has the right to seek protection from all forms of harassment, intimidation, coercion, and unnecessary vexation by government regulators. Business has the right to expect and to demand prompt, efficient, and competent service as well as full assistance from all levels of government in pursuit of its legitimate objectives. Above all, however, and the draft legislation specifies this unequivocally, Business has the right to expect consistency in government rules and regulations affecting it regardless of a change of administration at the national or local levels of government.
Nothing less, nothing more, for as Joseph Addison said: "There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch." And politics, that dirty hand of political machinations and political witchcraft and magic – these must stay away as the legislation very pointedly pronounces the safeguards and the penal sanctions. Former President Ronald Reagan, who is now very ill with Alzheimer’s, I do remember, said something about "politics" when he was still president...he said without a trace of humor, mind you that, "Politics is supposed to be the ‘second oldest profession.’ I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
I presume Senator Nene Pimentel must have thought about his six children, and the great population of young professional practitioners in the country right now who need a good business environment to help them get on in life. Nene’s children are some of the most capable and outstanding progeny I have known...out of six children, three of them followed in the footsteps of their father as lawyers: Gwen Petrecia who helps her father in the senate; Aquilino Martin, the celebrity who topped the bar exams in 1990; and Teresa Lourdes, all from the UP College of Law. The others are such high-powered professionals: Ma. Petrina with a Master’s degree in Mass Communications from the California State University; Aquilino Jusitinian, an orthopedic surgeon who topped the 1998 Orthopedic Fellowship Examinations; and Lorraine Marie who is finishing her Master’s Course in Computer Programming at Georgetown University.
With children such as these and with a totally devoted wife, Bing de la Llana Pimentel, who is such a talented music composer and lyricist, her works having been recently featured in a spectacular concert with her compositions depicting the life both political and personal of her man "Nene," Bing certainly provided living testimony that the inspiration and the light in Nene Pimentel’s life, is no one else but she. There is every reason to expect more meaningful words emanating from the outstanding senator that Nene Pimentel has been all these years.