New gatekeeper at the SEC

It’s official. Senior deputy executive secretary Manuel “Manny” Gaite is now associate commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He takes over from SEC Commissioner Jesus Martinez who figured in the Legacy pre-need fund scam. Martinez was forced to take a leave of absence last week on the eve of his retirement from the SEC. Gaite takes his oath of office before President Arroyo for a seven-year fixed term of office and immediately assumes his post at the SEC starting today.

The SEC post is the highest public office so far that the 54-year old Gaite would hold in his more than two decades in government service. He is a lawyer by profession. He earned his law degree at the Ateneo de Manila University in 1982. He passed the bar examinations the next year and ranked 30th among the bar topnotchers. By the way, he is also an Aquila Legis Fraternity member.

Gaite has rose from the ranks as can be gleaned from his curriculum vitae. Gaite has been working in the government since 1983. He first worked as a trial lawyer at the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel. He held different posts in various offices at Malacañang starting in 1987 under the administration of former President Corazon Aquino. I was a young reporter covering the Palace when I first came to know Gaite as a low-key and unassuming public official. He first served at the Palace as a Presidential staff director in the Presidential Management Staff (PMS).

When former President Fidel V.Ramos took over, Gaite was named Presidential assistant on Flagship Projects. He handled this post from 1994 until 2001. Or this was the period all the way to the administration of former President Joseph Estrada until the latter was ousted from the Palace. Gaite worked as executive director of the Presidential Adviser for Flagship Projects headed then by Robert Aventajado.

All through the years in this post, Gaite was never implicated in any allegations of hanky-panky deals even as he handled so many multi-million peso worth of government projects classified as “flagship” or priority projects of the administration. He never figured in questionable deals with contractors and bidders nor has he been accused of having favored any relatives or government officials and other interested parties in “flagship” undertakings that went through the scrutiny of his office. His squeaky-clean track record in office has obviously carried him from one administration to another.

A month after President Arroyo assumed power in January 2001, Gaite was appointed Presidential Assistant with the rank of Undersecretary in the Office of the Presidential Adviser for Regional Development. With so many big-funded infrastructure and other government-financed projects again under his disposal, Gaite has kept his nose clean. His last promotion in rank was in January 2003 when he was designated as senior deputy executive secretary for legal affairs at the Office of the Executive Secretary at the Palace.

All these years that I knew him as a Palace functionary, the Gaite that I know has never changed in the manner he carries himself to the way he talks to people. The soft-spoken Gaite has remained humble but is always ready to assist people who ask for his help. Little did he realize, his being helpful would get him someday into trouble he did not imagine could befall him. And that day came when his rather quiet and unexciting life in the government service suddenly turned upside down 

Described by close friends and former classmates in law school and in the seminary as “deeply religious” and generous to the needy, Gaite was dragged last year into the very high profile Senate investigation into the alleged “overpriced” national broadband network project with ZTE Corp. of China. He was implicated for allegedly trying to stop former Philippine Forest Corp. president, Rodolfo Lozada, one of the principal “whistleblowers” in the NBN-ZTE scandal, from testifying at the Senate public hearing. Gaite’s supposed crime was for “lending” P500,000 out of his personal money to help defray Lozada’s “expenses” while the latter was in Hong Kong.

Testifying at the public hearing, some of the Senators could not and refused to believe Gaite that he loaned to Lozada his personal money of P500,000 out of their family’s egg business. Gaite explained he had to use his personal funds since there was no government office from where he could withdraw it at a time Lozada urgently needed the money. Active in church activities, Gaite cited the money he loaned to Lozada was for a church project.

Lozada told the Senators he did not spend a single cent of the P500,000 given him by Gaite and turned it over to the Senate for custody as the investigation into this controversy went on for many weeks last year. Speaking of that P500,000, where is that money now? Another question we ask the Senators: Where is the final report into this NBN-ZTE case? 

In a media interview, Lozada was quoted as saying Gaite’s appointment to the SEC was Malacañang’s reward for his keeping silent about what he knows in the broadband scandal. Gaite said he never applied for this job at the SEC. “In our country the saying, ‘crime does not pay’ is not true,” Lozada rued. But who between Gaite and Lozada have committed crimes?

I went out on a limb for Gaite at the height of this controversy. I defended Gaite as I know him as a straightforward person against the self-confessed crook like Lozada. If Lozada has his nun and priest protectors at the De La Salle University, Gaite has his supporters in the Church who, like him, are quiet in their ways to defend him.

Fr. Gerard Deveza, who was Gaite’s classmate at the Holy Rosary Seminary in Naga City in the early 70s, described the Palace official as “a good man.” Fr. Elmer Ignacio, who is parish priest in Barangay Pulong Buhangin in Sta. Maria town in Bulacan where Gaite and his family live described the latter as “straight compared to Lozada.”

Amid these criticisms against his appointment at the SEC, Gaite appears headstrong to prove his detractors wrong. He vowed to help strengthen the SEC’s regulatory functions over these corporations and firms under the agency’s watch to keep away Legacy-like predators from preying upon the public. Obviously, he won’t allow himself to be distracted by these hecklers along the way. Gaite promises to be a better gatekeeper at the SEC.