Deciphering Digong

In the past, the toughest part of the Palace spokesman’s job is defending the president from allegations of wrong doing. Today, the challenge is how to explain what the president really meant to say.

Digong has such colorful language and when he gets started, it is difficult to stop him. Aside from calling the US Ambassador “bakla”, it also looked like he threatened our Chief Justice with martial law.

I immediately knew the president’s martial law “threat” was mere hyperbole. Digong was just driving home a point… that the drug menace is a clear and present danger to the nation and unorthodox methods are required to deal with it. He apologized to the Chief Justice a day later.

An older sibling who has lived most of her adult years in Washington DC wrote me to express her exasperation about Trump and in the process observed that we seem to have a similar problem with Digong.

I wrote back to say I agree that Trump seems crazy, but Duterte isn’t. Duterte won by promising change and change is never easy. Still, Duterte’s first month in office has given us a sense of a government in control and with the political will to change the many things that need changing.

Duterte has named a number of police generals, mayors and judges as protectors of drug lords and that information is chilling. Indeed, it was surprising to many of us to learn how deeply entrenched the drug menace has become in our society.

Over 90 percent of barangays are supposedly infested. Half a million people involved in the drug trade, or are drug dependents have surrendered to the authorities and they have run out of facilities to rehabilitate the drug users.

Why did past administrations allow this problem to get this big? Why did they allow drug lords to have luxurious “suites” inside the national penitentiary. The drug lords were running their business from the penitentiary with the help of cell phones and corrupt prison guards.

It is easy to see that the Philippines would have become a narco state if Duterte didn’t end up being president. We cannot depend on the usual processes in our corrupt judicial system to deal with this drug menace quickly.

But the president must stop the vigilantes who are giving his honest desire to clean the country of the drug menace a bad face. I get the feeling there are many in his masa support base who are getting worried and resentful that only the poor are being killed in the anti drug drive.

How come no rich drug lord has been arrested or killed? Indeed the president honored with VIP treatment one such big time drug lord he himself identified by personally meeting with him. If he was poor, he would have been dead, no questions asked.

And how come, too, that only mayors from the Visayas and Mindanao were named and shamed and none from Metro Manila? It is difficult to believe all the Metro Manila mayors are clean.

Now Duterte is also going after the oligarchs. He has pledged to destroy the oligarchy’s hold on the economy and probably that’s why the Makati elite has been unhappy and feeling very nervous.  

President Digong has to realize that because he is president now, everything he says is front page stuff. His statements about Roberto Ongpin have repercussions beyond Ongpin and PhilWeb.

Leonardo Alejandrino, a blogger and a former investment banker explains the fears: “Who are the next ‘oligarchs’ to be named? This is the question on the lips of Big Business, investors and banks in the wake of the PhilWeb debacle. Businessmen are worried not only whether they are on the presidential list, but also who else are: You do not want to be dealing with someone about to go down.

“Stock market investors are wondering which is the next PhilWeb. Bankers are concerned about loan exposure to possible ‘oligarchs’.”

Duterte may be right about how Ongpin pushed his weight around in past administrations. But there will be significant collateral damage if Ongpin is not handled properly.

There has been no explanation from Malacanang and PAGCOR why Ongpin is being punished so harshly. Is the president against Ongpin as a person or is he against online gaming as a matter of principle? If the latter, then DFNN, the other PAGCOR online gaming entity, must be closed too.

It is also not true that the government gets no benefit from PhilWeb’s online gaming business. In 2015, it remitted P2.1 billion to PAGCOR. It paid the BIR P280 million in corporate income tax, VAT and other taxes. Without PhilWeb, local gamers will go to online gambling sites abroad and we get no taxes from these entities.

Because of a potentially abrupt closure, an estimated 5,000 jobs will be lost from 286 e-Games outlets owned by 131 independent entrepreneurs. PhilWeb has already lost about P25 billion in shareholder value so far since Digong singled out Ongpin for destruction. But the pain goes beyond Ongpin.

Ongpin owns 771 million shares or 54 percent of PhilWeb’s equity, but 130 million shares or nine percent of total equity are owned by other domestic investors. More significantly, foreign investors including foreign investment funds own 182 million shares or 13 percent of total. The rest, 352 million shares or 24 percent are treasury shares.

Those foreign fund managers who invested in PhilWeb also own equity in other Philippine companies. They may see our regulatory regime as whimsical, lose confidence in our market and decide to totally pull out. That will have a serious impact on the health of our stock market, make our investment climate even less attractive and weaken the exchange rate of the peso.

While Ongpin will not win a popularity contest in the business community, the man is not a total ogre. His foresight and accomplishments are admirable. I think he served the country well when he was given the difficult task of managing the “Binondo Central Bank” at a crucial time in our economy’s history. It was a dirty job that had to be done.

But I am not surprised he caught Digong’s ire. Ongpin’s problem is his really bloated ego. In his pre-employment interview at SGV, he broke the ice by asking Wash SyCip when the SGV founder will retire so he knows how long he has to wait. He is an experienced power player and he did exercise his strong connections with past administrations, specially that of Gloria Arroyo.

Legality aside, Ongpin was on the wrong side in the Philex case where he was accused of insider trading. It was wrong for him to get a loan  from DBP to finance the Philex share purchase, even if DBP made money on it and needlessly profit from the MRT3 bond purchase deal. He got into so much trouble with those deals because it looked like he was flaunting his strong ties with the Arroyo administration. What he did describes an oligarch in President Duterte’s book.

But if the president wants to go after oligarchs, there are bigger and more horrible fish to fry. Hopefully some of those oligarchs will be in his new list of tax cheats because many of them are.

As for Bobby O, maybe he can try winning friends for a change. As one of his peers once observed, Bobby at his age (80 next year) shouldn’t be creating new enemies because he can’t live long enough to win new prolonged battles.

In deciphering our president, we have to realize he has this messianic zeal to save this country from the mess we are in. He is also impatient about the corrupt and slow moving justice system. That explains his unorthodox method. He said it best in one of his speeches:

“I am here to correct and establish order in my beloved country. Many will stop me, many will try to kill me, because of my principles and dignity over how to fix this country. But if God bless me, and with the people’s help, I might change this country into one that you all will be proud of, and my legacy will extend far beyond the next Filipino generation.”

I think that explains why Digong is Digong and we can only hope he succeeds for the sake of our grandchildren’s generation.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.