No bank secrecy for political bets

I really don't know why the Carbon Market Unit 2 has taken more than two decades to construct after it was burned in 1998. Back then, I was part of the planning team to rebuild Carbon Market Unit 2 and our biggest problem was lack of space because all the vendors wanted to stay on the ground floor. This is why the upper levels have become someone's bodega or worse, living quarters of certain people working in Carbon.

In 2005, I was appointed market consultant until my resignation in 2010. In those years, we finally decided that to put the second floor to good use, there should be a ramp that would bring cars and taxicabs to the second floor. This way, access to Carbon Market would be split into jeepneys on the ground level, while cars and taxicabs go up the ramp on the second level, complete with parking facilities. In effect, it allows people disembarking from taxis or other cars to enter the market from the second floor.

But the construction got snagged and I have completely forgotten about Carbon Market until it came out of the news. This simple construction should have been finished by 2005 when I quit as CITOM chairman. But until today, it has dragged on and I dare say that it is time to penalize the con-tractor for the delays the project had incurred. This construction has now taken an epic time to complete, just like the Temple in Jerusalem. There has to be a deadline to these seemingly endless days of construction, since the City of Cebu is losing revenues.

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We're but less than a week to the general elections and what are we getting? More mudslinging from that vice presidential candidate Antonio Trillanes, IV, who met with Atty. Salvador Panelo, the lawyer of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte at the Julia Vargas Branch of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), But BPI officials did not accept Atty. Panelo's special power of attorney, but instead requested the lawyer to give them seven days to release the details of Mayor Duterte's bank account.

Call it a brilliant move by BPI officials because seven days from today, the elections will be over and if they would reveal that there was no P211 million in Mayor Duterte's bank account, then it can only prove that Sen. Trillanes information was totally wrong. I already saw one of Sen. Trillanes listed accounts… and immediately I noticed that on Nov.20, 2011 there were four deposits of P41, 000 there. There's nothing wrong with that except that Nov. 20,  2011 was a Sunday and I'm sure that the BPI Julia Vargas Branch does not open on Sundays!

At this point, we still believe that BPI has kept its promise to protect its clients because of the Bank Secrecy Act. But at this point, we'd like to see changes in our electoral system that for instance, all candidates for any elective positions should be made to sign a waiver to allow the Ombudsman to look into their bank accounts and have them published. This way, there would be no need for political opponents to challenge each other to sign waivers for their bank accounts. We have a very corrupt government and I would like to see this law after the new Congress is sworn into office.

Meanwhile the political kettle has hit a boiling point where the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) issued a disclaimer that it had endorsed Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte. Because of that report that was splashed on Facebook, no less than Pres. Benigno "PNoy" Aquino, III went to visit the gods of INC perhaps to chide them for that endorsement, which they now deny. 

In fairness to INC officials, they did not endorse PNoy's anointed one, Manuel "Mar" Roxas, and said that their endorsement will come within this week. Knowing the INC, I don't believe that they would support a dead horse, which is represented by Mar Roxas. So it would have to be either Grace Poe or Mayor Duterte. We will just have to wait and see.

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I'm glad that The Freeman editorialized the fixing of the Banawa Road the other day. So allow me to reprint that portion which goes' "Anyone who has been to Banawa will have to agree it has one of the best paved roads in the city. Anyone who has been to Banawa lately will have to ask: What the hell happened? It has been destroyed, but not completely - a portion here has been cracked open, a portion there has been dug up. Road works normally erupt during election time all over the country. Infrastructure projects have always been a good and generous source of kickbacks that can prove very useful for election purposes. This is why even perfectly good roads like the one in Banawa had to be destroyed just so they can be repaired or replaced, the pretext required to collect." Please Office of the Ombudsman investigates this stupidity!

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