Nuisance suit

More than a year ago, an election dispute erupted at the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) involving some of the country’s top business leaders.

The dispute made headlines since after all, the PCCI is the country’s biggest association of private businesses in the country and it has worked closely with government in the formulation of important policies and programs.

Benedicto Yujuico, who was PCCI president from 2019 to 2021, and director Jesus Varela then asked the Taguig court to set aside the results of the PCCI elections held in December 2021, as they questioned the conduct of the nomination of candidates and actual election of the members of the PCCI board of directors.

Yujuico and Varela sought for the issuance of a preliminary injunction against the PCCI elections committee and key chamber officers in connection with what they described as void, illegal and irregular conduct of the 2021 PCCI annual general membership meeting and election of PCCI directors. They said that the election committee failed to properly conduct the nominations required for the election of directors and refused to validate the proxies and ballots.

On the day of the election, Valera said one of the nominees should be disqualified since he represented a company that has not renewed its business permit in more than a decade.

Despite this, the PCCI elections committee declared the new national board, led by returning PCCI president George Barcelon, who held the position in 2016 and 2017.

For Yujuico, the dispute boils down to reluctance of a number of directors to institute reforms, particularly the imposition of term limits.

For the defendants named in the complaint, they felt that their reputations were besmirched, prompting them to ask for the award of moral damages.

This intra-corporate case has finally been put to rest.

The Taguig City Regional Trial Court recently dismissed the case filed by Yujuico and Varela for being a mere “nuisance suit”.

In dismissing the case, the judge in his decision, a copy of which was shared by a court reporter, ordered Yujuico and Varela to each pay P50,000 to the defendants moral damages due to the media exposure of the case.

According to the Taguig RTC, Yujuico and Valera are not real parties-in-interest in the complaint, Yujuico having been nominated and eventually declared as one of the newly elected board of directors.

The court said that “as such, he has no interest and legal personality to bring the action for the simple reason that he did not suffer any wrong or injury and was in fact actually benefitted by the proceedings.”

On the other hand, the court emphasized that Varela was not a candidate for director and was not a member of PCCI since he was no longer connected with the company he supposedly represented, and therfore “could not have any interest in the election.

When reached for comment, Barcelon said: “The decision speaks for itself.”

Not the time to do it

Do we really need a sovereign investment fund?

It’s just a matter of time before a bill creating the Maharlika Investment Fund becomes a law but lingering doubts and bothering questions remain.

The House of Representatives adopted the Senate’s version of the Maharlika bill, just hours after the Senate voted to approve the measure.

Once ratified and duly signed by the Senate President and the House Speaker, the enrolled copy of the bill will be transmitted to the Office of the President for signature.

The reactions to the proposed measure are indeed diverse.

The country’s economic team believes that the bill’s passage will further strengthen the government platforms for investments.

Sen. Grace Poe, one of the senators who voted for the measure, said the MIF is an enhanced and better version, with adequate safeguards to ensure effective and transparent governance of funds.

She emphasized that they made sure the wealth fund will not touch the people’s pension money and social benefits such as those that are with the SSS, GSIS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG, OWWA and PVAO.

Poe added that they pushed to include the requirement of a P10 million fidelity bond for the board members of the Maharlika Investment Corp. to guarantee that they will faithfully account for the funds entrusted to them.

Meanwhile, Sen. Risa Hontiveros voted against its passage, saying the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund should be done only if the country has accumulated surplus money.

Akbayan Party meanwhile said the lawmakers just passed a measure enabling the country’s largest investment scam, adding that while safeguards may be in place now, a law is only as good as its execution.

The creation of the MIF is a priority measure of the Marcos administration. The fund will be used by the government to invest in areas like domestic and foreign corporate bonds, commercial real estate, and infrastructure projects to help the country’s priority programs.

The seed capital of the MIF will come from Landbank (P50 billion), Development Bank of the Philippines (P25 billion), and the national government (P50 billion).

It will be managed by the Maharlika Investment Corp. which will have the finance secretary as chair.

President Marcos, who has been promoting the proposed fund to potential investors abroad, has given assurances that the fund will not be abused, adding that it is up for the SSS and GSIS to invest in the fund if they want to.

According to Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, there are around 90 countries that have sovereign wealth funds, of which about 99 percent have been very successful.

An article by time.com revealed that at the beginning of the year, there were 161 sovereign wealth funds, managing more than $10 trillion in assets although there are countries with more than one fund. China Investment Corp. in Beijing has the largest with $1.35 trillion in assets.

But will ours be equally successful? Or are we going to join the one percent that has gone awry?

Any investor in his right mind knows that you should invest only what you can afford to lose.

With a staggering debt of P13.9 trillion and with no surplus funds to speak of, shouldn’t our country instead focus on foreign money being invested in us, instead of the other way around?

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