Corruption & blind loyalty harm economic stability

I wish to acknowledge the tremendous hard work, remarkable tenacity, competence and admirable guts of my former Ateneo economics professor President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in her single-minded push for robust Philippine economic growth. I believe it is unfair for critics of her controversial politics to totally ignore or belittle her solid economic contributions. We must call a spade a spade: President GMA has done well in leading the Philippine economy and this should be part of her legacy for future historians to chronicle. 

However, it is also sad to witness some respected business and political leaders wasting their reputations due to the raging controversy over the abominable multi billion-peso corruption allegations surrounding the cancelled but not forgotten National Broadband Network (NBN) project.

After a lifetime of defending civil liberties and once courageously opposing a morally bankrupt dictatorship, why is Senator Joker Arroyo in the twilight of his career trying to self-destruct as a shameless lapdog of the embattled powers-that-be?

Senator Arroyo, if the NBN corruption allegations are true, they are shocking not only in terms of destructive impact on the moral values of the nation, but also on the overall economic efficiency of our whole society. How many thousands of public-school classrooms or barrio clinics could those alleged billions of pesos in bribes or over-pricing have squandered if the NBN scheme was surreptitiously implemented? How could any right-thinking and decent person be party to a cover-up instead of working tirelessly to ferret out the truth which the Bible says shall set us all free?

It is tragic that Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) chairman Vivian Yuchengco, a niece of well-known President GMA supporter and Malayan Insurance/RCBC patriarch Alfonso Yuchengco, has repeatedly come out in partisan arguments blindly and loyally in favor of government officials instead of just calling for sobriety and for the separation of business from politics in her criticism of the Makati Business Club (MBC).

By the way, the executive director of MBC, Alberto “Bertie” Lim, is from the same gutsy and honorable family that gave the Philippines its first-ever West Point graduate and also a fearless World War II hero, General Vicente Lim, who was beheaded by Japanese invaders.  His image is on our P1,000 bill, along with two other World War II martyrs who chose death rather than to collaborate and compromise with evil: Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos and Philippine Girl Scouts founder Josefa Llanes Escoda. 

After rising back from the abyss of his Harvard-educated elder brother Dewey Dee’s huge indebtedness and paying off all obligations, then spending years sincerely advocating Philippine business stability and economic development, it is sad that Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) chairman Donald Dee seems to have succumbed to possible extreme political pressures to publicly call for a stop to the ongoing Senate investigations of the NBN project.

Lots of ordinary non-political business people are appalled by the seemingly canine loyalty shown by various PCCI leaders to the controversial politics of our many leaders, leading me to sometimes mistake PCCI as an acronym for the Philippine Canine Club Inc. of which my dogs are bona fide members. 

Couldn’t we separate support for the government and for the Philippine economy from partisan support for politics? President Arroyo, Benjamin Abalos (when he was still Comelec head), Joker Arroyo, Larry Mendoza, Romulo Neri, Lito Atienza and other personalities are not the Philippine government, rather they are supposed to be public servants and they should live up to public trust.

Ambassador Dee, it is not the Senate hearings that will harm the economic stability of the Philippines, it is the shamelessness and excessiveness of the alleged corruption of the NBN project — multiplied by a hundred or a thousand times in other unexamined government contracts — that have kept most people of this nation so poor. It is this type of culture of impunity and corruption that is the  root cause of the socio-economic travails of the Philippines.

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Is it true that while the mass media have been endlessly speculating about the supposedly fluctuating state of romance between tycoon Tonyboy Cojuangco and his actress-girlfriend Gretchen Barretto, he reportedly sold his controlling stakes in ABC 5 television network and the Bank of Commerce to the group of his uncle, San Miguel Corporation big boss Eduardo”Danding” Cojuangco Jr.?

If this is true, can we finally expect a stronger and more aggressive third-party challenge to the present duopoly of GMA 7 and arch-rival ABS-CBN 2? Will Danding Cojuangco do to Philippine television what John Gokongwei Jr.’s upstart Sun Celullar has so spectacularly done to break the once seemingly impregnable duopoly of Smart and Globe Telecom in the telecom industry?

Danding Cojuangco is one of the smartest business leaders of the Philippines and I think that Southeast Asia’s top beer-food conglomerate San Miguel Corporation is already too small for his leadership talents and vast vision.

What about PLDT whiz Manny Pangilinan? Will this Year of the Rat be the year that he can finally purchase control of a television station to synergize his flourishing telecom conglomerate’s need for content?

Congratulations to ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation led by Eugenio “Gabby” Lopez III and top executives like Charo Santos Concio for the firm generated roughly P20 billion in revenues and ended up with P1.2 billion to P1.3 billion in net profits. Our source said: “Finally, the publishing business of ABS CBN made a net profit in 2007.”

Congratulations also to GMA Network Inc. led by the rugged entrepreneur Atty. Felipe “Henry” Gozon and his partners — the Jimenez and Duavit families — for their outstanding feat of P2.3 billion net profits from 2007 revenues of between P11 billion and P12 billion. 

With the popularity of Marimar, sources claim that actress Marian Rivera is the front-runner to be cast as the lead star of the upcoming Dyesebel drama series in the second half of 2008.

Who are the real winners of the now raging TV networks war for ratings? The winners are not GMA 7 or ABS-CBN 2, but the viewers, consumers, advertisers and businesses, and ultimately the dynamism of Philippine economy. We should all encourage and uphold robust free market competition.

Whether as entrepreneurs, professionals or ordinary citizens of this republic, we should vigorously oppose any monopolies or oligopolies as well as stand up against the despicable ogre of excessive corruption that distorts market forces, breeds so much corrosive inefficiencies and social inequality, and is ultimately inimical to free enterprise economics, progress and democracy. 

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