SEC? Securities in Exchange for Commission?

First of all, allow me to congratulate our dear friend and publisher Mr. Nito Jabat for bagging the Perlas Awards for Journalism. This award is well-deserved to a man who has been in the business since I was a young kid. It was Nito Jabat who first put my face in the newspaper, a Manila-based sports news that featured our weekly Observed Trials motorcycle competition at the Subangdaku River (it was still clean and uncontaminated at that time). Our friendship grew and when he learned that I was connected with the newly-opened Philippine Star, he asked me to do columns for The FREEMAN. If I’m a columnist today, blame it on Nito Jabat! Kudos again Sir Nito! God Bless!

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It is truly embarrassing that we have become a nation of scandals thanks to society’s scourge called corruption. The rich and the well-connected get their way through bribery, while the poor lose their life savings! What a country! We’ve been writing about the ill-fated Legacy Group since their 13 rural banks started to collapse one after the other by mid-December 2008. What happened to Legacy isn’t just because of Celso de los Angeles. He had assistance from those who were more than willing to assist him… with open palms of course!

During the Senate Investigation of the ill-fated Legacy Group, startling revelations began to appear, like the bribery charge against Parañaque Congressman Eduardo Zialcita of P1.8 million, which he dubbed as “donation.” Our corrupt Congressmen are creative enough to find other terms for the word bribery. No wonder the Legislative Branch is so much in scandal today, especially after that World Bank report of collusion with high gov’t officials.

But the crème de la crème came from Ms. Carolina Hinola, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the shuttered Legacy Consolidated Plans, Inc. (LCPI) that Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Jesus Martinez (a cousin of Rep. Zialcita) was given a P5 million house and lot at the BF Subdivision in Parañaque City and another P1.4 million for a Ford Expedition. Perhaps Ms. Hinola realized the gravity of the situation, where poor people have been victimized by the shenanigans of Celso de los Angeles, that she turned against her former boss. Now the truth has finally come out, that the Legacy Group could do what it wants to do simply because they could buy the government regulators, even our Congressmen!

SEC Commissioner Fe Barin should immediately resign for failure to check and double check those companies that should never have been given the SEC nod. If she won’t quit, then we might conclude that she too was given a percentage of this bribe money. If SEC officials have been bribed, I’m sure that Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) must also have been bribed. This is why whenever we ask about the involvement of BSP in the Legacy collapse, they immediately point to the Regional Trial Court (RTC) Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that prevented them from examining the books of Legacy.

With all these, we expect a series of criminal suits. But the bigger problem we’re facing is that we no longer have any trust and confidence in the Office of the Ombudsman. Because of this mess, Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) has ordered a wider probe on the involvement of SEC officials as well as BSP executives that may have been involved in this man-made financial debacle! The SEC is now the nation’s butt of text jokes; the latest I got yesterday was: “Due to today’s Senate hearing, the SEC has approved a resolution changing its name to Securities in Exchange for Commission!” It may be funny, but it really ain’t funny!

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It seems that the Arroyo Administration is going from one anomaly to the next. While we laud the Senate for its very fruitful investigation of the ill-fated Legacy Group, we cannot say much about the Senate’s foot-dragging on that World Bank report about collusion between contractors and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). But while we’re hanging on this issue, the Department of Finance (DoF) and the Senate are now looking at another scandal, the so-called P50 Billion Road Fund anomaly.

This money came from the fund called the Road User’s Tax that Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile sponsored. Yet we don’t know how the fund was distributed. Here in Cebu City, we want to know how much of this fund can be used here. Or has it been misused already, just like what happened to the rest of our tax money? Abangan!