SATURDAY |FEBRUARY 16, 2008| PHILIPPINES

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Business Circuit

Greed is all right… Greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”- Ivan Boesky, May 18,1986

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‘I want my money back’

The word among wags is that at least two powerful people are mad at Sergio Apostol, chief presidential legal counsel. Apostol loudly expressed a racial slur against Rodolfo Lozada Jr. by suggesting his deportation after Lozada admitted that he came from a poor Chinese family in Ligao, Albay.

Apostol has apologized. But that does not seem to be enough; the Chinese want the alleged $130 million in bribes in connection with the ZTE deal to be returned.

I cannot exactly believe this. There is a deeper meaning. It could very well be connected with the so-called Spratly deal that President Arroyo and then Speaker Jose V. de Venecia promised the Chinese in exchange for fat contracts which are mostly overpriced.

The Spratly deal would allow the Chinese to explore territorial waters of the Philippines. If the deal is signed, this regime would have sold out the sovereignty and national patrimony of the state.

In exchange for what? For the hundreds of millions of pesos in bribes from Chinese contractors of Philippine projects.

Joker and law-making

Sen. Joker Arroyo, obviously trying to remove the heat from the government in the Lozada testimonies, wondered aloud how it happened that the Senate devotes 70 percent of its time to investigation and only 30 percent to legislation.

He should know better.

The Senate "wasted" so much time when Sen. Arroyo was chairman of the Blue Ribbon Committee.

He initiated a dozen or so probes, including the Jose Pidal accounts, the complaints of Sen. Panfilo Lacson against Gen. Victor Corpuz, among the infamous ones I can remember.

I would not mind the committee devoting so much time to probes. What makes me and many others sick is the non-closure or improper closure of investigations. For example, Sen. Arroyo terminated the Jose Pidal inquiry when Ignacio Arroyo, brother of the First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, executed an affidavit saying he was Jose Pidal. If he thinks that Alan Peter Cayetano would terminate the ZTE investigation the way Joker terminated investigations that embarrassed President Arroyo’s government, he’s got another think coming.

PHC lost money in failed bank

The closure of Bankwise did not create a ripple in the banking system. After all, the institution was a small savings bank that had deposits of less than P2 billion.

What I personally mad about is that the bulk of the deposits of Philcomsat Holdings Corp. was in that bank. Gone to ashes by the closure, I guess.

More than P300 million of PHC deposits in Bankwise disappeared. Somebody must be held accountable. Not only the bank or its officers.

We are now looking at the possibility that officials of PHC connived with Bankwise to make the money disappear.

We have information that part of our money was converted into equity in the bank. Did the Bangko Sentral ever order the retrieval of the deposits? We do not really know. What we have been told is that a PHC official was paid an incredible P8 billion for making the P303 million deposit.

The key officers of Bankwise have been criminally charged. How about the crooks who took our money in Philcomsat? They are having the best times of their lives at our expense.

They also served who stopped serving

Sylvette Tankiang, senior partner of Villlaraza Cruz Marcelo Angangco law offices personally invited me to the cocktails re-launching the law office.

I went out of my way to meet Nonoy Marcelo, former solicitor general and former Ombudsman who resigned for health reasons.

Avelino "Nonong" J. Cruz, also senior partner, and resigned secretary of national defense was there with Joey Tenefrancia , former senior deputy executive secretary.

The four assistants of Nonong were having the run of the place.

Big rich clients came in the hundreds.

What I discovered is that there is life after serving the Arroyo government. Marcelo is back in the firm.

Until I saw the presentation myself, I did not remember that Antonio T. Carpio was chief legal counsel of President Ramos. He is now an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Cruz was also chief presidential legal counsel of President Arroyo before he was moved to the DND.

The message here is that at least two presidents, Ramos and Arroyo, were not entangled in legal problems when their legal advisers were from The Firm.

Right to reply

Sometime this month, the Senate committee on communications will call for another hearing on the subject of the right to reply.

This refers to media’s duty to print the other side when so demanded. I have no problem with that. In fact, I need no law to respect the right to reply.

But we in the Philippine Press Institute cannot agree to equal treatment. Not because we want to deny them prominence.

It must be understood that news stories compete for space prominence everyday.

Sometimes, the prominence of a reply is lost.

Let us say, the subject of the day is Jun Lozada, with officials caught in the crossfire. Anybody who wants his two cents worth of reply will be accommodated.

But suppose, just suppose, that on the day that the reply is scheduled to be printed President Arroyo resigns to save herself further injury inflicted by the ZTE probe.

The resignation is the main story and may bump off or lower the prominence of the reply, as the bills authors would want it. How a news item or even a reply will be played depends on the quality of stories it is competing against for space and prominence.

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