Business Circuit

A pairing judge in a regional trial court has accepted the motion to dismiss the libel case filed against me by the First Gentleman. There were 47 of us from media who were defendants in 10 or so libel suits.

Jose Miguel Arroyo sought to dismiss the case after he survived life-threatening heart surgery. He said he had "seen the light."

Two of us respondents, myself and Marites Vitug opposed the motion to dismiss. We both believed that we should be set free or jailed based on the merits. The court ruled otherwise.

I consider the libel case against me as most cruel because I praised the First Gentleman for reacting positively to an item here where I begged him to come to the aid of the sister of a PSG soldier whose sister was suffering from brain cancer.

He acted swiftly and sent a team to the V. Luna General Hospital.

I praised him lavishly for that. The praise earned me a libel suit that alleged I ridiculed Mike Arroyo’s charity program.

In one of the hearings, he challenged my lawyer to a fist fight but he quickly apologized to the judge.

This case is closed. Another may come from him, not from me.

My informant in Malacañang (would you believe I have three) told me that President Arroyo has entertained the idea of finally resolving the controversial coconut levy although the case is in Court.

My mole explained that the President and her friends are thinking of coming up with some kind of amicable settlement where the Court’s role will be reduced to appending its approval to it.

My guess is the powerful politicians will get the 20 percent of San Miguel shares owned by the levy. What even more powerful men will get in exchange is anybody’s guess. But the numbers will not be small.

In the interpretation of some people, the levy is private – although it has been declared as being "affected with public interest" because the money was contributed by coconut millers and exporters, not directly by the coconut farmers.

There are documents that prove payments to the fund by these big people in the coconut industry.

However, the late Maria Clara Lobregat, one of the pillars of the coconut industry, insisted that the payments were deducted from the price of copra. Therefore, the levy belongs to the coconut farmers.

There is evidence that the levy is owned by the coconut farmers. There is a room in the United Coconut Planters Bank almost bursting with stock certificates proving ownership by the farmers.

In fact these stock certificates are the main defense of the group of Danding Cojuangco in trying to prove that the levy is private.

To put the record straight, the collection of the levy was started as early as the time of President Carlos Garcia. As far as I know, the Coconut Industry Investment Fund has collected P50 million during that period.

The money, if memory serves me right, is still with the Development Bank of the Philippines.

The collection of the levy was suspended but then was resumed. When the price of cooking oil was hitting the roof, Ferdinand Marcos ordered the organization of a stabilization fund that would neutralize the vertical rise in prices.

The funds were again collected from the coconut millers and exporters. When the price of cooking oil returned to normal, the collection was stopped.

But then, the group of Cojuangco continued with it and considered the fund as private, their own in fact.

In effect, there are two levies. One was collected directly from the coconut farmers. The other was paid by the coconut millers and exporters.

But as Tita Caling Lobregat insisted, all the levies were collected, some directly, some indirectly, from the coconut farmers.

We are not privy to the details of the out-of-court discussions on how the levy will be disposed of.

I hazard the guess that if it is given to powerful business groups, the Arroyo regime will have to face the ire of millions of coconut farmers who may be the beneficial owners of the levy.

Resolving the question of the coconut levy barely ten months before the national elections may not be politically correct.

But then one has to consider the fact that it is precisely because there is very little time left for the Arroyo regime to rob the country blind.

They have to take advantage of whatever little time is left to them in power. They know only too well that what happened to Alberto Fujimori, ousted president of Peru, cannot happen to them.

Fujimori got his third conviction that will send him to jail for about seven years for bribery.

The justice system here does not function the way it does in Peru and other democratic nations.

Key people in the customs brokerage business, truckers and importers are looking at the necessity of calling a strike – maybe to be timed with the SONA – against the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group.

They are protesting the indiscriminate, arbitrary and therefore illegal withholding of cargoes.

They have also taken note of what some elements in the PASG did in trying to chisel businessmen in some parts of the Divisoria area, particularly that mall called 168.

The stall holders and small owners are being accused of selling smuggled items but were never asked where they bought the merchandise.

The PASG is a group of military and police people armed like they are going to war in Afghanistan.

But we have yet to year them apprehend one smuggler or seize smuggled goods.