Category: Gloriagate

ANGKAN, INC. docu now online

Ed Lingao Leave a comment


The full PCIJ documentary on the Maguindanao clans is now online

A VIDEO DOCUMENTARY produced by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) on the continuing rule of the political clans in Maguindanao province may now be viewed online.

ANGKAN, INC. was produced by the PCIJ with assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The documentary was also broadcast by television network TV5 on Sunday, April 28, as part of the station’s Balwarte series.

The PCIJ documentary looks at the roots of clan rule in Maguindanao, tracing it to as far back as the rule of the Datus at the height of the Sultanate of Maguindanao, before the arrival of the Spaniards i the Philippines. Over the centuries, especially in the last hundred years, the royal clans of Maguindanao had evolved from religious and cultural pillars of the society into political clans courted by the powers that be in Manila, beginning first with the American colonial regime, followed by successive Philippine governments after the declaration of Independence.

The continued political and economic influence of the clans became all the more apparent during election years, when they field large numbers of clan members, effectively smothering many other aspirants for public office.

The print versions of the documentary may be viewed here:

Ampatuans, web of kin warp Maguindanao polls

Maguindanao’s misery: Absentee officials, absence of rage, poverty

National politics prop dynasties to win elections

 

Owning up when outed

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

IT REALLY IS indeed diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks as Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism Executive Director Malou Mangahas aptly wrote in her April 5 article, “Repentant, reticent, rude,” on how local Philippine officials reacted to a PCIJ report identifying them as owners of offshore bank accounts.

Unlike most of the public officials here who have also been outed for having offshore accounts in the tax havens of the Caribbean Isles, Mongolia’s deputy speaker in parliament simply admitted, showed remorse, and announced he was considering resigning from office.

“I shouldn’t have opened that account,” Bayartsogt Sangajav, deputy speaker of Mongolia’s parliament was quoted in an article by Emily Menkes and Marina Walker Guevara for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Bayartsogt is one of at least a dozen or so public officials who have been outed by the global investigative reporting project led by the ICIJ based in Washington DC. For the past 15 months, some 86 investigative journalists from 46 countries had been vetting and validating some 260 gigabytes of data which include at least 2.5 million files and more than 2 million electronic communiques.

“I don’t worry about my reputation. I worry about my family. I probably should consider resigning from my position,” Bayartsogt said when ICIJ confronted him about his offshore holdings.

“Bayartsogt, who says his Swiss account at one point contained more than $1 million, became his country’s finance minister in September 2008, a position he held until a cabinet reshuffle in August 2012,” the ICIJ article reads in part.

Bayartsogt had attended “international meetings and served as governor of the Asian Development Bank and the European Bank of Reconstruction, pushing the case for his poor nation to receive foreign development assistance and investment.”

The ICIJ article also reported that the deputy speaker was also “at the forefront of encouraging foreign mining and other companies to move into Mongolia.”

The investigative reporting project looked at 122,000 offshore companies or trusts, about 12,000 intermediaries (agents or “introducers”), and some 130,000 records of the people and agents who run, own, benefit from or hide behind offshore companies. Instead of just uploading the raw documents online, ICIJ decided to partner with journalists and media agencies – including the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism – to check out and verify the data. The project has been touted as the one of the biggest cross-border investigative partnerships in journalism history and one of the biggest financial leaks in history.

Here in the Philippines, pubic officials who have been outed for having offshore companies and trusts in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) include Ilocos governor Maria Imelda “Imee” Marcos-Manotoc, Senator Manny B. Villar, Jr and senatorial wannabee Joseph Victor G. Ejercito. Marcos had ignored the PCIJ’s inquiries, while Villar had acknowledged the account, claiming it was only a shell account with $1 inside. For his part, Ejercito in turn was evasive, and implied that the PCIJ was being used to derail his senatorial bid.

International experts say that for low-income countries such as Mongolia and the Philippines, funds that are hidden in tax havens affect the economic growth of the host countries of the wealthy elite who have opted to invest in offshore account and trusts because the “vital financial resources are stashed abroad rather than used to build up domestic infrastructure and productive capacity.”

The advocacy group, Tax Justice Network, claims that the total amount of funds hidden in tax havens comprise a third of the world’s wealth. Tax Justice Network is a non-government organization and is a staunch advocate against tax havens. James Henry of Tax Justice Network has estimated that the “stock of flight capital out of the Philippines reached $97 billion as of 2010.” This amount is more than the country’s external debt of only $60 billion that year as estimated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

According to former undersecretary of the Department of Finance Milwida Guevara, “the intention is to hide the transactions or hide their income so they made use of tax havens or places where there are no rules on transparency.”

“It’s hypocritical that they are sponsoring legislation that calls for faithful compliance with laws. At the same time, they are themselves trying to get away with it,” Guevara, who is also one of the founders of the Movement for Good Governance, said.

Manila’s shame: Nat’l politicos prop clans to win elections

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THE DATU system, an ancient political and social structure that has defined much of the history of the southern Philippines, provides continuity between a proud past and the tumultuous present in Maguindanao.

Yet it is one that has radically evolved — some would even say corrupted –into what many outsiders now perceive to be a system of patronage, corruption, inefficiency, and ruthlessness, especially in the province. As a result, the clans it has produced in the province are now perceived by many as the poster children of the worst kind of political dynasties.

But the problem is not a homegrown local phenomenon alone. National politicians and national poliical parties in Manila have also to share much of the blame: To win elections and to achieve political pre-eminence, they have cultivated datus or clans of choice as surrogates. They have stripped transformed the datus from traditional and religious leaders into political lieutenants.

It started with the American colonial administration, carried on to President Manuel L. Quezon who practically banned datuism in the 1935 Constitution, to the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos, and on to all the presidents that followed after the 1986 EDSA People Power revolt. Each president actually chose each his/her own favored datu or clan.

The story of the Ampatuans is most instructive. At the height of the Moro rebellion in the 1970s, however, Andal Ampatuan Sr. was not yet pandering to Malacañang. Like his grandfather. he became a rebel, his town of Ampatuan being “one of the sites of the fiercest fights, especially Christian and Muslim fights.”

In 1987, Andal Sr. ran and won as mayor of Maganoy, now named Shariff Aguak. The year 2001 was another turning point for the Ampatuans, with Andal Sr. elected governor of Maguidanao. It is said that Andal had the backing of the military, because his main rival, Zacaria Candao, was widely perceived to be coddling to Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

In Manila, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was busy struggling to consolidate her position after ousting Joseph Estrada in the second People Power revolt. Hounded by questions of legitimacy, Arroyo was besieged by pro-Estrada supporters who rioted in front of Malacañang in May 2001. All in all, the time was ripe for the interests of Andal Sr. and Gloria Arroyo to intersect.

In the years that followed, Andal Sr. carefully built his relationship with both military and political leaders on the regional and national levels.

Retired Lt. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, who served as martial law administrator of Maguindanao after the 2009 Maguindanao Massacre, acknowledges that the Ampatuan clan wielded an inordinate amount of influence on virtually all levels, even beyond the confines of Central Mindanao. It was a kind of clout that was unique to the Ampatuans, he says, and could not be seen with other political clans all over the Philippines.

“The clans were that powerful, to a point where they choose which battalion commander will be appointed there, or brigade commander,” he says. “Or even division commander, they can make a special request to higher authority. They can show that if you do not cooperate they can call on people higher than you.”

In large measure, Maguindanao remains a changeless story for now. National politicians have gone a-courting the clans again. Team P-Noy of the Liberal Party ruling coalition, as well as the opposition United Nationalist Alliance have adopted and endorsed their respective shares of candidates from the clans in the May 2013 elections. Party platform or philosophy seems to have little to do with the choices, more than the candidates’ winnability.

Yet still, the tide of change has started to take root in Maguindanao, as much as in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. “Young Moros” and civil society groups are now taking their place of honor in the political discourse, and transformation of the province and the region.

Read Part 3 and the Sidebars of “The Clan Politics of Maguindanao” here:

Part 3: National politicos prop dynasties to win elections
Sidebar: The wealth of Gov. Toto
Sidebar: The Change-makers

Maguindanao’s misery in excelsis: ‘Capitol on wheels’, absentee execs

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OVER THE LAST forty years, the seat of power in the province of Maguindanao has moved location six times, or just about anywhere its governor wishes o hold office. It has been a virtual “capitol on wheels.”

“The problem we have observed in Maguindanao is the new Governor always transfers the provincial capitol,” says Bobby Taguntong, Maguindanao spokesman for the Citizens Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reform or CCARE, a civil society group pushing for reforms in the election process in Mindanao. “Maybe we can suggest to the national government to make the provincial capitol mobile, perhaps even install tires.”

It is far more than an issue of confusion and inconvenience for those who need to conduct business in the capitol, wherever it may be relocated to next. Rather, the tale of the moving capitol symbolizes a bigger problem seen in places where governance is more personal than political, where families overrule political parties, and where blood trumps ideas and ideologies.

But the misery of inefficient and poor governance that is Maguindanao does not end there. Far too many candidates from a dozen political clans are running yet again in May 2013. This is amid the picture of absentee local executives that repeats in many of the 36 towns of the province. These candidates seem so excited to claim and grab the perks of office, but not to serve and work, when elected.

Just as worrisome, many voters seem to have scaled down their expectations of their leaders, according to Mindanao analysts. No public demand for good roads, more schools, better health care, more jobs; nor is there public rage over the severe lack of these services. The voters, analysts say, have just a few simple wishes of their leaders — don’t grab or buy off our land, leave us in peace, don’t harass, torture, or kill.

Read the PCIJ’s report on “The Clan Politics of Maguindanao” here:

Part 2: Maguindanao’s misery: Absentee officials, absence of rage, poverty

Sidebar 2: Cash for cops and soldiers

Maguindanao was spun off from the greater Cotabato empire province in 1973, the first governor, Simeon Datumanong, held office in Limpongo, in what is now Datu Hoffer town.

His successor, Zacaria Candao, held office on PC Hill in Cotabato City before resigning in 1977.

The replacement governor, Datu Sanggacala Baraguir of Sultan Kudarat town, naturally wanted the capitol in his bailiwick, and had a new capitol built in Sultan Kudarat.

The fourth governor, Sandiale Sambolawan, returned the provincial government to Shariff Aguak.

Then Datu Andal Salibo Ampatuan Sr. was elected governor in May 2001. He built a grand columned capitol almost right beside the municipal hall of Shariff Aguak, where he used to hold office as mayor.

A few years later, Andal Sr. would build a new and even more opulent provincial capitol, complete with a driveway that rivals a small EDSA flyover and a private toilet that houses a Jacuzzi, a stone’s throw away from the old capitol, on land that is rumored to be his own.

After the 2010 elections, Esmael Mangudadatu, the current governor who succeeded Andal Sr., moved the provincial capitol to his hometown of Buluan, accessible from Maguindanao only if one passes through Sultan Kudarat province first.

At first, Mangudadatu referred to the new capitol as the Satellite Office of the Provincial Government. Later, to avoid complications and questions, he renamed the place as the Maguindanao Peace Center.

Pooled editorial tells pols, parties: Take a stand, don’t cop out on FOI

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ANOTHER POOLED EDITORIAL by the newspaper-members of the Philippine Press Institute has challenged all political parties and candidates in the May 2013 elections to take a firm stand on the immediate passage of the Freedom of Information (FOI) in the 15th Congress.

The editorial ran on Monday in the print and online editions of Ang Pahayagang Malaya, BusinessWorld, The Journal, and Manila Standard-Today in Metro Manila, as well as in a number of regional and provincial newspapers.

The full text of the editorial follows:


Take a stand: Don’t cop out on FOI

IT IS the season of elections and all political parties and candidates are wont to spin a slew of promises yet again in their drive for votes.

But before they start courting voters yet again, the first order of business is this: Political parties and candidates must deliver on a promise they’ve made in elections past by taking and making known their party and personal stand on the passage of the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill.

Over the last 15 years, from the 11th to the 15th Congress, the FOI bill has been stuck in the legislative wringer for lack of clarity and coherence in how lawmakers and their political parties stand on the issue. Even as President Aquino himself as a candidate in May 2010 had promised to push the FOI into law, members of his ruling Liberal Party and its allies in the majority coalition of the Nacionalista Party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, and the National Unity Party have separately come out as either the most ardent champions or the most strident critics of the FOI bill.

Between the pros and the cons in the FOI bill equation, that is where these political parties are: fence-sitting with neither leadership nor clarity of purpose with respect to the constitutionally guaranteed state policies of transparency and accountability that the FOI bill upholds.

Political will from all the political parties could yet assure the passage of the FOI bill in the remaining nine session days from January 21 to February 8, 2013, or before Congress adjourns for the elections. Calling for a conscience vote on the FOI bill is a clear cop-out by political parties and candidates now aspiring to be elected into office.

All voters must carefully scrutinize how these parties and their candidates for the 2013 elections will stand on FOI in their remaining nine session days. The countdown begins today. How they stand on the FOI bill, and if at all they will take a stand on this all-important reform measure, will give us an idea whether or not they deserve our vote in the coming May elections.