Category: Jejomar C Binay

TRC in zombieland still, 2 years after pork scam

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AT THE height of the media hoopla over the pork-barrel scam two years ago, Dennis Cunanan had a perennially furrowed brow that matched a grim countenance. But the Dennis Cunanan who sat down with PCIJ recently looked relaxed – which is not exactly what one would expect from someone facing multiple graft cases at the Sandiganbayan.

The cases stemmed from Cunanan’s stint at the Technology Resource Center (TRC), a government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) attached to the Department of Science and Technology (DoST).

In 2013, TRC had been among five state firms singled out for possible abolition by the Governance Commission for Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG), in large part because of their role as implementing agencies of allegedly anomalous pork-barrel projects.

In the last quarter of 2013, President Benigno Aquino III, approved the abolition of Zamboanga del Norte College Rubber Estate Corporation (ZREC), the National Agribusiness Corporation (NABCOR), and the Philippine Forest Corporation (PFC). Left standing, however, are the National Livelihood Development Corporation (NLDC) and the firm once headed by Cunanan, TRC.

Yet while TRC lives, it does so in zombieland.

TRC, insiders told PCIJ, “is still open but on the way to closing shop.” A DOST Technical Working Group, they say, has set up “parameters on the manner of closing operations.”


Read, Part 4 of our report on “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy’:

* TRC in zombieland still, two years after pork scam

Until February this year, however, TRC has continued to offer livelihood training seminars, for fees of P1,815 (decorating balloons) to P4,269 (commercial bread-making) per person, including one held in Gerona, Tarlac on how to bake muffins and cookies.

On its Facebook page that links out to the DOST website, TRC this year has also offered training seminars on jewelry appraisal and pawnshop operation; accounting and record-keeping for small businesses, setting up a hardware/construction supply store, travel agency, bakery, silkscreen printing, retail store, beauty parlor, and other small business operations; and making Chinese dimsum, herbal soap and detergents, trendy balloons, processed meat, and doing tilapia culture, among others.

As the DOST’s corporate arm, TRC supports research and technology by providing investments in innovations and rolling out or marketing the products of these studies. But state auditors say that somewhere along the way TRC became a conduit for the flow of pork monies to fake nongovernment organizations (NGOs).

The Commission on Audit’s (COA) Special Audit Report on the disbursement of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or simply pork barrel, form 2007 to 2009 abounds with serious allegations against TRC.

According to COA, P2.44 billion worth of pork monies was transferred to TRC during the period, and that in turn, TRC transferred nearly the entire amount, P2.432 billion to bogus NGOs linked to Janet Lim-Napoles, the supposed pork barrel scam queen.

The projects, the COA report said, were endorsed by a total of 143 senators and congressmen, notably:

* Seven senators — Edgardo Angara, Jose ‘Jinggoy’ Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile, Gregorio ‘Gringo’ Honasan, Lito Lapid, Ralph Recto, Ramon ‘Bong’ Revilla. Of the seven, Revilla allotted the biggest amount of PDAF to TRC: P127.5 million.

* 136 members of the House of Representatives, including then Surigao del Sur 1st District Rep. Philip Pichay, who allotted P209.4 million of his PDAF to TRC.
From 2007 to 2009, said the COA report, TRC transferred the P2.432-billion pork funds it received to 39 NGOs.

Of these NGOs, eight had been organized by Napoles.

In total, the Napoles-linked NGOs got P478.64 million from TRC.

But COA said that the biggest payout from TRC to a single NGO went to Aaron Foundation Philippines Inc.: P476.41 million. – PCIJ, August 2015

‘Twas not just about pork & Napoles

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FIGHTING corruption has been one of the top priorities of President Benigno S. Aquino III. Or so he claims. He bannered the slogan “kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” during the 2010 presidential campaign.

He promised to be the “most-determined fighter of corruption” in his Social Contract with the Filipino People, the Aquino administration’s platform until 2016.

He also made good governance a cornerstone in the current Philippine Development Plan, promising to curb corruption by intensifying government efforts at detection and prevention as well as resolving pending corruption cases with dispatch.

Read, Part 3 of our series on ‘Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy’:

* Lean harvest for ‘Daang Matuwid’- 24 solons in DOJ pork complaints, free pass for 94 more in COA list?

* What they told PCIJ

* What they told COA

Yet barely a year before Aquino’s term ends, the Aquino administration seems to be falling far, far behind in fulfilling such pledges. Indeed, one of the starkest examples of its weak response to corruption is its action – or lack thereof – on the controversial cases involving pork-barrel monies.

In fact, rather than being proactive in pursuing those involved in the pork-barrel scam that included government agencies, lawmakers, and bogus nongovernment organizations, the Aquino administration appears to have been springing into action only after dogged media coverage on the controversy.

And when it does act, those it hales into court are mostly small fry – career civil servants from the middle level down. Interestingly, too, most of the big-fish exceptions belong to the political opposition.

Speed, volume, focus, fairness – a campaign blind to political color or friendship – these seem to be in short supply when it comes to Aquino’s anti-corruption drive. Not surprisingly, it is hard to find enough reason to assert that the present administration has conducted a truly, fully vigorous war against corruption.

For instance:

* The PDAF scam story broke in the Philippine Daily Inquirer involving eight NGOs connected with businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles in July 2013, and the Commission on Audit (COA) released its special audit report on the abuse and misuse of pork from 2007 to 2009 in August 2013.

A month later, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed its first plunder and graft complaint against three opposition senators and five former legislators, and two months later, its second complaint against seven more former legislators.

But it was only on Aug. 7, 2015, or 24 months later, when DOJ filed its third complaint against a senator and eight other incumbent and former legislators. Curiously, all three complaints were founded on practically the same sets of documentary evidence and testimonies of whistleblowers.

* In its three complaints, the DOJ has named more than 100 respondents, including only 24 legislators mostly from the political opposition – four senators and 20 former and incumbent members of the House of Representatives. The Ombudsman has filed charges against three senators and five former congressmen in the Sandiganbayan, indicted a few more, but has yet to finish its case build-up against the rest of the lawmakers named in the three DOJ complaints.

The 24 legislators in the DOJ list make up just a fifth of the 118 legislators that COA said implemented “highly irregular” PDAF projects in tandem with questionable NGOs from 2007 to 2009.

This, in the five-year life of “Daang Matuwid” is by no measure an abundant harvest and, according to both critics and allies of the administration, an apparent case of “selective investigation” or “selective justice” on the part of the DOJ and the administration. To this day though, the Ombudsman’s Field Investigation Office continues to gather documentary and testimonial evidence against the other legislators named in the COA report.

• The COA report offered more than enough documentary and testimonial evidence on the modus operandi of legislators, implementing agencies, contractors, and NGOs, and how they corrupt the flow of public funds. Too, it proposed a menu of corrective measures and reforms that could have been instituted in agencies that have been used as pork funds conduits. The President had abolished pork barrel under the PDAF system, but in its stead allowed the continued flow of monies to bankroll projects endorsed by legislators, in the budgets of executive agencies.

• In a series, more COA annual audit reports followed for the years 2012 and 2013, this time on the same patterns of pork abuse and misuse under the Aquino administration. As with the first report, hardly word, comment, action, or promise of reform was heard from the President about what the government could do better to curb corruption.

To be sure, the problem is corruption is a problem bigger in scope and breadth than mere saber rattling against it could solve.

For one, Napoles is just one of the so-called “service providers” who have supposedly been colluding with lawmakers and officials of various state agencies to pocket funds meant for development projects. Lawyers, prosecutors, and civil servants in the agencies tainted with the corruption in pork say there are six to nine more Napoles-like “service providers.” Thus, the three batches of PDAF complaints that focused only on Napoles NGOs would hardly scratch the surface of this multi-billion-peso scam.

For another, PDAF was just one of the multiple lump-sum funds that have been raided, and continue to be raided, by Napoles and Napoles-like service providers and their fake NGOs. Audit reports documenting the abuse and misuse of these funds have not received appropriate action from the President or his Cabinet secretaries.

For a third, filing suit against a few big fish and a multitude of small fry may not at all trigger the right results and behavior among civil servants. Those in the lower ranks are bearing the heaviest punishment for corruption, even as their bosses and the politicians who authored the misdeeds have managed to fly out of the country, hide in opulent surroundings, and escape prosecution. – PCIJ, August 2015

Pork, parties, Binay, breaking bad

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AS THINGS stand, it looks like the ruling coalition led by the Liberal Party (LP) of President Benigno S. Aquino III has more members implicated in the pork-barrel scandal than parties belonging to the opposition.

Of the 114 legislators who were allegedly involved in anomalous pork projects in 2007 to 2009, 38 now belong to the administration coalition.

About 33 of the 114 belong to the opposition parties while the rest are either already dead or have unknown political affiliations.

But then again, there is Vice President Jejomar C. Binay, who had also cornered big slices of pork. For three years in a row, 2011, 2012, and 2013, Binay had received a hefty P200-million slice of pork annually.

He had vowed to spend it on his project lists: scholarship for indigent students, medical assistance for the poor, and the construction of 200 senior citizen centers in as many towns and cities of the country.

Whether he spent it well is a question that state auditors have raised. In its annual agency reports on the Office of the Vice President (OVP) for 2012 and 2013, the Commission on Audit (COA) found reason to conclude that Binay’s pork had turned bad.

Read Part 2 of PCIJ’s report, “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy”:

* Solons in pork scam list: 38 LP, 33 UNA, 11 dead
* Binay’s pork: Breaking bad

To be sure, with each election in this country, the political landscape shifts, twists, and turns. As such, classifying the political leanings of the legislators who may or may not have benefited from pork-barrel projects is tricky.

Binay, who won as the opposition candidate for vice president, had wished for pork in a letter to President Benigno S. Aquino III in late 2010.

Because they were friends once before, Binay’s wish was granted, albeit in a manner that broke conventions. Aquino’s allies in Congress, including then Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile had lobbied to give BInay pork, while Senator Franklin Drilon, Liberal Party vice chairman and then Senate Committee on Finance chair, had endorsed it.

In Enrile’s mind, as the nation’s “No. 2 Man,” Binay “deserves to get his pork” because “he represents government… the sovereign people… the Republic of the Philippines next to the President.”

“In other words,” Enrile said, “we are not a monarchy system but he’s in effect in the position of a crown prince.”

But not everyone could be a “crown prince” like Binay. Many others thus decided to just jump ship to the LP camp, the political party in power after 2010.

Of the 114 names revealed in both the records of the whistleblowers and government agencies, only seven lawmakers had been originally allied with LP.

Many of the others had supported the Lakas political party of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Upon Aquino’s assumption to office in 2010, however, at least six of these pro-Arroyo lawmakers became LP converts.

More members of the Lakas-led administration coalition under Arroyo that later became the opposition under Aquino – 25 in all – shifted alliance in 2013. – PCIJ, August 2015

Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy: Kahindik-hindik, unconscionable

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TODAY we start running a series of PCIJ reports on the unyielding saga of pork and corruption, seemingly the eternal scourge of government and politics in the Philippines.

On Nov.19, 2013, the Supreme Court, voting 14-0 with one abstention, declared “the entire 2013 PDAF Article” and all legal provisions behind its prior incarnations – Countrywide Development Fund and Congressional Initiatives Allocation – to be unconstitutional.

It noted that the pork system “authorized lawmakers, individually or through committees, to intervene, assume or participate in any of the various post-enactment stages of the budget execution, such as project identification, modification and revision of project identification, fund release, and/or fund realignment.”

But from the reports of the Commission on Audit (COA) on agencies riddled with pork, and various people and paper sources, the story of the continuing abuse and misuse of pork and other lump-sum funds emerges.

It lingered on even during the first half of the “Daang Matuwid” administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III from 2011 to 2013.

And despite the high court’s temporary restraining order on pork disbursement from Sept.10, 2013, some agencies and legislators continued to dispense it, while many others have yet to return to the Treasury multimillion pesos of unutilized pork monies allotted in their 2012 and 2013 budgets.

“Kahindik-hindik” or horrible in English, was how then COA Chairperson Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan described the corruption in pork that her team of 18 COA Special Audits Office staff and a Technical Audit specialist uncovered when they scrutinized pork-barrel projects supposedly implemented from 2007 to 2009.

Fresh COA reports on the agencies that implemented pork projects during the first half of the Aquino administration do not present a pretty picture, either. In one, state auditors chose a searing description for what has been going on: “unconscionable” – or walang awa in Filipino.

COA’s Circular 2012-003 defines “unconscionable expenditures” as those that are “unreasonable and immoderate, and which no man in his right sense would make, nor a fair and honest man would accept as reasonable, and those incurred in violation of ethical and moral standards.”

For this series of reports, a seven-person team of PCIJ writers, content producers, and platform staff reviewed, sorted, and analyzed a volume of data from the agencies linked to the Napoles pork-barrel scam; the files of whistleblower Benhur Luy; the pleadings submitted to the Sandiganbayan; COA audit reports; the corporate records of some contractors behind pork-funded projects; and the political history of administration and opposition legislators who had been linked to the corruption in pork.

Too, the PCIJ sent letters to 20 lawmakers implicated in the pork-barrel cases to secure their side, and conducted interviews with relevant sources from the Department of Justice and other executive agencies, the Ombudsman, and COA, as well as with the lawyers and some of the respondents in the cases pending before the Sandiganbayan. - PCIJ, August 2015

PNoy’s promises still ‘in progress’

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By Rowena F. Caronan

FIVE YEARS AGO, when President Benigno S. Aquino III delivered his first State of the Nation Address (SONA), he made specific policy promises on economic reforms and job creation – on top of his overall promise of change: “Daang Matuwid” and “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.”

Five years hence, Aquino’s SONA promises and those laid down in the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) for 2010-2016 are still a work in progress. In all of the targets he has sworn to achieve, he is falling behind the natural deadline of his presidency that comes on June 30, 2016.

The Aquino government has secured credit ratigs upgrade for achieving record economic growth yet still, that growth has yet to turn inclusive and trigger jobs of sufficient quality and quantity for the Filipino poor.

Interviewed on the ABS-CBN News Channel, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan justified that no country or political administration has so far eliminated poverty and unemployment.

The promises he made

In his 2010 SONA, Aquino laid out his blueprint for job creation by boosting growth in the industry and streamlining business processes.

A year later, through his social contract, Aquino promised a government that prioritizes jobs that empowers Filipinos and provide them with opportunities to rise above poverty. He also said his government would create jobs at home so working abroad will be a choice rather than necessity. He promised to prioritize welfare and protection of those who choose overseas work.

More specifically, the Aquino administration’s PDP sought to reduce the number of poor Filipinos to 18 percent of the population, maintain an average economic growth of at least 7.5 percent annually, generate employment of one million per year, and reduce the unemployment rate to 6.5 percent by the end of his term in 2016.

What he has achieved so far

From 2011 to 2014, Aquino had boasted in his SONA credit ratings upgrades, and record runs of the stock market as evidence of a strong economy. This meant, he had explained, that the government could borrow funds for programs and projects at lower interest rates and more business would be attracted to invest in the country.

In his 2011 and 2012 SONAs, Aquino said his government had delivered on reducing the number of unemployed Filipinos. He said, “Is it not an apt time for us to dream of a day where any Filipino who wishes to work can find a job?”

In his 2013 SONA, Aquino reported additional jobs created in the BPO (business processing outsourcing) sector. He said: “Back in the year 2000, only 5,000 people were employed in this industry. Fast forward to 2011: 638,000 people are employed by BPOs, and the industry has contributed 11 billion dollars to our economy.”

In 2014, Aquino praised Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz for adopting better labor resolution practices that helped reduce the number of labor strikes to less than 10 during that year.

He said: “Consider this: According to the National Conciliation and Mediation Board, since 2010, the number of strikes per year has been limited to less than ten. This is the positive result of the Department of Labor and Employment’s Single entry Approach, or SEnA, through which filed labor cases go through a 30-day conciliation-mediation period. The good news: out of 115 notices of strike and lockout in 2013, only one pushed through. This is the lowest number of strikes in the history of DOLE.”

The Aquino Presidency: Promises vs. Results

1. Reduce the number of poor Filipinos to 18 percent by 2016 – In progress

The poverty incidence among Filipinos (25.8 percent) in the first quarter of 2014 is still far from the target of 18 percent by 2016. In fact, this estimate by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) shows an increase from the 24.6 percent in the same period last year.

PSA noted that the 2013 poverty estimate had been revised for consistency with the 2014 poverty estimates, which was based on the 2014 Annual Poverty Indicators Survey and did not include sample households from Batanes and Leyte.

2. Sustain economic growth of at least 7 percent for the five-year period – In progress

The annual growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) averaged 6.3 percent from 2010 to 2014. The only time that the government has met its target of at least 7 percent annual GDP growth rate was in 2013.

In the first quarter of 2015, growth of the domestic economy slowed down to 5.2 from 5.6 percent in the same period last year.

In a statement, Balisacan explained that the “slower-than-programmed pace of public spending, particularly the decline in public construction” slowed the growth of the economy. Balisacan, however, said that the economy is expected to grow faster in the remaining quarters.

3. Increase the annual average output of different sectors for the five-year period: agriculture, fishery and forestry (2.5 percent to 3.5 percent), industry (9.3 percent to 10.3 percent), services (7.2 percent to 8.1 percent) – In progress

But while the government managed to increase the share of industry to the economic growth, it failed to do the same for the services, and agriculture and fishery sectors, which represent the poorest sectors.

Annual Gross Value Added (GVA) in industry grew by 8 percent on average from 2011 to 2013. But the agriculture, fishery, and forestry sectors grew only by 2 percent on average from 2010 to 2014.

According to the 2014 Socioeconomic Report of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the agriculture and fishery sectors had to grow “by an average of 10.8 percent for the remaining period (2015-2016) to achieve the lower-end target.”

Meanwhile, the government met its target for the services sector when it hit a 7.41-percent increase in 2012. But the services sector grew only by 6.62 percent on average from 2011 to 2014. In the first quarter of 2015, it grew by 5.6 percent compared with the same period last year.

4. Create a resilient external sector by increasing the share of the export industry to 51.6 percent of the economic growth and the value of merchandise exports to US$109.4 billion by 2016 – In progress

On average, exports represent 29.6 percent of the Nominal Gross Domestic Product from 2011 to 2014. The lowest rates were recorded in 2013 and 2014 at 28 percent and 28.7 percent, respectively.

Moreover, sales receipts from merchandise exports had continued to grow below the target. In 2014, total merchandise exports were valued at $61.8 billion or more than $7 billion short of the downscaled target.

5. Generate employment of one million annually and reduce the unemployment rate as low as 6.8 percent by 2016 – In progress

As of April 2015, the unemployment rate currently stands at 6.4 percent or above the government’s target. In 2014, the annual unemployment rate was estimated at 6.8 percent.

However, the employment generation from 2011 to 2014 had fall short of the target. Employment expanded from 36 million in 2010 to 38.7 million in 2014, with an average increase of 654,000. The 1-million annual target was reached only in 2011; employment generation dropped to about 500,000 in the following years.

According to Ibon Foundation, “comparable official figures for April 2015 clearly show the quality of work deteriorating.”

“The number of contractual and other workers in insecure and poorly-paid work has been increasing in the last two years. As of April 2015, 15.5 million or 40 percent of employed Filipinos were in just part-time work with likely very low pay and scant benefits.” – PCIJ, July 27, 2015