MikeLigalig.com

CAMPAIGN FINANCE OFFICE IN DRIFT, HEADLESS

P334M from only 13 donors
funded Duterte’s presidency

by Karol Ilagan and Malou Mangahas
MONDAY, DECEMBER 5TH, 2016



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A second tier of 18 other donors who donated from P1 million to P3.5 million delivered an additional P31.66 million, or eight percent more, to Duterte’s campaign.

No doubt, this is far from how Duterte and his followers had described his campaign team: That the masses who could afford to donate only “Emilio Aguinaldo” money or five-peso coins would be the ones sending him to Malacañang.

By the data he enrolled in his SOCE, only 13 extremely wealthy individuals and 18 other million-peso donors whose companies do business with the government or engage in utilities, mining, and the exploitation of natural resources bankrolled Duterte’s rise to power.

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CFO headless, in drift

PCIJ curated, digitized, and reviewed Duterte’s SOCE, as well as those that the other candidates for president, vice president, and senator in the May 2016 elections have filed with Comelec. Altogether, these documents, including advertising contracts, broadcast logs, and various SOCE forms, came up to about 12 gigabytes of data. PCIJ also secured records from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for some of the companies of some of the campaign contributors, and sent letter requests to the candidates and their donors for comment and clarification.

The PCIJ audit reveals that Duterte and some other candidates may have some explaining to do with Comelec for their failure to disclose the true identities of their donors, for overspending, for failure to file complete and correct SOCEs, or even for not filing their SOCEs within deadline of one month after the May 9, 2016 elections.

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Court case drags

In July, Duterte’s political party, the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan or PDP-Laban asked the Supreme Court to declare the Comelec’s decision “illegal, prohibited, and void,” saying the deadline extension was made to “accommodate” the then ruling Liberal Party.

The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the matter. A court official told PCIJ that the justices are not likely to deliberate and rule on the case soon, on account of other pending contentious cases and the usual holiday downtime.

Should the court rule against Comelec, at least 69 winning candidates and 5,836 losing candidates for national and local positions in the May 2016 elections could face penalties or sanctions under Comelec’s campaign-finance rules. If it should rule for Comelec, however, the court is likely to court the disfavor of the PDP-Laban party of President Duterte.

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Still, Mazna Lutchavez, Attorney IV at the Comelec CFO, is firm in saying that a careful reading of the poll body’s rules suggests that Duterte’s donors are covered by the prohibition on giving donations, if they are engaged in mining, public utilities, and government contracts.

This is because, she says, the law specifically cites not only juridical persons or companies, but natural persons, too. She adds that the provision citing direct and indirect involvement also pertains to the company owner.

Then again, Lutchavez allows that the legal doctrine that separates a person from a company offers a loophole that may subject the election rule to different interpretations. For instance, says another election lawyer, a campaign donor engaged in mining, could say as a defense that he owns a mining firm but it is his company that engaged in a mining activity – not him.

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Donors from Davao

Among Duterte’s biggest donors are those whose companies do business with the government. These include Duterte’s top donor, Davao del Norte Rep. Antonio ‘Tony Boy’ R. Floirendo Jr., who contributed P75 million in cash to Duterte and another P25 million to the President’s party, PDP-Laban.

Floirendo’s late father was the founder of Anflo Management and Investment Corporation (Anflocor), which oversees at least 11 businesses engaged in agriculture, trading, realty, hotel and restaurant services, financing, and others. Today Tony Boy Floirendo is one of Anflocor’s major stockholders.

Anflocor’s flagship company is Tagum Agricultural Development Company Inc. (TADECO), one of the highest-yielding banana plantations in the world. TADECO has a long-term joint venture agreement with the Bureau of Corrections, in which inmates of the Davao Penal Colony work at its banana plantations. The joint venture agreement between TADECO and BuCor was renewed for another 25 years in 2004.

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Uy is a stockholder in several companies, including DIMDI Centre Inc. and DIMDI Builders Center Inc., two government suppliers.

From January 2013 to October 2016, DIMDI Centre and DIMDI Builders Center had been awarded with government contracts worth a total of P2.7 million, PhilGEPS data show. Both companies are also on PhilGEPS’ list of registered suppliers as of Oct. 7, 2016.

DIMDI Centre and DIMDI Builders are both engaged in merchandising. They have supplied photocopying machines, air-conditioning units, television sets, and other appliances to various government offices in Davao. Among these are the regional offices of the Department of Agrarian Reform, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, Department of Science and Technology, Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, and the City of Davao.

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In business with DU30

Uy and President Duterte, along with Lorenzo A. Te Jr., Azucena Angbue, Jan S. Ced, Eugenio O. Ced, Divino M. Tan II, Danilo D. Tan, and Jesus Y. Tan, are also stockholders of Honda Cars General Santos Inc.

Uy, Duterte, and Te are incorporators as well of Poeng Yue Foundation, along with James S. Gaisano, Josue G. Tesado Sr., Johnny Lee Ng, and Samuel G. Afdal.

Like Uy, Davao City businessman Te had given P30 million to Duterte’s campaign.

“Friend” in Mandarin, Poeng Yue was formed by Duterte and his business partners in 2012 to “extend assistance, financial or otherwise, to cancer patients with special focus on children suffering from said disease.”

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Government contractors

But what about campaign donors who have companies that have business with government? Aside from contributions from Davao-based businessmen, the Duterte campaign had also accepted donations from those like Felix R. Ang, whose company later landed a deal with a state agency.

Ang donated P10 million to the Duterte campaign. He is an incorporator, stockholder, and chairman of Cats Asian Cars, which bagged a P1.24-million contract with the Social Security System for the supply and delivery of one brand new sedan in October 2016.

Yet another Duterte campaign contributor, Marcelino C. Mendoza, is president and stockholder of MGS Construction, which appears in PhilGEPS list of registered suppliers.

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According to DPWH’s online registry of awarded contracts, Pragmatic has won at least three contracts altogether worth P64.75 million from the DPWH Cebu City Engineering District Office from 2014 to the present. One was worth P38.06 million, for the widening of the Canduman-Cebu North Road from May 4, 2015 to March 11, 2016; another was valued at P18.33 million, for the widening of the Canduman North Road-Mandaue City from Feb. 5, 2014 to Oct. 18, 2016; and a third, P8.36 million, for the concreting of J. Luna Avenue-Cardinal Rosales Intersection from March 3, 2015 to March 3, 2017.

From 2001 to 2014, Pragmatic was also awarded P48.1 million worth of government contracts, almost all located in Cebu, according to PhilGEPS and DPWH databases.

The firm had also donated P280,000 in cash to the Bagumbayan-VNP party in the 2013 elections, according to PCIJ’s SOCE database.

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Public utility

Then there are brothers Tomas and Nicasio I. Alcantara, who contributed a total of P30 million. Tomas and Nicasio are stockholders of Alsons Development and Investment Corporation and several other businesses.

Tomas is chairman and president of the Alsons Power Group, which is composed of power generation facilities across Mindanao. According to its website, Alsons Power Group operates three diesel-power facilities, one each in Alabel in Sarangani, Zamboanga City, and Iligan City. In April 2016, the group’s first coal-fired power plant located in Maasim, Sarangani started commercial operations.

Tomas is No. 41 on the 2016 Forbes list of the 50 richest Filipinos. The Alcantara family had also been included in previous Forbes lists of richest Filipinos.

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Donors & appointees

Dominguez is now Finance Secretary in the Duterte administration. Aside from him, other Duterte campaign donors have wound up in government themselves.

For instance, Dennis A. Uy of Davao City was named presidential adviser for sports last July. The president and chief executive officer of Phoenix Petroleum, Uy and his wife Cherylyn gave a total of P31 million in cash to the Duterte campaign. Cherylyn also gave P5 million to PDP-Laban.

Similarly, Salvador Medialdea and wife Ma. Bertola donated a total of P1.5 million to Duterte. Medialdea is now Executive Secretary.

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Legal but not right?

“It’s not legally prohibited,” lawyer Rona Ann V. Caritos, executive director of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), says of the appointment of campaign donors to government posts. “But all these things that are not prohibited in law do not necessarily mean that they are right.”

Section 4 titled “Norms of Conduct of Public Officials and Employees” of Republic Act No. 6713 does say that every public official and employee shall observe professionalism, among others. This means they “shall endeavor to discourage wrong perceptions of their roles as dispensers or peddlers of undue patronage.”

But CSC’s Ronquillo — who also heads the Commission’s Office for Legal Affairs — says the President, being the appointing authority of his people, enjoys the widest latitude of discretion to appoint whoever he wants to positions. The appointments are actually subject to the President’s trust and confidence, he says. These people are confidential appointees — co-terminus with the chief executive — so it’s only natural for the president to choose people whom he trusts, Ronquillo says.

“Hindi ka naman mag-aappoint sa position na hindi mo kakilala (You will not appoint people you do not know),” he says. “You will appoint those you’re comfortable with because these are the people who will help you deliver the promises that you made during the campaign — to deliver the services that you want to deliver to the people.”

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And yet there are the likes of Senator Alan Peter S. Cayetano and former Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chairman Francis N. Tolentino, both of whom donated substantial amounts to Duterte but hold no appointed position at present. Cayetano’s and Tolentino’s donations were in the form of tandem advertisements worth P71.3 million and P3.15 million, respectively. Cayetano was Duterte’s running mate; he has since become a perennial presence in events attended by the President, including those abroad. He was said to be eyeing the top post at the Department of Justice, but this went to Duterte’s former law school classmate Vitaliano Aguirre II.

Caritos has a different bone to pick with Cayetano and Tolentino, however. She says that while no law is violated by elected and former officials donating to campaigns, there is a need to highlight the fact that they hold or held positions in which salaries would not go over half a million pesos per month.

Asks Caritos: “How can these individuals give those inordinate amounts to their fellow party members? Kahit hindi bawal, saan galing ang pera mo para makapag-donate ng ganyan (Even if it’s not breaking any law, where did you get the money to be able to donate that much)?”

— With research by Floreen Simon, Fern Felix, Vino Lucero, Davinci Maru, Ana Isabel Manalang, Steffi Sanchez, Jil Caro, and John Gabriel Agcaoili, PCIJ, December 2016

http://pcij.org/

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p.s.

ug naka hibawo pa ko nga sa kantidad nga one million pesos lamang, mapatik na ang ahong halangdon nga ngalan, mi tampo unta pod ko 

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