ANOTHER senator has joined the opposition to including telecommunications among the industries where alien equity ownership limits are to be eased, raising serious risks that foreign-owned entities in such a sensitive sector could compromise national and cyber security.
Interpellating Sen. Grace Poe who sponsored the amendatory bill for the 85-year-old Public Service Act, Sen. Richard Gordon said on Thursday “regulatory capture” is a reality in the Philippines, and it is not far-fetched to see some “Quislings” selling their country to a foreign ownership. “In our country there are many ‘buy-able’ people,” Gordon said, recalling how traitors in other countries sold their countries’ secrets, causing casualties.
“The bigger issue is national security if you favor foreign control,” Gordon said. Nonetheless, he clarified he was not singling out China as the sole threat, adding, the United States, a long-time ally, “could also spy” on the Philippines.
Gordon stressed, though, that he fully supports efforts to draw in more foreign direct investments, sharing Poe’s thesis that FDIs would help the pandemic-battered economy recover.
However, Gordon said—echoing Senators Panfilo Lacson and Risa Hontiveros earlier—the fact is that certain countries could use telecom businesses they control in order to work against the Philippines in its maritime disputes.
In the first round of interpellations, Lacson had warned that including telcos among those to be liberalized in terms of ownership could face a “constitutional challenge,” quoting minutes of the 1986 Constitutional Commission indicating the framers’ clear intent to consider telecommunications as a public utility to be covered by restrictive ownership provision. Hontiveros for her part said if China has aggressively breached Philippine rights on the West Philippine Sea, it’s not beyond it to use a telco it controls to undermine the country.
Gordon clarified he was only against including telecoms on the list for liberalization. He had no objections to considering the amendatory bill’s intent to clearly define public utilities, and thus exclude some sectors from the Constitution’s caps on foreign ownership.
Gordon acknowledged Poe’s argument that it seems short-sighted to refuse to open up the economy simply because the Philippine military has not been upgraded enough to adequately defend the country from security threats. Still, Gordon stressed, “we should not be rushing this” to give the defense sector time to boost its strength,
“Aren’t we allowing the fox to enter the henhouse so easily” by rushing? Gordon asked.
The amendatory bill to the Commonwealth-era Public Service Act is one of three economic measures certified urgent by the President, with sponsors arguing that critical industries with potential for drawing in key foreign investments should be freed from the constitutional restrictions by being taken out of the definition of “public utility.”