ABOLISHING the controversial Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) by Congress without requiring it to explain in writing what it did to the more than 800 corporations, subsidiaries and other suspected ill-gotten wealth worth billions or perhaps trillions of pesos in today’s value might be interpreted as a cover-up.
The Constitution, in Section 1, Article XI, commands that: “Public officers and employees must at all times be accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives.”
This is an absolute constitutional order that Congress, the branch that represents the will of the people, and other agencies, must comply and not offer excuses.
On May 15 the House voted 162-10 to pass House Bill 7376 on third and final reading to abolish the PCGG. The bill will then be forwarded to the Senate and the Office of the President for enactment into law.
Between February 28, 1986, and July 26, 1987, the last day of former President Corazon C. Aquino’s revolutionary government and beyond, more assets, including cash, jewelry, treasury bills, shares of stocks, trust funds, bearer certificates, real-estate properties, aircraft, vessels, buildings, condominiums, apartments, houses, newspapers, radio and TV stations, were quietly sequestered, confiscated and surrendered.
Subsequently, many of these assets either mysteriously disappeared or were taken over by Mrs. Aquino’s own relatives, friends and cronies. Others were transferred to the Asset Privatization Trust.
Even more reprehensible, as detailed in the best-selling book, Greed & Betrayal, republished in 2011 by Amazon, one of the world’s largest publishing houses and authored by this writer, was the wholesale granting by the Aquino regime of immunity from civil and criminal prosecutions to scores of Marcos friends and cronies who should otherwise have been thoroughly investigated and indicted.
Because of this, the PCGG earned the sobriquet “Pestilential Combination of Graft and Greed,” as some of those empowered by the Aquino government to sequester the alleged ill-gotten wealth of Marcos and his cronies transformed themselves, in just a few years, from virtual paupers, after emerging from their hideouts in the United States and other places with empty suitcases, to veritable taipans and arrogant politicians, complete with mansions, expensive cars and millions of pesos in bank accounts.
Worse, while the number of poverty-stricken people increased by the day, their proud and bejeweled wives shamelessly flaunted their newly acquired wealth and often graced the front and society pages of the country’s newspapers and TV channels.
The chairmanship of the PCGG in President Aquino’s time had changed hands five times—from former Senate President Jovito R. Salonga, to Ramon A. Diaz, to Adolf S. Azcuna, to Mateo T. Caparas, and to David M. Castro.
And yet, not one of them and President Aquino had rendered to the nation a complete individual accounting of the purloined assets.
As of today, the PCGG, exactly 32 years after its creation, is still enmeshed in a web of legal controversies, onerous compromise deals and accusations of graft and corruption.
The quasi-judicial body, with vast powers to sequester, issues summonses and grants immunity from prosecution. It was also mandated to prevent concealment, destruction and dissipation of assets, investigate cases of corruption and adopt safeguards to ensure that the plunder shall not be repeated in succeeding administrations.
To ensure success, the Aquino regime initially allotted P649 million for its recovery efforts, set up offices here and abroad, employed more than 1,500 foreign and local lawyers, accountants, intelligence agents, fiscal agents and asset monitors, and gave the PCGG unhampered access to all branches of government.
But what happened?
In six years ending June 30, 1992, the PCGG recovered only P4,216,654,434.09 in cash, less than P10 billion in kind and $356 million in Swiss bank pledges out of the $10 billion the Aquino government claimed Marcos, his relatives, friends and cronies had plundered in 20 years.
Despite the indispensable body of evidence, the availability of state witnesses and its awesome investigative and prosecutory powers, the Aquino regime failed to get a final conviction for any of the Marcoses and their more than 400 codefendants.
Worse, there was no effort on the part of the Aquino administration to correct this brazen irregularity as the Sandiganbayan began lifting the writs of sequestration on some multibillion-peso corporations and other assets for failure to implead them before the constitutional deadline and other violations such as the issuance of writs of sequestration on the signature of just one commissioner.
Strangely, many of these corporations and conglomerates took the Aquino administration a record time of one day, just one day, to investigate and settle the assets of billionaire and confessed Marcos crony and front man Jose Yao Campos.
The hasty settlement of the 99 corporations and subsidiaries worth billions of pesos in Vancouver, Canada, saw the PCGG inordinately acting as investigator, prosecutor and judge, rolled into one.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.