i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
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T H E V I C E P R E S I D E N T<br />
of some of their companies’ histories,<br />
the Lopezes are perceived<br />
by many as having monopolistic<br />
tendencies and prone to ruthless<br />
business tactics.<br />
Numerous focus-group discussions<br />
conducted by the TV<br />
industry show that the viewing<br />
public perceives the Lopezes<br />
to be using ABS-CBN to further<br />
their interests. The question<br />
many Filipinos have now is<br />
this: Would they likewise use de<br />
Castro <strong>for</strong> their own ends if and<br />
when he becomes president?<br />
The group Freedom From<br />
Debt Coalition (FDC) says the<br />
Lopezes already have done that<br />
with the vice president. They say<br />
that President Arroyo, through<br />
de Castro, allowed the bailout of<br />
the Lopezes’ beleaguered Maynilad<br />
Water company by allowing<br />
the government water agency<br />
Metropolitan Waterworks and<br />
Sewerage System (MWSS) to<br />
shoulder some of the Lopez<br />
company’s debts.<br />
Aside from this, the government<br />
allowed not only Maynilad<br />
Water to charge higher rates, but<br />
also let the Lopezes’s Manila<br />
Electric Company (Meralco) do<br />
the same.<br />
But Chavez insists, “<strong>No</strong>li<br />
will never compromise or sacrifice<br />
the national interest to big<br />
business.” The vice president,<br />
says Chavez, understands these<br />
things and is aware of the<br />
country’s political and economic<br />
history and the role cronyism<br />
played in the past.<br />
DE CASTRO’S INNER<br />
CIRCLE<br />
Friends like Recto are also trying<br />
to correct that impression. Recto<br />
says de Castro isn’t the type “to<br />
favor anyone….He understands<br />
that <strong>for</strong> business it’s leveling the<br />
playing field (that’s important).<br />
He understands (the need <strong>for</strong>)<br />
equal protection of the law.<br />
Simple naman ‘yun di ba (It’s<br />
simple, isn’t it)?”<br />
Well, not really, at least not<br />
<strong>for</strong> de Castro. One of de Castro’s<br />
<strong>for</strong>mer media colleagues says<br />
that Eugenio ‘Gabby’ Lopez III,<br />
President of ABS-CBN Channel<br />
2, is the one person closest to<br />
de Castro, the person whose<br />
voice is the most often in the<br />
vice president’s ear, closer even<br />
than his friends in the so-called<br />
“Wednesday Group.”<br />
The Wednesday Group is de<br />
Castro’s political gang, made up<br />
of four other senators he struck<br />
a friendship with when he began<br />
his political career in 2001.<br />
They are <strong>for</strong>mer human-rights<br />
lawyer Joker Arroyo, businessmen<br />
Manuel ‘Manny’ Villar and<br />
Recto, and ex-student leader and<br />
lawyer Francis ‘Kiko’ Pangilinan.<br />
The group meets at least once a<br />
week to exchange political gossip,<br />
give each other advice, and,<br />
since June, help de Castro prepare<br />
<strong>for</strong> bigger things ahead.<br />
Recto describes how the<br />
group came together: “Joker<br />
became somewhat of a Yoda—<br />
considering his age and experience,<br />
he’s the eldest in the<br />
group. Manny and <strong>No</strong>li are of<br />
the same age. Me and Kiko are<br />
of the same age. Joker, Manny,<br />
and I all came from the Ninth<br />
Congress so we’ve been together<br />
since 1992. <strong>No</strong>li was a neophyte<br />
as well. We had good rapport in<br />
the session hall.”<br />
But de Castro’s <strong>for</strong>mer media<br />
co-worker describe them this<br />
way: “Ralph and Kiko are the<br />
outer flank, Manny and Joker are<br />
the inner circle, and right beside<br />
<strong>No</strong>li is Gabby Lopez.”<br />
A “PROBLEMATIC”<br />
FRIEND<br />
De Castro, however, has friends<br />
of his own outside the realm of<br />
politics and big business, and<br />
one of them actually put him in<br />
a bad light.<br />
When de Castro was named<br />
head of the Housing and Urban<br />
Development Coordinating<br />
Council (HUDCC) and given<br />
the Housing portfolio after becoming<br />
vice president last year,<br />
he brought with him his friend<br />
Celso de los Angeles.<br />
In September 2004, de los<br />
Angeles was appointed chairman<br />
of the National Home Mortgage<br />
Corporation (NHMFC), the<br />
agency that provides community<br />
mortgage programs to urban<br />
poor groups. De los Angeles<br />
didn’t last a year in office. He<br />
filed sick leave prior in mid-July,<br />
to going on terminal leave.<br />
<strong>No</strong>ngovernmental organizations<br />
in the housing sector say<br />
that the few months that de los<br />
Angeles headed the agency was<br />
a time of “flagrant and brazen<br />
graft and corruption” at the<br />
NHMFC. By the last few weeks<br />
of de los Angeles’s term, these<br />
NGOs were asking President<br />
Arroyo to kick him out.<br />
“We believe that one impediment<br />
in your housing program<br />
<strong>for</strong> the poor is Mr. Celso de los<br />
A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS<br />
FRIENDS. The vice president,<br />
shown here during his days<br />
as a radio broadcaster, has<br />
strong links with the Lopez<br />
family which owns ABS-CBN.<br />
Angeles,” said the <strong>Philippine</strong><br />
Undertaking <strong>for</strong> Social Housing<br />
and other groups working in the<br />
area of Community Mortgage<br />
Program (CMP), in a paid print<br />
advertisement addressed to President<br />
Arroyo on July 1, <strong>2005</strong>. “We<br />
urge you to remove him from<br />
office because he is not morally<br />
fit to be in government.”<br />
Their reasons had nothing<br />
to do with the fact that de los<br />
Angeles got into a very public<br />
fight with TV starlet Regine<br />
Tolentino over the P8 million<br />
worth of jewelry he supposedly<br />
gave her. Neither did they have<br />
anything to do with the fact that<br />
Ilocos Sur Governor Luis ‘Chavit’<br />
Singson, in his testimony during<br />
the impeachment trial of <strong>for</strong>mer<br />
President Joseph Estrada, described<br />
de los Angeles as “isang<br />
jueteng operator din noong araw<br />
(someone who used to be a<br />
jueteng operator).”<br />
INSTITUTIONALIZING<br />
PATRONAGE<br />
What the housing NGOs had<br />
protested was the culture of<br />
palakasan<br />
and alleged increased<br />
incidence of extortion that prevailed<br />
at the NHMFC during de<br />
los Angeles’s watch. A turning<br />
point in the campaign against<br />
de los Angeles was the arrest of<br />
Nestor Favila, head of the Task<br />
Force Community Mortgage Program,<br />
on June 24, <strong>2005</strong>.<br />
Favila was caught in an entrapment<br />
operation accepting<br />
P85,000. The sting operation had<br />
been prompted by several complaints<br />
against Favila <strong>for</strong> allegedly<br />
extorting from landowners<br />
selling land to the NHMFC.<br />
On top of this, say organizers<br />
of the National CMP Congress,<br />
NHMFC officials encouraged<br />
urban poor residents’ associations<br />
to seek the intercession of<br />
congressmen, senators, and local<br />
officials in following up their<br />
community mortgage programs.<br />
The result: the institutionalization<br />
of patronage politics in the<br />
housing sector.<br />
<strong>No</strong>body in de Castro’s circle of<br />
close advisers seems to know anything—or<br />
wants to talk—about his<br />
relationship with de los Angeles.<br />
Recto says he never heard of de<br />
los Angeles be<strong>for</strong>e, while Chavez<br />
would only say that de los Angeles<br />
was someone whom his staff saw<br />
in the 2004 campaign sorties twice<br />
or thrice. Yet he is apparently<br />
close enough <strong>for</strong> de Castro to<br />
have endorsed as head of a crucial<br />
government agency.<br />
But de los Angeles did not<br />
seem that indispensable to the<br />
vice president. To de Castro’s<br />
credit, says Soliman, the vice<br />
president immediately took heed<br />
when told of reports of controversies<br />
de los Angeles found<br />
himself in. “Alisin na natin kung<br />
ganun (In that case, let’s take<br />
him out of that post),” Soliman<br />
quotes de Castro saying.<br />
Hopefully, de Castro has no<br />
more friends like de los Angeles<br />
and Lopez waiting <strong>for</strong> him to<br />
be president. For sure, to most<br />
Filipinos, that would hardly be<br />
a “plus-plus.”<br />
18 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT