Leni Robredo’s presidential campaign is being dubbed as a people’s campaign. Her propagandists never fail to cite volunteerism as one of the campaign’s core values as they want the public to believe that there is a movement behind Robredo to be elected President on May 9. This is another illusion that Robredo’s campaign team has been selling since she announced her candidacy last October 2021.
The rise of civil society began in 1983 after the Aquino assassination. You had a cacophony of acronyms back then. There were more than twenty with a national scope and dozens more at the regional and local levels. This created the illusion that most Filipinos were for Marcos’ ouster.
Eventually, these groups formed the core of the Cory Aquino campaign during the snap election, in addition to the opposition party’s UNIDO had under its wing. You can just imagine the lobbying that went on after Marcos was ousted. Civil society carved a power base and wanted its share of the spoils.
Boo Chanco and other opposition spinmeisters are trying to make the public believe that the spirit of EDSA is alive again because of the Robredo campaign. It is the same old good versus evil narrative since a Marcos is running for President. It is also about Robredo not having enough financial resources to mount a campaign, or so they want us to believe. Never mind that in 2016, Robredo actually outspent Marcos.
But for this candidate, not only do people spend their own money to attend, they bring food to share with strangers who happen to be kindred spirits.
Visual artists are donating their services to paint giant murals on so many walls and design campaign materials. Music composers are composing songs and jingles for free.
Doctors and lawyers are donating their services so rallies become occasions to serve the needs of the masa. Ordinary people are donating materials, transport, and other services to help run rallies smoothly.
A poet has launched a book of poems for her. Alumni associations of leading colleges and universities are endorsing her. Also professional associations of doctors, engineers, nurses, former Cabinet members, retired generals.
Popular showbiz celebrities are giving her free endorsements and even hosting and participating in rallies. People are doing all these as if their lives depended on her winning the election.
How can one woman inspire such confidence, such trust and devotion from people normally politically apathetic? Even financial analysts noted this outpouring of support in their risk analysis.
What’s happening now started to happen in 1986, but was not sustained. We prematurely relaxed and gave our power back to the elite. We lost the sense of nationhood that was brightly shining only for a week.
So we are where we are now… back to square one.
The good news is, the sense of nation and love of country is back.
This time, people are going all out for the candidate who embodies their concern for good governance and has the track record to assure it.
People are investing time, money, and talent for what looks like, according to the polls, an impossible dream of winning.
And it won’t end on May 9. Whoever wins, the pink movement will become a strong civil society movement that will not be afraid to call out malfeasance in government.
For this election cycle, Robredo has spent P888M landing second after Isko Moreno who has spent P900M. Ping Lacson rounds out the top three with P848M spent. So where is the truth in the claim that Robredo is without financial backing in this campaign? Is she going to claim that the campaign donations she has received are all from Filipinos who believe in her brand of leadership?
Civil society transitioned to being non-governmental organizations or NGOs after Marcos’ ouster. They begain building up their power base by collecting from the political victors who saw them as tools for mass mobilization. This is how the leftist-militant movements grew as well as their European allies funneled monies into their organizations using grants. Thus began the lucrative scheme that was to be busted by the Napoles scandal. But before that, there was Code-NGO. The following is an excerpt from a Vera Files article:
After getting RCBC to buy the PEACe Bonds for P10.17 billion, Code-NGO immediately turned around and sold them to RCBC Capital for nearly P12 billion, making a profit of P1.83 billion.
Code-NGO then donated P1.34 billion of the profit to another nongovernment organization, the Peace and Equity Foundation (PEF), as an endowment, retained P149 million for itself, and paid the remaining P400 million as fees and commissions to its financial advisers.
Besides the 20 percent withholding tax, the bonds were exempted from capital gains tax in 2001.
With P1.93 billion in total assets by the end of 2010, PEF has extended over the last decade nearly P1 billion in grants and loans to antipoverty programs of other foundations and non-profit organizations, including Code-NGO. It lives off earnings from the P1.34 billion endowment fund as well as sources funds from groups such as the Catholic Organization for Relief and Development Aid of the Netherlands, United Nations Development Programme, World Health Organization and The Coca-Cola Foundation for the programs.
The country’s biggest nongovernmental organization, Code-NGO’s 2010 financial statements reflect total assets of P150.6 million, including a P147.9 million endowment fund it set up in December 2004.
Former National Treasurer Leonor Briones said she agrees with the government’s decision to impose taxes on the PEACe Bonds.
“Tax exemption should not have been granted in the first place. They were exempted because they were doing something for the poor. They were lending to the government for the poor. But where is the road to the poor? That’s not clear,” she said.
The government’s decision resurrects the accusations levelled by critics: that Code-NGO, which designed and proposed the bonds to the Department of Finance in 2001, profited at the expense of government and deprived it of revenue by lobbying for tax-exempt status. Now, critics say, the government is again on the losing end since it will be paying back the bonds at almost double the prevailing interest rates.
Interest rates on government bonds hover between 5 and 6 percent. A government securities expert said the BTr had on several occasions retired bonds bearing high interest rates before they mature to cut losses.
But more than this, VERA Files sources say, there is a subtle message in the Henares ruling: that the government of President Benigno Aquino III considers the PEACe Bonds deal highly irregular. The ruling stops short, though, of pinpointing criminal liability over the deal.
“The ruling has a deeper implication,” said economist Filomeno Sta. Ana, coordinator of the Action for Economic Reform, who has studied the PEACe Bonds issue extensively. “It’s a recognition that the tax exemption was irregular and was a mere ‘sweetener’ to make it more attractive to investors.”
Code-NGO, which was partly instrumental for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s rise to the presidency through the country’s second People Power revolution in 2001 and was headed by Corazon “Dinky” Soliman before she was appointed Social Welfare secretary in 2001, has repeatedly denied the accusations, and has maintained that the PEACe Bonds deal never violated any law and did not prejudice the government or the people, and that no one profited illegally from it.
“(T)he PEACe Bonds was a legitimate and legal transaction that has resulted to the creation of a substantial and sustained endowment fund, which has been managed responsibly and transparently and used for anti-poverty projects—benefiting poor Filipinos in the past nine years and in the years to come,” Code-NGO said in a position paper in November 2010.
But former government officials and others in the NGO community say the PEACe Bonds deal was immoral and unethical, even if it appeared to be legal. Soliman’s successor in Code-NGO was Maria Socorro Camacho-Reyes who actively pursued the PEACe Bonds deal.
Camacho-Reyes is the sister of Jose Isidro Camacho who, as then finance secretary, presided over all bond issuances. Camacho was appointed finance secretary in June 2011 and officially inhibited himself from the PEACE Bonds issuance only in September.
Soliman’s husband, Hector, was also the first corporate secretary of PEF, which managed the proceeds from the bonds.
The PEACe Bonds were 10-year treasury notes issued to raise funds for projects to alleviate poverty. For regular bonds, government would issue coupons that bond holders could redeem anytime within the maturity period. But the PEACe Bonds were designed as “zero coupon,” which meant that bond holders could only wait till the end of the 10-year period to get the returns. It was the first such bond offering by the BTr.
The BTr offered the bonds at an auction. Code-NGO was neither a bank nor a financial institution, had no billions in capital, and therefore was not qualified to bid. And so it entered into an agreement with RCBC, a GSED, to raise the funds for Code-NGO and bid in its behalf.
RCBC/Code-NGO’s bid was so low compared to other bidders, raising concerns that they might have known something the other bidders didn’t.
Senate hearings in 2002 and 2010 and various reports show that as early as Feb. 20, 2001, Code-NGO was already brainstorming the deal with its financial advisers, Red Mayo of Capital Advisors for Private Enterprise Expansion (Capex) Inc, and Bobby Guevarra and Juan Victor Tanjuatco of SEED Capital Ventures. At the time, Arroyo had been in power for exactly a month, and Jose Isidro Camacho had not even been appointed finance secretary.
What followed were months of intense lobbying by Code-NGO leaders, including Danilo Songco, former executive director of Code-NGO who was at that time sitting as member of the board of the Development Bank of the Philippines.
Note that the Vera Files article specifies that P400M was paid in commissions and fees by Code-NGO its “financial advisers.” Your guess is as good as mine as who these advisers, who made a shitload of money, are.
The opposition and its allied in civil society refer to the Marcos administration as a kleptocracy as they pride themselves as freedom fighters and democracy icons. But it begs the question, corruption did not stop after they took over government. Was corruption minimized or did it get worse under their watch? The Code-NGO bond issuance was rife with the putrid smell of the misuse of power by government officials for their own monetary benefit. The transaction was set in motion barely a month after GMA assumed power.
The fate of the key players is one of karmic justice. Dinky Soliman and Marissa Camacho both died from comorbidities exacerbated by Covid infection. Soliman was part of the Hyatt 10 group of Arroyo Cabinet members who resigned in a bid to bring down her government on the instruction of Cory Aquino. She would later occupy the same Cabinet post in the Aquino administration and be the subject of intense criticism over her handling of foreign donations for Yolanda survivors.
The PNoy administration would be rocked by the Napoles scandal where dummy NGOs were formed to serve as the conduit for the pork barrel of Senators and Congressmen so they could receive rebates. Napoles’ NGOs were only the tip of the iceberg as there are other “legitimate” NGOs engaged in the same practices. Some of these NGOs are also funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and their European socialist counterparts for the promotion of their causes in the country.
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