Tough love from regulators
by Roel Landingin
SUBMITTING DOCUMENTS to government regulators is usually a routine matter assigned to messengers who hand over the parcels, and get a receipt in return.
But when Manila Water Corp. sent almost 30 boxes of financial records and documents to the Regulatory Office of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) a few minutes before the close of office hours last Friday, what should have been a mundane delivery turned into a mini-crisis of sorts.
Water regulators hesitated to accept the delivery because they were initially told to expect just around 10 boxes.
Sidebar
by Roel Landingin
IN PRINCIPLE, the setting of basic water rates for customers of Manila Water Co. and Maynilad Water Services Inc. is easy enough to understand. Of course, the key phrase there is “in principle.”
According to the 1997 Concession Agreement between the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) and its two concessionaires: “… the rates for water and sewerage services … shall be set at a level that will permit the Concessionaire to recover over the 25-year term of the Concession operating, capital maintenance and investment expenditures efficiently and prudently incurred, Philippine business taxes and payments corresponding to debt service on the MWSS Loans and Concessionaire Loans incurred to finance such expenditures, and to earn a rate of return on these expenditures for the remaining term of the Concession.”
Should they assume office on June 30?
by Karol Ilagan
IF RULES on campaign finance will be followed, only five winning senatorial candidates will be allowed to assume office on June 30, 2013. That is until the rest of the candidates and their nominating parties submit a complete Statement of Election Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE) by June 29, 2013.
As of June 25, seven winning candidates for senator had actually “fully complied” with the SOCE requirements: Alan Peter S. Cayetano, Francis Joseph ‘Chiz’ G. Escudero, Mary Grace Poe-Llamanzares, Cynthia A. Villar, Paolo Benigno ‘Bam’ A. Aquino IV, Gregorio ‘Gringo’ B. Honasan II, and Loren Regina ‘Loren’ B. Legarda.
by Karol Ilagan
NEARLY A year would seem plenty time for senatorial candidates and their political parties to study the campaign-finance rules and regulations for the May 2013 elections so that they could comply correctly. After all, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) issued Resolution No. 9476 that set out all these rules as early as June 22, 2012.
Yet as far as the submission of the Statement of Election Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE) goes, the election body’s Campaign Finance Unit (CFU) has found various deficiencies on the reports filed by almost all 33 senatorial candidates and nearly all their political parties. In fact, the CFU has recommended fines on almost all these candidates and most of the 12 political parties that nominated them because of this.
‘ICIJ Leaks Database’ now online
by Roel Landingin
THE BUREAU OF INTERNAL REVENUE (BIR) says it will investigate leads from the interactive database that reveals names of people from more than 170 countries, including the Philippines, associated with secret offshore tax havens released today by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) based in Washington, DC.
The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database allows users to search for owners, officers and other parties linked to some 120,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore locales such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands and Singapore, the ICIJ announced in a statement. The database came from a hard disk containing 2.5 million files on secret offshore entities in more than a dozen tax havens leaked to the ICIJ last year.
The ‘air war’ for votes in May 2013
by Che de los Reyes
NINE SENATORIAL candidates and one party-list group in the recently concluded elections would have breached the airtime limit for political ads on TV had it not been for a crucial order from the Supreme Court regarding a new rule being imposed by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). One of those nine candidates would have also surpassed the campaign-spending limit.
Seven of the nine actually won in the May 13, 2013 midterm elections. Meanwhile, Buhay, the party-list group that eventually garnered the most number of votes among party-list groups, is poised to occupy three seats in the House of Representatives.
by Che de los Reyes
THIS COULD be the very first time in the history of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) that campaign-finance violations will be treated seriously. Never before has the failure to submit truthful campaign finance reports have so much implication for the filers concerned.
Comelec itself is first to admit that in previous elections, it had been quite lax even with keeping a reliable record of candidates, political parties, and party-list groups — as well as campaign donors, contractors, and media entities — who did and did not file their Statement of Election Contributions and Expenditures (SECEs).
by Che de los Reyes
POLITICAL STRATEGIST Malou Tiquia has observed a consistent pattern in the 2010 presidential elections and the 2013 midterm elections.
“It would appear,” she says, “that there is now a pre-campaign expenditure and a campaign proper expenditure.”
Crime in politics? Politics in crime?
by The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
IN THE LAST ELECTIONS, President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III summoned voters to support his allies and associates who would supposedly help fulfill his epic “Daang Matuwid” project. Not to be outdone, Vice President Jejomar C. Binay and his opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), coined their own shibboleth to distinguish their candidates from Team PNoy: “Daang Maganda.”
By all indications, however, “Daang Matuwid” and “Daang Maganda” were nothing but brave but empty messages lost in translation to both administration and opposition political parties in the last balloting. Indeed, both coalitions even became vehicles by which crime burrowed its way into politics, and politics into crime, in the May 2013 elections.
Crime in politics? Politics in crime?
by The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
AMONG ITS many excuses for being, the government is supposed to combat crime and corruption. Those elected to office thus take a solemn oath before God, country, and Constitution to uphold, defend, and rule by the laws of the land.
But the May 2013 elections saw the unsettling nuptial of politics and crime, or of candidates and party-list group nominees accused of both graft and criminal offenses winning elective positions.
