Stories tagged
‘lobbying’

Gloria's LobbyGate?

Government splurges millions on multiple, secret lobby contracts

by Malou C. Mangahas

SINCE it assumed office in 2001, the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has spent at least $3.7 million or P208 million in eight multiple, loosely monitored, and largely secret consultancy contracts for eight US-based lobby and law firms.

The controversial agreement with the law firm Venable LLP is only the latest contract that Mrs. Arroyo had authorized her Cabinet deputies to sign in the name of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.

Read more… | Posted Tuesday, September 20th, 2005

Despite hard times, Arroyo hires pricy foreign consultants for Charter Change

by Malou C. Mangahas

ON THE same day that she delivered her State of the Nation Address and summoned the nation to start “the great debate” on charter change, President Arroyo awarded a million-dollar lobbying consultancy contract to an American law firm to “secure grants and (US) congressional earmarks” for her initiative to “reshape the form of government…into a parliamentary federal system.”

Read more… | Posted Tuesday, September 13th, 2005