Maharlika could be BBM’s waterloo

By Herbert Vego

OBLIVIOUS to the voice of the people but his sycophants, Pres. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. may soon find his waterloo in the Maharlika Investment Fund bill that he is expected to sign into law come June 18 or any date before his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 24.

There is no public clamor for the bill that is promoted to generate foreign investments. We are alarmed because it would kick off with money withdrawable from government-run banks. Marcos himself could not explain why and how it would succeed.  He has initially lied that it would be marketed as a “sovereign foreign investment fund”.

It could not qualify as such, however, based on the definition of sovereign wealth fund as “a state-owned investment fund sourced from money generated by the government’s surplus reserves.”  We have none of it.

But as reported, public funds would have to be withdrawn from government banks to pump-prime the fund. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) other government revenue sources may also be tapped.

If he could not convince us about the “high-growth” provisions of the bill during his trips abroad, why expect foreign investors to believe the propaganda being bandied around by his economic managers?  Incidentally, the team led by Finance Secretary Ben Diokno is now in Toronto, Canada in the second leg of their US-Canada Non-Deal Roadshow (NDR) aimed at selling the investment fund.

A senator who voted “yes” to the Mahalika bill, ironically, has come out wondering why not a cent of the billions of dollars pledged by investors from Belgium, Cambodia, China, Japan, Switzerland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom has materialized.

To reiterate what I had pointed out in a past column, our legislators should have voted against the fund based on a lesson learned from Malaysia, whose US $8 billion invested in a true foreign wealth fund had perished in losses.

The misuse of the word “Maharlika” could be the President’s road to political perdition.  Why?

Though correctly interpreted to mean “noble” – it reminds us of a historical fiction woven by BBM’s dad, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, which was exposed to the world by the New York Times on Jan. 23, 1986.

In that story headlined “Marcos’ Wartime Role Discredited in US files,” author Jeff Gerth wrote that the United States Veterans’ Administration (USVA) had denied the existence of a World War 2 guerrilla resistance force called Ang Mga Maharlika, stressing that “no such unit ever existed”.

The elder Marcos had claimed to have led this group that fought Japanese forces during World War 2 in 1942 to 1944.

The New York Times also labelled as “fake” the 32 medals that  Marcos had earned  for “heroism”.

Back to the present, the Philippine government’s total outstanding debt has reached P13. 75 trillion, half of which were incurred during six years of the Rodrigo Duterte presidency.

Prorated, to quote a former senator, Ping Lacson, it means that every Filipino is saddled with a P120,000 debt.

Sana, all ang nakinabang pero… O hindi!

-oOo-

MAYOR JPT EXPECTED TO ACT ON CO-OP SCANDAL

KUDOS to Sangguniang Panlungsod member Alan Zaldivar for vowing to shed more information on an alleged loan scandal rocking the Board of Directors of the Iloilo City Government Multi-Purpose Cooperatives. Indeed, as chair of the Committee on Cooperatives, he is the right man to lead the probe.

The thorough investigation will be conducted by the Committee of the Whole, which is composed of all city councilors, with Vice Mayor Jeffrey Ganzon presiding.

Never before had the co-op figured in seven-figure loans – a million pesos or more — granted to its own directors at “ridiculously low payment terms”.

While Zaldivar is yet to reveal the names of alleged loan recipients, we heard from City Hall employees that the cooperative must have run out of funds due to “delinquent borrowers”. As of last accounting, the co-op had loaned out ₱23.65 million already.

One of the borrowers has allegedly taken ₱5.67 million in accumulated loans.

Hence, it behooves the city council to determine whether repayments for the loans are “normal” under the standard set by the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA). An interest rate of 6% per annum is standard.

Otherwise the rumored amounts of repayment by “millionaire” loan takers would drain the cooperative’s funds, especially if it’s true that one of them repays at a scandalous rate of P1,000 per month only – repeat, if it’s true. A lifetime would then not suffice to wipe out his loan.

“To be an officer or member of the board is not a ticket to abuse an authority or break a policy even if the same does not cause damage or injury to another,” Zaldivar said in a privilege speech. “You are above no one and an innocent face will never be an exception to the rule.”

Mayor Jerry Treñas was correct in encouraging the Sanggunian probe, and in inviting the small cooperative members to reveal whether many of them had been denied loans even if they are qualified.

He said, “I guess the cooperative has very loose control on the maximum loan limit.  It should have been incorporated in the articles of the cooperative.”