Philippine lawmakers are currently making efforts to amend the country’s Constitution to ease restrictive provisions on economic ownership.
“We want to lift the restrictive provisions vis-a- vis the economy,” House Speaker Martin Romualdez III said in an economic briefing.
Last week the House Committee on Constitutional Reform investigated the source of funding for the so-called Constitutional Initiatives started by several diverse groups nationwide.
On behalf of these groups, more than P50 million was “handed in cash” to a broadcast station.
These events are bothersome:
1) It is legally difficult, practically impossible, to make a transaction to advertise, without complying with a volume of documents;
2) It is especially impossible to do a transaction without the need for adequate legal personality for the TV station to accept cash payments;
3) As a subterfuge, this “payer in cash” resorted to engaging a law firm to act as go-between for the parties;
4) Most of all, the public hearing disclosed that our government, through various agencies, authorized the contribution of P20 million to the Constitutional amendment “People’s” Initiative.
It is troubling enough to figure out how diverse organizations raised P50 million + for the broadcast studios.
More bothersome is the thought that money from our treasury, “authorized” by a national budget, has wormed its way into a private fund!
I have a queasy feeling in my gut that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
More creative “treasure hunters” may just keep more of our people hungry and poor.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
