MANILA, Philippines — On the last plenary day of the 13th Congress, the Senate on Thursday proposed the overhaul of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) after finding PCGG nominees to a couple of sequestered companies guilty of “overwhelming mismanagement.”
“The PCGG…failed miserably in its mandate to preserve and protect the interest of the national government” in three companies in which the government has interests, said Committee Report 312, which the Senate adopted Thursday.
Senator Richard Gordon, who heads the Senate committees on Government Corporations and Public Enterprises and on Public Services that submitted the report, said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should also look into the eventual abolition of the PCGG.
But he acknowledged that the 11 hearings on the three companies are not enough to make the conclusion that PCGG must be abolished. “Investigations into more sequestered companies may have to be made to make that conclusion,” he said.
Gordon said the proposed PCGG overhaul may be made together with the reported impending Cabinet revamp.
The report also proposed that the Ombudsman further investigate the actions of PCGG officials, government nominees to Philippine Overseas Telecommunications Corp. (POTC) and Philippine Communications Satellite Corp. (Philcomsat), and private individuals in Philcomsat Holdings Corp. (PHC) for culpability.
The report also recommended the following:
* Remove the jurisdiction of the national government shares in POTC and Philcomsat from the PCGG and transfer them to the Privatization Management Office under the Department of Finance.
“As the Supreme Court already decided that the 35 percent of shares in these companies belong to the government, representation over such interest should no longer be under the PCGG…There is no longer a question of ownership over these shares,” it said.
* Replace government nominees as directors to POTC and Philcomsat as the former are “clearly ineffective in protecting the interest of the national government in these corporations.”
“[The replacements] should be made to submit regular reports to the agencies they represent concerning the corporations to which they have been appointed,” it said.
* Privatize the national government share in POTC and Philcomsat.
* Have the Anti-Money Laundering Council investigate the suspicious bank accounts exposed in the Senate hearings including the so-called Munsayac account for which PCGG officials and nominees cannot explain.
* Have the Sandiganbayan and the Supreme Court investigate the instances where the two institutions were supposed to have received money from PHC.
* Have the Bureau of Internal Revenue look into the alleged representation allowance in relation to “BIR transactions” amounting to P2.952 million.
* Have the Senate continue investigating the other PCGG sequestered companies as part of its oversight function.
“The PCGG has been in existence for over 20 years, the committee takes the position that it is time for the PCGG to be put to task and to be required to render a detailed accounting to the people concerning its accomplishments,” it said.
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