Could Aquino’s approval-rating go up again?

Frankly Speaking
By Frank Wenceslao

Knowing Sonny Coloma for a long time now I dispensed with congratulation upon learning of his appointment as President Aquino’s spokesman. I just emailed him PNoy made the right decision to rely on Coloma to communicate his policies and programs. Even though it sounded self-serving I assured Coloma that Pamusa has been doing our best anticorruption efforts which would help the presidential approval rating go up again.

In fact, I’ve devised several programs to fight corruption until the least costly but effective weapon better than what administration officials have put forward thus far and named it the DOJ-PAMUSA ANTICORRUPTION AGREEMENT (DOPAA) now awaiting approval of Secretaries Ochoa and De Lima. DOPAA won’t entail additional cost to the Office of the President or the Malacañang Communications Group presumably headed now by Coloma. The DOJ’s share of Pamusa’s monthly operating, maintenance and other expenses in the USA we’re asking is a pittance vis-à-vis what the PCGG had spent for foreign lawyers and the legal cost of the search and recovery of Marcos’ and cronies’ ill-gotten wealth in any given month of the agency’s 27-year existence. If Chairman Andy Bautista can show that the PCGG spent less than the amount we are asking the DOJ for Pamusa’s operation in the US and other foreign countries, we have some US Filipinos willing to provide Pamusa with funding until we can generate income and be self-supporting. If I were paid $100 each time I repeat and explain Pamusa’s anticorruption program to administration officials, we won’t need the DOJ to share our expenses in the US.

DOPAA will enable the government to focus ALL its resources for criminal justice at home while Pamusa, a US nonprofit corporation deputized as an anticorruption entity by the USDOJ in since 2007 will take care of the work and legal actions to be done in the US. The UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) that took effect in Dec. 2005 and the additional powers from other international cooperation agreements against corruption (ICAAGs) like threads woven into a fabric to fight corruption by the US National Strategy to Internationalize Efforts Against Kleptocracy have empowered non-governmental organizations like Pamusa to work side-by-side, say, with US government agencies (USGAs) to help another country such as the Philippines to the extent of crossing national borders like the US did in arresting, extraditing, trying and sentencing Panama’s then President Manuel Noriega to 25 years in US prison for drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption, etc.

The USGAs’ powers have been broadened after the UNCAC took effect in 2005 with additional powers from the ICAAGs enforced under US laws that as an anticorruption weaponry become more fearsome. As readers may know especially those with legal training, an international agreement after ratification, e.g. by the US or Philippine Senate, it becomes part of the law of the land as though passed by Congress and approved by the President. Hence, Pamusa is empowered to ask USGAs including the USDOJ, FBI, IRS, Treasury Dept.’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), etc. to charge of corruption, investigate, and prosecute a Filipino such as Janet Napoles et al. for violation of congruent US and Philippine laws and eventually recover the proceeds of corruption they amassed like Marcos’ and cronies’ ill-gotten wealth and the current and former government officials, their immediate family members and close associates or private businessmen and individuals that colluded with them in enriching themselves after the fall of Marcos.

In order to increase pressure on respondents such as Mr. and Mrs. Napoles, their children and co-conspirators in their knowing their enormous expenses to defend their cases in court and the risk of conviction and imprisonment in the US, they will be compelled to opt for plea bargain and settlement of their US cases by paying millions of dollars of fines, returning the

In other words, the PCGG can ask Pamusa to seek USGAs’ assistance in the search and recovery of Marcos’ and cronies’ ill-gotten wealth while the DOJ or OMB can do the same to bring US legal actions against Napoles and other Filipinos accused of corruption who can be prosecuted faster and recover their illicit assets from the proceeds of corruption especially current and former government officials and co-conspirators after the fall of Marcos pursuant to the following UNCAC’s international cooperation provision, to wit:

“Countries agreed to cooperate with one another in every aspect of the fight against corruption, including prevention, investigation, and the prosecution of offenders. Countries are bound by the Convention to render specific forms of mutual legal assistance in gathering and transferring evidence for use in court, to extradite offenders. Countries are also required to undertake measures which will support the tracing, freezing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of corruption.”

For a Filipino whose ill-gotten wealth is hidden in another foreign country, Pamusa has the option to ask USGAs to ask their foreign counterparts to help Pamusa’s legal counsel to recover ill-gotten assets claimed by the Philippine Government pursuant to the above UNCAC provision.

The President and Coloma know that offense is the best defense. Approval rating won’t go up again by merely being defensive. Everyone involved in fighting graft and corruption should be proactive. As shown by Napoles, G&C had hardly been dented by the Aquino administration’s anticorruption efforts. On top of it, the DOJ doesn’t provide effective weaponry against the evil because of the government’s structural deficiencies and inadequate resources of which approx. 20% of budgetary funds is lost to graft and corruption annually according to the World Bank.

PNoy must address the government’s structural deficiencies. He isn’t helped when, according to a Pamusa adviser (a retired UP law professor-CA justice), he found out the staffing pattern of the Office of the President that aside from Ochoa the ES office has three deputies and one assistant all lawyers making the administration too lawyer-heavy. Most of the Cabinet and other top national offices are headed by lawyers which means every problem and solution are primarily seen from a legal perspective while other aspects of governance are overlooked or considered secondary when graft and corruption, the most debilitating national problem pulling down the President’s approval rating is in fact a basically economic aggravated by the people’s perception criminal investigations never end and culprits go free ultimately. For instance, the President’s most faithful Filipino American supporters doubt that the perpetrators of the Mindanao Massacre, Atimonan shoot-out, or the scams involving pork barrel, Malampaya and Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) would ever be brought to justice, more so when the President critics are embellishing his success to impeach and dismiss Chief Justice Corona was made possible by bribing the Senator-Judges.

If readers ask what makes me confident that Pamusa can make the President’s falling approval rating go up again, I’m relying on the G8 Summit held in Northern Ireland last June. The conferees agreed that the world’s No. 1 financial problem is caused by the multinationals not paying taxes in their home offices because their profits are kept in safe havens overseas with the earnings of drug traffickers, organized crimes, terrorism financiers and kleptocrats reducing the world’s capital and preventing investment in productive enterprises for national economies to grow, create wealth, foster new investment, generate employment, and increase the production of goods and services needed by a rapidly growing world population.

Using the Philippines as example, the imbalances result in stunted economic growth and wealth creation; slow investment, production and employment generation; and the increasing demand of the country’s rapid population growth that stretches resources to the limit frequently reduced by natural devastations and corruption, thus exacerbating acute social problems.

In order to solve the problem now becoming worldwide, the eight (G8) richest and most powerful nations agree to close down and deny safe havens used for tax evasion and criminally earned profits. This is the President’s luck of the Irish. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that when taxes are not paid and criminally earned profits are stopped in going to safe havens at home and overseas, Filipinos will lose interest in rigging multibillion peso-government contracts and large-scale corrupt deals won’t be attractive anymore. Moreover, the G8 nations will help search and recover the poor countries’ resources lost to corruption and enforce retributive justice on the guilty so the time will soon come perhaps no later than the next administration when corrupt government officials and co-conspirators would have no safe havens except in Siberia and the unexplored darkest areas of Africa.

Finally, those in charge fighting corruption should set aside a bureaucratic malaise mentality that if they allowed Pamusa to participate in the search and recovery of public resources and foreign aid lost by the Philippine Government to corruption and becomes successful, they won’t get the credit and may instead get the blame for not thinking of Pamusa’s solution in the first place. This is another government deficiency approaching mental inability to accept the Reagan doctrine, to wit: “It does not really matter who gets the credit as long as the mission is accomplished.”

President Aquino should implant this doctrine in the minds of his top officials before his falling approval rating can go up again. Pamusa’s volunteers have located Marcos’ and cronies’ ill-gotten wealth worth at least $1 billion and an equal amount of unlawfully acquired assets after the fall of Marcos that Pamusa can immediately pursue from Filipinos especially ex-Filipino citizens who are naturalized Americans, Canadians and Australians. We are sure these ex-Filipinos will negotiate settlement when informed they are Pamusa’s targets for violating US and other foreign countries’ anticorruption laws including unlawful assets acquisition at home rather than be criminally liable in the US for which conviction is a ground for deportation and to annul their naturalization. Pamusa has American or Filipino-American legal counsels with litigation experience in US government and private sector and can immediately launch the hunt for ill-gotten wealth as soon as the OP by Sec. Ochoa or the DOJ by Sec. de Lima accepts the DOPAA and issues the “Notice to Proceed” proposed in our correspondence.

For direct comment fcwenceslao1034@gmail.com.