FOLLOWING are the editorials of the Philippine Star and Malaya (Sept. 2) and Daily Tribune (Sept. 1) on the presidential sons’ California homes reported by VERA Files.
Philippine Star‘s “Because they can”:
Following in the footsteps of his parents, Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo is now under fire for assets that he reportedly failed to declare in his official Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. The failure concealed a considerable increase in his wealth since 2002. President Arroyo’s eldest son said he had declared all his assets and that he had transferred ownership of a $1.32-million California home to a company called Beach Way Park LLC, where he owns 40 percent of the shares. This was his explanation for not declaring the property in his SALN.
VERA Files, which filed the report on Mikey Arroyo’s assets, disputed his claim, pointing out that the California property was in the name of his wife Angela as of last Monday, and that there was no Beach Way Park LLC registered with the assessor’s office in San Mateo County where the property is located.
Arroyo refused to identify the other shareholders in Beach Way Park, saying they were private citizens. He also said his failure to declare the property in his SALN was due to his misunderstanding of the requirements in filing the declaration. Asked about the dramatic rise in his income from P5 million in 2002 to P99 million in 2008, he said he received generous wedding gifts and donations to his congressional campaign. He refused to identify the generous souls.
A retired military general is currently on trial for plunder for receiving gifts from suppliers doing business with the Armed Forces when he was the comptroller. Perhaps a new law should be crafted, detailing the gifts that must be turned down by public servants and all members of the First Family. The prohibited gifts should include $20,000 dinners, corporate shares, waterfront homes and condominium units.
Arroyo insisted everything he had done was legal and aboveboard and his critics should simply sue him. The attitude is not surprising. Confronted with accusations of impropriety, those in power in this administration have a standard explanation: because they can.
Malaya’s “Jose Pidal Jr.?”:
Everybody’s talking about the “undeclared” property of Mikey Arroyo, including a $1.32 million house and lot in the Bay are in Northern California, and the sharp rise in his assets after winning a House seat in 2004.
It’s a valid subject for public discussion. Arroyo is not only an elected representative of Pampanga. He is also a son of President Arroyo. He ought to have a better explanation for his newly acquired wealth than claiming the source was campaign funding, wedding gifts and his business acumen. But if he insists in so claiming, that’s his right. The ball should now be in the court of the Comelec with regards unreported campaign contributions which he has pocketed and the Ombudsman on the windfall he got by entering into marriage.
As to his business acumen, that’s where we want to contribute our two cents’ worth. And not for the purpose of dragging his name through mud, but rather to warn him against the very real possibility he would end up losing his inheritance because of his reckless personal investment strategy.
Mikey’s assets are not the problem. It is his liabilities. From zero liabilities before he won his House seat, with two gilt-edged pieces of real property in La Vista in Quezon City, his liabilities shot up to P61.8 million after a year. His liabilities subsequently rose to a high of P78.4 million and then eased to P56.8 million by 2008.
Almost half of those liabilities are listed as loans from relatives. His father-in-law Herman Montenegro is owner of a highly profitable group of companies which is the biggest producer of activated carbon in this neck of the woods. So we suppose that’s not a problem.
Still a loan is a loan and he is also carrying another P34 million IOU on his Bay area property.
At an assumed cost of interest of 12 percent, P56.8 million in liabilities would need P6.8 million yearly to service. If Mikey intends to retire those liabilities in a straight-line 10 years, that calls for P5.6 million in principal payments yearly. The total comes up to P12.4 million a year. On an income of a congressman, there’s no way Mikey can meet that level of obligations.
With Mikey’s mother exiting in June 2010, we do not expect donors to be rushing to fill his campaign kitty when he runs for reelection next year (that is, assuming Gloria does not run for the district seat currently held by Mikey). Obviously, he cannot stage another wedding, so that’s another source of money foregone.
He can always hope his claimed acumen in business continues to hold.
Which we suppose is always possible. His uncle, Rep. Iggy Arroyo, after all was able to parlay a declared income of P10,000 a year, into hundreds of millions of pesos of deposits with a local bank and more besides with an American private banker in the name of “Jose Pidal.” At least, that’s what he says..
Daily Tribune’s “Don’t judge the Arroyos?”:
For a time there, we wondered, after VERA Files came out with the report on the presidential sons’ luxury homes in San Francisco, complete with pictures, whether Malacañang would come out lashing at the media and challenging them to show proof, just as it always does whenever the media report on the unexplained wealth and the luxurious lifestyle of the Arroyo couple and their children.
The Palace didn’t demand any proof whatsoever this time around. Apparently, since the report was thoroughly substantiated, Malacañang couldn’t come up with the same spiel.
But trust Gloria and her aides to come up with yet another whopper to explain the inexplicable.
It now tells the Filipinos not to judge the presidential sons, Mikey and Dato, over the US properties.
Deputy presidential spokesman Anthony Golez Jr. said people should not judge the two merely on account of their having purchased luxury homes in the US, and should not put any malice in their purchase of these homes abroad, but should instead wait for the two congressmen or their lawyers to air their explanations, stressing that people should hear their side first.
What the mouthpiece of Gloria is really saying is that people should hear more lies from the mouths of the Arroyos and Malacañang.
For how can one explain the fact that all too suddenly, shortly after their mother, Gloria Arroyo, rose to the presidency on a naked power-grab, the children — not to mention the parents — grew exceeding wealthy — even as they started with nothing — until of course they were suddenly sworn in as members of Congress?
Even the Arroyo couple, from the time Gloria was a mere assistant secretary in the Department of Trade and Industry, to her becoming a senator, and even up till the time she was elected Vice President, they weren’t exactly multi-millionaires, as reflected in her statement of assets and liabilities, networth (SALN) and, to stress, they didn’t appear to be too lucky to make their so-called investments and stocks grow fantastically, yet appeared to have all the luck and business acumen to make their “private wealth” grow in leaps and bounds, only after Gloria Arroyo was sworn in as President.
But then again, wasn’t there a $14-million bribe from Impsa, the independent power producer to her brand new government of two days, in exchange for a sovereign guarantee, which was given to Impsa? And that’s just two days in the presidential office. How long has Gloria been in Malacañang? That’s a pile of money there!
Funny, but there again goes a different standard of measure, since it is now the Arroyos being questioned about their properties and unexplained wealth.
But didn’t the Gloria administration have charges filed against deposed President Joseph Estrada for plunder, and with no evidence even then, shortly after he was charged?
And didn’t the Sandiganbayan Special Court, despite the fact that there was no concrete proof Estrada owned the Jose Velarde account, which Estrada and his lawyers proved, through bank documents, that the account belonged to Jaime Dichaves and not Estrada, claim that they, the justices, were convinced, despite the clear evidence that the account didn’t belong to Estrada, that it belonged to the deposed President? And they even ruled that the Erap Youth Muslim Foundation, which received a donation of some P200 million from Chavit Singson, claimed to be from jueteng proceeds, was Estrada’s and therefore constituted plunder, despite the fact that there was no public money involved and even more telling, the foundation was a completely different entity from Estrada?
And didn’t Gloria and her civil socialites demonize Estrada for that?
Yet here Malacañang is, claiming that these can be explained, and that people shouldn’t put any malice on these luxury purchases of the Arroyos et fils.
So why did not Mikey include this US asset of his in his SALn? More to the point, how did he amass so much money to buy the property in the US, given his pittance of a salary as a congressman?
The same goes for son Dato. Just what were Dato and Mikey before their mother came to power and top position? Hardly anyone has heard of their “business acumen” that apparently came in late in life for the two, and even that of their father, First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo prior to the ascension of their mother to the presidency.
Dato, a greenhorn, purchased a P26.7-million property in San Francisco barely a year after he won his congressional seat in 2007. So where did he make that pile of money?
But nothing will come out of this, for sure — at least not until after Gloria and her brood step out of Malacañang.
The question is, will Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez simply dismiss these charges, saying she couldn’t find an iota of evidence of plunder, let alone, graft and corruption?