Acts to grind

About two weeks ago, with Congress about to go on break, the House of Representatives did a buzzer beater: It passed the tax reform package of the motorbiking Duterte Harley.

At the same time, despite its legislative plate brimming, the House just had to spend some more time on the pet peeve of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.

That was the 50-year-old deal between the Davao Penal Colony (Dapecol) and Tadeco, the banana export company of the Floirendo family in Davao del Norte, which started some 50 years ago in 1968.

Alvarez personally instigated the House “investigation in aid of legislation” on the deal, or what he called “low” rental paid by Tadeco for some 5,600 hectares of banana plantation in what he called “prime” land in the colony.

He also recruited to his revenge, este, venture, the help of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Solicitor General and the Commission on Audit.

Anyway, the House actually diluted the tax package of Duterte Harley beyond recognition, cutting the revenue target in the first year from P204 billion to P43 billion.

That, from what I gathered, was thanks partly to the intense lobby launched by certain business sectors like car importers that called themselves an “industry.”

After all, Duterte Harley declared the package—and its resulting additional revenues—as the key to his ambitious “build build build” program.

Now, with the resumption of the Tadeco hearing in the House, the news media also just had to highlight the claim of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre.

In the process, the House got away with a vicious act to grind down beyond recognition the Duterte-era tax reform package.

It could be explosive news indeed, as Aguirre—reportedly —declared that he had agreed with Alvarez that the Tadeco-Dapecol deal was illegal.

Still the original resolution of Alvarez called for the investigation of the deal for being “grossly disadvantageous” to the government.

With the help of some PR campaigns, the deal quickly metamorphosed into something “unconstitutional” and “null and void.”

And so Aguirre reportedly offered two ways to handle the case: Either Duterte Harley would rescind the contract, or the DOJ would file a case to nullify it.

In contrast, about four weeks ago, the same Aguirre averred that the DOJ was still studying the issues raised by Alvarez.

At that time, his position was that the government could modify the contract, precisely, to address those issues.

Last week, all of a sudden, Aguirre reportedly declared the whole thing null and void. He just became the first and only justice secretary in the past 50 years to see it differently.

From what I gathered, about 14 former justice secretaries reviewed the “joint venture agreement,” for its validity and legality.

All of them, including Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Franklyn Drilon, both once justice secretaries, saw nothing wrong.

The thing was that certain congressmen reportedly praised Aguirre for being the only one to see the defect that eluded all the 14 others.

A few months ago, when Alvarez first threw a tantrum over the Tadeco-Dapecol contract, he wrote the DOJ to ask for its opinion.

Aguirre then formed a panel to study the contract, but from from what I gathered, the panel never gave Aguirre any report.

From out of nowhere, Aguirre reportedly quoted the panel as opining that the contract was illegal, although Aguirre nevertheless forgot to produce the supposed report in the two hearings so far.

By the way, a congressman filed a resolution earlier to investigate Aguirre over a case being handled by his law firm, because the congressman claimed to have proof that Aguirre ordered his people to manipulate a particular case.

In the resolution, the congressman sought to recall the confirmation of Aguirre by the Commission on Appointments.

While such would be quite improbable at this point, the issue would certainly give Aguirre some bad press, and what would Duterte Harley think of that?