MANILA, Philippines — Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, the country’s chief economic manager who supported President Duterte’s campaign during the 2016 elections, on Monday night said ABS-CBN Corp.’s account of the issue on unaired political ads “does not tally” with their own experience.
Asked to comment on the claim of ABS-CBN president and chief executive Carlo L. Katigbak’s explanation before senators Monday about the supposed delay in refunding P2.6 million in ad money for P7 million in unaired local ads before the 2016 polls, Dominguez replied: “I was busy today and didn’t listen to the testimony in the Senate. What was said?”
After Dominguez was provided a link to a news story posted on ABS-CBN \, he said: “Amazing how this reminds me of the old Japanese movie ‘Rashomon,’ where a murder is described by different witnesses and none of the accounts tally with each other.”
Asked if his experience during the campaign was different from Katigbak’s account, Dominguez said: “Sen. Bong Go told me what he said which is what I know happened, and from what I read, his account does not tally with the account of what the executives of ABS-CBN said.”
Katigbak said that while ABS-CBN had been able to air all of Duterte’s national campaign ads worth P117 million, another P7-million worth of spots out of P65 million in political advertisements had not been aired as the network ran out of airtime.
On behalf of ABS-CBN, Katigbak said: “We are sorry if we offended the President” after the TV giant aired an ad paid by former Sen. Antonio Trillanes—described by Go as “black propaganda”—close to election day.
Last week, Dominguez said that if the Supreme Court rules that ABS-CBN indeed violated Constitutional restrictions and franchise rules as alleged by the quo warranto petition filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), it will mean the Duterte administration had been upholding the rule of law.
Dominguez was a childhood friend and former classmate of President Duterte. He was also the finance manager during Duterte’s campaign.