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Nearly
850 people were onboard the MV Princess of the Stars
when it capsized on June 21 at the height of Typhoon
Frank. Less than 60 reportedly survived the worst sea
disaster in the Philippines in two decades.
On
December 20, 1987, the MV Doña Paz sank to the bottom of
the Tablas Strait after it collided with an oil tanker.
Officials placed the death toll at 1,565, which came
close to the number of passengers and crew listed on the
interisland ferry’s manifest. Other reports, however,
said the ship was overloaded and placed the actual
number of fatalities at 4,375. Only two dozen or so were
able to swim to safety as no lifeboats were launched
from the ferry. The incident has since become the
world’s worst maritime disaster in peacetime.
Both the
Princess of the Stars and the Doña Paz were owned and
operated by Sulpicio Lines, which at least one
commentator has come to call “Soul-picio” for obvious
reasons. In between those two grisly incidents, the
ferry operator had three other vessels that either sank
or caught fire, taking scores more lives.
Sulpicio
is one of the country’s biggest shipping companies,
along with Aboitiz and Negros Navigation, operating
passenger-cargo ferries and container ships that play a
key role in interisland commerce. For an archipelagic
country like the Philippines, its operations are
critical to the national economy.
Which is
precisely why, as soon as word surfaced from the Sibuyan
Sea that Princess of the Stars had run aground and
capsized, its owners launched a public-relations effort
to hammer home a single message: Without Sulpicio Lines,
this country would sink.
It is
basically the same message that a blackmailer or a
hostage-taker delivers.
Sulpicio’s PR line is even being echoed by some
unusually respectable quarters, especially after Sen.
Juan Ponce Enrile, Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza
and other officials proposed a government takeover of
the shipping company.
Objections to the officials’ proposal amounted to
nothing less than music to “Soul-picio’s” ears. For
other less morally ambiguous observers, however, such
expressions of sympathy for the shipping company—whether
intentional or not—were nothing short of giving comfort
to a public enemy.
Not only
does vacillation in the face of incontrovertible
crime—several offenses, in fact—supply much- needed
ammunition to Sulpicio’s “crisis PR” effort, it also
helps shield the company from civil liability.
It is,
perhaps, no accident that Sulpicio has chosen to focus
its passenger business on travelers who generally cannot
afford the more expensive option of air transportation.
Its passengers usually include domestic helpers from the
South, students with limited allowances from their
hard-up parents, workers who must regularly hop from
island to island and other travelers with tight budgets.
With
such a customer mix, the ferry operator must have felt
it could deal with any liability arising from an
accident—that seems to be always waiting to
happen—involving any of its vessels. It could find its
way out a jam through the simple expedient of handing
out paltry sums to the victims’ next of kin who, as
experience has shown, generally have neither the means
nor the inclination to engage Sulpicio in a protracted
class suit.
No
wonder, then, that Sulpicio Lines has been able to not
only survive a string of disasters, but to actually
thrive through the decades of its dreadful corporate
history.
Over the
weekend Representative Taliño-Mendoza pointed out in a
press statement that Sulpicio generates annual revenue
amounting to nearly P6 billion. Thanks to the size of
its yearly business, it consistently ranks among the top
200 Philippine companies.
From
audited financial statements and other regulatory
filings, Taliño-Mendoza noted that Sulpicio’s annual
earnings surged by P2.08 billion—or 57 percent—from just
P3.66 billion in 2001 to P5.74 billion in 2007.
Its 2007
gross revenues of P5.74 billion was up P520 million or
10 percent from the P5.22 billion it generated in 2006.
The company reported a cash hoard of P467.2 million last
year.
Meanwhile, data from the Securities and Exchange
Commission showed that in 2007, Sulpicio Lines posted
P1.84 billion in vessels’ operating income, which is
defined as vessels’ operating revenues minus their
operating expenses.
This
implies that the operations of Sulpicio’s fleet of 22
passenger and container vessels have been lucrative,
although the company claims it has to cope with “other
charges.” Due to these charges, Sulpicio insists it has
not realized net profits for several years now. It
claims to have posted a net loss of P211.46 million in
2007, slightly less than its net loss of P229.1 million
a year earlier.
If it is
true that Sulpicio has been sustaining regular losses,
why, then, do its owners insist on hanging on to the
shipping company? We can almost anticipate its amply
funded publicists’ response: out of a sense of patriotic
duty. Yeah, right.
Accounting legerdemain aside, such claims of consistent
losses only reinforce the suspicion that Sulpicio does
not have what it takes to operate an interisland-ferry
service at safety and other standards required of its
franchise. If the company chooses to stand by its
bookkeeping figures, then it has only handed yet another
reason for a takeover—if not by the government, then
certainly by a competent management team and more
responsible owners.
Allowing
Sulpicio to operate “business as usual” would not only
make a mockery of our laws, it would also erase its
liability for all the lives its ships have taken to Davy
Jones’s locker. |
