SECRETARY Sonny Coloma of the Malacañang press office wrote to explain why he has taken moves to try to thrash out so-called issues and infirmities in the highly irregular land deal between IBC 13 and controversial land developer Reghis Romero II/Primestate Ventures Inc.

Despite his explanations, however, I can’t help but say the whole deal still stinks. In fact, it’s beginning to smell worse as Coloma’s office tries to save what has been questioned and declared illegal by the Commission on Audit (COA), Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) and even the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) itself.

And now, even as we hear out what Coloma has to say for himself, it is only appropriate that the highly questionable transaction be subjected to a congressional investigation.

In fact, the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability chaired by Jerry Trenas (LP, Iloilo) is scheduled to start public hearings on the scandal starting today.

The Trenas committee will tackle House Resolution 1103 authored by Rep. Maria Milagros Magsaysay (Lakas-Kampi, Zambales) and HR 1606 of Party-list Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy of Bagong Henerasyon.

Magsaysay said in her resolution that the parties went ahead with the “illegal” transaction despite being cautioned by the OGCC that the transaction did not comply with the joint-venture guidelines set by the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

Dy, for her part, was quoted as having said there seemed to be an urgent need to revisit the country’s anti-graft laws and politicies governing the disposition of government assets.

Both Magsaysay and Dy are urging that the JVA covering the land deal—which potentially can generate for the Romero group some P6 billion to P8 billion in sales revenues—be immediately put on hold while the investigation is going on. (But the government may need to secure a court order to do this). The Romero group has been busy pre-selling condo units that have yet to be built on the property.

Graft charges against officers of both IBC 13 and the Romero group were filed with the Ombudsman last week.

Dy pointed out that the COA first questioned the deal when it became clear that the Romero group would pay only P728 million to IBC 13 on a staggered basis in exchange for the 3.64 hectares of prime land.

It was the COA that said the Romero group was in effect paying only P9,999 per square meter for the property when the going rate for land in the vicinity is anywhere between P35,000 to P60,000 per square meter.

It’s sad that Coloma’s letter (published in full on this page in yesterday’s issue) only deepened suspicions about his real motives in trying to save the IBC 13-Romero land deal.

For those who somehow missed reading his letter, however, it’s my pleasure to share with them the key points he put across: Coloma’s key points:

• He assumed supervisory authority over IBC 13 in his capacity as head of the Presidential Communications Operations Office or PCOO, pursuant to Executive Order 4. This means anything affecting or concerning the sequestered broadcast facility is his business.

• He said his office merely “inherited the implementation of the JVA and the management of a network that was suffering from severe financial constraints.”

• The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the agency that used to have direct supervision over IBC 13 as a sequestered asset, had pointed out to Coloma the issues and infirmities of the deal. This prompted Coloma to initiate legal and financial due diligence on the JVA.

• Coloma sought the opinion of the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) and the OGCC as part of his due diligence. (In his letter, however, he does not say what the OSG or OGCC think of the deal.) The OGCC had earlier publicly declared it illegal from the start for not carrying the approval of the Privatization Council of the Department of Finance. This fatal legal flaw was first cited by the COA in a formal report. Still, as Coloma revealed in his letter, “the PCGG initiated a meeting among the OSG, the OGCC and the Commission on Audit to address the observations raised by COA.

(An offshoot of that meeting was the creation of a “technical working group to address the issues and find ways to improve on the government’s position and ensure that the provisions will be advantageous and beneficial to the government.” This part of Coloma’s letter only showed that despite the JVA’s fatal legal infirmity, the five agencies are now under instruction to find a way to save the transaction, despite its onerous features.

Instead of scrapping the deal altogether, the technical working group is now seeking ways “to improve the government’s position.” If that’s not bending over backward on the part of Secretary Coloma, I don’t know what the expression means.

As a result of Coloma’s heroic efforts to strike a “harmonized” government position on the issue, the PCOO that he heads and the IBC 13 board has formed a technical working group composed of key representatives from all of the agencies already mentioned with the addition of representatives from the Privatization Council of the Department of Finance and the National Economic and Development Authority.

This working group, of course, will bear close watching. I can already imagine that its main objective is to somehow work into the existing JVA the crucial approval of the Privatization Council. This would be two years after the original JVA was signed and two years after the fact that Romero group had physically taken control of the 3.64 hectares of prime land that used to be part of Broadcast City.

All of these things would soon come under the harsh glare of public scrutiny when the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability starts its investigation of this highly irregular land deal.

For its first witness, I hereby nominate Secretary Coloma, your honor!

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