|
By Luz Rimban, Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism
Conclusion
LAST Saturday, members of the Philippine
Veterans’ Legion (PVL) broke tradition when they spent Araw ng
Kagitingan, or the Fall of Bataan, in Fort Bonifacio. For years
these old men, easily recognizable by boat-shaped military caps, had
traveled all the way to Mount Samat to hear the President speak of
war and the veterans’ forgotten exploits. But they are growing
weaker, and physically and financially incapable of making the trip
to the place that marked the Filipinos’ surrender to the Japanese.
Besides, says PVL chair Frank Cedula, the veterans feel “the
government isn’t doing anything to help” them, especially now
that they are facing a different kind of enemy.
Sixty years ago a grateful nation honored
Filipino soldiers and guerrillas for defending the country against
Japanese invaders.
Chair Emmanuel de Ocampo gets each month in
compensation for running the bank, an amount de Ocampo admitted to
receiving in a Senate hearing in 2002. De Ocampo also described the
work he was doing to merit such a salary: “I had to do some
marketing, I have to do some management, I have to help, Your Honor.
And besides, the P650,000 includes expenses in the board which I
have to sign as chairman.”
But veterans say that for the huge salary he
gets, de Ocampo has failed to protect their interests at the PVB.
They cite the fact that de Ocampo—himself a war veteran who
retired a colonel—was already a bank director before its closure
in 1985, when cronies of then-President Ferdinand Marcos, like
Herminio Disini, were running away with the bank’s money. Behest
loans to such Marcos friends led to the bank’s closure.
Plundering the PVB
Nothing much changed when the bank was
rehabilitated and then reopened in 1992. The plunder continued, even
after the Bangko Sentral repeatedly warned bank officials to stop
abusing their powers and privileges. In a February 16, 2000, letter
to then-President Joseph Estrada, then-PVB President B. Teodoro
Eusebio wrote, “Many . . . violations of BSP [Bangko Sentral ng
Pilipinas] regulations, diversion of the bank’s income to personal
accounts, dishonesty and inefficiency have been discovered.”
Eusebio pledged to “clean the bank” but found himself out of the
PVB presidency not long after. At that time the directors of the
bank included Estrada’s sister, Pilarica Ejercito.
Veterans say that among those who are taking
advantage of the bank’s assets is a director who allegedly
falsified his credentials as a veteran’s son to get himself into
the PVB and to get huge loans for his companies. Last year the bank
hastily granted a P550-million loan to a company owned by a Filipino
Chinese businessman with close ties to presidents past and present,
although the firm failed to comply with the requirements. The loan
remains unpaid a year after it fell due.
Veterans trace part of the problem to de Ocampo
and his all-encompassing financial and political power over the
bank, as well as to related organizations that control it. Besides
being PVB chair, de Ocampo also heads the Veterans Federation of the
Philippines (VFP) and the Board of Trustees of the Veterans of World
War II. A founding member of the Hunters’ ROTC, de Ocampo took
part in daring guerrilla actions during the war. One of these was
the raid on the Bilibid prisons in Muntinlupa in 1943 to free
Filipino prisoners of war. De Ocampo was then head of the 47th
Regiment.
His fellow veterans now fear he has looked the
other way as other raids have gone on, this time on PVB and its
affiliates. De Ocampo was unavailable for interview, but Miguel
Villa-Real, the bank’s assistant vice president for corporate
communications, says that contrary to his fellow veterans’ belief,
de Ocampo has been active in pursuing the cause of veterans at the
bank. De Ocampo helped press for the increase in the veterans’
monthly pension from P1,000 to the present P5,000, says Villa-Real.
He also says de Ocampo’s being a key figure in the bank’s
reopening in 1985 is a major contribution to the veterans’ cause.
Sitting on a huge amount of cash
Yet it has certainly not helped de Ocampo any
that the PVB, the VFP and the Board of Trustees all suffer from the
lack of openness even as all three sit on a huge amount of cash. For
instance, the PVB, which was initially meant to be a public
corporation under the defense secretary’s supervision and control,
is a private bank accepting government deposits and exempt from
openness and scrutiny.
Veterans say they also have no idea how money
given to it is handled by the Board of Trustees, an entity
established by Republic Act 3518, the law that created the PVB. The
Board was designated as custodian of 20 percent of the PVB’s
earnings, an amount that was supposed to be made “available for
‘grants-in-aid’ to veterans, their widows, orphans or compulsory
heirs, for educational, social, charitable and rehabilitation
purposes, to organizations doing service for the veterans.” The
composition of the Board, the law said, was to be determined by the
Supreme Council of the VFP.
Created by another law in 1956, the VFP is an
umbrella group of various veterans’ organizations. These include
not only World War II groups but those made up of former soldiers
who took part in the Korean War in 1950. Its cash income is
collected from the veterans’ pension, automatically deducted by
the Philippine Veterans’ Affairs Office (PVAO). In the past few
years, the VFP has been getting 1 percent from each veteran’s
annual pension, or P500 for every veteran a year, supposedly for its
operations. Many say they were not consulted when the VFP and the
PVAO agreed upon these deductions. This is why Manuel Reyes,
national adjutant of the Philippine Veterans’ Legion, has argued
that veterans could get back that P500 collected from them yearly,
provided they formally request the PVAO in writing to stop the
deductions.
The VFP is estimated to be collecting a total of
about P50 million annually, including the veterans’ pension
deductions. But its books have never been scrutinized by the
Commission on Audit (COA).
Here actually lies a problem, and a divergence
of attitude among government agencies toward the PVB and the VFP:
The Supreme Court, in a labor case involving former PVB employees,
maintained that the PVB is a private entity because it is owned by
World War II veterans and not by the government. The
Department of National Defense (DND), meanwhile, cites the original
law that put the bank and the VFP under the supervision and control
of the defense secretary. In fact, when Charlie Beloso, chair of the
Crusade to Reform Veterans’ Organizations (CREVO) and a wartime
soldier who fought under the war hero Macario Peralta, filed
plunder charges against the PVB officials in 2002, the DND legal
department endorsed the suit to the Ombudsman for the military,
because it considered the bank’s officers public officials.
‘Adjunct of the government’
The COA, for its part, maintains that there is
no government money in the VFP, hence it cannot be audited. Yet the
law that created it clearly called it a public corporation. Besides,
says a DND official, there are several pieces of property belonging
to veterans and under the control of the Foundation, for which the
VFP refuses to pay taxes because it has cited its being a government
entity.
And then there is the VFP’s disqualification
from the party-list election because it was an “adjunct of the
government.” In 2001 the VFP fielded two candidates in the House
of Representatives who won. Beloso also ran in the same race, under
a party called the Veteran Care Organization. But the VFP sought his
disqualification, because it said the VFP was the “only
veterans’ organization in the Philippines.” Beloso countersued,
seeking the VFP candidates’ disqualification. He argued that the
VFP is a government corporation and cited the law saying the “VFP
shall be nonsectarian and nonpolitical.” The Commission on
Elections sided with him, disqualifying VFP’s candidates.
More than its affiliates, though, it is the
Philippine Veterans’ Bank that preoccupies the minds of those who
fought in World War II, because of the meaning it has for them. The
bank is often the subject of discussion among members of Cedula’s
Philippine Veterans’ Legion, which is composed of soldiers and
guerrillas that signed up with the United States Armed Forces in the
Far East (USAFFE).
‘Our last hurrah’
The Legion meets regularly at the old Philippine
Veterans’ Affairs Office compound on Arroceros Street, Manila.
But its meetings are now fewer and far between, because the members
are getting too old or are too ill to make the trip to the old PVAO.
They fear there might be one member less every meeting, because of
either death or illness. Earlier this year, Legion members put up a
sign on a wall at the PVL office that reads: “This is our last
hurrah [probably].”
Indeed, moving about is a taxing and tiring
activity for many veterans. Mostly in their 80s, Legion officials
are just ghosts of the young men they were in the 1940s, when their
able bodies could still take a stab from a bayonet. Cedula, who
endured five days of pain, thirst and starvation before fellow
Filipinos found him bleeding from his stab wounds more than half a
century ago, is an exception, and is still quite sprightly at age
82.
Most veterans are like Miguel Marcos, who signed
up as a USAFFE volunteer in 1941 and saw action as a guerrilla in
1942, along with Cedula. Marcos was a tall high-school student when
the war broke out. Now he is thin, gaunt and walks slowly, with a
stoop. But he still takes public transportation to his home in
Valenzuela City.
There is also Manuel Reyes, another former
guerrilla and now the Legion’s director for Luzon. Reyes’s
eyesight is failing, and he needs a magnifying glass to read the
papers and readings that other veterans share with him.
Medical assistance is what these veterans need
most now. In fact, the PVL has been trying to scrape up funds to
build the Angel Suarez Convalescent Home, where they hope members
can take refuge in their old age. Angel Suarez was a guerrilla and
former PVL leader. A notice at the PVL office in Makati says that
the convalescent home will rise on that site, but there is hardly
any indication of that happening anytime soon. By the time it does,
the veterans may no longer be around to use it.
Veterans die 20 a day
Beloso says World War II veterans are an
endangered species. According to PVAO statistics, they are dying at
the rate of 20 a day. If only 5,000 members of the USAFFE and 17,000
recognized guerrillas remain, Cedula says, that makes some 22,000
World War II veterans still living. But at the rate they are dying,
they might all be gone in four years.
De Ocampo himself is in his 80s. But unlike him,
many of his fellow veterans live in poverty, says Braulio Bumanglag,
whose own father fought as a guerrilla in Isabela during the war,
and who counts himself among the veterans’ sons and daughters
supporting their cause. That is why he, Beloso, Cedula and the rest
of those in various veterans’ groups are fuming over how they say
bank officials have been enriching themselves.
For sure, the niggardly P80 cash dividend check
each veteran gets annually as a PVB stockholder barely covers
transportation when they claim pension checks, or apply for medical
assistance, which at their age is their most pressing concern.
Villa-Real says, however, that the veterans can
avail themselves of free medical and dental care at the VFP
Outpatient Center in Taguig that gets support from the bank. Also
among the bank’s “substantial assistance to World War II
veterans,” says Villa-Real, are pension loans of P24,000, payable
in 12 months, or P40,000, payable in nine months, at interest rates
ranging from 9 percent to 12 percent. In addition, veterans can
maintain a passbook account with only P100, and a minimum balance of
P500 to earn interest.
‘Oplan Beterano’
Whenever it is time for the veterans to collect
their pension checks, Villa-Real says, “Oplan Beterano” kicks
into gear. This is when the bank provides tents for shade, brings
out chairs and serves water and biscuits to the former soldiers.
Portable toilets are set up and an ambulance is put on standby.
Villa-Real says “Oplan Beterano” was named the joint winner in
the customer service category in the 2004 International Asian
Banking Awards.
But perhaps the bank and the VFP should not
expect any award from the veterans, who have grown disillusioned
with what they had perceived as the reward for their bravery in war.
CREVO’s Beloso has even been writing members of Congress and the
media to express his outrage that the Federation has somehow managed
to skirt election laws.
In the last elections, another party using
similar initials and affiliated with the Federation fielded a
candidate and won. The Veterans Freedom Party is now represented in
Congress by Ernesto Gidaya, former chair of the PVAO. Said Beloso in
a statement: “The Veterans Freedom Party was organized only 16
days and not one full year before the date set to apply for
accreditation under the Party-List System. This act of the Veterans
Federation Party is a gross and flagrant violation of the Party-List
Law.”
Many of the men like Beloso who once defended
the country against the Japanese feel that no one seems to be
listening to them anymore, however hard they scream. Although they
are willing to fight against what could be their last adversary,
they say they are fast being sapped of the little strength they have
left—and running out of time.
Cedula himself says his personal story is the
stuff war movies are made of, having been a 17-year-old reservist
who endured seven stabs from a Japanese bayonet in the Sierra Madre
mountains in 1941. For their heroism, the Philippine and US
governments promised them, their widows and orphans financial
compensation and other rewards.
It took ages before many of those promises came
true; some remain unfulfilled. What did materialize early on was the
creation of a trust fund for World War II veterans and their heirs
that would come from the $20-million payment by Japan for the losses
and damage it inflicted on the Philippines. Known as the reparations
fund, the money was given in 1956. It eventually went into the
creation of the Philippine Veterans’ Bank (PVB), whose
stockholders were supposed to be the veterans and their heirs.
To the veterans the bank is the most tangible
tribute of the nation’s gratitude, a financial monument to their
service during the war, an edifice of honor built in their name. For
all that, though, the veterans and their heirs remain mere titular
stockholders of PVB, with little say in the running of the bank. In
truth, they also know little about the bank’s operations, as well
as that of its affiliates, largely because these suffer from a lack
of accountability and openness.
Personal piggybank
This has made it possible for politicians, their
cronies and bank directors to treat the PVB as their personal
piggybank, dipping their fingers into its coffers without much fear
of getting caught. Worse, veterans say that one of their own, who
eventually became bank chair, seems to have failed to watch out for
them. At the very least, they fear he let others abuse the bank’s
considerable holdings—as well as those of related institutions.
The PVB had been designated as a depository of
government funds. Thus, the bank has been holding money belonging to
government agencies and local governments; the Philippine Health
Insurance Corp. (Philhealth) is one of those with huge deposits at
the PVB. In addition the bank holds some P2 billion in trust for the
preneed company College Assurance Plan (CAP).
Such holdings help justify the generous P650,000
that PVB Chair Emmanuel de Ocampo gets each month in compensation
for running the bank, an amount de Ocampo admitted to receiving in a
Senate hearing in 2002. De Ocampo also described the work he was
doing to merit such a salary: “I had to do some marketing, I have
to do some management, I have to help, Your Honor. And besides, the
P650,000 includes expenses in the board which I have to sign as
chairman.”
But veterans say that for the huge salary he
gets, de Ocampo has failed to protect their interests at the PVB.
They cite the fact that de Ocampo—himself a war veteran who
retired a colonel—was already a bank director before its closure
in 1985, when cronies of then-President Ferdinand Marcos, like
Herminio Disini, were running away with the bank’s money. Behest
loans to such Marcos friends led to the bank’s closure.
To be continued
Part 1 |
|
