DURING the Senate hearing on the controversial Iloilo Convention Center (ICC) last week, Senate President Franklin Drilon said that he is “proud to be associated” with the project that is located in his hometown of Iloilo. Senator Drilon cited the fact that the government became a beneficiary of the donation of land valued at more than P520 million. Indeed, the national government did not spend a single centavo for the site of the ICC that is now being built.

On the surface, it looks like an act of magnanimity on the part of MegaWorld Corp. to generously give to the Philippine government a piece of land inside its Iloilo Business Park that is now being valued at more than half-a-billion pesos. However, this 1.7 hectare of land that Senator Drilon refers to as “prime property” donated to the Department of Tourism (DoT) has become the source of apparent anomalies in the ICC.

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