GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc , The Philippine Star, Friday, July 25, 2008
Juan Ponce Enrile avers the Supreme Court is wrong. Like many others, he disagrees with its ban on importing used cars. But unlike them, he defies the ban by abetting importations by his kin in his Cagayan turf.
Where lies the difference? Is it because Enrile is a senator and lawyer; former congressman and assemblyman; minister of defense, of finance and of justice; and commissioner of insurance and of Customs — while most are not as blessed? Is it because they’re them, and Enrile is Enrile?
Enrile must deem the Supreme Court right in upholding Romy Neri’s executive privilege. Many others don’t think so. They fear that the Tribunal legitimized the coverup of crime by letting Neri clam up on the ZTE scam. Neri had refused to tell the Senate what Gloria Arroyo did after he reported a P200-million bribe to endorse the deal. To muzzle him, Malacañang had invoked unspecified, unsupported security and diplomatic reasons, which Enrile echoed in Senate hearings. Dissenters cry that the High Court verdict goes against transparency in government dealings. But they do not ask for Neri’s arrest and wringing by the Senate to flout the ruling. At worst, they grumble among themselves about which justices consistently vote pro-Malacañang. One lawyers’ group even zero in on that one who has failed to explain past minority decisions, in violation of the Constitution. But they generally, though grudgingly, accept the ruling.
Not Enrile in the case of used car importations. He is as passionate with his beliefs on that business issue, as others are about the political and criminal implications of the Neri decision. He cites tax revenues and other economic benefits, just as those against Neri allude to presidential abuse. Most importantly, to demonstrate his point, Enrile does exactly what the Supreme Court prohibits. Others just meekly conform.
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STILL ON CTPL. Illicit Compulsory Third Party Liability insurers do cheat car registrants with fake policies and the government by tax evasion. Some do not report CTPLs to the Insurance Commission and simply pocket the 40-percent fund they must put up to cover indemnities. And the claim that 60,000 people will lose jobs with the GSIS takeover of CTPLs misleads to elicit pity. With these Reymar Mansilungan agrees, as member in 2005 of the IC task force on CTPL. But he adds three points in a long reaction to my piece last Monday:
• “The Insurance Code vests big clout on an insurance commissioner. The commissioner may close down or put under a conservator any insurer for violation of even the most minor order. He can even bar an insurer from issuing CTPLs simply by ordering the IT provider from authenticating the policies. So a commissioner could have solved or minimized the CTPL mess if he wanted to. But a succession of three past commissioners did nothing. Failure to enforce the 40-percent indemnity fund constituted ineptitude. More so since, through computer network, they had capability to verify in real time how many CTPLs any insurer has sold and at what premiums.
• “Was there a hidden agenda? One commissioner prodded non-life insurers to form a consortium to solely handle all CTPLs. It was supposedly to parcel equitably all the business premiums and losses. Like today, small insurers then howled against the entry of big ones who never sold CTPLs before. But the commissioner wanted an information technology firm of his choice to manage the consortium for a fee of 35 percent of CTPL premiums. It would have been a cool billion pesos then. Are you now thinking what I’m thinking?
• “I’m not entirely against the GSIS takeover, if it will really solve the CTPL mess. But we must have rule of law. The Dept. of Transportation and Communication has no power to assign any insurer as sole CTPL provider for private motor vehicles. The Insurance Code vests that authority only on the insurance commissioner. There’s a dictum: a delegated authority cannot be re-delegated. The Code further provides three modes of complying with third party coverage: insurance, surety bond, or cash deposit. The DOTC order removed all these. The Code penalizes insurers who refuse to issue CTPLs. DOTC ignored this. In effect amending the Code, DOTC usurped the power of Congress to legislate and of the commissioner to regulate. It can cure this by going to Congress.”
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Quick, go to YouTube and search for “Christian the Lion — the full story (in HQ).” It’s an incredible story of kinship between a ferocious beast and two men who had cared for it.
After viewing, go to www.snopes.com, the website that verifies tales and exposés hoaxes or urban legends. The entry on “Christian the Lion” not only authenticates the video, but is even more amazing.
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