LET’S GIVE credit where credit is due: Sen. Koko Pimentel is a fair man, notwithstanding the previous marital complaint of her former beauty queen wife, Jewel. He’s pushing a risky probe that, once and for all, should clear the air about the estate tax conundrum bewildering the nation, on one hand, and bedeviling the Marcoses, particularly a presidential aspirant aka BBM.
It’s a damn – if -you –don’t’ damn-if-you-do case. It can also a win-win solution that potentially can make everyone happy — all the way to the bank. Pimentel has an ax to grind or two: his late father, Nene, was the founder of a party to stand up against his nemesis, the Marcos regime, then and now. His party’s presidential bet cum world boxing champ stands to gain from the probe. No small incentives or motivations.
Objectively, so possibly, conceivably for BBM and his family. BBM and/or his lawyer have been crying fake news over the P203 billion estate taxes the Marcoses are supposed to have paid more than 20 years ago but failed — willfully, in the word of former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio. A collection letter was supposed to have been sent to the Marcos family no less than 4 times, doing a simple arithmetic that the BIR is supposed to do the job every five years.
Always quick to jump on the opportunity, Mayor Isko Moreno had asked the BIR a copy of the collection letter. It turned out to be genuine news, good for Moreno and the nation, bad for the Marcoses.
Comes now the eldest daughter, Imee, now a senator, coming to her brother’s aid, as well as her mother’s who, like BBM, is also on the dock for being a co-administrator of an immense wealth that the late dictator left behind. The family, she says, hasn’t received any letter of that sort. Nada, nunca.
Well, that’s a worn-out lawyer strategy of a losing party that instinctively denies that it has received an unfavorable news from the court. The reverse is true when it’s a good news. It’s an open-shut response. But, it can also be true.
In addition to the failed collection letter, Imee is questioning the timing. Why now? It’s the best time , in fact. BBM is running for president. Surveys show he’s leading the pack comfortably by a huge margin, although Vice President Leni Robredo is catching up fast. Time for the Filipino to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is a sound basis for a making a monumental choice.
As a lawyer and public official, Koko knows the line by heart. So, he has fathered a Senate resolution for a probe on the unsettling and unsettledP203 billion estate taxes. The Supreme Court had ruled as far back as 1997 that the Marcoses should pay the government P23 billion. How has it ballooned to P203 billion?
The Senate probe will, should show that. The genius Albert Einstein who understood the universe and God more than others had confessed being less gifted when it comes to understanding taxes. It’s for philosophers, he said, not for mathematicians. BBM may be in a better shape that Einstein. He’s been said to be less of a mathematician than a philosopher. Once upon a time, his late father-dictator expounded on Plato’s idea about a king-philosopher. It might just happen with BBM, although the dictator has been quoted as describing the eldest daughter as the smartest among his kids.
To begin with, since jurisprudence is settled on the P23 billion due the government, the Senate probe should be able to find out how the BIR has been hemming and hawing all this time and has not been able to produce the desired result. President Duterte, who has not been happy about his daughter doing second fiddle to BBM, has wondered equally why in a quasi-blind item. Something must give. As they say, nothing exists in a vacuum. It’s P203 billion, for Pete’s sake!
It’s possible that the computation was erroneous or the material scope exaggerated. No one is perfect, even the opposition or government. This could be an added boon to BBM’s mind-boggling performance in the survey. Or, it’s the correct figure, indeed, based on official accounting, In which case, it could pull down BBM’s performance to the muck. In other words, the probe can be risky either way. Which explains why BBM is avoiding the public presidential debates like the plague because he would rather not feed his rivals red meat.
Sen. Ping Lacson is aware of the political risk. He has said he was not going to join the probe, apparently as a gesture of political courtesy to a presidential rival that could be the object, wittingly or unwittingly, of Pimental’s proposition. A few days ago, Lacson blamed the unabated corruption in government to weak-willed public officials. Staying away from an all-important probe, is a fair equivalent definition. Fortunately, there are enough senators who apparently will support Koko’s probe.
It could be the mother of all probes in the Senate. It will settle also the issue of perceived affront of historical revisionism by BBM of a ‘golden age” in his father’s time. It’s either that or the P203 billion in tax deficit is true. Sen. Richard Gordon has said that the government can follow the model set by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States of making a celebrated mobster, Al Capone, pay his taxes. In fairness, BBM is not in that mold, although he has been officially convicted of not making his tax payments when he was governor and vice.
It’s better that the Senate probe be televised, replayed ad infinitum , nationwide. It could be the best tele-drama ever shown on Philippine television, better than all the public debates,past and future. friendly and otherwise, put together. It could settle the presidency right there and then.
This is one event BBM should not miss.
