AN EVIL MOST FOUL

So why, you ask me, have this come to pass?

For the first time in the past two decades, the tax collection shortfall this year is double digit (Php 33.4 billion for the first six months). During the tax deadline month of April, collection was less than the previous year, again a first in the history of BIR. This is the worst record of the BIR in the post-war era.

Pitiful than even the miniscule increases of the previous government. In the first year of the Estrada government, year on year tax collection fell from an average of 18 percent to 1 percent. Yet taxes still increased from the previous year. In Estrada's second year, revenues grew by 2 percent. Today, the tax increase is less than zero. It is in reverse. This signifies how the revenue collection effort has virtually collapsed.

As a result, the mid-year budget deficit has ballooned to Php 120 billion, barely Php 10 billion short of the targeted ceiling of 130 billion by the end of the year. And we still have five months of spending to go.

Welfare losses

This has been the result of the poorest revenue collection record to date. And no amount of 'creative accounting' can hide it. To fudge the figures, Bañez has been actively downscaling his targets - by Php 20 billion at the least. This he was able to achieve in 2001 after the target revenue collection of Php 408 billion was reduced to Php 388 billion by the Development Budget Coordinating Council. They could not afford to let Bañez lose face early on his stint as BIR Commissioner then. Nevertheless, with the budget deficit out in the open and no “fudging’ allowed, at the rate we are going, a budget deficit of Php 180-200 billion may not be farfetched.

Let us now consider the welfare losses from Bañez miserable performance:

-	Forty thousand new low cost housing shelters for the urban and rural poor lost;
-	Twenty thousand new public schools to educate our youth unbuilt;
-	Free textbooks for more than 10 million public school children lost;
-	The minimum food and caloric requirements for 5 million pre-school children for a year unsecured;
-	Enough funds to accomplish the land reform program lost;
-	One million new jobs for the poor foregone.

Last year the president sympathized with Bañez because he was threatened. Today I say, show compassion to the poor whom Bañez threatens! Look at the food unsecured, the schools and books lost, and the jobs foregone.

Mr. Speaker, this is the staggering cost of gross mismanagement and ineptitude. This is the price we are paying for the indolent performance of Rene Bañez.

We have weighed him. We have measured him. And he has been found wanting.

Evil most foul

However, all of these are only the tip of the iceberg. It gets worse.

Mr. Speaker, a week ago this representation brought to your attention and the Filipino people the certifiable incompetence and utmost lack of accountability that attended the policy regime and work record of BIR Commissioner Rene Bañez.

I raised the issue of performance. I believed that there lay the strongest basis for the immediate and unconditional expulsion of Bañez not only from the BIR, but also from the rest of government.

I called him a 'dud' and a certified NPA-- non-performing asset. I have shown, through unassailable evidence and elementary standards of performance that our distinguished commissioner is indeed 'distinguished' for one reason and one reason alone -- for being the weakest link in the economic chain of command.

Today I tremble at the discovery that the person to whom we have entrusted our nation's wealth in taxes is the personification of evil most foul.

Mr. Speaker, Commissioner Bañez stands guilty not only of ignorance or incompetence. He is a scoundrel and a highwayman. He is a plunderer and economic saboteur 'par excellence'. And I have in my possession unmistakable proof of his dirty and utterly despicable deeds at the BIR.

I have evidence of plunder that makes the DOF-Manalili tax credit scam look like a picnic. Documents which show how taxes were waived to favor the Fort Bonifacio Development Corporation (FBDC), a member of the Metro Pacific Group of Companies and the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) led by controversial businessman Manuel Pangilinan, of which Commissioner Bañez was previously the tax director and vice president.

I have proof of 19 tax refund cases filed by the FBDC amounting to a total of Php 6 billion at the court of tax appeals. Two of these cases were already decided by the CTA in favor of FBDC. The BIR under the leadership of Banez did not appeal the decision. They slept on the job. They simply did not do anything to protect and defend public interest. Hence, the decision became final. This decision against the BIR and the Filipino people’s interest is significant because it gives the assurance to FBDC that the remaining cases will be decided favorably for them. And this involved hundreds of billions of pesos in taxes.

I have proof that BIR Commissioner was instrumental in the reduction of the zonal valuation of the land at the FBDC project from Php100, 000 to Php30, 000 per square meter. This was extremely and scandalously undervalued considering that same land was purchased from the government at p33, 000 per square meter when it was then undeveloped, raw land.

Banez also has a lot of explaining to do in regard to why PLDT and Smart Communications managed to get away with the paltry and highly-questionable and anomalous payment of only Php 950 million in reduced income tax payments in spite and despite their much ballyhooed and highly-publicized record-breaking income and profit reports last year amounting to billions of pesos.

I have proof which clearly points to the collusion between Bañez and some key business interests that clearly sought to undermine tax collection and perpetrate economic sabotage.

I have in my possession a Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) showing how Php1.18 billion of taxpayers’ money was used to pay for the documentary tax liabilities of FBDC issued for book purposes only. The SARO was intended to technically condone FBDC's documentary stamp tax liabilities.

This particular tax scam is economic sabotage at its vilest and wickedest form. The government, which should not pay any taxes at all, had been duped into issuing out a SARO worth Php 1.18 billion representing tax payments for and in behalf of FBDC, a private corporation.

Mr. Speaker, the awesome gall and audacity of the perpetrators of this tax scam merit the ultimate test of a public trial. And, expectedly, because of overwhelming evidence at hand, the penalties prescribed for such a crime – not white nor blue collar but a shameful black crime. One that even defies color-coding as it springs from the most evil of intentions. The worst that could ever be committed against the government and the Filipino people by those sworn to serve them with honor, competence, integrity and honesty.

I understand that Bañez even took leaves of absence from his work at the BIR at the height of the PLDT-Gokongwei-Salim Group controversy. Was he also in Hong Kong to join his private colleagues and his erstwhile boss Manuel Pangilinan in the PLDT- Metro Pacific Group of Companies to use his influence as BIR Commissioner and negotiate with the Gokongwei Group? Video and still pictures of these meetings were supposed to be taken, with Bañez figuring prominently in them.

It is ironic because it is evident that Bañez apparently considers this patent act of moonlighting as legitimate. Anyway, he can always claim that he took a personal leave. All of these indiscretions were done while concurrently being the BIR Commissioner.

I also know of the involvement of PR groups of PLDT and another dubious group used by Commissioner Bañez as consultants to cover up his incompetence, non-performance and corruption at the BIR.

But Bañez committed the most brazen, arrogant, patently illegal and abusive actions during his early days at the BIR. In spite of a COMELEC ban on the transfer or movement of employees during the 2001 elections. Bañez totally disregarded the COMELEC order. He reassigned BIR officials and employees with impunity and threw the rule of law and due process out of the window. Already, the COMELEC legal department had found him liable for violating the COMELEC rule. The Legal Department had asked the Commission en banc to file the necessary action before the proper court for violation of section h of the Omnibus Election Code. The Legal Department also asked the Commission en banc to order the reinstatement or restoration of affected BIR officials to their previous positions and places of assignments. We now can look forward to the law being enforced by the new COMELEC Chairman Ben Abalos Sr., who can redress the grievances of BIR officials and employees whose rights had been violated by Bañez. We take comfort on Abalos’ decision to stop the transfer of seven top police officials during the recent barangay elections because of the COMELEC election ban.

Paying the price

Mr. Speaker and honorable colleagues, some of you will consider me reckless for what I have said today. You will wonder why I have so damned a person who walks honorably in high society and the corridors of power.

Well, one of the biggest lessons in life is that you should learn to swallow what you dish out. Bañez sought the limelight and is paying the price. He wanted power, he got it, and he used it recklessly.

The supreme irony is that Bañez, who prides himself for being a human resource development and management expert, is so poor at communicating his ideas, dealing with people, and managing the bureaucracy.

The BIR today is one of the most fragmented bureaucracies in our system of governance. Priorities are displaced. Perverse incentives abound. People are shifted, more often than not, without notice and due process, from one post to the other at the whim and caprice of Commissioner Bañez. To date, in a period of only over a year, 970 or thereabouts personnel were shifted. There is no accounting for performance. There are no rewards for excellence.

I say these not out of disrespect for the bureaucracy. My accusations are grounded in an abiding faith in the civil service. Public servants toil in conditions of supreme sacrifice - they do not need another albatross like Bañez around their necks.

Bañez: this bogus altruist is a rapacious vulture

Mr. Speaker, commissioner Bañez is not an altruist as he tries so hard to project, forsaking the comforts of the private sector for the harrowing demands of public life. He is a rapacious vulture. He is that kind of lawyer who operates at the opposite end of the moral spectrum.

It is often said that ignorance and 'bounded rationality' can be cured by more training, maturity, and experience at the helm. But there is only one cure for opportunism and corruption: a long prison sentence.

Mr. Speaker, Rene Bañez is the single biggest threat to establishing a strong republic. The Palace cannot remain callous to the outrage at the gates. But the silence of Malacañang has been deafening. Is the President already distancing herself from Bañez?

Message is clear: kick Bañez out now!

Mr. Speaker, whatever reasons the President has, there is one clear message in all of this. Expelling Bañez from the BIR is the least that the president can do to uplift her sagging image in the revenue front.

It sends a clear signal that incompetence will not be tolerated, and that economic saboteurs and plunderers will always be brought to justice.

There are reasons to believe that Commissioner Rene Bañez, and PLDT President Manuel Pangilinan and other officials of FBDC, under existing penal laws are guilty of crime of plunder for having caused the loss of billions in government revenues carried out by, among others, manipulating implementation of collection policies at the BIR to favor, obviously his clients, principally PLDT and FBDC- a gigantic conspiracy by and between Commissioner Bañez and Manuel Pangilinan to defraud the Republic of the Philippines.

And for conduct unbecoming a member of the Philippine Bar in shamelessly lawyering the cause of his private clients against the interest of the government, Rene Bañez must be disbarred, delisted from the roll of attorneys to serve as an example to other members of the bar who are in public service.

Rene Bañez should be kicked out of office, charged with plunder and economic sabotage, disbarred, hauled off to court and denied bail! Now.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.