Fel V. Maragay
Manila Standard

Isn’t it odd that former Senator Ernesto Herrera, secretary general of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, is so outspoken and persistent in compelling the Government Service Insurance System to make a full disclosure of the overseas investment of the pension fund of state workers when this hardly falls under the domain of his labor group? Herrera should be more concerned with the investments of the Social Security System since it administers the pension fund of workers in the private sector, a huge fraction of whom belongs to labor unions affiliated with the TUCP.

For his self-appointed role as prober and watchdog of the pension fund of civil servants, Herrera has incurred the ire of GSIS officials for putting them in hot waters. A media critic sympathetic with the GSIS rebuked the inquisitive ex-senator for allegedly acting more like a fault-finder than a guardian of workers’ interest. Sounding irreverent, he even advised Herrera, a paraplegic who walks with a cane, to hang up his gloves and fade out of the political scene.

But if you ask this journalist, Herrera is doing the millions of civil servants a great service by his perseverance and no-nonsense attempt to make the GSIS account for its $1-billion Global Investment Program in the face of the collapse of leading banks and investment houses in the United States and Europe. To a great extent, he is doing what the docile pseudo-labor leaders should be doing but have shamelessly failed to do as representatives of government employees in the GSIS board of trustees.

To douse the suspicion that the pension has incurred losses from its global investments, GSIS president and general manager Winston Garcia reported a week ago that the System’s GIP “bucked all odds and posted an impressive growth in the total value of investment of five percent to P1.245 billion as of Sept. 30. Garcia also reported that the GSIS has deployed only $600 million of the $1-billion investible fund.

Senator Edgardo Angara, chairman of the committee on banks, currencies and financial institutions, said he did not think there was any window-dressing in the GSIS report. Thus is should be accepted as factual. But Herrera, along with incumbent Senators Francis Escudero and Juan Miguel Zubiri, were not satisfied and urged Mr. Garcia to make public the details of the GIP, including the banks, investment houses, together with the stocks and bonds where the pension fund was invested. Herrera called on the GSIS to fully reveal terms of its contracts with Credit Agricole Asset Management Ltd. and ING Investment Management, the designated fund managers of the GIP.

In response to calls by Herrera and other individuals and other groups, the GSIS, in a two-page newspaper advertisement Friday, bared details of the GIP, to include P10.127 billion “in global equities.” P3.08 billion in “global property securities” and P8.875 billion in “cash, short term notes and other investments.” The system also reported fixed-income investments in notes (corporate IOUs) issued by three US banks or investment banks—the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Merrill Lynch and Co. Inc. It also reported holding common stocks in four banks in the United Kingdom—Barclays, PLC, Lloyds TSB Group, Royal Bank of Scotland PLC and HSBC Holdings PLC.

After the publication of the ad, Herrera commended the GSIS for heeding the call for transparency. However, this did not mean that his scrutiny of the state pension fund has come to an end. Over the weekend, he issued another statement, this time warning that the plan of the US and UK to acquire large equity stakes in American and British banks does not bode well for the GSIS investments in common stocks of foreign lenders.

“This will definitely dilute the foreign bank stocks held by the GSIS. The banks will have to issue new shares to the US and UK government in exchange for large amounts of fresh capital,” the TUCP secretary general said.

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While it is often said that “justice needs to be blind,” does the same principle mean that justice secretaries should play deaf or dumb, especially to the sensibilities of victims of heinous crimes who are deeply hurt by government actions? In this country, that seems to be the case.

In what can only be described as an appalling display of insensitivity, Secretary Raul Gonzalez has once again outdone himself by launching a verbal assault on the parents of slain teenager Maureen Hultman. Let’s not even discuss the issue of whether or not the 17 years, two months and nine days behind bars was enough penance for Claudio Teehankee Jr. who was convicted for the senseless killing of Maureen and her friend, John Chapman, and the wounding of another. What boggles the mind is how the justice czar spewed the harshest remarks against the Hultmans in the wake of criticisms of the executive clemency granted to Teehankee.

It seemed that Gonzalez was impervious to the agony of Anders and Vivian Hultman who lost a daughter—an innocent girl whose life was cut short under the most dreadful and irrational of circumstances. What kind of reaction was he expecting from any parent upon learning that their daughter’s killer was now a free man? Was he expecting the Hultmans, now living in Sweden, to keep silent in the face of this heart-breaking turn of events? In this case, a sober-minded individual would have anticipated their hostile response and would have been circumspect and subdued in making his reaction. Instead, we heard the justice secretary ranting that “they (the Hultmans) are hypocrites, and if they can’t accept (the decision), they can jump into the lake.” Showing that he was equally confused with the body of water as he is with the rules of decorum in tense situations like this, Gonzalez further said that “very wide naman ang North Sea.”

He also called the Hultmans “liars” because according to him, they “already knew that Teehankee would one day be paroled or pardoned.” To back up this diatribe, he showed newsmen a copy of the signed civil-liability settlement between the couple and Teehankee.

Now, wait a minute. Let’s say your child goes on a field trip to the zoo, and you sigh the parental consent and waiver form. Later on you find out that your child was eaten by a lion. Following Gonzalez’s line of thinking, you would be a “hypocrite and a liar” if you expressed anger and disbelief, because after all you had signed the waiver. “You should have expected it,” he would probably say.

Much to the consternation of Christians and non-Christians alike, Gonzalez has also advised all those who are against the Teehankee pardon and release “to file an appeal before Jesus Christ.” This journalist, though, is not sure how the Son of God fits into this whole episode, but I am often guilty of taking His name in vain whenever people like the justice chief talks like this.