Swiss deposits part of Marcos estate

Retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio has made several big lies in his discussions over our South China Sea claims, many of which are being repeated even by otherwise intelligent people.

Now in the homestretch to the May elections, he’s created another Big Lie: presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. owes government P203 billion in estate or inheritance taxes. Carpio is hoping this Big Lie can stop Marcos from winning the presidency 31 days from now.

It’s a classic case of a Big Lie which an unscrupulous politician spreads for his electoral ambitions and which biased, or plain stupid media disseminates. The gullible candidate Isko Moreno has gone on to say silly things, such as that the “P203 billion” will feed 59 million Filipinos for a year. He has practically made it his platform of government, that if he wins the presidency, he will make it his priority to collect those unpaid estate taxes.

The forever anti-Marcos Philippine Daily Inquirer jumped on the fake issue, claiming in an editorial that the BIR isn’t doing its job if it doesn’t collect the P203 billion. That paper got that idea from Carpio who said: “What is the BIR waiting for? “

I find it astonishing that he forgets that when that tax deficiency was first issued in 1991 and when the Supreme Court allegedly made it “final and unappealable” in a decision in 1997, the administration in power was that of Fidel Ramos, in which Carpio was one of the most powerful Cabinet members, being the presidential legal counsel. He recommended for Bureau of Internal Revenue head Liwayway Vinzons-Chato, a colleague in the law profession. Why couldn’t they get the “tax” paid?

THE P203 billion which presidential candidate Isko Moreno Domagoso and retired justice Antonio Carpio have been alleging are “unpaid estate taxes” the Marcoses owe government will go down in our political and media history as one of the most preposterous lies to have ever been given some attention. Thanks of course again to the virulent anti-Marcos Philippine Daily Inquirer and Rappler — the only two media outfits that’ve been screaming over it.

This “estate tax” brouhaha was concocted in a desperate move to breathe some life into candidate Moreno’s dying campaign; he has gone to town to disseminate that cock and bull story. However, by spreading the lie, Moreno has definitively demonstrated he is totally unfit to be president: he is either so gullible to believe the yarn invented by the ever-scheming Carpio or so unprincipled to spread something he himself knows is a fallacy.

That this is a colossal fabrication is easily gleaned from the fact that among the alleged Marcos assets on which the estate taxes were levied include stocks in San Miguel Corp. and Manila Bulletin, and shares of the late drug tycoon J.Y. Campos as well as such properties as Fort Ilocandia, the Coconut Palace, and the sugar lands of Roberto S. Benedicto in Negros. Why on earth would the Marcoses pay estate taxes on these?

Yes, Mr. Dumb candidate, these “unpaid estate taxes” include assets which the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) had sequestered in the 1980s. Many of these were ordered by the courts to be returned to their owners (in the San Miguel case, to Edgardo Cojuangco), or which the owner had surrendered to government, which then auctioned shares sold many decades ago.

As the current PCGG clarified on March 22 when Moreno’s party asked about this “unpaid estate taxes”: When the Cory government sequestered these assets, it “legally laid claim to them [and are in custodial legis],” and therefore beyond the Marcos rights over and liabilities arising from them. Even if the Marcoses wanted to pay the alleged estate taxes, their being in government’s custodial legis bars them from doing so.

The PCGG also disclosed in its letter that there was a “verbal agreement” in 2003 between it and the BIR to determine which among the properties the latter wanted to levy estate taxes on were sequestered and which were not. The PCGG and the BIR never got around to doing that chore, understandably as there were 300 lots and over 200 companies/shares in corporations the latter had levied estate taxes on.

OUR presidential debates (and worse, the vice-presidential), if their formats are not drastically changed, are just a sheer waste of time. They deprive voters of a real opportunity to really know the candidates.

To have four, five debate participants, including those who would win only in an alternate universe, is ridiculous and absurd, and I am astonished at why the Comelec (Commission on Elections) and even private entities undertake these and seem to revel in having them as hyped-up events held in five-star hotel ballrooms.

That “Deep Probe” format is worse: how sadistic (I dare say, stupid) can its organizers be to have the likes of Jose Montemayor, who I swear had a mad look in his eyes and who can’t even fix his tie, and Jose Ma. Sison’s candidate, Leody de Guzman with his constant salesman’s grin, lectured us for half an hour with their nonsense with otherwise intelligent interlocutors ridiculously nodding their heads at their gibberish.

I admire the panelists though for their willpower in maintaining their deadpan looks, suppressing their laughter at the ridiculous responses of Montemayor and de Guzman.

Look, because I got so pissed off listening to these clowns the other day, I switched to Netflix — making me miss Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s segment, which I hear was very informative of the candidate. How many Filipinos did that?

THERE are essentially two kinds of people who believe that Maria Leonor Robredo can be president. First are simply those from her home region Bicol, an indication and reflection of Filipinos’ deep-seated tribal mentality — “we have to vote for our own.”

Thus, the Pedro Laylo Associates February poll shows 65 percent of its respondents in Bicol voting for her, down, however, from 85 percent in January.

Similarly, the Tondo boy Isko Moreno’s biggest lead (although still trumped by Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Robredo) is in the National Capital Region, while that of Manny Pacquiao is in his home region Soccskargen.

The bigger kind of Robredo’s supporters are those who have been totally brainwashed with the narrative of the Yellows and the US that Ferdinand Marcos was a ruthless, stealing dictator of the same type the Americans and the West have been demonizing since the post-war era. Martial law was the Dark Age of our history, according to this narrative.

These kinds of people will mythify whoever Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s main opponent is, put her on a pedestal to project on her all the saintly virtues and heroic qualities they can think of. What helped them in this massive make-up project is the fact that Robredo, like Cory, became a widow and for some miraculous reason as in 1986 got to occupy such a high post.

IT’s hilarious for Yellow columnists to keep on using clichés they think make them look smart, like “in high stakes diplomacy, nothing is final until its final.” The title of one column was a loud whistling while walking past the graveyard: “Are Leni and Isko turning the tide?” I’ll bet soon there will be even priests calling for the faithful to chant their “oratio imperata” for the Marcos-Sara team’s ratings to be shot down by God’s thunderbolts.

The Pulse Asia report the other day was another confirmation of the certainty that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will win the presidency in May, with his formidable 60 percent preference, in politics light years ahead of Leni Robredo’s 15 percent, practically unchanged since last year.

Her spokesman’s comment was so ignorant and stupid, that the poll results did not reflect the “massive record-breaking rallies” for his boss. This guy must be smoking too much weed in his wretchedness over Robredo’s failure to launch, even being beaten by Isko Moreno in some surveys.

Polls, at the least the real ones, merely reflect a sample of the population’s current preference for voting for a candidate. While there are a myriad of factors determining these, most important are what I call “fundamentals,” a term I borrow from the stock market, which refers to the factors that contribute to the underlying — i.e., real — value or worth of a listed company. These are measurable “hard data,” such as a company’ debt-to-equity ratio, cash flow and market role.

THE first time I heard about it last month, I couldn’t believe it, and thought it was merely a trial balloon by the Rappler website. But it wasn’t, and I still can’t believe the Commission on Elections could do such an atrocious thing.

Either the commissioners were plainly stupid and derelict that they didn’t do due diligence on the matter or the poll body had been infiltrated by Rappler or its Yellow (Pink) operators.

Last week, on February 24, the Comelec officially gave authority to Rappler to undertake such functions during elections as “monitoring and rectification efforts on critical efforts on the ground” and to acquire from the Comelec such sensitive data during and after elections such as candidates’ expenses and untransmitted votes. The Rappler website would even carry the precinct finder for voters. Neither Rappler nor the Comelec has made the memorandum public although Maria Ressa, in her usual melodramatic manner, boasted about it in her website, bragging at the signing ceremony: “Whatever happens here will help determine the fate of other democracies around the world.”

Any election lawyer would immediately see that Comelec is giving the Rappler a huge amount of confidential data and authority to intervene on the ground, and a means of portraying the elections — if it wishes to — as a failure.

IN a desperate move to reverse Ferdinand (“Bongbong”) Marcos, Jr.’s inexorable run to win the presidency, the camp of Leonora Robredo, second placer in the polls (third in some surveys), is attempting to launch this February a campaign to clamp down on anti-Robredo, pro-Marcos posts in social media, mainly in Facebook and Twitter, the two most popular platforms in the country.

It was Senate candidate Larry Gadon who disclosed last week in his Viber account: “Leni Robredo personally met with Chris Kuzhuppily, Facebook Philippine public policy manager; Roy Tan, politics and government outreach manager for Asia Pacific; and Kylie Mooney, government, politics and advocacy partner manager, regarding the avalanche of support of millions of FB users behind Bongbong Marcos.”

Gadon quoted a source in Robredo’s camp as reporting: “They plan to suspend massive BBM supporters’ accounts one week before campaign period starts. A middle man helping Leni’s team reach FB is closely connected with the US.”

These reports jibe with a Robredo strategy paper titled “Il Figlio,” which claimed that “her weak imagery was solidified by what they see in social media.” The paper therefore claimed that the “battle is in social media — biggest sources of awareness and what shapes their perception towards different personalities are through social media.” Indeed, social media has widely broadcast Robredo’s gaffes in recent weeks and even her hilarious ads, even if these had already been taken down.

I AM convinced so. But you decide. I provide you with data and information.

Indeed, it’s not just an academic question these days. With Ferdinand Marcos’ son running for the presidency, the shoo-in, it seems now there has been a resurgence of articles by the Yellows claiming that the Marcos era was an economic disaster, so that Bongbong has no moral right to lead the country.

For instance, a Philippine Star amateur columnist in two columns pontificated that “statistics” (he actually means economic measures as GDP) such as the anemic 3.8 percent during Marcos’ 21-year rule prove so. He says that’s one reason Bongbong should not run for the presidency. That’s total baloney.

The Marcos regime’s economic performance must be divided into two parts, or else it cannot be understood: how could Filipinos live in such a “dark age” for 13 years?

The first period was from 1972 to 1980, which I term, to irritate the Yellows, Marcos’ “Golden Years” during which GDP growth surged to an average 6 percent, one of the highest rates since the Republic was born; better than that of Cory Aquino’s at 3.9 percent and Fidel Ramos’ at 4.8 percent.

RESEARCH commissioned by presidential aspirants Isko Moreno and Leni Robredo confirm through their own surveys, focus groups and analysis that Ferdinand ("Bongbong") Marcos Jr. is way ahead of them in the presidential contest, with…

DATA from the low key but highly reliable pollster Laylo Associates indicate that the Marcoses’ so-called Solid North (the Ilokano-speaking provinces) and the relatively new “Solid South” (the Dutertes’ Northern Mindanao and Davao provinces) are even more solid in delivering votes than in 2016.

According to the Laylo poll (undertaken end-November and with 3,000 respondents), 92 to 97 percent of the Ilocos, Cordillera and Cagayan Valley will be voting for Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. This is markedly bigger than the 65 percent to 75 percent of votes in these provinces that Marcos got in the 2016 vice presidential elections

These North and South regions will most likely deliver an avalanche of votes for both Marcos and his running mate, Sara Duterte-Carpio, to make the opposition candidate Leni Robredo the worst-performing candidate in our Republic’s history. At least according to the Laylo November poll, she would be getting only 12 percent of votes; even worse than Jose de Venecia’s 16 percent in 1998, the record holder as the biggest loser so far.