THAT the Yellows have
used the template labeled “AMLC” to attack its major foes has been as obvious
as it is sickening.
It was used to take out
Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012 and then the leading presidential candidate
in 2016, Jejomar Binay. The Yellow stragglers are now trying to use the same
template to oust President Duterte.
The gang of former
President Aquino and the Liberal Party has debased an institution that is
supposed to fight international organized crime and terrorism and turned it
into a tool to viciously assail their enemies. A cliché but certainly true:
Only in the Philippines. *
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It was used to take out
Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012 and then the leading presidential candidate
in 2016, Jejomar Binay. The Yellow stragglers are now trying to use the same
template to oust President Duterte.- Tiglao (photo credit to notey website)
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With Filipinos’
notorious short historical memories, not too many remember that the Yellows
mobilized the Anti Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to create and disseminate
the colossal black propaganda that then Vice President Jejomar Binay, the then
frontrunner in the presidential elections in 2016, and his allies, had hid
billions of pesos in their bank accounts.
After the AMLC’s lies
took their course, spread especially by the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) and
the website Rappler, Binay’s standing in the electoral contest fell steeply
from its 30 percent plus level in January 2016 to 13 percent on the eve of the
elections. He landed last in the field of four candidates.
Karma
Talk of karma. Those
fooled by the AMLC voted instead for Duterte, who won decisively—the only
candidate it turns out now with the grit to exterminate the Yellows from the
face of the earth.
The Yellows did deploy
in the 2016 election contest the same weapon against Duterte, with AMLC
“records” leaked to Sen. Antonio Trillanes 4th. But the AMLC focused on the
candidate the Yellows thought was their main enemy, Binay. In the first place,
the Yellows’ scheme would be so obvious if it had attacked two presidential candidates,
wouldn’t it? *
It was the executive
director of the AMLC’s secretariat then, Julia Bacay-Abad (who resigned last
January) who was allegedly responsible for the agency’s mobilization against
Binay. It is this same Abad whom Duterte the other day accused of leaking to
Trillanes his and his family’s bank account records, which the imaginative but
unscrupulous legislator tampered with so that these would show P1 billion in
“transactions”.
It was certainly an
instance of that adage: “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.” The chairman
of the AMLC then, Bangko Sentral governor Amando Tetangco—as well the council’s
two other members, Securities and Exchange Commission chair Teresita Herbosa
and Insurance Commission head Emmanuel Dooc—just kept quiet, while its
executive director Abad did the Yellows’ bidding.
What the AMLC did in the
last elections to torpedo Binay’s presidential bid was so brazen, we are shamed
as a nation for not raising a howl against it.
Can’t they think of
another scheme?
First, it leaked to a
PDI reporter, Nancy Carvajal, an alleged confidential 62-page AMLC report in
2015 which said that Binay got “billions of pesos” from infrastructure projects
in Makati. It was the newspaper’s banner headline with its opinion writers echoing
the allegations. *
Whether the “report” was
a genuine AMLC report or a product of Mar Roxas’ lawyers’ creative minds,
nobody could say to this day. A facsimile of the report was never published by
the PDI. The AMLC simply remained silent about it, which therefore sent the
message that it was authentic. A year later, and two months before the
elections, the PDI would regurgitate the same article, and again put it as its
banner headline.
Ex parte case
Ex parte case
Second, rather than
money laundering criminals —drug lords, big-time smugglers, and al-Qaida
terrorists, the supposed targets of the Anti-Money Laundering Law—the AMLC
threw its scarce legal resources against the vice president. It filed an ex
parte money laundering case in the Court of Appeals, at the height of the
election campaign period against Binay, who was way ahead of the pack in the
presidential contest. “Ex parte” meant it chose to file the case on its own,
not because of any complaint of any other third party.
The AMLC asked the
court—which granted the appeal—to freeze not only Binay and his family’s
accounts, but also those of his business supporters. The AMLC move was not just
a propaganda project. It was also intended to cripple Binay’s campaign, by
freezing his business allies’ bank accounts, so that the flow of campaign funds
for the candidate would be choked. *
In any other country,
the prosecution by an agency controlled by the ruling party of the opposition’s
presidential candidate who is the front-runner would have created so much
public outrage. Not here.
That the AMLC may have
manufactured data to convince the court to freeze the bank accounts Binay, his
family, and his financial supporters became so obvious later on.
Abad had called
businessman Antonio Tiu—a Ten Outstanding Young Men awardee—a dummy of Binay
and included his bank accounts among those the AMLC got the Court of Appeals to
freeze. Abad claimed that $20.4 million in foreign exchange that Tiu had bought
from a subsidiary of RCBC was actually Binay’s. Tiu filed a perjury case against
Abad.
RCBC told the court Tiu
had no such transactions with the bank—in July 2016, after the presidential
elections.
The AMLC of course
didn’t work alone. It had as its co-conspirators in its attacks against Corona
and Binay, the Ombudsman, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Rappler. It is the
same conspiracy now that has Duterte in its sights. *
That is what the Yellow
Cult has been doing to this country. Invoking some noble cause, it has debased
our institutions, even the press, in its desperate attempt to remain in power.
The article was written by Mr. Rigoberto
Tiglao of the Manila Times titled “AMLC: The yellows’ weapon vs Corona and
Binay, now aimed at Duterte” which was published October 6, 2017.
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