GSIS PRESIDENT ARANAS QUITS
Embattled Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) president and general manager Jesus Clint Aranas has resigned from the state-run pension fund effective July 2.
Two sources close to Aranas confirmed to the Inquirer his resignation just days after the GSIS chief sought to sell a property operated by ports tycoon Enrique Razon.
Malacañang confirmed Aranas’ resignation.
‘Personal reasons’
A source cited “personal reasons” for Aranas’ resignation, but another said the reason was his clash with Razon and no less than Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, who heads the Duterte administration’s economic team.
Aranas was former treasurer of President Duterte’s ruling PDP-Laban party and helped in the 2016 presidential campaign, but he resigned from the party post last year.
In 2016, Aranas was appointed deputy commissioner for legal at the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), where he later clashed with BIR Commissioner Caesar Dulay.
While Aranas’ name had figured as a major contender for the BIR chief post before Duterte assumed office, it was Dulay, the President’s roommate at the YMCA dormitory in the 1960s, who was eventually appointed to head the country’s biggest revenue agency.
In November 2017, President Duterte transferred Aranas to the GSIS, whose top post was left vacant for over a year after former GSIS president and general manager Robert Vergara resigned in October 2016.
Last week, Aranas said the planned sale of the contested property at Manila North Harbor would push through despite opposition from Razon-led International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI).
‘Naked title’
“To ensure the integrity of the funds of its members, the GSIS is determined to sell it through public bidding upon the approval of the board,” Aranas said.
Aranas was reacting to an earlier statement of Razon that the GSIS only had a “naked title,” hence had no right to use the property.
For Aranas, “that does not preclude the GSIS from disposing of the property.”
According to Aranas, the 672,645-square-meter property occupied by ICTSI has a market value of P33.6 billion, based on its zonal valuation as of May.
In a press briefing in June, GSIS officials claimed that ICTSI should pay the pension fund P80 million in monthly rent for the land that the port operator had occupied since the 1970s.
Aranas had said the GSIS was ready to initiate legal proceedings to collect back rentals of almost P1 billion per year from ICTSI.
In response, ICTSI claimed that what the GSIS has been holding to claim ownership of the disputed 67-hectare land was “at most, only a naked title” without the corresponding right to use the property.
ICTSI earlier explained that what the GSIS believed granted it ownership was a title for land reclamation granted to GSIS by former President Ferdinand Marcos through a 1975 presidential decree. At that time, more than half of the disputed property was underwater and had yet to be reclaimed from Manila Bay.
“Three months after Presidential Decree No. 802, the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) charter was issued where all port facilities, land, buildings, movable and immovable properties, intangible assets, powers, rights, foreshore lease and other privileges were transferred to the PPA,” ICTSI explained
In early 1978, another Marcos decree—Presidential Decree No. 1284—expressly repealed PD 802 which became the source of the GSIS title.