Misleading

The January survey conducted by the SWS validates what the December Pulse Asia survey already noted: Vice President Jejomar Binay is beginning to extend his lead over the rest of the field. With a 31 percent share of voter preference in a five-candidate race, Binay’s lead is impressive and almost impregnable.

The Binay lead noted in the SWS survey does not yet take into account the adverse political fallout from President Aquino’s veto of a bill increasing SSS pensions by a mere P2,000. Senior citizens, who have a very high voter turnout, are up in arms, vowing to reject all of Aquino’s candidates.

Voters migrating from the beleaguered Grace Poe camp mainly transfer their support to Binay. Migration of previous Poe voters to the Binay camp was detected by survey analysis months ago. The more Poe’s share shrinks, the larger Binay’s lead will be.

LP operatives who have been trying to knock Poe out of the race, thinking this will improve Mar Roxas’ chances should now dramatically shift gears. In a tragicomedy of sorts, they must now try to keep Poe in the game to keep Roxas’ candidacy viable.

The Mar Roxas campaign responded to signs the heavens were falling with misleading advertising warning, in effect, that the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program will be terminated if he is not elected president. For the record, all the major presidential aspirants have committed to continuing the CCT.

This misleading advertising confirms the CCT program was a vote-buying project to begin with. Dinky Soliman is now very busy mustering CCT beneficiaries to support the Roxas-Robredo tandem.

The main reason the Poe voting base is shrinking rapidly is the likelihood she will be disqualified from the presidential race on issues of citizenship and residency.

Responding to the rapid evaporation of voter support for her candidacy, the Poe camp frantically reminds voters she remains a candidate. That, too, is misleading.

Strictly speaking, she has been disqualified by the Comelec voting en banc on the two issues. She remains a disqualified candidate until the Supreme Court reverses the Comelec ruling.

The legal arguments do not seem to make a Supreme Court reversal very likely.

On the issue of residency, Poe’s lawyers offer a thin defense, saying the certificate of candidacy she filed when she ran for the Senate in 2013 contained an “honest mistake” that should be “corrected” by her filing for the presidency. But in the period she is supposed to have reverted to Filipino citizenship, she continued using her US passport.

On the issue of her citizenship, her lawyers plead that international law establishes that no foundling could be stateless. That, too, is not the issue.

The petition filed by lawyer Estrella Elamparo does not deny her citizenship. What it says is that she is not a natural-born citizen as specified by our Constitution.

The constitutional requirement might be harsh; but that is the law. The magistrates are unlikely to be swayed by emotional arguments raised by Poe’s lawyers. That does not bode well for her candidacy.

Capitalized

Liberalization of our banking system now makes it possible for more foreign banks to come in and partner with local banks. This, in turn, will encourage expansion of bank branching, raise corporate governance levels and improve capitalization of local banks.

Last week, it was announced that The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) entered into a strategic partnership with Security Banking Corporation. The large and respected Japanese bank will invest about P37 billion for a 20 percent stake in Security Bank by way of newly issued primary shares. This means the entire P37 billion will go to Security Bank’s capital resource, improving its resiliency and capital adequacy.

With its investment, BTMU gains two seats in the Security Bank board. The Dy family, however, remains the biggest shareholder in the local bank.

With the new investment, Security Bank begins expanding a comprehensive financial services platform to take advantage of opportunities in a rapidly expanding economy. This platform will enable the bank to grow its branch network by between 500 and 600 new branches before 2020. It will also support existing retail banking initiatives, increase SME penetration and grow its low-cost funding base.

This is significant, considering that only a third of the Philippine population has access to banking and financial services. There is much headroom for bank expansion, especially in what is called the “middle market” of retail banking and SME partnership.

Even before the entry of BTMU, Security Bank distinguished itself with its state of the art information technology systems designed for the convenience of bank clients. The new investment will allow the local bank to improve further on those IT systems and provide clients highly differentiated financial services.

This strategic partnership between Security Bank and the Japanese financial giant can only be good news to banking clients who look forward to highly responsive financial services. In this highly mobile technological environment, depositors and borrowers want to be closely in touch with their respective banks using mobile technologies. Security Bank wants to be the leader in this regard.

Surely this will not be the last strategic partnership between Filipino banks and large foreign financial institutions. The deal between Security Bank and BTMU sets the model for other similar partnerships to happen.

Our economic growth cannot be sustained unless a critical mass of our working population has access to financial services. Such access will enhance both broad-based investment in the financial market as well as more analytical consumer behavior.

A domestic economy where the majority of the working population has no access to banks and modern financial services in untenable.