New Sol-Gen abandons Abaya in car plates mess

The new Solicitor General is abandoning the old transport officials in their irregular contracting of vehicle license plates in 2013. That move practically collapses the case at the Supreme Court of Dept. of Transport ex-chief Joseph Abaya and six factotums.

Sol-Gen Jose C. Calida decided to stop defending Abaya’s P3.8-billion contract after discovering it had no proper government funding. Abaya earlier made the SC believe that Congress appropriated a budget – when records show that it had not.

Rushed in mid-2013, Abaya’s Motor Vehicle Plate Standardization Project ( MVPSP) was all messed up. In the allegedly rigged bidding, a Filipino company blacklisted for forgery and its undercapitalized Dutch partner outdid prestigious European rivals. The sample deliveries reportedly were substandard, with the metal crumpling under floodwaters and the “tamper-proof” bolts falling off. The first bulk delivery of 600,000 plates remains stuck at the Manila port for unpaid import duties. The five-year program to replace 10 million old plates has flopped, with hundreds of thousands of new vehicles now running with no plates at all. The registrants were made to pay not only for the plates, but also for non-existent stickers.

In a 51-page manifestation to the SC last Aug. 25, Calida withdrew his office from defending Abaya’s contract. He invoked the constitutional mandate of the Sol-Gen as the “tribune of the people.” As such, the Sol-Gen can refuse to lawyer for executive agencies in acts inimical to the public interest. The Sol-Gen basically is answerable to the citizenry.

Calida’s review of the contract revealed a series of breaches of the Constitution, the General Appropriations Acts of 2013 and 2014, and anti-graft and government procurement laws.

When the bidding was held in 2013 for the P3.8-billion MVPSP, Congress’ appropriation was only P137.3 million. Still Abaya granted the contract to Power Plates Inc. and J. Knierem B.V. Goes (PPIJKG). He even advanced more than P400 million to the joint venture. That advance came from the allocations to and collections by the Land Transportation Office’s vehicle registration database and driver licensing. Those works are handled by other contractors.

In the subsequent budget bill for 2014 there was no proposal for the MVPSP. Seeking to remedy it, Abaya requested then-budget secretary Florencio Abad to realign funds from the extension of the Light Rail Transit-1. Abaya didn’t get it. He then requested Congress for the same realignment during the budget hearings. Again no go. The GAA-2014 that Congress enacted and then-President Noynoy Aquino signed thus had no single centavo for Abaya’s contract.

Taxpayer Reynaldo M. Jacomille questioned before the SC the constitutionality of Abaya’s unfunded contract. Abaya made the justices believe that the MVPSP was covered by the separate 2013-2014 budgets for vehicle registration databasing and driver licensing. The SC ruled that the contract indeed was unbudgeted, but that it was deemed cured by the GAA 2014.

Congressmen Gustavo Tambunting and Jonathan dela Cruz, who had intervened in the case, sought reconsideration of the SC’s clearance of the contract. It is in that pending motion that Calida manifested withdrawal from defending Abaya and detailing his findings.

Abaya can be held criminally liable. Same with ex-undersecretaries Jose Perpetuo Lotilla, Rene Limcaoco, Julianito Bucayan, and Catherine Jennifer Gonzales; and ex-assistant secretaries Ildefonso Patdu and Alfonso Tan Jr., then-head of the LTO.

PPI-JKG has charged them with graft before the Ombudsman for non-payment of the 600,000 plates. That case is about their failure to secure a Multi-Year Obligational Authority, a legal requirement for any government contract that recurs beyond one budget year. The Ombudsman ordered Abaya et al to explain themselves by last week.

In investigating the undue haste in the multibillion-peso deal, the Ombudsman would do well to consider that 2013 was an election year. It must also read the SolGen’s manifestation to the SC.

Calida’s case reviewers include Assistant Solicitors General Rex Bernardo Pascual and Thomas Laragan, and Senior State Solicitor Maria Victoria V. Sardillo.

This is not the first time that the Sol-Gen withdrew as counsel of executive officials. In the early 2000s Simeon Marcelo twice had refused to defend an erring state prosecutor and an anomalous policy. The courts respected the Sol-Gen’s role as People’s Tribune.

MRT-3 holdover GM Roman Buenafe now admits to 12 cracked bogey frames. Before that, the new spokeswoman at the DOTr head office claimed there were only two railcars with faulty bogey frames, not four as exposed here last week.

Buenafe persists in saying the metal cracking is “normal.” That covers up the faults of the contractor he and Abaya hired for P4.25 billion without public bidding. The contractor has not stockpiled basic spare parts since Jan. 2016. That’s

As “Tribune of the People,” the agency need not defend acts of executive officials that are inimical to public interest.

why breakdowns occur every other day, and only a few trains are running.

Buenafe claims the defective railcars have been fitted with “rotational spare frames.” That makes it sound like the contractor has on stock the heavy frames that hold up the railcar wheels and brakes. Yet, those supposed spares merely were cannibalized from the three railcars smashed in 2014 and at least two more with irreparably busted brakes.

The contractor is a joint venture of Busan Transport of Korea (four percent) and four Filipino dummies (86 percent) who are into anything but rails: plumbing, agricultural supply, general merchandise, and construction.

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