We have a name for transactions made by government officials who are about to leave their posts but who want to secure some form of benefit for themselves or their allies just before other people take over.
Recall how President Benigno Aquino III took his immediate predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to task for naming Supreme Court Associate Justice Renato Corona chief justice shortly before she stepped down. A midnight appointment, he cried.
Mr. Aquino did all that was within his power to make life not just difficult but miserable for Corona. At the 2010 presidential inauguration, Mr. Aquino acknowledged those who were on the stage with him except the chief justice.
Two years later, Corona was impeached, tried, convicted and removed from office upon the instigation of Aquino, who went as far as providing a P50-million incentive for every senator who would convict the chief justice despite the fact that the numerous grounds for impeachment had been whittled down into Corona’s failure to declare everything he owned in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth.
Corona died this year, most likely still a broken man. Mr. Aquino says he should never have been appointed chief justice; we say it’s sheer vindictiveness for a Supreme Court decision adverse to the Cojuangco-Aquino family that owns Hacienda Luisita.
Curiously, Mr. Aquino never said a word when in February 2015, the man he named chairman of the Commission on Elections, Sixto Brillantes, signed a deal with Venezuelan company Smartmatic to repair 82,000 voting machines for use in this year’s elections three days before his retirement. It took the Supreme Court to halt this anomalous transaction by declaring the deal null and void.
Smartmatic is the same company that gave us woes in last month’s polls. Doubts continue to linger about the reliability of the election results with reports of wide-scale manipulation of votes to favor the administration. The Comelec has played down such accusations.
Now another Aquino appointee, Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina, is accused of issuing an order last week to allow Manila North Harbour Port Inc. to engage in international trade just weeks before a new administration is set to take over.
The company has an existing agreement with the Philippine Ports Authority to engage only in domestic trading.
A Customs official told this newspaper that Lina had railroaded the hearing on the implementing rules and regulations of the law identifying which agencies are under the jurisdiction of the bureau and whose which are not. The PPA is under the Department of Transportation and Communications while Customs is under the Finance Department.
Lina’s appointment had been problematic to begin with because of his private interest in a number of firms transacting with Customs. He said he had divested himself of his holdings —but we only have his word to take for this claim.
On this issue, we have yet to hear word from the Palace, which styles itself as the enemy of midnight transactions in its pursuit of the straight path—except when those involved come from its own ranks.
Transition periods are generally uncertain times; people do not know which old or new standards apply and in the frenzy do not often keep track of what the outgoing officials are doing to further their interests or save their skin.
We can reduce the uncertainty by keeping watch over what the outgoing officials are doing —and making sure they are held accountable for it not too long into the future.