The House of Representatives will pass a bill putting the Presidential Commission on Good Government and the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel under the Office of the Solicitor General, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said Wednesday.
The reason? The PCGG and the OGCC have failed to win cases in favor of the government, Alvarez said.
“They have yet to win cases in favor of the government. I have to be blunt about it,” the Speaker said.
Alvarez said the House leadership is preparing a measure that will virtually abolish the PCGG and the OGCC as well.
The PCGG was created in 1986 purposely to handle cases of ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses. But since its creation, Alvarez said he was unsatisfied with the agency’s performance, having recovered “only” about P170 billion from the ill-gotten wealth of the former dictator’s family.
Alvarez said the bill, to be filed soon by the House leadership, will simplify the function of the 82-year-old OGCC, the function of which is to attend to legal cases of the government-owned and controlled corporations, under the SolGen.
The OGCC was created on Dec. 1, 1935 and initially served as “small corporate counsel division” under the Department of Justice. In 1951, it was placed under the Office of the Solicitor General, and became an independent agency in 1959.