“Now under Duterte, we discover that the objective of both concessionaires has less to do with RORB than it has with taxes they consider as reclaimable losses.

There are three issues currently burning in the public discourse that show how previous presidents may have each sold us down the river. By doing so they not only betrayed the trust granted them when they subsequently sat behind the most powerful desk in the land, but in their betrayal, they’ve effectively conspired with, placed in critical positions and empowered an avaricious cabal of “Makapili” with a stranglehold on important facets of our economy.

For those who may have forgotten who the “Makapili” were, allow us a skinny.

The Makabayang Katipunan ng mga Pilipino (Patriotic Association of Filipinos) or Makapili was formed during World War II. They gave military aid and support to the invading Imperial Japanese Army, virtually selling out fellow Filipinos. They conducted a war against Filipino guerrilla fighters and were involved in some of the worst atrocities committed against those opposing the Japanese. Over time the nomenclature has come to mean either a collaborator or an outright traitor.

In the issues involving the sell-out of our sovereignty we might see the equivalent of the Makapili as an insidious operator benefitting from unwarranted burdens inflicted on the public. After all, what had attracted the original Makapili to betray their fellow Filipinos was a promise of wealth, land and resources later to be distributed after the war.

In each of the sell-out episodes debated today, Rodrigo Duterte is not only confronted with the task of cleaning up the putrid poop left in the grass but he now must likewise recast significant cogs of the economy and work into its constitution provisions to prevent in the future similar surrenders of sovereignty.

His is a heroic and Herculean task as the anomalies are themselves as gargantuan as the greed behind their crafting and the apparent stupidity of the officials who allowed these inflicted on us.

Allow us to briefly review some that continuously victimize. For the sake of accountability, let’s name under whom they were spawned specially those whose onerous conditions entangle the government and lead to the challenges we face today. While today may be far removed from the environment of those past actions, it behooves us to recognize certain universalities like greed, dereliction and corruption.

The water concessions we are now debating were perhaps the oldest, albeit the provisions embedded in those contracts mirror provisions in latent agreements with the same principals. This compels us to review and perhaps rewrite not just the old contracts but the new ones. This is important especially amid obfuscation chatter and noise from opposition media.

One online outfit sought to taint the water concessionaire issues as one founded on a corporation’s required return on capital by citing the risks faced by private corporations invited by then President Fidel Ramos to manage and expand the distribution operations of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System. Necessarily capital expansion was required for efficient and low-cost distribution.

Unfortunately, not only did the opposition media fail to do their homework but in their rush to vilify Duterte in this issue they forgot that under the Aquino administration returns on rate base (RORB) as well as issues of passing on of tax liabilities to the public had already been raised but were quickly excreted.

In 2013 the concessionaires demanded rebates presumably based on a 12 percent RORB where rate bases are assets solely employed in the water business. Because both have unrelated assets audits are required. In 2013, there was no such audit.

The controversy festered. Arbitration ensued and the state lost its case.

Now under Duterte, we discover that the objective of both concessionaires has less to do with RORB than it has with taxes they consider as reclaimable losses.

Under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo we were pretty much skewered from behind as well. The privatization of the National Transmission Corporation involved deferred accruals sourced from charges inflicted on consumers.

Under Benigno Aquino III there were two bloody sell outs. One was Aquino’s Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement that allowed the foreign use of our restricted military facilities thus painting a bright red target within our territory for hostile forces to aim at. The other was the Mamasapano massacre where brave lives were sold out, abandoned and left to a brutal fate.

Obviously the Makapili are alive and remain among us.