ALL right, the lords and masters of Philippine business and industry as well as their allies in the political realm have spoken. To hell with whatever anybody thinks about the acquisition by PLDT of Digitel’s Sun Cellular. The best legal minds don’t believe that the acquisition of Sun Cellular by the No. 1 telephone service corporation, which owns the No. 1 mobile phone service company, Smart, is tantamount to the return to the era of monopoly. Well, technically it doesn’t indeed create a monopoly. It only creates a duopoly, for there is still Globe, which is the No. 2 Big Player in the industry. Sun Cellular ranks No. 3. In their full-page color ad in all the broadsheet dailies (except The Manila Times), the PLDT-Sun Cellular combination crows “Sisikat and araw sa buong Pilipinas” (the sun will shine all over the Philippines) because “sa PLDT, tuloy-tuloy and ligaya sa Sun UNLI (in PLDT, the fun in Sun UNLI will keep going on).” This advertising copy seeks to allay the public’s fears that the cheap “unlimited texting and voice-call” services offered by Sun will, cease to exist. PLDT, which owns No. 1 mobile phone company Smart, claims that it will continue the cheap rates Sun has been offering, because of which it has survived as the No. 3 giant in the cellphone business. This claim means that Sun will continue to erode Smart’s profits (because it has had to make offers to match Sun’s cheap rates to prevent Smart subscribers from going to Sun.) But for how long will PLDT keep Sun’s cheap rates shining? Nobody knows. You can’t rely on the promises the clever businessmen and executives of PLDT make—same way you can’t count on the fidelity of government regulators to their mandate to protect the interests of the consumers. The No. 2 mobile phone giant, Globe, tried to keep PLDT’s acquisition of Sun. But its efforts seem to have been stymied by the opinion of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. The Senate President is trying to push an anti-trust law. This gives him, some people think, the moral authority to proclaim the PLDT acquisition of Sun Cellular not only legal but also ethically unquestionable. He has been quoted by media reports as saying (the quotes we are using here are from the Interaksyon.com story by Karl John C. Reyes posted on May 31, 2011) that: 1. There is no need for Congress’ approval of the deal because it is not the franchise that is being transferred from Sun Celular to PLDT but only the shares of stock (the ownership of Sun from Digitel to PLDT). 2. The franchise award laws Congress passes always have an “equality clause.” “So there is no problem with that transaction. Hindi naman siguro ako magsasabi na legal yun o tama yun na hindi ko muna pinag-aralan ang batas. Tungkol sa merger-merger na yan, kaya ako naging Master of Laws dahil dyan [I wouldn’t be asserting that this is legal or right if I didn’t study the law very well beforehand regarding something like this, that’s why I’m a Master of Laws].” Mr. Enrile even cast aspersion on Globe for opposing the PLDT-Digitel deal. He said Globe failed to acquire Sun because PLDT gave the Digitel owners a better offer. He accused Globe of trying to use Congress to stop the merger but it “cannot use Congress in order to stop the merger since no violations of any provision of the franchise given to Digitel were violated.” “Kaya ba sila nagku-complain dahil natalo sila? Puwede bang bawiin ng gobyerno yung transaction? Anong violation? Yun ang sabi nila dahil gusto nila makipag-areglo. Gusto nilang gamitin ang Kongreso para sila mapaburan [Are they complaining because they lost? Can government void that transaction? What violation? That is what they say because they want to settle. They want to use Congress to favor them]. No way,” Enrile firmly said. “Yes, gusto nilang bilhin yun. Mababa yung presyo nila. So, smart yung Smart. Dinoble nila yung presyo, kaya nabili nila. Ganyan ang negosyo. Parang sugal yan, kung hindi ka desididong sumugal ay hindi ka mananalo [Yes, Globe wanted to buy it, but the price offered was low. Smart was smart, it offered a higher price and got it. Business is like gambling; if you’re not prepared to up the stakes, you can’t win],” Enrile is quoted to have said. The spirit of the law What is the spirit of the law, though? Is it a benign spirit or an evil one? We admire Senate President Enrile for seeing—more than many of his colleagues in the Senate—the human being that must not be treated as just a glob of blood in the fertilized ovum. It takes a higher level of humanity to have a heart and mind that would be concerned about vulnerable human beings in the unborn. But we must here appeal to him to apply a similar sensitivity to the issue of allowing unbridled capitalism to reign. What kind of anti-trust law will emerge if the PacMan proclivity of PLDT-Smart and the business genius Mr. M. V. Pangilinan will always have the support of legal eagles and political powers like Mr. Enrile? Our understanding of anti-trust legislation is that it should promote democratic capitalism not the triumph of tendencies like those of the great cartoonist Al Capp’s General Bullmoose. The creator of Li’l Abner also created General Bullmoose, whose ruthless capitalist creed was “What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!” Are we creating a Philippine society whose creed is “What’s good for Mr. Pangilinan is good for the Philippine Republic?” We believe there’s something morally infirm about the PLDT-Digitel deal that places Sun Cellular in the same basket as Smart. And it gives us a queasy stomach to think of business as being as questionable as gambling. Source:- http://www.manilatimes.net/opinion/editorial/legally-okay-maybe-but-morally-infirm/
