Seares: The Tulfos and conflict of interest

THE Senate Blue Ribbon committee last Tuesday (Aug. 14) heard Tulfo brothers Ben and Erwin deny the charge that the P60-million Department of Tourism ads placed in a show hosted by the Tulfos on PTV4 was anomalous. No conflict of interest, they insisted.

They are right, up to a point.

The contract that involved government funds was between DOT -- whom their sister Wanda Tulfo-Teo led as secretary -- and PTV4, a government-owned television company managed by the president’s communication office, PCOO. By itself, the deal didn’t create a conflict of interest. The party sought to be benefited by the ad contract is a government entity of which Tulfo-Teo had no part.

Trap ahead

The situation arose when PTV4 contracted with Bitag Media, of which Ben Tulfo was CEO and Erwin Tulfo was host of the program that Bitag ran on the said TV station. Tulfo-Teo allegedly specified that the money be spent on Bitag’s shows and PTV4 complied.

Conflict of interest, Sen. Richard Gordon, the Blue Ribbon committee chairman intoned, klarong klaro.

Had Tulfo-Teo directly dealt with Bitag it would’ve been outright conflict of interest. Although she is not an officer, member or capital sharer of Bitag, she would be enriching her siblings. The roundabout way may indicate that the Tulfos knew what was ahead, a possible “bitag” or trap.

Saving money

Tulfo-Teo could’ve been asked by the senators why she specified the Bitag show when it was reportedly only #38 in the audience ratings. Or if she did not, why PTV4 picked Bitag. PTV4 granted the bulk of the contract money to Bitag when the TV station should’ve been the major beneficiary of the deal.

Industry experts could’ve given the Blue Ribbon insight on how the government could save money on promotion campaigns. A local example was the recent decision of Capitol to allocate funds for the promotion of its projects. DOT, much like the Capitol but in a smaller scale, seems to ignore information on how to spend advertising money.

Policy on conflict

The thrust of Blue Ribbon is, or should be, how to help government offices avoid waste of the state’s precious resources on media campaigns.

Apparently however, from the behavior of some senators who enjoyed bullying the Tulfos, they were more keen on putting them behind bars. Sen. Antonio Trillanes, for one, read the provision on plunder to scare the siblings.

Not so quick, your honors. The administration appears to be not bent on sanctioning conflict-of-interest situations. The recent case of the solicitor general bagging multimillion-peso contracts for his family’s security agency created an uproar but it has not cost him his job or the revocation of the prize contracts.

Failure of law?

Either the law is not tough enough or those who interpret the law look at the loopholes instead of its spirit or intent. The fact is the law seems to have failed.

Remember the case where a Cebu City councilor (a) served as member of the City Council and chairman of the committee on scholarships that decided on the award of contracts for scholarships and (b) at the same time was owner of a school that was given a multi-million-peso contract? The ombudsman saw a clear case of conflict of interest. The vice mayor, a former ombudsman investigator, advised him there was a conflict of interest. You know how the court ruling cleared the councilor? The council was merely recommending the appropriation. Heck, the council authorized the spending. The mayor could not have signed the contract without the council’s authority. Did the court need a basic law tutorial there?

Comparing situations, the Tulfos’s repeated plea that they did not violate the law might even be more tenable than the councilor’s argument.

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