Are labor groups now the stooges of scoundrels at the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), whose expertise is resurrecting long dead bus franchises? Only Jesus Christ can resurrect someone from the dead, but this gang is trying to perform the same miracle.
The question above is asked because the shadowy group behind the resurrection of the 489 “Lazarus franchises,” which subsequently sold these wholesale to five companies that belong to the most dominant bus operator in Luzon, is now waging a propaganda war. The group’s claim: “The retrenched Pantranco workers have to get their due. Justice should be served. It is a social justice issue. The sale of the bus lines to the Hernandez group would compensate the workers’ money claims against the defunct Pantranco, etc., etc.”
Another claim: There was a 1993 Supreme Court decision that awarded them the franchises. False.
Even two congressmen, Emil Ong of Samar and Teddy Casiño of the party-list group Bayan Muna, were fooled. They urged, in yesterday’s issue of the Inquirer, that Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas, who had canceled the illegal award of the franchises to the workers, to follow the high court and “let the LTFRB do its job of transferring the franchises to the company to which the former Pantranco management sold it.” Alas, they were misled.
What is the truth? After careful investigation, I found that these are the facts that expose all those claims as half-truths.
In the May 2012 award by the LTFRB to the Hernandez group, the flow chart was this: The defunct Pantranco was the original vendor and it passed on the franchises to the Pantranco Retrenched Workers Association (Panrea), which then sold the franchises to five companies belonging to the Hernandez group.
Why did the workers, supposedly on a quest for social justice, make a fast-break sale to the largest bus operating family in the whole of Luzon? Is it now the mandate of the workers to make the big, bigger, and the rich, richer? We identify labor groups with crusades for egalitarianism, not as the support group and ally of the rich.
Let us tackle the legal issues. The first piece of evidence shows that the expired Pantranco lines were sold by two legally nonexistent entities. Meaning, the franchises were sold to the Hernandez family by bogus entities—Pantranco, the corporation, and Panrea, the labor group. In short, two dead entities selling 489 dead franchises.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued two certifications relative to the issue. The first one showed the revocation by the SEC of the certificate of registration of the Pantranco North Express, the corporation, on July 2, 2003. Panrea’s certificate of registration was revoked on Dec. 1, 2005. The SEC said the two failed to meet routine reportorial requirements.
Legally, the LTFRB failed to do an elementary thing: check the legal status of the two parties in a wholesale, unprecedented award of 489 bus franchises to just one family. How can the LTFRB approve the award of dead lines by two entities with no legal personality?
The workers are now claiming that in 1993, the high court ruled in their favor and this was used by the LTFRB to revive the franchises. False. There was never a high court decision awarding the franchises to Panrea on or before June 30, 1993.
The Supreme Court indeed made a decision on the Pantranco workers’ case. But it was dated Oct. 17, 1996, or more than three years after the June 30, 1993, expiration of the Pantranco franchises.
The high court’s decision on Oct. 17, 1996, was a generic one on compensation, with no mention of the dead franchises.
After that decision, Pantranco paid P895,000 to the retrenched workers as initial compensation. A writ of execution was issued in 2001, and this attached properties of Pantranco—namely, machinery, equipment, buses and other motor vehicles—in favor of the workers. By this time, the lines could no longer be attached because as early as 1993, the LTFRB had declared the franchises expired and dead.
The sob story of the supposed uncompensated workers is as big a lie as the peddled story line that the franchises are still alive and negotiable. Why did the workers not get from the massive landholdings of Pantranco to satisfy their claims? This is a big mystery.
The award, aside from the corruption and legal issues, will not serve any public good whatsoever.
There is absolutely no need to pack the jammed Metro Manila streets with 489 additional buses. To fill up the void created by the dead Pantranco franchises, the LTFRB had granted new franchises, and only after a survey, technically called the RMC (or rough measured capacity). The LTFRB, based on its history and practice, can award a bus operator-applicant only from 10 to 30 franchises per order. (We are speaking of the past LTFRB, not the present one.) In fact, the LTFRB has already issued an excess of franchises, resulting in the horrendous traffic jams every day. What the LTFRB should be doing is this: Cancel many existing franchises, not grant new ones. The number of vehicles in Metro Manila is already four times the carrying capacity of its streets.
Lastly, the workers are crying out “social justice.” No less than the Supreme Court has said that “those who invoke social justice may do so only if their hands are clean and their motives blameless.” These workers have levied franchises that, they knew, expired decades ago and sold these to Victory Liner, Pangasinan Five Star, Bataan Transit, etc., the same bus companies who relentlessly argued before the LTFRB that these “franchises have long expired and can no longer be sold or transferred.” Now they are claiming the exact opposite: that the franchises are still valid.