Who owns the country?

(Concluded from Monday)

A survey of the holdings of Philippine business conglomerates across industries draws a map of the control of strategic sectors of the national economy by a few business combines. This overview is graphically provided, not by a microscopic examination of corporate balance sheets and financial statements submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, but by data based on listings of the distribution of corporations in control of certain sectors.

Since ordinary citizens or laypersons are not accountants, this spectrum is probably the most expeditious way to have an idea of who owns this country—or what business combine has exercised control of most of the wealth and productive assets of the economy. Forbes magazine’s list of the 40 richest Filipinos (billionaires and millionaires) only gives us a superficial view of who owns most of the wealth of this country and through what mechanism.

The starting point of this inquiry is the recent collapse of the attempt by a group of companies clustered around Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., headed by Manuel V. Pangilinan, to buy controlling shares in GMA7, the second largest radio-TV network in the country, and merge it with ABC-TV5, which Pangilinan’s group acquired in 2003. If the negotiations with GMA7 had succeeded, it would have gained control of 60 percent of the TV market, and the merger of the two networks would have placed them in a strong position to compete with ABS-CBN, the industry leader, owned by the Lopez family.

The listings of the corporate holdings of the PLDT group show a widespread scope unequalled by any business conglomerate in the Philippines. Wikipedia, Businessweek, and other sources summarize Pangilinan’s group investments, and his various positions, thus:

Managing director and chief executive officer of First Pacific Co. Ltd., based in Hong Kong; chair, PLDT; president, Manila Electric Co.; CEO and president, Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (2001 to 2003); chair, Maynilad Water Services Inc., since 2007; chair, Metro Pacific Tollways Development Corp.; chair, Philex Mining Corp. since 2008; chair, Philex Petroleum Corp.; chair, Board of Medical Doctors Inc., which operates hospitals and medical services; and chair, Manila Metro Rail Transit System.

In the First Pacific Group, Pangilinan holds the position of president commissioner of P.T Indofood Sukses Makmur Tbk, the largest food company in Indonesia. He chaired the board of trustees of Ateneo de Manila University until last month, when he announced his “complete and final disengagement” from Ateneo over “irreconcilable differences” on the issues of mining and the Reproductive Health bill.

These extensive corporate investments tell us that the PLDT group touches every aspect of our life as citizens, ranging from the water we drink, the food we eat, the electricity we use, our education, our health facilities, our communications system, and our public infrastructure, to the information and ideas we get from radio-TV and newspapers. This invasion, this pervasive presence of business enterprises, is worse and more dangerous than that of the Big Brother state.

This issue came to a head when the PLDT group moved to expand its foothold in the mass media with the bid to buy out GMA7 to consolidate its control of radio-TV networks and mainstream media in which it already holds minority shares of stock.

In Australia today, there’s a big debate over moves by mining billionaires such as Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer to buy up a bigger slice of the Australian media. In an article in The Conversation journal, Richard Denniss, a professor at the Crawford School at Australian National University, warned about the danger posed by these moves to press freedom.

Rinehart is reported to be the wealthiest person in the world. She is the heiress of Hancock Prospecting and daughter of the late Lang Hancock. According to Wikipedia, she bought stakes in media organizations, becoming the largest shareholder of Fairfax Media (which owns Melbourne Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review), and taking a significant share in Ten Network Holdings.

In his article in The Conversation of Feb. 10, 2012, Denniss, who is executive director of the think tank Australia Institute, points out that the mining industry is spending an estimated $20 million on TV advertisements opposing the introduction of a mining tax.

He writes that business pages of the major dailies “have often acted as a cheer squad for the mining industry’s determination to extract as much as it can and as quickly as it can.”

Denniss writes that the mining industry has been working hard, and successfully, to manipulate the Australian media. Relatively, small projects are breathlessly “described as $50 billion projects by simply adding up the total sales for the next 40 years.”

“The media can and does play an important role in democracies. It provides both scrutiny and platforms for those who seek to influence the nation. But that role is becoming harder and more contestable,” Denniss writes.

He writes that “the prospect of mining magnates buying up larger slices of the Australian media has understandably made many citizens anxious about the future of public debate in Australia. The real issue is how, if at all, Australians want to limit the capacity of those with the greatest wealth to influence what the country sees, hears and reads.”

Then he asks: “When the powerful buy into the media, can the media still scrutinize the powerful?”

By the same token, can we allow business conglomerates to expand their holdings in the media?