Elections incoming! Launch the racketship!

Time was when “racket” in election season meant lots of noise with TV and radio ads, candidate shows and speeches, parades, motorcades and events with dancing girls and loud music. And that all started with the official start of the campaign period, usually 90 or 60 days before election day depending on the position.

But nowadays, not just months but years before elections the racket starts… not just with noise but rackets with a more nefarious reason: filling up the war chest with much needed finds and beyond – win or lose, they come out on top of piles of moolah.

Sure, there’s putting the squeeze on potential campaign funders, usually a nervous Taipan or two. But as late as last elections – in 2013 – we saw something really nasty: the use of government agencies and contracts to get fat commissions for their campaign kitties.

Take the case of the Land Transportation Office (LTO) which used the woes of its computer systems provider STRADCOM to raise a few billion pesos for the midterm election sortie of the ruling Liberal Party. Party top level triumvirate like Budget Secretary Butch Abad, Senate President Frank Drilon and Transport and Communications Secretary Emilio Abaya (head of the LTO’s mother agency DOTC) basically stopped payment for STRADCOM, pulled the contract renewal and let the company keep on operating while they sat on their fat asses running pretend bidding sessions for a new contractor.

Meanwhile, the STRADCOM billing kept building up, until it was exploding in the seams. The triumvirate then turned around and offered payment provided some of the billions owed be diverted to the party effort.

Fast forward to today, the year before the 2016 national elections. Highly funded moves again by the DOTC and its agencies raise the eyebrows of this underground dweller, enough to cause a shift on the West Valley fault. We’re talking about the auto registration stickers and car plates. Aside from being massively delayed, many of the stickers bought and paid for by auto owners since 2012 were never delivered and installed.

And all that money just vanished into thin air because nobody just cared to answer and has been rendered moot and academic due to the issuance of totally new car plates and stickers, the contract of which was granted even before any budget was approved by Congress and the delivery to date is over a year delayed.

Further to this, the new plates come with a so called security bolt where the hex head breaks off leaving a rivet-like flat head securing the plate on your bumper. That is, if the bolt fits, which the LTO vehicles themselves show that they don’t. But this has not stopped the agency from issuing a memo of a P5,000 fine if caught not using the prescribed plate security bolts.

Talking about getting screwed multiple times over.

Of course, that’s not counting the driver’s licenses whose supply of plastic cards have suddenly disappeared creating a blackmarket of real but highly expensive cards needed by the least who can afford them, the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who have to drive for a living, like truck drivers in the desert.

And what about spurious MRT maintenance contracts? PNR antique station restoration (note: no trains)? Airport fees for lousy airport facilities nationwide? MRT ticketing and undecided North Avenue station (note: still no trains)?

Election rackets indeed!

So effective that even the opposition has gotten into the business – wait, is Vice President Jojo Binay really opposition or is he just one and the same… racket?

Well, the VP and Housing Czar’s new effort stems from the most recent bulaga for licensed Real Estate Brokers. And this comes from a retroactive licensing fee from the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB), an agency under VP Binay’s portfolio.

Generally the agency is the regulator of housing and land developers and their adjunct agencies. As such it licensed real estate brokers up until 2007 when the government decided that since brokers were being pushed to be VAT registered and the sales industry was being developed to eventually be a true business entities. Thus the licensing for brokers was transferred to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Furthermore, the license was renewed every three years instead of yearly, provided minimum hours of review classes and update seminars conducted by accredited agencies were attained during the period.

In 2010 the real estate licensing was again transferred to the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), an agency under the Office of the President which licenses nurses, doctors, engineers, certified public accountants and other professionals. The real estate sales industry, apparently, was moving to have real estate brokerage a full college degree, not just what it is now where any Tom, Dick, Harry and Inday can just go to review classes and take an exam.

Come 2014,  Binay’s HLURB contacted all real estate developers – no not real estate brokers – that it requires all their sales brokers and agents to be licensed with it. Because the brokers would not be recognized by developers without the HLURB license, they wouldn’t have product to sell, so they complied.

Lo and behold, as they got their licenses from the HLURB office they found that they were charged not just P700 for the current license but another P200 per year they did not get an HLURB license or another P1,800. That’s P2,500! That on top of having to have to come up with the same requirements – insurance bond, papers etc. all over again.

So now licensed Real Estate brokers have two licenses, the PRC and HLURB. Why? Only God knows.

One thing is clear: Elections are coming, and there are lots of war chests to fill. Launch the racketship! On to matuwad na daan!