Enrile eyes political fundraising in mysterious phone load deductions

05/27/2009 | 11:33 AM

MANILA, Philippines - Mysterious deductions from his cellular phone load in the last three days have led Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile to suspect the trick could be telecommunication firms' political fundraising tactic for the 2010 polls.

Enrile raised his suspicion at a hearing of the Congressional Oversight Committee on Comprehensive Tax Reform Program at the Senate Wednesday.

“As a politician, I have experienced it for a period of over four decades. Is it possible, now they are going to face a stiff political contest in the country, some of these public utilities, telcos especially, would be expecting a lineup of politicians going to them for help and so are raising funds through this system? At least they got from me almost P1,000 in three days, so that they can put this in a slush account not in their regular book from where they will draw the money to support favorite politicians," he said.

He suggested that the government impose a heavy tax on telecommunications firms, and use the tax instead for public service.

“Why should we tolerate this? Why don’t we impose a heavy tax, let government take that and use it for public service," he said.

A separate report by dzBB’s Nimfa Ravelo said Enrile will summon telecom firms executives to explain the sudden disappearance of his mobile phone load.


Enrile said he noticed his P387 prepaid load “disappeared" last Monday, prompting him to reload his phone with P600 Tuesday.

But he said that on Tuesday evening, the load went down to P519, without him using his cell phone. On Wednesday morning, he said the load was down to P445.

“Now this is a senator of the republic. I’m sure that many cell phone users are experiencing the same thing. We who understand taxation and accounting, all of this went to the treasury of this service provider. If they were not used by subscribers that is income to these people, a windfall. It goes into the profit margin," he said.

Upon learning from the Bureau of Internal Revenue that there are some 52 million mobile phone subscribers in the country, Enrile said telecom firms can get billions a day using of this scheme.

He computed that if just two million subscribers are targeted to raise funds for a purpose and are milked of P20 a day, it could mean some P44 billion a day.

Enrile said this is aside from the “unlimited" call schemes of telecoms firms that involve deadlines where a load will expire after a certain period.

“From here all the way to the campaign period they can easily raise billions of pesos to support their favorite candidates," he said. - GMANews.TV
Narinig ko na ito dati e, mabilis ang bawas sa mga load ng mga prepaid kahit di masyadong ginagamit, at di alam kung ano ang kaltas