Solicitor General says ” the end is near” for ABS-CBN

June 2, 2020

Solicitor General Jose Calida Monday warned ABS-CBN Corp. that the “the end is near” for the broadcast giant.

Calida, who attended the second hearing of the House committee on legislative franchises and on good government through videoconferencing, faced the network’s executives led its president and CEO Carlo Katigbak.

“ABS-CBN is motivated not by service but by greed and a desire for power and influence. Their brazen acts must come to an end. The hour of reckoning may have been delayed, but it has now come,” Calida said.

Katigbak answered the citizenship issue against its former president Eugenio “Gabby” Lopez III who was invited to participate in the next hearing on Wednesday morning on the motion of Deputy Speaker Rodante Marcoleta.

He said the Department of Justice, in granting Lopez’s request for recognition as a Filipino citizen in 2002, said he was born in Boston which made him an American citizen, the former president of the network was a legitimate child of Conchita La'O and Eugenio Lopez Jr., both natural-born Filipino citizens, which made him a Filipino citizen.

Calida said in the past 25-years, ABS-CBN which was ordered by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to stop airing last May 5 – has violated the Constitution, its franchise and other pertinent laws.

Among the issues Calida cited, which was also part of his SC petition, is the claim that the network, through ABS-CBN Holdings Corp., allowed foreigners to own its common shares through issuing Philippine depositary receipts (PDRs) which he said is a “circumvention of the foreign equity restriction provided under the Philippine Constitution.”

“Indeed, the ABS-CBN PDR has provided for a creative mechanism (for foreigners) to indirectly own the underlying ABS-CBN shares of stock,” he said.

Katigbak  said PDRs are not shares that would mean ownership of a part of ABS-CBN since its holders do not have voting rights.

He said the practice of selling PDRs was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on October 4, 1999 and that other media companies like GMA 7 also sold PDRs to the public.

The joint panel did not cite Calida in contempt after he participated in the hearing only to say that he will not answer questions about issues pending before the SC because of the “sub-judice” rule. DMS