Anakalusugan party-list Representative Mike Defensor claimed that passing the resolution to deny the franchise application of the ABS-CBN network was hard for the House franchise committee, knowing that the welfare of its 11,000 employees will be greatly affected.
In an interview with ANC, he claimed, “My heart goes out for everyone who’s been affected by this.”
But he further said that Congress having the constitutional duty could not just let the alleged violations pass stating, “the situation is that we have a constitutional duty to decide.”
He also stated that the Lopez-owned company already knew that “there may be problems” when they applied for the franchise, so he questioned why they used the employees to reason out their renewal.
He said, “All applicants for mass media, for broadcasting, know that at some point, there may be a chance of denial. So I couldn’t understand why when they applied, they were using as a cover the employees and those that will be out of work.”
He added that the company should use it’s supposed “evaded taxes” to compensate the employees who are in danger of losing their jobs.
“If you really feel for the employees, you know that there’s so much money there. There are retained earnings where you can get from to help the employees, while we are trying to resolve everything, and not just to retrench them and take them out of the company,” he said.
The BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue) already debunked this claim saying that the network regularly pays its taxes and doesn’t violate any tax rules.
Also, despite the clarification of the network lawyers, Defensor claimed that there was an issue in the PDRs (Philippine Depository Receipts) that ABS-CBN released to foreign entities.
“Do we now say no because there are 11,000 workers and we should approve the application for the franchise even if we know that there are 30,000 investors in contradiction of the Constitution?” he said.
He added, “If the discussion then or the nature of what we were discussing was somehow in the effect, ‘Mr. Chairman, this may be a problem, we can correct immediately, we can do this and that.’ But that was not the direction of the discussion. They were insisting that it was legal.”
Meanwhile, ABS-CBN counsel Atty. Cynthia Del Castillo maintained that the network did not violate any law for the issued PDRs are merely financial instruments and not shares, also holders have no voting rights in the management.
The 70-11 votes that adopted the verdict to deny a new franchise to ABS-CBN sparked various reactions from netizens. Some agreed with Congress while others showed their dismay with the unjust decision. And one of those who expressed their disappointment was Mike Defensor’s daughter Mikee.
On Twitter, Mikee showed her sympathy with the workers while noting that she doesn’t share the same views with her father.
She said, “At the end of the day, I’m not the one in Congress. And more importantly, I am NOT my father. My heart goes out to those who are greatly affected by this, most especially the 11,000 workers who have lost their jobs in the middle of a pandemic.”
https://twitter.com/iambotbatibot/status/1282213137094070273?s=20
In May, the Kapamilya network stopped its broadcast operations following the cease and desist order of NTC (National Telecommunications Commission) prompting ABS-CBN president and CEO Carlo Katigbak to consider retrenchment of workers by August due to the revenue losses. The company is losing around P30 million to P35 million in daily revenues.
