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by Rigoberto D. Tiglao (Author)
The book exposes one of the biggest deceptions ever foisted on the Philippine nation, the total domination of our telecommunications industry by foreigners and its deliberate concealment. This is a grave violation of the Philippine Constitution, a fact that was ignored by the Aquino administration when it chose to side with foreign interests instead of following a Supreme Court order to stop the foreign control of a strategic public utility. While claiming to be majority-owned by Filipinos, the reality is that the biggest stockholder of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., which operates Smart Communications, is the Indonesian billionaire and former Suharto crony Anthoni Salim with his minor partner the giant Japanese telco NTT. Globe Telecom's biggest stockholder on the other hand is the Singaporean state firm Singtel. With their lucrative duopoly the foreign firms have remitted out of the Philippines gargantuan profits totaling $9 billion from 2000 to 2015. How are these foreign firms able to bypass the constitutional limit on foreign control of public utilities with little resistance from the Philippine body politic? This book exposes the chicanery behind the acquisition of the country's biggest corporations, the corruption and cronyism that had allowed this to happen, and the pernicious plot to amend the Constitution to perpetuate the foreign control of companies over vital sectors of our economy.
Author Biography
Rigoberto D. Tiglao is a veteran political and business reporter, and the only journalist to be awarded all four of the most prestigious awards for Philippine journalists: the Catholic Mass Media Awards for Best News Reporter in 1983; the Ten Most Outstanding Young Men for 1992 (for Print Journalism); Nieman Foundation Fellow For Journalism at Harvard University (1988); and, the Best Economic Journalist for Asia 1991, awarded by the Mitsubishi Foundation. Tiglao was correspondent and then bureau chief of the renowned Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review from 1989 to 2000 and after that, editor-in-chief of Inquirer.net, the website of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He conceived of, and was one of the founders of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. He was in public service for nine years from 2001 to 2010, in several positions in the government of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as press secretary, presidential spokesman, chief of staff, Presidential Management Staff head, and as Philippine Ambassador to Greece and Cyprus. He has been a regular columnist of the Manila Times since 2013 and since March 2016 of Bulgar, the country's largest newspaper.
