Dominguez offers ‘special briefing’ to Imee Marcos on her ‘valid points’

Saying Sen. Imee Marcos raised some “valid points” at last week’s Senate briefing from the Duterte administration’s economic team, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III offered to hold a special briefing just for her.

In a letter to Marcos last Tuesday (May 26), Dominguez said as chair of the Cabinet’s Economic Development Cluster (EDC), “I acknowledge the questions and concerns” raised by the daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos on the Philippine economy.

Dominguez told Marcos that he was offering a “special briefing particularly on national accounts” to be given by a senior EDC official to the chair of the Senate committee on economic affairs.

“Rest assured that the EDC is studying the points you raised during the committee hearing,” said Dominguez in his letter, referring to the convening of the Senate as a committee of the whole to receive briefing from the economic team.

The Inquirer asked Dominguez if he thought Marcos offered valid points at the hearing and if she was competent to head the economic affairs committee.

Dominguez replied: “Valid points emerged, which could be addressed by an in-depth briefing.”

During the Senate hearing, Marcos touted as a “success” the Masagana 99 rice program of her father, who had been accused of running the Philippine economy to the ground during his one-man rule.

But Dominguez replied: “I was the secretary of agriculture that cleaned up the mess that was left by ‘Masagana 99.’”

“There were about 800 rural banks that were bankrupted by that program, and we had to rescue them. So whether it is a total success or not, tends to be measured against that,” Dominguez had said in reply to the senator.

Dominguez had served as agriculture secretary and natural resources minister under the late President Corazon Aquino, who became the leading figure in the bloodless 1986 People Power Revolt that put an end to the Marcoses’ autocratic rule.

In turn, Marcos replied that her father’s more than 20-year rule was marked by “success” in rice exportation to which Dominguez retorted: “We never exported rice, Ma’am.”

Edited by TSB