IT is impossible to talk about the sudden and suspicious assumption of Bernadette Romulo Puyat to the position of tourism secretary without discussing how her predecessor, Wanda Tulfo Teo, was removed. And Teo’s removal, which was planned and engineered by Yellow forces who didn’t want her looking into the deals entered into by Teo’s predecessor, Ramon Jimenez Jr., was made possible by the advertising deal entered into by her brother, broadcaster Ben Tulfo, with government broadcast station PTV4 and the Department of Tourism.
But this is not strictly about Tulfo’s deal with two government agencies, which has been discussed ad nauseam in other forums, including the Senate. It is about how government communications officials led by Secretary Martin Andanar apparently used a policy statement of President Rodrigo Duterte in order to use government tourism promotion funds for private gain.
In fact, at the height of the “Kilos Pronto” ad placement controversy, the DoT last April, when Teo was still tourism secretary, explained the practice in a statement in this manner: “Ad placement is a normal transaction between the DoT and a television network, although preferential treatment was accorded to the People’s Television Network Inc. in line with the President’s directive for government agencies to support the government television network as part of the national government’s communications efforts.”
But my own investigation into the story of Romulo’s appointment led me to sources who declared that this preferential policy led to apparent widespread abuse by Malacañang communications officials. Two of these sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, alleged that a trusted subordinate of Andanar used the policy as an excuse to demand that government agencies advertise with PTV4, in exchange for “flowback,” or hefty commissions; furthermore, they said that this subordinate made it clear that Andanar had authorized him to solicit advertising from these agencies.
The modus operandi was simple: Andanar’s subordinate would go to the head of an agency that has funds set aside for advertising and promotions like the DoT and ask that placements be made in PTV4 in support of Duterte’s directive.
The subordinate would assure the head of agency that not only would they be helping implement the president’s policy but that they would also get “commissions” for their trouble. This was, both sources said, what happened with the ad placements in Ben Tulfo’s “Kilos” program, which was produced on a blocktime basis by Bitag Media Unlimited Inc.
But Bitag’s blocktime deal was unusual in the sense that it did not have to pay PTV4 any money up front for airtime used, like producers of such programs usually do. Andanar’s agency, through PTV4 which is under Andanar’s Presidential Communications Office (PCO), did the soliciting of ads for the blocktimer.
In other words, the DoT ads placed in “Kilos” were not at all solicited by Tulfo. They were brought in by PCO itself, which also decided which programs in the government station would air them and collect payment.
It’s perfectly possible, according to these sources, that Teo did not know that her brother’s show on PTV4 was the beneficiary of the scheme. But it is incredible that Ben Tulfo did not know about the deal, even if he did not have to lift a finger to get the DoT’s advertising, which was procured by Andanar’s subordinate.
As one of my sources explained, Tulfo must have known that the P60 million paid by DoT for the “Kilos” placements was way too much, given the low cost of production entailed and the limited capabilities of Bitag Media. This source also intimated that the original deal was for the airing of up to P200 million through the Tulfo program, a scheme which was thankfully aborted by the exposé.
Duterte became apparently incensed about the “Kilos” deal when he found out about it, as well. According to a May 10 post by the web-only news site Politiko, the president bawled out and cussed Andanar, especially when his communications secretary told Duterte in a phone conversation that he (Andanar) was not aware of the PTV4-DoT deal, either.
One of my sources said that it was impossible for Andanar not to have known about the “arrangement,” since his trusted subordinate was the one brokering such deals. In one instance, a Cabinet secretary whose department traditionally did not have any funds for advertising and media promotions, complained that Andanar’s man was badgering him for advertising allegedly upon the behest of the Malacañang communications boss, even if his agency had never advertised anywhere in the past before.
I was waiting for reports of this unusual (and highly beneficial, for some officials) solicitation scheme to surface during the recent hearing conducted by the Senate blue ribbon committee of Sen. Richard Gordon, who looked into the controversy. Unfortunately, Andanar, who was present during the Senate hearing, was not even called upon to explain to Gordon’s committee what his office’s involvement was, if any, in the “Kilos” kerfuffle.
I am not aware if the PCO official who made it his job to solicit ads for PTV4 is still making the rounds of government offices and importuning heads of agencies to spend their advertising money on the government station, despite its meager ratings, in furtherance of Duterte’s dream of making PTV4 a self-sustaining network like the British Broadcasting Corp. If the scheme continues to this day, then this Andanar subordinate has definitely not learned anything from the controversy that brought down Teo and Cesar Montano, who were both targeted for removal by Jimenez and his former officials.
All I can say is that there is a lot more to this story than was ever reported in the mainstream media or investigated by the Senate. And that a Yellow rearguard operation to protect people involved in an allegedly anomalous billion-peso promotion campaign has also exposed corruption committed in other agencies by officials of the current administration – who I’m told are now busy covering their tracks after what happened to Teo, Montano and even Ben and Erwin Tulfo.
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