Philippine Daily Inquirer/ September 15, 2020

Locsin: Kickbacks motive behind push to sell Ph properties in Japan

Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr. opposes a renewed bid to sell four Philippine properties in Japan accusing those behind it as only after kickbacks, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported on Tuesday.

The four properties in Tokyo and Kobe were acquired by the Philippine government under the war reparation agreement with Japan on May 9, 1956.

It includes the 3,179 square-meter property in Roppongi district in Tokyo, one of the most expensive piece of real estate in the Japanese capital, the Inquirer said.

Several attempts were made by past administrations to dispose of the Roppongi property either by sale or long-term lease.

The three other war reparation properties are:

• The 2,489.96 sq.m.-Nampeidai property at 11-24 Nampeidai-machi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
• The 764.72 sq.m.-Kobe commercial croperty at 63 Naniwa-cho, Kobe
• The Kobe residential property at 1-980-2 Obanoyama-cho, Shinohara, Nada-ku, Kobe.

“There is another plot to dispose of four of our Japan properties. This is a second Pearl Harbor perpetrated by Filipinos on our own patrimony,” Locsin tweeted on Monday, according to the Inquirer.

“Dollar patriotism. Not while I am alive. Kaching, kaching. Disgusting!!!,” he continued, saying “the plight of our poor veterans, so few of them left, have been invoked by every gang of officials who’ve run through the budgets of their own agencies.”

The Supreme Court has ruled in a previous case that the sale of the four properties in Japan requires concurrence of the President and Congress, the Inquirer said.

Locsin said he has turned down all proposals to sell government properties overseas during the pandemic. It is not clear whether the proposals have to do with earlier pronouncements of President Duterte for government to raise funds for the anti-Covid-19 campaign.

(DMS/Virgilio DC. Galvez)