Band of Brothers Finds Formidable Foes in Veteran's Bank

11-12 APRIL 2005
Band of Brothers Finds Formidable Foes in Veteran's Bank
by LUZ RIMBAN

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The PCIJ is releasing, in time for the 63rd anniversary of the Fall of Bataan last Saturday, a two-part series on the plunder of the Philippine Veterans Bank or PVB.
The two-part story shows how veterans are being deprived of their rightful benefits by the plunder of the PVB by its officers, the latest of whom is PVB director Romeo Roxas, who has been accused of illegal logging in Aurora.

The first part of the story details how Roxas, who allegedly faked papers showing he is the son of a World War II veteran, used his position in the bank to acquire controlling shares in the PVB and also to give his companies, including those accused of logging illegally in the Sierra Madre, preferential loans in the tens of millions of pesos.

It was also Roxas who made it possible for former Estrada crony and businessman William Gatchalian to acquire a dubious P500-million loan from PVB.
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WHEN THE country marked the 63rd anniversary of the Fall of Bataan last Saturday, Charlie Beloso was home, strapped to a wheelchair, and probably just watching the event on TV. But he often relives in his mind the year 1942, when he was among the thousands of brave, young Filipinos who refused to accept defeat in the face of a brutal enemy.

Sixty-three years ago, Beloso, a fresh college graduate, enlisted in the 62nd Infantry to fight the Japanese. When Bataan fell, his unit retreated but Beloso was ordered to return to Bukidnon to do intelligence work. He also took on a risky mission: to bomb his unit's ammunition and food supply in Dalirig town to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. The mission was accomplished, but Beloso had to run for his life, dodging a hail of bullets from a 25-caliber machine gun that trailed his every step.

Now 87 years old and suffering a variety of illnesses, Beloso is still fighting. In the twilight of his years, he faces a slew of adversaries — old age, disability, and what could be the most formidable foe he and other veterans have faced: a rich and powerful institution whose officials, the former soldiers and guerrillas say, have been committing abuses in the name of World War II veterans, many of whom are now impoverished.

That institution is the Philippine Veterans Bank (PVB), established by law as the repository of a $20-million trust fund intended for soldiers and guerillas who fought the Japanese. Beloso and his fellow veterans say, however, that some bank officials have been plundering the bank for themselves and their cronies, leaving those who fought valiantly in World War II out in the cold.

The veterans say rampant irregularities have gone on in the bank for decades. But the main object of these old soldiers' current campaign is PVB director Romeo Roxas, a lawyer and businessman who was recently in the news when a company he owned was accused of illegal logging in Quezon and Aurora provinces. Roxas, Beloso and several other veterans say, is not even the son of a World War II veteran — a charge Roxas has denied. The PVB's charter allows only veterans or their heirs to own stocks in the bank.

The charter also guarantees that all veterans, no matter their rank or assignment, would share equal status in the bank since no one can amass huge numbers of shares. Yet Roxas has managed to acquire at least 1.6 million shares, which now make him the bank's only major stockholder.

The original law put a limit of 20 shares per veteran. Over the years, this has risen with the issuance of various stock dividends. In an examination report, the Bangko Sentral noted the bank's ownership structure in 1998: "Ownership of the bank's shares of stock are limited to veterans, widows, orphans or compulsory heirs of a veteran who can own not more than thirty-six (36) shares of stock." By its 2001 examination report, the BSP was now saying, "Director Romeo G. Roxas is the only major stockholder owning 8.28 percent of the bank's common shares." Common shares give the stockholder voting rights in the bank.

Miguel Villa-Real, PVB assistant vice president for corporate communications, says that when the bank reopened in 1992 as a private corporation, it fell under the Corporation Code, General Banking Act and other related laws. "Under these laws, there are no limits as to what a single stockholder can own in terms of percentage share," Villa-Real says. But the law that reopened PVB actually recognizes and restores "the full force and legal effect" of the original charter.

At any rate, as the only major stockholder and director, Roxas holds sway over the affairs of the bank and the gold mine on which it sits. Aside from the veterans' trust fund, bank insiders say, the PVB handles deposits of government agencies like Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), and is a trustee for P2 billion belonging to the pre-need company College Assurance Plan (CAP), now reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy.

Roxas's position in the bank has also enabled him to secure loans for his own companies as well as for other businessmen, veterans say. In January 2004, for instance, the PVB granted a P550 million loan to Metro Alliance Holdings and Equity, Inc, a firm whose majority owner is the Filipino-Chinese businessman William Gatchalian. Documents show that Metro Alliance failed to submit all the requirements needed to process its loan. At that time, too, another Gatchalian-owned company, Willex Plastics, had an unpaid loan from the PVB of P28 million. A small ordinary borrower with such a poor credit performance would have been immediately turned down.

Veterans believe Gatchalian got the loan through the help of Romeo Roxas. Listed as collateral in Gatchalian's loan application is real estate property in "Laurel, Cavite" belonging to Roxas's Green Square and Green Circle Properties. The loan remains unpaid to this day, a full year after it first fell due.

Meanwhile, Roxas himself has availed of DOSRI (directors, officers, stockholders, and related interests) loans as a bank director, borrowing more than what was allowable under banking rules. In a report in 1998, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) found that Roxas's Green Square Properties and Green Circle Property and Resources had outstanding loans with the PVB of P66.86 million. BSP examiners said this "exceeded the ceiling for an individual loan to DOSRI."

Roxas and PVB Chairman Emmanuel de Ocampo are also stockholders of a firm called Green Dreams Holdings, which was granted a P35-million loan, although the veterans say the value of its collateral was "bloated."

In a letter on February 16, 2000, then PVB President B. Teodoro Eusebio himself had reported to President Joseph Estrada about the rampant violations of BSP regulations being committed at the bank, including abuses made by directors like Roxas.

Eusebio wrote that he had met twice with BSP Governor Rafael Buenaventura to map out a plan to save the bank. "Following (Buenaventura's) advice," he said in the letter, "I have informed bank officials concerned to retire or resign to forestall a scandalous dismissal by the BSP Monetary Board. The Directors have been fined P34,500 each, and bank officials P69,000."

It seems the Monetary Board pressed on anyway. In a March 3, 2000 resolution, the Board required PVB directors and officials to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the BSP. A BSP examination report released in 2001 also said, "The MOU includes the assignment of BSP Resident Examiners at the Bank to Monitor PVB's compliance with the MOU as well as check compliance with banking laws, rules and regulations, instructions issued by the Monetary Board, and observance of safe and sound banking practices."

Such action, however, apparently failed to discourage Roxas from availing himself of another DOSRI loan. In March 2001, he borrowed P68.1 million from the PVB for his Green Square Properties. When the loan became due a year later, it was transferred to sister company Green Circle, which agreed to assume the obligation.

But Villa-Real asserts in the bank's "official replies" to PCIJ's queries: "It is not true that Philippine Veterans Bank has given loans to Green Square Properties and Green Circle Properties. There are no outstanding loan balances from any of the said companies in our books."

The veterans know Roxas is an intimidating adversary. A graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Law, he is a member of the powerful and influential Sigma Rho Fraternity, whose members hold some of the most important positions in government. They include Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo, Senate President Franklin Drilon, and Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio.

Aside from his fraternity connections, Roxas has in the past boasted of support from the highest officials of the land. Roxas says his projects in Quezon and Aurora have had the blessings of then Presidents Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada, as well as the present chief executive, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

But despite having what seems like an invincible enemy and fighting what may seem like a lost cause, concerned World War II veterans are not giving up, and are confronting their foe on various fronts, a tactic they had employed in the 1940s.

Just last March 26, another 87-year-old wheelchair-bound veteran sought Roxas's disqualification from the bank in a suit filed with the Manila Regional Trial Court. The veteran, Auxencio Peñaranda, included in the case Roxas's fellow PVB directors who he says are condoning Roxas's actions.

Beloso himself has repeatedly written members of the House of Representatives and the Senate asking them to dig deeper into the alleged anomalies at the PVB. He has also filed plunder charges against PVB officials before the Office of the Ombudsman.

Philippine Veterans' Legion (PVL) officials have also written BSP's Buenaventura, asking him and members of the Monetary Board "to disqualify Atty. Romeo Galo Roxas, for the misrepresentation he made that enabled him to accumulate shares of stock of the bank that allows him substantial control over the affairs of the bank."

The veterans insist that Roxas has no right to own shares in the bank. Part of the PVB records is a thick listing drawn up in the 1960s of all soldiers and guerillas whose service in the war was recognized by the Philippine and U.S. governments. It took nearly six years, from 1963 to 1969, for the government to track down these veterans and award them or their heirs shares of stock.

Veterans say the name of Romeo Roxas's father Santiago was not on that list. Neither is it in the files of the Office of the Adjutant General (OTAG) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Camp Aguinaldo, the agency with the complete veterans list. A certification signed by Lt. Col. Narciso Erna, assistant adjutant general, dated January 3, 2005, says there is no record in the OTAG of Santiago Galang Roxas, Romeo Roxas's father.

"If the records do not list my father as a veteran and not an original stockholder of the Bank, it does not erase the historical fact that he was, indeed, a veteran," said Roxas in a Jan. 31, 2005 letter to Francisco 'Frank' Cedula, chairman of the Philippine Veterans' Legion. Roxas says his father was a food and supplies officer under Col. Wendell Fertig in Misamis Oriental during the war. "The responsible course of action to then take," said Roxas, "is to correct the records to conform to this unalterable fact."

Veterans say it is not that the records of Roxas's father are non-existent. Rather, they say, it is that Roxas appropriated the name and stock certificate number of another Santiago Roxas who he now claims to be his father.

In the suit he filed before the Manila RTC, veteran Peñaranda said the person recognized by the PVB is Santiago Roxas born in 1921. During the war, this Santiago Roxas was a sergeant in the Manila Barrion's Division, later issued Veteran's Bank Stock Certificate No. 412604, and whose name appears in the Master List of veterans. But records show that this Santiago Roxas hails from Meycauayan, Bulacan and was childless.

In the PVB database, Romeo Roxas is listed as compulsory heir and holder of common stock no. 412604. Yet veterans say his real father was born in 1899, was a former superintendent of the Bulacan School of Arts and Trades, and had 10 children, the ninth being Romeo.

In a letter to retired Judge Salvador de Guzman, who acts as PVL's counsel, Roxas says, "After the war, my father in 1947 went to Bulacan where he had an affair with another woman and thereafter kept a second family. Wary that he would be opening up himself to a charge of immorality for having an affair with another woman, he being a member of the civil service, he must have intentionally distorted his records in order to deflect this circumstance. This will explain the entry into the records of a Santiago Roxas from Mecauayan, Bulacan."

"In any case," he continues, "there are numerous instances where, due to clerical errors, the record of a veteran does not reflect his real and true circumstance and situation."

But veterans are puzzled that Roxas claimed veteran status for his father only years after the PVB came into being, and long after the bank had closed and then re-opened. Roxas and his siblings never appeared on the scene before 1990, when he was hired to help with the bank's rehabilitation. Only in 1993, when PVB reopened, and Roxas was already connected with the bank, did he begin saying he was a veteran's son.

The veterans have argued as well that the hiring of Roxas for P43 million in 1990 was illegal because the PVB was still closed at the time and thus had no legal personality to hire anyone. In a meeting of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Roxas explained, "It was not the bank who really retained my services. It was the Veterans Federation in their desire to reopen the bank. And I advanced all the expenses, Mr. Chairman, you know, necessary for the re-opening of the bank. For the record and all the veterans will affirm that. I was the one who financed the reopening single-handedly of the bank."

But a memorandum of agreement obtained by the PCIJ shows that de Ocampo had contracted Roxas in behalf of the bank. De Ocampo himself has also said that what financed the reopening of the bank was PVB's P750 million in cash and assets that were taken over by the BSP in 1985. Said the PVB chairman in a 2002 Senate hearing: "Before the bank closed, Your Honor, there was so much money deposited with the Central Bank and this was part of the money that earned interest so that there was now more than one billion to the credit of the Veterans' Bank. That is where we got the P750 million."

Indeed, despite its problematic history, the PVB continues to be flush with money. Aside from earnings that are supposed to benefit veterans, it also holds deposits of the national government and local government units. When the bank shut down in 1985, the national treasury still had some P1.4 billion in deposits with it. Senator Aquilino Pimentel has also said Cagayan de Oro had deposits with the bank that have yet to be accounted for.

Yet should the allegations of the veterans turn out to be true and Roxas is revealed as being a bogus soldier's son, it may be a case of history repeating itself. In his book Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines, Paul Hutchcroft writes that the Veterans' Bank "had most of its shares 'held in trust' by the veteran with all the bogus medals, Ferdinand Marcos."


Part Two
Banks Leaves Veterans in the Dark
by LUZ RIMBAN

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Part two of the series deals with the long history of plunder of the PVB dating back to the Marcos era and even before that. It weaves the story of the bank's plunder with that of the plight of veterans who until now, in the twilight of their years, are still fighting for what is rightfully theirs.
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LAST SATURDAY, members of the Philippine Veterans' Legion (PVL) broke tradition when they spent "Araw ng Kagitingan," or the Fall of Bataan in Fort Bonifacio. For years, these old men, easily recognizable by boat-shaped military caps, had traveled all the way to Mount Samat to hear the president speak of war and the veterans' forgotten exploits. But they are growing weaker, and physically and financially incapable of making the trip to the place that marked Filipino surrender to the Japanese. Besides, says PVL chairman Frank Cedula, the veterans feel "the government isn't doing anything to help" them, especially now that they are facing a different kind of enemy.

Sixty years ago, a grateful nation honored Filipino soldiers and guerillas for defending the country against Japanese invaders. Cedula himself says his personal story is the stuff war movies are made of, having been a 17-year-old reservist who endured seven stabs from a Japanese bayonet in the Sierra Madre mountains in 1941. For their heroism, the Philippine and U.S. governments promised them, their widows and orphans financial compensation and other rewards.

It took ages before many of those promises came true; some remain unfulfilled. What did materialize early on was the creation of a trust fund for World War II veterans and their heirs that would come from the $20 million payment by Japan for the losses and damage it inflicted on the Philippines. Known as the reparations fund, the money was given in 1956. It eventually went into the creation of the Philippine Veterans Bank (PVB), whose stockholders were supposed to be the veterans and their heirs.

To the veterans, the bank is the most tangible tribute of the nation's gratitude, a financial monument to their service during the war, an edifice of honor built in their name. For all that, though, the veterans and their heirs remain mere titular stockholders of PVB, with little say in the running of the bank. In truth, they also know little about the bank's operations, as well as that of its affiliates, largely because these suffer from a lack of accountability and transparency.

This has made it possible for politicians, their cronies and bank directors to treat the PVB as their personal piggy bank, dipping their fingers into its coffers without much fear of getting caught. Worse, veterans say that one of their own, who eventually became bank chairman, seems to have failed to watch out for them. At the very least, they fear he let others abuse the bank's considerable holdings — as well as those of related institutions.

The PVB had been designated as a depository of government funds. Thus, the bank has been holding money belonging to government agencies and local governments; the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (Philhealth) is one of those currently with huge deposits at the PVB. In addition, the bank holds some P2 billion in trust for the pre-need company College Assurance Plan (CAP).

Such holdings help justify the generous P650,000 that PVB Chairman Emmanuel de Ocampo gets each month in compensation for running the bank, an amount de Ocampo admitted to receiving in a Senate hearing in 2002. De Ocampo also described the work he was doing to merit such a salary: "I had to do some marketing, I have to do some management, I have to help, Your Honor. And besides, the P650,000 includes expenses in the board which I have to sign as chairman."

But veterans say that for the huge salary he gets, de Ocampo has failed to protect their interests at the PVB. They cite the fact that de Ocampo — himself a war veteran who retired a colonel — was already a bank director prior to its closure in 1985, when cronies of then President Ferdinand Marcos, like Herminio Disini, were running away with the bank's money. Behest loans to such Marcos friends led to the bank's closure.

Nothing much changed when the bank was rehabilitated and then reopened in 1992. The plunder continued, even after the Bangko Sentral repeatedly warned bank officials to stop abusing their powers and privileges. In a February 16, 2000 letter to then President Joseph Estrada, then PVB President B. Teodoro Eusebio wrote, "Many…violations of BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) regulations, diversion of bank's income to personal accounts, dishonesty and inefficiency have been discovered." Eusebio pledged to "clean the bank" but found himself out of the PVB presidency not long after. At that time, the directors of the bank included Estrada's sister, Pilarica Ejercito.

Veterans say that among those who are currently taking advantage of the bank's assets is a director who allegedly falsified his credentials as a veteran's son to get himself into the PVB and to secure huge loans for his companies. Last year the bank hastily granted a P550-million loan to a company owned by a Filipino-Chinese businessman with close ties to presidents past and present, even if the firm failed to comply with the requirements. The loan remains unpaid a year after it fell due.

Veterans trace part of the problem to de Ocampo and his all-encompassing financial and political power over the bank, as well as over related organizations that control it. Aside from being PVB chairman, de Ocampo also heads the Veterans Federation of the Philippines (VFP) and the Board of Trustees of the Veterans of World War II. A founding member of the Hunters' ROTC, de Ocampo took part in daring guerilla actions during the war. One of these was the raid on the Bilibid prisons in Muntinlupa in 1943 to free Filipino prisoners of war. De Ocampo was then head of the 47th Regiment.

His fellow veterans now fear he has looked the other way as other raids have gone on, this time at PVB and its affiliates. De Ocampo was unavailable for interview, but Miguel Villa-Real, the bank's assistant vice president for corporate communications, says that contrary to his fellow veterans' belief, de Ocampo has been active in pursuing the cause of veterans at the bank. De Ocampo helped press for the increase in the veterans' monthly pension from P1,000 to the present P5,000, says Villa-Real. He also says de Ocampo's being a key figure in the bank's reopening in 1985 is a major contribution to the veterans' cause.

Yet it has certainly not helped de Ocampo any that the PVB, the VFP and the Board of Trustees all suffer from the lack of transparency even as all three sit on a huge amount of cash. For instance, the PVB, which was initially meant to be a public corporation under the defense secretary's supervision and control, is a private bank accepting government deposits and exempt from transparency and scrutiny.

Veterans say they also have no idea how money given to it is handled by the Board of Trustees, an entity established by Republic Act 3518, the law that created the PVB. The Board was designated as custodian of 20 percent of the PVB's earnings, an amount that was supposed to be made "available for 'grants-in-aid' to veterans, their widows, orphans or compulsory heirs, for educational, social, charitable and rehabilitation purposes, to organizations doing service for the veterans." The composition of the Board, the law said, was to be determined by the Supreme Council of the VFP.

Created by another law in 1956, the VFP is an umbrella group of various veterans' organizations. These include not only World War II groups but also those made up of former soldiers who took part in the Korean War in 1950. Its cash income is collected from the veterans' pension, automatically deducted by the PVAO. In the past few years, the VFP has been getting one percent from each veteran's annual pension, or P500 per veteran a year, supposedly for its operations. Many say they were not consulted when the VFP and the PVAO agreed upon these deductions. This is why Philippine Veterans' Legion national adjutant Manuel Reyes has argued that veterans could get back that P500 collected from them yearly, provided they formally request the PVAO in writing to stop the deductions.

The VFP is estimated to be collecting a total of about P50 million annually, including the veterans' pension deductions. But its books have never been scrutinized by the Commission on Audit (COA).

Here actually lies a problem, and a divergence of attitude among government agencies toward the PVB and the VFP: The Supreme Court, in a labor case involving former PVB employees, maintained that the PVB is a private entity because it is owned by World War II veterans and not by the government. The Department of National Defense (DND), meanwhile, cites the original law that put the bank and the VFP under the supervision and control of the defense secretary. In fact, when Charlie Beloso, chairman of the Crusade to Reform Veterans' Organizations (CREVO) and a wartime soldier who fought under war hero Macario Peralta, filed plunder charges against the PVB officials in 2002, the DND legal department endorsed the suit to the Ombudsman for the military, because it considered the bank's officers public officials.

The COA, for its part, maintains that there is no government money in the VFP, hence it cannot be audited. Yet the law that created it clearly called it a public corporation. Besides, says a DND official, there are several pieces of property belonging to veterans and under the control of the Foundation, for which the VFP refuses to pay taxes because it has cited its being a government entity.

And then there is the VFP's disqualification from the party-list election because it was an "adjunct of the government." In 2001, the VFP fielded two candidates in the House of Representatives who won. Beloso had also run in the same race, under a party called the Veteran Care Organization. But the VFP sought his disqualification, because it said the VFP was the "only veterans' organization in the Philippines." Beloso countersued, seeking the VFP candidates' disqualification. He argued that the VFP is a government corporation and cited the law saying the "VFP shall be non-sectarian and non-political." The Commission on Elections sided with him, disqualifying VFP's candidates.

More than its affiliates, though, it is the Philippine Veterans' Bank that preoccupies the minds of those who fought in World War II, because of the meaning it has for them. The bank is often the subject of discussion among members of Cedula's Philippine Veterans' Legion, which is composed of soldiers and guerillas that signed up with the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East).

The Legion meets regularly at the old Philippine Veterans' Affairs Office (PVAO) compound in Arroceros, Manila. But its meetings are now fewer and far between, because the members are getting too old or are too ill to make the trip to the old PVAO. They fear there might be one member less every meeting, either because of death or illness. Earlier this year, Legion members put up a sign on a wall at the PVL office that reads: "This is our last hurrah (probably)."

Indeed, moving about is a taxing and tiring activity for many veterans. Mostly in their 80s, Legion officials are just ghosts of the young men they were in the 1940s, when their able bodies could still take a stab from a bayonet. Cedula, who endured five days of pain, thirst and starvation before fellow Filipinos found him bleeding from his stab wounds more than half a century ago, is an exception, and is still quite sprightly at age 82.

Most veterans are like Miguel Marcos, who signed up as a USAFFE volunteer in 1941 and saw action as a guerilla in 1942, along with Cedula. Marcos was a tall high school student when the war broke out. Now he is thin, gaunt and walks slowly, with a stoop. But he still takes public transportation to his home in Valenzuela City.

There is also Manuel Reyes, another former guerilla and now the Legion's director for Luzon. Reyes's eyesight is failing, and he needs a magnifying glass to read the papers and readings that other veterans share with him.

Medical assistance is what these veterans need most now. In fact, the PVL has been trying to scrape up funds to build the Angel Suarez Convalescent Home, where they hope members can take refuge in their old age. Angel Suarez was a guerilla and former PVL leader. A notice at the PVL office in Makati says that the convalescent home will rise on that site, but there is hardly any indication of that happening anytime soon. By the time it does, the veterans may no longer be around to use it.

Beloso says World War II veterans are an endangered species. Based on PVAO statistics, they are dying at the rate of 20 a day. If only 5,000 members of the USAFFE and 17,000 recognized guerillas remain, Cedula says, that makes some 22,000 World War II veterans still living. But at the rate they are dying, they might all be gone in four years.

De Ocampo himself is in his 80s. But unlike him, many of his fellow veterans live in poverty, says Braulio Bumanglag whose own father fought as a guerilla in Isabela during the war, and who counts himself among the veterans' sons and daughters supporting their cause. That is why he, Beloso, Cedula and the rest of those in various veterans' groups are fuming over how they say bank officials have been enriching themselves.

For sure, the niggardly P80 cash dividend check each veteran gets annually as a PVB stockholder barely covers transportation when they claim pension checks, or apply for medical assistance, which at their age is their most pressing concern.

Villa-Real says, however, that the veterans can avail of free medical and dental care at the VFP Outpatient Center in Taguig that gets support from the bank. Also among the bank's "substantial assistance to World War II veterans," says Villa-Real, are pension loans of P24,000, payable in 12 months, or P40,000, payable in nine months, at interest rates ranging from nine to 12 percent. In addition, veterans can maintain a passbook account with only P100, and a minimum balance of P500 to earn interest.

Whenever it is time for the veterans to collect their pension checks, Villa-Real says, "Oplan Beterano" kicks into gear. This is when bank provides tents for shade, brings out chairs and serves water and biscuits to the former soldiers. Portable toilets are set up and an ambulance is put on standby. Villa-Real says "Oplan Beterano" was named the joint winner in the customer service category in the 2004 International Asian Banking Awards.

But perhaps the bank and the VFP should not expect any award from the veterans, who have grown disillusioned over what they had perceived as the reward for their bravery in war. CREVO's Beloso has even been writing members of Congress and the media to express his outrage that the Federation has somehow managed to skirt election laws.

In the last elections, another party using similar initials and affiliated with the Federation fielded a candidate and won. The Veterans Freedom Party is now represented in Congress by Ernesto Gidaya, former chairman of the PVAO. Said Beloso in a statement: "The Veterans Freedom Party was organized only sixteen days and not one full year before the date set to apply for accreditation under the Party List System. This act of the Veterans Federation Party is a gross and flagrant violation of the Party List Law."

Many of the men like Beloso who once defended the country against the Japanese feel that no one seems to be listening to them anymore, however hard they scream. Although they are willing to fight against what could be their last adversary, they say they are fast being sapped of the little strength they have left — and running out of time.