The Stories Behind The Million-Dollar Donation
/Inquirer.net takes down story on Martin Romualdez’s reported funding of Tagalog course in Harvard
By Carmela Fonbuena
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
On Thursday, Inquirer.net, one of the Philippines’ most-read news websites, asked that question in an article based on an exclusive report by The FilAm, an online magazine based in the United States with which it has a content partnership.
The article was up for several hours and getting multiple comments from readers when it was taken down, reportedly on orders from top management. The link to the piece now directs readers to a landing page of reports by Inquirer.net’s US contributors.
A link to a cached version could still be found on Sunday morning. It now renders a 404 error.
It’s the latest in a number of instances of Philippine news sites taking down reports on the country’s powerful politicians and businessmen. The CEO of the Inquirer Group of Companies, Sandy Prieto Romualdez, is married to the Speaker’s brother, Philip.
PCIJ reached out to Inquirer and Inquirer.net on Sunday morning for comment. It has not received a response as of this writing.
The Inquirer was founded in 1985 in the wake of massive protests against the regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, eventually displacing the pro-Marcos Bulletin Today as the country’s number one newspaper.
Speaker Romualdez has neither confirmed nor denied the donation, which amounts to around 10% of his declared total net worth. In 2016, the Speaker, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, reported a net worth of P475 million. In 2018, his wife, Rep. Yedda Marie Romualdez, declared a net worth of around P488 million in her statement of assets. This was the last time the House of Representatives released summaries of its members’ statements of assets.
The FilAm reported the Speaker’s $1-million donation based on information from a well-placed Filipino Harvard alumnus who attended a dinner in April this year at the home of Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine, a wealthy entrepreneur of Filipino descent and a member of the Harvard board of overseers.
“Yes, the Speaker was the donor,” the alumnus, who joined other Filipino alumni and students of Harvard at the dinner, was quoted as telling the US-based online magazine. “And we were told not to share this information. I found that very suspicious. If you are doing something without any nefarious intent, then why make it so secretive?”
Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez delivered on April 20, 2023 a speech at the Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He said the Philippine Congress is committed to build stronger alliance between the Philippines. He also said that the military alliance between the two countries is ‘iron-clad’ and the economic relations are ‘robust.’ Photo courtesy of congress.gov.ph
Ruben Carranza, former commissioner of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), told The FilAm it would be “wrong” for Harvard to accept donations from the family of the late dictator.
Romualdez is the first cousin of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator. His father, Benjamin “Kokoy” Romualdez, had been tagged by the PCGG as the elder Marcos’ conduit for taking control of the electric company Meralco. A compromise agreement between the Meralco Foundation and the government said that Marcos, through Kokoy Romualdez, used “sinister strategies and underhanded maneuvers” to acquire the electric company’s shares from the dictator’s rivals, the Lopez family.
There are also cases against the Romualdez family in relation to their assets in mining and in newspaper publishing.
“There is obviously something wrong if it is true that Harvard accepts donations from families of dictators who are corrupt, whether for teaching Filipino or any other course,” said Carranza.
Marcos Jr. won the presidential elections in May 2022. In July of the same year, Romualdez was elected Speaker. Shortly after, a bill was filed seeking to abolish the PCGG, saying the agency has “not produced significant accomplishment [and] has outgrown its usefulness.”
In its 2021 Annual Report, the PCGG reported recovering P175 billion in Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth since it was established in 1986. The fund supported farmers and human rights victims.
As of December 2020, about P99.678-billion worth of assets were still under litigation.
Speaker Romualdez was in the United States in April for a series of engagements with his counterparts in the US Congress. He also gave an address to Harvard’s Kennedy School, saying that he hoped to help strengthen US-Philippine ties. There, he said that Harvard’s Tagalog offering was “a source of national pride."
A Harvard spokesperson told The FilAm that it could not disclose the identity of the donor who made the Tagalog course possible, saying it does not discuss details of individual gifts. (The report may also be read on The FilAm’s website.)
The FilAm also reported that in 1981 the Philippine government tried to donate $1 million to endow an academic chair at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy to be named the Ferdinand E. Marcos Chair for East Asian and Pacific Studies.
“Marcos withdrew the funds because he was dissatisfied with his treatment by both Tufts and the US government,” the Harvard Crimson reported, citing sources at the Fletcher School.
Former Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., the most vocal critic of the Marcos dictatorship, was a research fellow at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. In his fellowship, taken after his release from prison in 1980, he did research on the history of Philippine democracy.
In 2018, Inquirer.net took down a series of reports on the rape case of actress Pepsi Paloma following a request from then Senate President Vicente Sotto III. The reports tagged the politician in an alleged attempt to whitewash the rape case that accused his colleagues in the entertainment industry — Vic Sotto, Joey De Leon, and Ritchie d’Horsey — of raping Paloma.
In a statement after the takedown, Inquirer.net said the articles on the Pepsi Paloma case “are currently under review and are unavailable at the moment.”
In 2019, the Philippine Star website, philstar.com, also took down a 2002 article on businessman Wilfredo Keng after he informed the newspaper of the “possibility of legal action.”
Keng, once one of the country’s richest according to Forbes, was tagged in the article as the prime suspect in the ambush-killing of former Manila Councilor Chika Go. The report was cited in a 2012 Rappler article identifying Keng as the owner of the vehicle used by the late Chief Justice Renato Corona. The Rappler report became the subject of a cyber libel case against Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and researcher Reynaldo Santos.
In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Sen. Francis Tolentino also reportedly asked philstar.com to remove a story about his access to rare Covid-19 test kits. His post about his negative test prompted an online uproar because many Filipinos with serious symptoms did not have access to test kits at the time.
Speaker Romualdez himself became a key player in the Philippine broadcasting industry following a joint venture agreement between ABS-CBN and his Prime Media Holdings to produce content for radio and cable television. The Romualdez family also owns the national broadsheet Manila Standard and the Journal Group of Publications (which publishes tabloids People’s Journal and People’s Tonight, among others).
Reposted with the author’s permission from https://pcij.org/article/10634/inquirernet-takes-down-story-on-martin-romualdez-reported-funding-of-tagalog-course-in-harvard
Carmela Fonbuena is the Executive Director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).
Here’s the original story from The FilAm:
Imelda Marcos’s nephew funds Harvard’s new Tagalog language course
‘The FilAm’ EXCLUSIVE
By Cristina DC Pastor
Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives Martin Romualdez. Facebook photo
The university, through a Harvard spokesman, declined to disclose the donor’s identity. The FilAm was informed that Harvard does not discuss the terms or specifics of individual gifts.
A Harvard Asia Center newsletter recently highlighted the “generous gift” that enabled the university to hire Tagalog instructor Lady Aileen Orsal, yet did not name the donor.
But Harvard students and alumni who attended a dinner last April in honor of Imelda’s nephew, Martin Romualdez, a prominent Philippine politician and first cousin of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., say they were clearly told that Romualdez was the donor but were asked by organizers of the dinner that this not be revealed to others.
The dinner was hosted by Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine, a Harvard alumna of Filipino descent and a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers. Sunshine did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
At the dinner, according to guests, James Robson, an official of the Harvard University Asia Center, gave a speech thanking Romualdez.
A Harvard alumnus who was present at the dinner confirmed what transpired during the dinner. About 20 to 30 people attended and some of them were told that Romualdez made a $1 million donation to fund the Filipino language course.
“Yes, the Speaker was the donor,” the alumnus, who declined to be named, told The FilAm. “And we were told not to share this information. I found that very suspicious. If you are doing something without any nefarious intent, then why make it so secretive?”
Top photo: Former first lady Imelda Marcos; younger brother Benjamin ‘Kokoy’ Romualdez. Lower photo: Speaker Martin Romualdez and cousin President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (Facebook photos)
Martin Romualdez is the Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives.
When asked for comment on the donation, Romualdez’s office sent The FilAm a press release from last April that confirmed the dinner gathering but did not comment on the donation. Romualdez had also spoken at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government during the same trip. A Romualdez spokesperson told The FilAm that they had nothing else to add.
“The teaching of Tagalog at Harvard University is a source of great national pride,” Romualdez said at the dinner, according to his press release.
Martin Romualdez is the youngest son of the late Benjamin “Kokoy” Romualdez, Imelda Marcos’s younger brother. The Philippine Commission on Good Government (PCGG), established after the ouster of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. in 1986, has recovered assets worth over $3 billion that it claims were illegally obtained by the Marcos family. According to the PCGG, Martin’s father Benjamin was a conduit for Marcos to acquire substantial shares in a major electric company (Meralco) using “sinister strategies and underhanded maneuvers.”
“There are also outstanding civil cases against the Romualdez family related to the family’s assets in banking, mining, Meralco (electricity), and newspaper publishing,” said Ruben Carranza, a New York-based lawyer and a former commissioner of the PCGG.
“There is obviously something wrong if it is true that Harvard accepts donations from families of dictators who are corrupt, whether for teaching Filipino or any other course,” Carranza told The FilAm.
Martin Romualdez himself has long been considered one of the Philippines’ wealthiest political leaders, according to his own disclosures to the government, with substantial holdings in Philippine media companies.
While the Philippine donation to Harvard has caused barely a ripple, with no other news reporting on it so far, a previous donation to another Boston-area university at the height of the Marcos martial law regime was met with public criticism and wide media coverage.
In 1981, the Philippine government tried to donate money – also $1 million – to endow an academic chair at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy to be named the Ferdinand E. Marcos Chair for East Asian and Pacific Studies. The pledge for the donation was withdrawn after critical editorials and reporting in U.S. newspapers. As reported in the Harvard Crimson, citing sources at the Fletcher School, “Marcos withdrew the funds because he was dissatisfied with his treatment by both Tufts and the U.S. government.”
UPDATE: After being posted on the Inquirer.Net, this article was deactivated by order of the owners, who are related to House Speaker Martin Romualdez
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cristina DC Pastor is the Founding Editor of The FilAm.
Here’s the link to the story: https://thefilam.net/archives/39291
