President Rodrigo Duterte said that they’re still paying the damages after the Philippines lost to the cases filed against the government during the time of former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay who’s now a senatorial candidate under Otso Diretso.
In a speech in Batangas on April 17, Duterte said that Hilbay failed to defend the government from the said cases and now even the current administration is obligated to pay for it.
According to him, the Philippines is known for breaching contracts.
“Ito si Florin Hilbay, solicitor general. Wala namang naipanalo. Nanalo ba tayo sa kaso natin? Karami nating bayad, totoo lang ngayon. Hindi akin, previous administration mga damages, mga kontrata because we were known then as a country who does not honor contractual obligations,” the President said.
Duterte also convinced the people that it’s useless to vote for Hilbay in the upcoming senatorial elections because he didn’t prove anything as a Solicitor General.
In 2011 The World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled January 23, 2011, that former President Benigno Aquino III’s cancellation in 2011 of a Belgian firm’s P18-billion flood-control venture, the Laguna Lake Rehabilitation Project, was illegal and unfair.
The court ordered the Philippines to pay P800 million to the dredging firm Baagerwerken Decloedt En Zoon (BDZ).