Trash talk, again and again

THEY’RE NO Greeks bearing gifts, but Pampanga’s LGUs better beware of them.

They are foreign companies or consortia proffering facilities – at little or no cost to the government – to solve the garbage problem of the province.   

“$450-M plasma plant to solve trash problem,” the Capitol press released last Friday about US-based Quantum International Group, Inc. seeking a joint venture with the provincial government. The intent: “to establish a plasma waste treatment facility for the processing and disposal of municipal and industrial solid wastes.”

The $450 million “to be used for the construction of the plant, purchase, importation and set-up of all plasma equipment, and as compensation for the technology required in the plasma processing.”

The PR furthered: “Merlinda Cantero, vice president of Quantum Philippines Property Holdings and Management, Inc., disclosed that the proposed plasma gasification plant needs at least 2,000 metric tons of municipal and industrial wastes daily and is expected to produce power supply not only for the province but for some other parts of Central Luzon.”

And more: “The processing of 2,000 metric tons of wastes could generate 2,000 megawatts of power. The local government units might be able to choose what products they wanted to produce from the plasma gasification plant such gasoline, kerosene and bio-fuels.”

Haven’t we heard all these – and variations of these – before? Here’s some refresher:

On September 14, 2011, Gov. Lilia “Nanay Baby” Pineda and Lubao Mayor Mylyn Pineda-Cayabyab signed a memorandum of agreement with James Mackay, chairman of the Pampanga Green Management Inc. and the MacKay Green Energy Inc., for the establishment of a $63-million facility that will convert the province’s garbage into electricity. 
Per the MOA, the facility will not entail any cash-out from the provincial government while the Lubao municipality will provide the site for it at its central materials recovery facility in Barangay Sta. Catalina. The facility is expected to be completed within four months from the signing of the agreement.
Mat Evans of MacKay Green Energy Inc. explained that through a process dubbed as “treating metropolitan solid waste and using the refuse derived fiber to produce renewable energy,” 800 metric tons of garbage a day will go through combustion to generate 22 megawatts of electricity, enough to energize 110,000 households at the rate of one megawatt for every 5,000 households.
“With combustion at 1,200 to 1,800 degrees centigrade, the facility produces no toxic gases,” Evans stressed. “With our system, there will be no longer any need for landfills. With our facility you can be guaranteed to be safe from any leachate, which is very hazardous. Methane issues will no longer be a problem.”
So there was blessing – officiated by the Rev. Fr. Rudy de Guzman, and groundbreaking – participated in by the governor, the vice governor, the mayor and the proponents, at Barangay Sta. Catalina for the MacKay facility. And that was it. Nothing ensued further.

From MacKay’s $63-million facility to Quantum’s $450-million plasma plant, the ante has certainly been upped, aye, maxxed. Still, it’s hard to bite.

Much earlier, the City of San Fernando boasted of the final solution to its garbage woes with the Biosphere facility right at the fringes of the city’s open dumpsite in Barangay Lara.

Ballyhooed as a waste-to-gasification facility, the Spectrum Blue Steel pelletizing plant publicized as ran by one True Green Energy Corp. has yet to make even but a tenth of its promised solution. Stacks of residual wastes to be processed threatening to bury the plant itself.

Gasification. Waste-to-energy. Plasma. Same difference. Differently the same. All involving some incineration or the other.

As well articulated by Greenpeace activist Von Hernandez at the time of the MOA signing of the Capitol and MacKay:  “The Clean Air Act of 1999 explicitly prohibits the incineration of municipal waste, and the proponent (MacKay) is using clever semantic subterfuge (i.e. characterizing their technology as gasification, pyrolisis, or plasma airs) to try to exempt their proposed facility from the ban.
“They will claim that their technology is state of the art and without emissions. I find such spectacular claims hard to believe. While there may be state of the art incinerators, there is no such thing as a pollution-free incinerator.
“The combustion of waste especially chlorine containing materials like plastics creates cancer-causing dioxins and furans, liberates heavy metals into the air, essentially converting a waste problem into a formidable toxics pollution problem which will threaten the communities around the proposed facility.”
Concluded Hernandez: “The Department of the Environment and Natural Resources and the Pampanga provincial government should be cautious and not fall into this trap. Under the Clean Air Act, the public can take them to court for sabotaging and violating the provisions of the law.” 
Hernandez is the 2003 Goldman Environmental awardee, 2007 Time Hero of the Environment, member of the Steering Committee of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, an international anti-incineration coalition promoting zero waste, and the executive director (on leave) of Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

$450-M plasma plant to solve trash problem. Pure garbage talk. All the pun intended there.

House of dishonour

SELECTIVE JUSTICE is injustice.

Ululated the Honorable Jinggoy Estrada, citing 371 lawmakers were tagged with PDAF “irregularities” in the Commission of Audit report, but only Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Bong Revilla and himself have been “singled out.”

How about the P1.2 billion in LGU transactions funded from PDAF that did not comply with the Procurement Law, some of which were sourced from the PDAF of Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Alan Peter Cayetano, Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan and Manny Villar?

So the Honorable Estrada asked, furthering: Why were (these honourable senators) not mentioned (in the hearings, in the media)? Is it because they are allies (of the President)? I am not saying that they have sinned. This is based on the COA report that there were irregularities in their allotments.

Yet another instance of discriminative justice: How about the PDAF allocations…of the second highest official of the Lower House, Rep. Neptali “Boyet” Gonzales Jr. of Mandaluyong?

Were his PDAF properly used? It doesn’t appear so because according to the COA special audit report, 28 suppliers of Mandaluyong City denied having undertaken 167 transactions amounting to P28.744 million. It means there were 28 suppliers of Mandaluyong who said they had no transactions worth P28.7 million in the city of Mandaluyong so it could be said that they were also ghost projects.

Meron pa ngang nakita ang COA na P6 million worth of transactions sa Jollibee! Ano ito? P6 million worth ng Chickenjoy, hamburger at Jolly hotdog? Langhap na langhap ang sarap, hindi po ba?

And then still more: The COA report also said that it was not able to establish total releases for each legislator. Is this the reason why only P2 million was audited for Congresswoman Henedina Abad? P178 million for Congressman Niel Tupas? P197 million for Congressman Isidro Ungab? P351 million for Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano? P5 million for former Sen. Mar Roxas? P3 million for Senator Trillanes?   

Selective and blatantly incomplete. Thus, the Honorable Estrada damned the COA report, and trained his tirades on COA Chair Grace Pulido-Tan: Gumising ka na! Mukhang lagi po kayong may jet lag kaka-biyahe nyo sa ibang bansa: Five times out of the country travels in 2010, nine in 2011. At noong nakaraang taon (2012) sampung beses! Halos buwan-buwan wala sa bansa si Chariman Pulido-Tan. At sa kasalukuyang taon lamang, as of August 2013, nakabiyahe na sa labas ng bansa ng siyam na beses si Chairman. Kahindik-hindik, di po ba? At mukhang mapapahagulgol din tayo dito.

Pulido-Tan’s very words thrown back at her with biting sarcasm there. 

With such a scale and scope of sin obtaining – the Honorable Estrada arrogated unto himself the words of the Christ: “Kung sino mang walang bahid ng ano mang kasalanan, kayo ang unang bumato sa taong ito.” And then some: “Huwag naman kayong mag-malinis at lalong-lalo na, huwag naman kayong masyadong ipokrito!    

It was the Bard himself that said “the devil can cite Scripture for his own purposes.”

So who was it who said “religion is the last refuge of a scoundrel”?

A dud. The listening public readily dismissed the Honorable Estrada’s pre-publicized “”bombshell.”

A vain, if failed, attempt to bring the whole house down with him.   

Rather than reasoned arguments to disprove the charges ranged against him and his cohorts, the Honorable Estrada resorted to a number (ir)rationalizations found in the body of Material Fallacies of Reasoning any student of my day learned in Philosophy 101. 

The Honorable Estrada and the equally Honorable Revilla are being singled out because they are strong candidates in the presidential derby of 2016. This, he not so subtly implied in his speech.

This is an instance of the post hoc fallacy or finding consequence in sequence. So they are puffing up their pretensions to the highest positions in the land, so they needed to be shut, if not shot down? PDAF irregularity is the issue at hand, not presidential illusions and hallucinations.    
Then, by dragging his peers into the PDAF scum, by raising questions on the integrity of the COA and its chair, the Honorable Estrada exampled the fallacy of tu quoque – “you yourself do it” so what right have you to judge me?.

This closely adheres to the Kapampangan wisecrack “Pare-parehu tamu mu king akbak nang Hudas (we are all the same in Judas’ skewer.)”

Precisely what the Honorable Estrada did accomplish in his “The Untold PDAF Story that the People Should Know” speech.

At the expense, aye, the very negation, of that witticism about honor obtaining among thieves.

The senator’s speech proved it is the (dis)honorific “Honorable” that takes honor out of thieves.     

Shame. Have they got any?

Pork to perdition

PORK IS evil.

So spake retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno at a gathering of Methodist churches at the Good Samaritan Church in Quezon City last week.

“The pork barrel is an evil practice and it is our duty to fight evil by engaging it and not running away from it, not escaping from it,” he declared. “The fight against evil requires that we not only start the fight but we finish the fight. The fight against evil demands a period. The fight cannot be postponed by a comma, cannot be suspended by a ceasefire. Evil deserves but one end—defeat.”

No war of attrition there but the war to end all wars. 

As well addressing all men of faith, the esteemed magistrate said: “In sum, the Methodist position in regard to abuse of governmental power is clear, unchanging and unchangeable. Our North Star has always been and will always be the Word of God. We maintain that government derives its power from God; that it is the sovereignty of God that counts, it is the sovereignty of God that controls, it’s the sovereignty of God that should dictate the direction of human destiny.”

So sadly, some divine attribute arrogated unto themselves by those in government, thus: “However you look at it, the pork barrel scandal is all about abuse in the exercise of the powers of government, especially the legislative power over the money of the people.”

Indeed, “the only rationale of the government is to maintain order by promoting good and not evil, and above all, the government must be an instrument of God, hence no government can subvert the sovereignty of God.”

Indeed, government – at least in the case of the pork barrel scam – did just that.

The evil of “mass theft” of the people’s money compounded and complexed by how it was “misused against the people’s interest.”

“It was misused for political patronage; to buy the loyalty of people whose politics is for sale; to corrupt our system of making laws; to corrupt our systems of enforcing our laws; to corrupt our system of election; to perpetuate poverty; in other words, to violate the dignity of our people, to demean our democracy, and worse of all, to defy the sovereignty of God.”

Drawing the lines of battle thus, “between God’s power and evil people in power.” Verily, the final conflict to be waged there.

Pork is an abomination.

Haram, as the Qur’an proscribes -- "Forbidden to you (for food) are: dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which hath been invoked the name of other than Allah." [Al-Qur’an 5:3].

In the Old Testament too -- "And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch, they are unclean to you." [Leviticus 11:7-8]. The same phrase in Deuteronomy 14:8 reverberating.

As well as – and more terrifying – in the New – “And there was a good way off from them a herd of many swine feeding.  So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.  And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.” [Matthew 9:30-32, King James Version]. 
And so the devils went into the congressional pork, and, behold, the whole House of Congress rocked violently and now lies precipitously on a steep cliff, teetering to fall into the sea of rage of a people wronged, and to perish…  

Pork is damnation.

In both its scriptural and political sense. Woe unto you pork scammers. Hell has a special place for you.

Abolish pork. Be saved.   

Duh?  
 

Down the summit

ITEM 1. The city Government of San Fernando on Friday spearheaded an education summit at Heroes Hall in response to the urgent and critical need to improve the quality of basic education.

So Sun-Star Pampanga reported. It furthered: Together with Department of Education officials led by City Schools Division Superintendent Esperanza Laya were heads and representatives from the Department of Labor and Employment, Commission on Higher Education, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, teachers, students and other allied stakeholders gathered for the whole day summit themed "Reaching Out and Building a Better Community."

Item 2. Subject of a recent Balitaan forum in Bale Balita at the Clark Freeport were the doldrums of the socio-economic and political kinds keeping the wind off the sails of the Clark airport to reach its destiny as the country’s premier international gateway, or even just an equal twin to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

The solution proffered by 1^st District Rep. Yeng Guiao: Clark summit, among all stakeholders – representatives of airlines, freeport locators, local government units, the CAAP, CDC, CIAC and DOTC, travel and tour agencies, hotels and restaurants, advocacy groups, business chambers, etc.

Item 3. Faced with the persistence of tuberculosis in many areas of Pampanga, both urban and rural, the provincial government in coordination with the Department of Health held a health summit participated in by chiefs of the provincial and district hospitals, heads of rural health units as well as barangay health workers.

Item 4. A series of carjacking cases and killings in Pampanga prompted the provincial government to hold a peace and order summit participated in by the Camp Olivas top brass, the provincial police office, all commanders of city and municipal police stations, the Highway Patrol Group and the Drug Enforcement Agency.      

Item 5. The Department of Public Works and Highways last May announced the completion of the repair and rehabilitation of the San Fernando-Sto. Tomas-Minalin tail which, it said, “was designed to protect the towns from floodwaters coming from upstream...(and) can rest assured of the integrity (of the repair) of the dike to prevent another flooding.”

Came typhoon Marin and the habagat again last August:  the dike was breached again, the towns inundated anew.

To come up with a definitive solution to this perennial flooding, no need to guess what has been recommended – a flood summit, dummy, to be participated in by the local governments of Pampanga, the DPWH and all its attached offices, and other stakeholders.

Education. Tourism. Health. Peace and Order. Infrastructure. Any and all problems and issues in any and all sectors have only one solution – hold a summit.

Summit. A most misappropriated word, given its current usage hereabouts.

Summit came with perfection the first time I heard of the word – in Grade 1 or Grade 2 with a picture of Mayon Volcano providing the visual aid.

Summit, thereafter, I associated exclusively with mountains, their highest points specifically. No matter their jaggedness, as in the Alps. No matter the imperfection of their cone, as in Fuji.

I have not yet graduated from the elementary grades when summit assumed another meaning. That was when the so-called leaders of the “free world” gathered in the Philippines to talk about the Vietnam War.    

I still have a mental image of Nguyen Cao Ky and Van Thieu of South Vietnam, Holt of Australia, Holyoake of New Zealand, Thanom Kittikachorn of Thailand – I don’t know but that name is forever etched in my memory – and Lyndon Johnson of the USA seated on a roundtable with our very own Ferdinand E. Marcos presiding, in what was hailed as the Manila Summit.

Associations in definitions now – summit means the top of a mountain, a summit meeting means that which is exclusive to the top of a hierarchy, principally political.

As in the Reykjavik Summit between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to ban or limit intercontinental  ballistic missiles.

As in the periodic G-20 Summit of leaders of the world’s major economies. Or the APEC Summit of the leaders of the countries in Asia and the Pacific. Or the ASEAN Summit among leaders of neighboring countries in Southeast Asia.

In all those wise, it is the exclusivity among top leaders that makes a summit meeting. Any other participated in by just any Tom, Dick and Harry whose family names are not Jefferson, Nixon and Truman, won’t make a summit meeting.

Just like all those education summit, tourism summit, flood summit, health summit or peace and order summit foisted at every turn of a problem or a disaster. Summit is not the proper term there. General assembly or forum is the more appropriate.

Yeah, from the rarefied airs of Olympus, the summit has descended to the pits of triviality.

Still, for those too hung-up on summitry here are some words from Barry Goldwater: “The only summit meeting that can succeed is the one that does not take place.”

Touche.       

Terminal case

"THE EXPANSION of the passenger terminal is to accommodate the coming of the long-haul flights from the Middle East, the wide-body planes of Emirates and Qatar, and Clark is being readied for the coming of more of these long-haul flights."

Coming in the immediate aftermath of the announcement of Philippine AirAsia’s suspension of its Clark flights and moving to NAIA, the declaration of CIAC President-CEO Victor Jose I. Luciano has been widely taken as some pampalubag loob over the pain for some great loss.

Yeah, so Philippines AirAsia – a low cost carrier – is leaving Clark. So what? Long- haul big leaguers Emirates and Qatar are coming. More gains than loss there for the Clark airport. 
Emirates Airlines starts its daily Dubai-Clark-Dubai flights Oct. 1. Qatar Airways will roll out its Doha-Clark-Doha route on October 28. This effectively links up Central and Northern Luzon to the Gulf, and Europe – here we come!

Precisely to that end is the P360-million terminal project, geared to a capacity of five million passengers, and expected to be complete before the end of September.

I don’t know how Mr. Luciano will make good on that promised completion.

Thursday last week, I flew to Hong Kong – via AirAsia, yeah they still fly the Clark route till October 9 – and saw the scale and scope of (non)completion of construction at the Clark terminal.

It’s two weeks before A-Day for Emirates and the terminal is still way behind its finishing phase. As much the way I saw it, as the way I was inconvenienced by all that construction – boxed in by all those panels at the departure lounge, and queuing right at the arrival gate on my return Monday noon to the immigration counters. There were but two flights that time from Hong Kong both – AirAsia and Cebu Pacific and all six slots of the immigration desks were manned.

I can only shudder at the prospective mayhem of October 1 – what with the Emirates’ Boeing 777 with 438 passengers adding up to the other flights      

But I take Mr. Luciano’s word for it – that the terminal will be completed by the end of the month. As I have taken his word in everything about the Clark airport, most specially its terminal.

I believed Mr. Luciano when he proclaimed the so-called Terminal 2 project would be finished before Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stepped down from the presidency.
In September 2006, GMA presided over the laying of the time capsule for the construction of Terminal 2. It was announced then that the sum of P3 billion, to come from the Manila International Airport Authority, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., and the Bureau of Immigration, among other agencies will be allotted for the project.
I believed Mr. Luciano when he announced the $1.2 billion proposal from an ALMAL Investments Co., a subsidiary of the Kuwaiti mega developer M.A. Kharafi Projects, “to cover all civil components of the DMIA Terminals 1, 2 and 3 plus the adjacent 1,500 hectares in the aviation complex strictly following the CIAC original master plan.”
I believed Mr. Luciano when his CIAC press released that a group of major government-linked and private firms in Malaysia called Bristeel Overseas Ventures, Inc. (BOVI) offered to infuse at least $150 million in foreign direct investment to immediately undertake the much-needed expansion of the passenger terminal of the Clark International Airport.

I believed Mr. Luciano when I read that in a regular meeting on May 17, 2010, the CIAC Board “resolved to accept for detailed negotiations” the proposal of the Philco Aero Inc. on the Passenger Terminal 2 Development Project of the DMIA, as it was deemed “superior” to the BOVI proposal.
I believed Mr. Luciano when – in January 2012 -- announced that “they” are pushing for the construction of a budget terminal that will handle about 10 million passengers a year at the CIA.
“The new facility, amounting to P12 billion, will take three years to complete and make (the CIA) the second largest airport in the country, next to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport…This budget terminal is the kind of terminal that meets the requirements of our airport in Clark. Our terminal right now can only accommodate 2.5 million. So we need a budget terminal to effectively say that DMIA is the next budget airline airport of the country.” So Mr. Luciano said. So I believed him.

As you may well see, nothing that Mr. Luciano verbalized has ever been realized. Still, I believed him.

Now, he is saying that the terminal will be finished on September 30 at the latest.

And I cannot but help believing him.

Yeah, you’re right. More than Mr. Luciano, it is I that suffer from a terminal case of…whatever.   
 

Tapang on track

“THERE ARE existing national and local laws and even executive orders on anti-overloading, but do these really solve the problems and issues hounding the industry? It is imperative that we, in the sangguniang panlalawigan should come up with a legislation that will truly regulate the quarry industry in this province, which eventually will redound to the benefit of our constituencies.”

Thus premised the Honorable Michael Tapang, 2^nd district board member, his proposed ordinance “regulating the hauling and transporting of sand, gravel and other quarry materials within the Province of Pampanga through any motor vehicle and for other purposes.”

Tapang lamented “the scourges of overloading and the unabated damage on provincial roads (that) increase the Capitol’s expenses in road repairs and maintenance” which could better be earmarked for social services.

Tapang knows whereof he speaks. As a matter of course, he is in the best position – among all Pampanga legislators – to take the issue hammer and tongs, as indeed he has done not so long ago when he was yet to enter politics.

Aye, here’s not just a throwback but a re-happening of January 2009, right in this corner, under the head Money matters, to wit:    

THERE IS more than what one reads in the papers on the protest of truckers against the implementation of Ordinance 261.
O-261 aims to regulate the hauling and transport of quarry-derived materials within Pampanga with a strict proviso on the truck size and load volume.
O-261 was principally authored by Senior Board Member Cris Garbo but crafted with the inputs of various stakeholders not the least of which is the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon which first raised the need to definitively put a stop to overloaded trucks that have been a curse to motorists and the principal destroyers of roads and highways.
In his sponsoring speech, Garbo emphasized O-261 “will prevent the deterioration and destruction of roads, bridges and highways and the recurrence of vehicular accidents that result to loss of lives and properties.”
These protesting truckers in effect are howling against the rightful regulations to check on their abuses. Damned, these truckers have no right even just to murmur against O-261, having long been violating, with so much impunity, the Anti-Overloading Law. They should even be thankful the Land Transportation Office and the local police have not exacted the full measure of the law upon them. Or have they, the exaction coming in some other form – yellower, bluer and with more graphics than a traffic violation ticket?
Selfish motives, to be kind about it, are easily gauged among the truckers based on our above arguments. Then, there is still even worse.
The purported umbrella organization of these mostly sand and gravel haulers – the Federation of Pampanga Truckers, Inc. (FPTI) – reportedly sacked its own president, one Mike Tapang, for his alleged “individual judgment that is self-serving and of personal interest.”
The redundancies there clear indication of how much contempt those who ousted Tapang had for him.
Tapang, it was said, tried to bludgeon the FPTI with an “unrelenting proposal for an outside management and consultancy company to manage the whole operations and all the affairs of the federation.”
That company they identified as one Suretrux Management and Consultancy (SMC).
Cries the FPTI board: “We will not agree to the demands of the management company for fees that we found to be unreasonable beyond logical proportion and without any accounting records for such an undertaking.”
Redundancies there again. Guys, where did you learn your syntax?
The FPTI board’s coup de grace: “This federation do hereby condemned (sic) this individual judgment of Tapang...for such an act that is unbecoming of an officer especially being president and the lost (sic) of trust of its (sic) capacity to lead the federation objectively and without prejudice, we do hereby demand the concurrent (sic) president to turn over all of its (sic) duties and current affairs to the officers and board of trustees. Furthermore, we demand the President’s irrevocable letter of resignation effective immediately.”
More than a management and consultancy company, the FPTI needs a good English grammar teacher.
That aside, we can see clearly a power play in the FPTI.
So what has this Tapang to hurl back?
“There was no MOA or such other documents signed to finally use the services of the SMC. I was just bringing up an idea or plan as an officer of the federation. That is not enough ground to oust me for loss of confidence as cited in their decision,” so was he quoted as saying…

TAPANG could have just as easily dismissed all of the charges against him with a counter-charge of linguicide.  

O-261 was of course repealed by Ordinance 362.

We wrote in another piece then “the nullity of such a ‘perfect law’ as (0-261), constrained by the imperfections impacted in its implementing rules and regulations, notably the “cutting” of trucks to prevent them from overloading. Crafted by a task force created by Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio, the IRR were never intentioned in the ordinance, the sangguniang panlalawigan declared.
The IRR destroyed the spirit of Ordinance 261, so held Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao. Hence, the imperative of its termination.

And whence exploded a protracted legal war between Panlilio and the SP, that lasted to this day – or has the court ruled on the legality of 0-362?

Anyways, the Aquarian Age obtaining at the Capitol today, read: harmony and understanding, sympathy and love abounding, augurs well for a definitive legislation on the transport of quarried materials in Pampanga.

And then, of course, there’s Mike Tapang.   

Terminal case

Zona Libre/Bong Z. Lacson

"THE EXPANSION of the passenger terminal is to accommodate the coming of the long-haul flights from the Middle East, the wide-body planes of Emirates and Qatar, and Clark is being readied for the coming of more of these long-haul flights."

Coming in the immediate aftermath of the announcement of Philippine AirAsia’s suspension of its Clark flights and moving to NAIA, the declaration of CIAC President-CEO Victor Jose I. Luciano has been widely taken as some pampalubag loob over the pain for some great loss.

Yeah, so Philippines AirAsia – a low cost carrier – is leaving Clark. So what? Long- haul big leaguers Emirates and Qatar are coming. More gains than loss there for the Clark airport. 
Emirates Airlines starts its daily Dubai-Clark-Dubai flights Oct. 1. Qatar Airways will roll out its Doha-Clark-Doha route on October 28. This effectively links up Central and Northern Luzon to the Gulf, and Europe – here we come!

Precisely to that end is the P360-million terminal project, geared to a capacity of five million passengers, and expected to be complete before the end of September.

I don’t know how Mr. Luciano will make good on that promised completion.

Thursday last week, I flew to Hong Kong – via AirAsia, yeah they still fly the Clark route till October 9 – and saw the scale and scope of (non)completion of construction at the Clark terminal.

It’s two weeks before A-Day for Emirates and the terminal is still way behind its finishing phase. As much the way I saw it, as the way I was inconvenienced by all that construction – boxed in by all those panels at the departure lounge, and queuing right at the arrival gate on my return Monday noon to the immigration counters. There were but two flights that time from Hong Kong both – AirAsia and Cebu Pacific and all six slots of the immigration desks were manned.

I can only shudder at the prospective mayhem of October 1 – what with the Emirates’ Boeing 777 with 438 passengers adding up to the other flights      

But I take Mr. Luciano’s word for it – that the terminal will be completed by the end of the month. As I have taken his word in everything about the Clark airport, most specially its terminal.

I believed Mr. Luciano when he proclaimed the so-called Terminal 2 project would be finished before Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stepped down from the presidency.
In September 2006, GMA presided over the laying of the time capsule for the construction of Terminal 2. It was announced then that the sum of P3 billion, to come from the Manila International Airport Authority, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., and the Bureau of Immigration, among other agencies will be allotted for the project.
I believed Mr. Luciano when he announced the $1.2 billion proposal from an ALMAL Investments Co., a subsidiary of the Kuwaiti mega developer M.A. Kharafi Projects, “to cover all civil components of the DMIA Terminals 1, 2 and 3 plus the adjacent 1,500 hectares in the aviation complex strictly following the CIAC original master plan.”
I believed Mr. Luciano when his CIAC press released that a group of major government-linked and private firms in Malaysia called Bristeel Overseas Ventures, Inc. (BOVI) offered to infuse at least $150 million in foreign direct investment to immediately undertake the much-needed expansion of the passenger terminal of the Clark International Airport.

I believed Mr. Luciano when I read that in a regular meeting on May 17, 2010, the CIAC Board “resolved to accept for detailed negotiations” the proposal of the Philco Aero Inc. on the Passenger Terminal 2 Development Project of the DMIA, as it was deemed “superior” to the BOVI proposal.
I believed Mr. Luciano when – in January 2012 -- announced that “they” are pushing for the construction of a budget terminal that will handle about 10 million passengers a year at the CIA.
“The new facility, amounting to P12 billion, will take three years to complete and make (the CIA) the second largest airport in the country, next to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport…This budget terminal is the kind of terminal that meets the requirements of our airport in Clark. Our terminal right now can only accommodate 2.5 million. So we need a budget terminal to effectively say that DMIA is the next budget airline airport of the country.” So Mr. Luciano said. So I believed him.

As you may well see, nothing that Mr. Luciano verbalized has ever been realized. Still, I believed him.

Now, he is saying that the terminal will be finished on September 30 at the latest.

And I cannot but help believing him.

Yeah, you’re right. More than Mr. Luciano, it is I that suffer from a terminal case of…whatever.   
 

It's only words

LOOK DIDA, my grandson Miguel Iñigo tugged at my shirt and pointed to the blown up photo on one wall of the eatery where, I learned later, Angeles City Councilor Max Sangil ingested pork that ran roughshod in his bowels.

No this is not about bowels, which often times are confused with vowels, and indeed find confluence in some affliction endemic to politicians called verbal diarrhea.

My apo referred to a picture of sculptors emblazoned with the big bold texts “Wood curving, Betis Pampanga.”

Is it the shape of the wood? Or the craft of the men? Migo asked me what was headlined there.

A curved piece of wood being carved into a work of art. Passable alibi for the semantic lapse. Still, it’s wood carving, both livelihood and art.   

Part of editorial work is traversing through verbal landmines of homonyms indiscriminately, usually carelessly, planted in news stories which gives them a different meaning. Okay, which reduced them to meaninglessness.

There is for instance the breaching of the Arayat setback levee one time, noted down as levy in one story and levi in another. The embankment assumed in the first the imposition of a tax, and if capitalized that of Pampanga’s foremost business and media mogul, and in the second a Hebrew patriarch which when uppercased that of the inventor of denim jeans.

A police story one time referred to a rouge’s gallery making me search for the names Max Factor, Revlon Maybelline, L’Oreal and Alexandra de Markoff in that list of scoundrels, also known as rogues.

Then there was the murder suspect reported to have been hailed in court. So what was a man indicted for a heinous crime praised for? Instead of being compelled – haled – before a judge to face the bar of justice.

Still on legal grounds, pork chopped legislators flout the law when they flaunt their ill-gotten wealth. Maybe – in contrition, and to make amends – they may also flout their loot and flaunt the law. So much for wishful thinking.

A case too in semantic misdemeanor is that of the “aid” of Nanay Baby Pineda herself aiding the flood victims. Aid for the assistance misplaced for the assisting aide of the governor. At least, it was not a case of the dreaded disease which, to distinguish, we always put in all caps, AIDS.  

As dis makes the whale of a difference between honor and dishonor, so in spells the chasm between fame and notoriety – famous, the heights of glory; infamous, the abyss of obloquy, okay, disgrace.

It is thus the ultimate insult to call – even unwittingly, ignorantly too – a child celebrity as “infamous.”

A matter of semantics, so careless journalists pooh-pooh wrong choice of words in their stories.

Yeah, it’s only words. And – to paraphrase that song – words are all we have to take our readers’ minds away.  

Write with care. We owe it to them.

Mind your Ps

READ THIS in Headline Gitnang Luzon, September 11, 2013 issue online. Underscoring/highlighting mine:  

CLARK FREEPORT – Vice Gov. Dennis “Delta” Pineda and at least nine others will travel to Taiwan this month to inspect Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) sheet files as part of the efforts of the Pampanga government to solve perennial flooding, a member of the provincial board disclosed over the weekend.

Senior Board Member Ferdinand Labung, who will join the delegation, said they will study the “viability and efficiency” of the PVC sheet files extensively used in rivers, creeks and other bodies of water in China and Taiwan, also known as Chinese-Taipei.

Labung said the Taiwan-made materials are used to prevent water from spilling out of rivers and onto properties and roads. He added that these are being eyed to replace the sheet files made of cement and steel.
Labung said that the sheet files made of PVC are reportedly “light weight,” allowing for “quick transfers and installations” of the materials.

“The PVC sheet files are also more durable and live longer than the ones we use made of steel and cement,” said Labung, who added that Gov. Lilia Pineda “wants to make sure of its effectiveness before she gives a go to the use of PVC sheet files.”

Earlier, Guagua Mayor Dante Torres appealed to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to make immediate and permanent actions on the breached portions of a dike in Barangay San Jose. It caused flooding in at least four other villages, including Barangays San Matias and Santo Cristo, at the height of monsoon rains last month.

Torres said that the Diosdado P. Macapagal Memorial Hospital (DPMMH), Pampanga’s provincial hospital, is prone to floods if the dike will not be repaired.

Labung has yet to give the name of the company in Taiwan, which reportedly offered to shoulder the expenses for the travel of their group. ● Joey Pavia

No typo error in the above, owing to the consistency in the usage of sheet files – a total of six times.

Kafamfangan taken to the extreme there, reducing to ridiculous proportions an otherwise good news story. And giving it a totally different meaning.

So is the search for solution to the perennial inundation of Pampanga now centering on the piling of documents along riverbanks, creeks and dikes to prevent their erosion or overtopping? That’s what sheet files conjure in the mind. At least in mine.

Must be really strong documents there to try to outdo even King Canute himself. (For those not in the know, he was that king of England, Denmark, Norway and parts of Sweden who was so great a ruler that his courtiers claimed he could command the tides of the sea to go back. So he had his throne carried to the seashore and sat on it as the tide came in, commanding the waves to go back to open sea. Of course, he got all wet.) 

It boggles the mind – mine – to think how the Honorable Ferdinand “Dinan” Labung, an engineer who built his name, his fortune and his politics, around his highest rated construction business, can ever take sheet files for sheet piles, those “made of timber, steel, or prestressed concrete set close together to resist lateral pressure, as from earth or water.” 

Aye, it could only be his Kafamfangan? Heard and written to perfection by the ace reporter Joey Pavia, a stickler for accuracy, accuracy, accuracy as impacted in him by his late, dearly lamented father, the illustrious editor Joe L. Pavia

Or Labung could really be talking of a new engineering system. Consider this direct quote from him: “The PVC sheet files are also more durable and live longer than the ones we use made of steel and cement.”

Live longer. Wow, with lives of their own, the sheet files can grow to maturity, procreate and multiply to further buttress the banks wherever they are piled.

Yeah, the perfect solution to Pampanga’s flooding there.

I am just wondering why “Labung has yet to give the name of the company in Taiwan, which reportedly offered to shoulder the expenses for the travel of their group.”  

Trade secret to protect the patent for sheet files as the new engineering miracle?

So excited am I to see these sheet files that I want to join Labung’s delegation to Taiwan, at my own expense. It is not everyday that one sees a new creation.                      

A great mind

MORE OFTEN the politician neither legislates nor administers so much as he intervenes and mediates. He achieves a personalized relationship with his constituents as individual persons, more anxious about doing things for each of them rather than for all of them. A bridge, a school, or a rural development project, although important, is not enough. Has he been approachable? Has he managed to place a son in a Manila office? Where was he when a fire broke out or a typhoon came? How personally generous has he been with the needs of certain influential leaders? If he fails in these personalist tests, he fails as a politician.

Are the people to blame for this state of affairs? Hardly, for conditions are such that the majority depend on the government. But are the politicians, who are simply responding to the situation as they see it? I would say Yes. Within the undeniably practical limits of political survival, politicians can and should try out some innovations that will transform the political culture from being populist, personalist and individualist to being more nationalist, institutional and socialist, in the strict meaning of being more conscious about the needs of society and the national community…

One reason for the pervasiveness of corruption is that in being part of the system, everyone it touches seems to benefit…The corrupt politician who is at the same time accessible to his constituents has more chances of staying in power than an honest one “who has not done anything.” He probably takes his legislative or executive work more seriously, concentrating on collective goals to the detriment of political “fence mending,” but he is more often judged by the populist, personalist and individualist standards of the political culture.

A true politician should be able to lead his constituency in a precarious present toward an uncertain future, but he dare not initiate or innovate unless he can be sure it will not cost his position.

It is easy to condemn him for lack of moral courage, but what good is a businessman without a business, a politician without policy? “I must see where my people are going so that I may lead them,” an Athenian politician was supposed to have said. There are certain conditions, however, in which this attitude cannot be a useful principle of democratic leadership.

RELEVANT REFLECTIONS in this season of corrupted pork and rotten politicos. Written – would you believe? – 42 long years ago, by – no kidding! – Ferdinand Edralin Marcos in his 1971 book Today’s Revolution: Democracy.

Populist. Personalist. Individualist. Marcos distilled the essence of all that is wrong, aye, the very evil of politics in the country. 

Proof positive once more of the Great Ferdinand’s mastery of political domain.

Even more – testament anew to the persistent prevalence of politics as plunder in the Philippine praxis. EDSA Uno no matter. EDSA Dos, whatsoever. BS Aquino III, no bother.  

And ultimately, affirmation again of the Marxist doctrine of history happening first as tragedy and recurring as farce. Or of Santayana’s “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Even simpler is that Irish saying: “There is no present, there is no future, only the past happening over and over again.”

Marcos, Marcos, Marcos pa rin. He would have been 96 today, September 11.

Wonder where the Philippines would have been by now if he stayed…

  (Punto, Sept. 11, 2013)  

         

Two cuts from the same pork

A CONFESSION.

“The core problem is not just the shameless corruption of a growing number of greedy corrupt officials in a system that has become corruption-friendly. The issue is the breakdown of our moral fiber as a Christian nation…

“The issue could also be the diminishing relevance and eroding credibility of moral shepherds … the failure of religion to make morality and ethics the foundation of all human actions and endeavors, after almost 500 years of Gospel presence.”

Thus Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas takes us to the pith of the P10-billion pork barrel scam.

A moral issue, above all else. And what have the people for moral guardians?

“We cannot afford to be known as a Church of denunciations and prohibitions. As we denounce evil and sin, we must, in the same breath propose imitating Christ as the only alternative to our social ills…

“Let the national news of the recent weeks about extensive corruption in governance make us more humble as moral guides and more zealous as lighthouses of morality in the midst of the storms besetting our boat. We have our own ‘pork’ to abolish so that we can be better.”

Veritably now, priests feeding on and off Janet Napoles herself. Or haven’t you noticed those video clips of reverends praying over her, fawning at her very presence? 

Even more essential, priestly pork that needed to be burned in holocaust is the effete elitism that, in Francis’ words, “clericalised” the Church as in “…come inside so we make decisions and announcements between ourselves and those who don't come in, don't belong." Ending up, vainly, “separating the people of God from salvation.”  

And the creeping materialism among the clergy, again Francis encapsulated thus: “It hurts me when I see a priest or a nun with the latest model car, you can't do this…A car is necessary to do a lot of work, but please, choose a more humble one. If you like the fancy one, just think about how many children are dying of hunger in the world.”

Flirting with mammon. That which Francis holds as “…precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad — sad priests — in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with ‘the smell of the sheep’.”

Inspiring in Villegas the firmest of resolves: “The fear of the Lord is our only alternative. No more complacent orderliness … we must smell like the sheep and get out of the swivel chair. No more religiosity without godliness [and] beyond knowledge of the faith, let us live it.”

Some Act of Contrition worthy of an Augustine there, if I may say.

AN ASSERTION.

Prejudged unfairly in the media-induced frenzy on the pork barrel scam.

So the Inquirer reported former Sen. Edgardo Angara as saying of the lawmakers ensnared in the scandal – “controversy” he would rather say, and rapping media for having tarred lawmakers as “evil” and NGOs as “fakes.”

“Why are senators being blamed? The world has been overturned. The implementing agencies should not pass on their responsibilities to the lawmakers,” Angara argued.

Premised, as the Inquirer story says, thus: “The Department of Budget and Management had made it a point that only government agencies or local government units should be allowed as implementing agencies (IAs) for a ‘practical reason.’  They have resident auditors outside of the regular COA.

So the lawmakers were not responsible for checking the legitimacy of NGOs as the IAs had resident auditors designated for that role.”

A legal issue, nothing else. Angara a virtual echo of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada there.

The Inquirer reported: “Angara gave P14.4 million of his pork to an NGO, Kalusugan ng Bata, Karunungan ng Bayan Inc., where he was an incorporator, stockholder and board member. In its findings, the COA said P9 million of the food packages distributed by Jeverps Enterprises was unliquidated while 20,625 of the 50,000 packs distributed were not supported by documents.”

Angara’s retort: “They did not qualify the (COA) report. They did not say any irregularity. Even if they mentioned my name, don’t jump into conclusion that I pocketed money from that.”

Some arrogant denial truly worthy of the lawyer in the once Integrated Bar of the Philippines president there.