Published in The Philippine Star, GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc, Friday, April 11, 2008
It’s a curse on our land that our leaders if not crooked are plain dull. The costly, needless, hidden $330-million NBN-ZTE deal typifies the sleazy. The environment clearance for Korean firm Hanjin Corp. to build two high-rise condos inside the Subic Freeport forest shows up the incompetent.
With commonsense,
The permit is as zany as that granted to another sly Korean to build a concrete and steel spa on the mouth of Taal Volcano’s crater. It would have let only a few moneyed Asian tourists enjoy it, but spoiled the view from Tagaytay’s ridge.
Remember that dimwit in the late ’80s who, from his agency’s meager operating funds, bought himself an expensive leather vibra-massage chair? He justified it with equal denseness that “we’re a rich country pretending to be poor.” Sillier works abound under the Arroyo admin. Like, that rush to open the new but shoddy
Officials must know that their job is to enforce the law and so make everyone equal. Selfish folk will always try to pull a fast one. Like, that bishop whose vehicle convoys menace motorists to give way. Or, that ferry operator who hazardously overloads passengers. And, the electric company that overcharges customers. But the government should be there to push them back in line.
Only an idiot will not understand that. But sadly in government, it’s the idiot who rises to position.
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Speaker Prospero Nograles, pushing for passage of anti-graft bills, laments that corruption is a “deadly virus”. Really? I’ve never heard of any congressman dying from pork barrel.
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Authorities are to make an ambitious “discipline zone” of
That’s a tall order. Decades of bad habits would be tough to unmake. Litterbugs dump home and market trash on the road median. Uncouth bus and jeepney drivers load and unload passengers wherever they wish. Daredevils cross on the 16-lane highway instead of pedestrian overpasses. Street hawkers occupy road and sidewalks in the name of poverty. And ordinary motorists drive like crazy, joining the chaos around them in classic example of “broken windows syndrome.”
But if disciplining works on Commonwealth, the whole metropolis may yet save itself from decay. Needing similar zones are Bagong Silang in Caloocan and Tramo in Pasay.
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Okay, so Malacañang has lifted the 300,000-metric ton yearly limit on rice imports by private traders. They may now bring in as much as they want.
Wait, here’s the big but: they still need accreditation by the National Food Authority under the Office of the President. And they must buy only through the NFA and from NFA suppliers.
That rule smells fishy. It seems to ensure that the Palace biggie will still get his “tongpats (kickback)” from others’ imports?
The brouhaha over a rice shortage stinks too. Poor Agriculture Sec. Arthur Yap has been going around town to dispel rumors of stocks running out in just 12 days. But Malacañang is doing everything to make it look like there’s a crisis: raids on private warehouses, NFA’s sudden increase in palay buying price, government retailing of rice no longer by sack but kilo bags and thru churches, P48 billion emergency for production boosting, and a serious second look at the population policy.
All this aims only to prime the public mind for the “urgent need” to import two million tons of rice. Again, so that the biggie gets his “bukol (bulging kickback)”.
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