An embarrassment owing to stupidity - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

In the battle of credibility, the President’s defense panel suffered a terrible "public awareness" disaster as a result of the testimony of Equitable PCIBank Senior Vice President Clarissa Ocampo that she had prepared the paperwork six days after the impeachment trial began (namely on December 13) to "change" the ownership of the questioned account of "Jose Velarde" to an Estrada pal’s account, i.e. businessman Jaime Dichaves.

Worse, the signing of the switcheroo, according to Ocampo, took place in the office of former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza, one of the President’s defense lawyers – although, Ocampo had added, Mendoza himself wasn’t nearby when the transfer documents were reviewed and signed. Mendoza quickly declared he did not know about it, but the holding of the act of "signing" in lawyer Mendoza’s office of documents believed by many in the Senate chamber and, I gather, most of the televiewers (whose continuing interest has made the "trial" the telenovela drama of the year) to be a "cover-up" attempt, was a shocker.

The Asian Wall Street Journal yesterday (Jan. 3) ran it as the lead story on page one, with the lurid headline: "Banker Levels Blow to Estrada With Testimony." The subhead of the article, by AWSJ correspondent Eric Bellman, was even more damning: "Ocampo Says She was Asked to Hide Account Ownership." In the continuation of the piece on page 2, the head asserted: "Estrada Faces Damaging Testimony."

The International Herald Tribune, also published worldwide, ran its story on page 5, but the headline was no less embarrassing. The article by Trib correspondent Thomas Fuller was headlined: "Banker Was Ordered to Cover Up Account for Estrada, She Says."

What is most appalling is the utter recklessness – Sus, worse than that, stupidity – with which the matter was handled. If Ocampo is telling the truth (and her demeanor projected earnestness when she testified and was cross-examined by the senator-judges last Tuesday), the bank’s Chairman George Go, since then resigned from that post, had directly instructed her, the Herald Tribune reported, "to prepare documents to show that the owner of the secret account was Jaime Dichaves . . ."

If a cover-up was indeed intended, it was conducted in the clumsiest manner possible: The signing of the papers was even held in Mendoza’s law office. Sanamagan. If it wasn’t stupidity to have done that, it was an act of arrogance.

I’ll have to say that Senator Loren Legarda-Leviste, while not a lawyer, has been scoring points by the manner in which she has been asking the right questions and conducting herself, both in the Ocampo "cross-examination" and in earlier hearings. She’s showing up some of the eager-beaver legal "experts" among her fellow Senators who’ve been "showboating" rather than coming to the point.

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Yesterday was Ilocos Sur Governor Luis "Chavit" Singson’s turn – in fact, his "return bout" – to reiterate his charges and be cross-examined. The defense, naturally, tried mightily to discredit his testimony, accusing him of having a "selective memory." However, Singson is sticking to his guns.

"Chavit" – whose startling jueteng payola "revelations" and accusations of the looting of Ilocos Sur’s Virginia tobacco tax rebate fund, started the brouhaha which has shaken the Erap presidency – has been holed up in a "safe house" the past few weeks.

He’s been taking the danger of another "assassination" attempt, like the foiled 11 p.m. "ambush" try last October 3, very seriously. In truth, how could two police cars, in the dead of night (full of cops toting automatic weapons) plus a civilian car also carrying armed men have been dispatched to chase a governor’s Chevy van and demand that he come out of the vehicle to answer a "called-in" allegation that he had committed a traffic violation and used an "illegal" blinker?

As I had asked in this column the following day, if somebody had been attacked by thugs at 11 o’clock at night, and was yelling for policemen to "save" him, how many cops do you think would have responded within minutes to such a cry of distress? Nada, I’d say. Not one. But three carloads? Susmariosep, what suspicious efficiency. That, for Singson, was obviously the last straw.

And look at what’s happened since then!

If the police only exhibited the same kind of efficiency that they "demonstrated" on the night of October 3, 2000, by tracking down last Saturday’s ruthless and bloodthirsty "bombers", we’d understand their efficiency in intercepting that "blinker" or "red light" violation. Luckily for Chavit, his instincts of self-preservation (sharpened by six ambush attempts during the "Crisologo Wars") hadn’t deserted him. He had refused to descend from his bullet-proof van, and – again, thanks to sheer luck – managed to summon help from his Ilocos Sur mayors (with their bodyguards) who were gambling . . . er, conferring . . . nearby in the "Holiday Inn" casino.

I can’t say it was God’s intervention (Chavit, by his own confession, is no saint), but call it Fate. Or somebody’s bad karma. Or, as the Chinese (not the crony variety necessarily) used to call it: "bad joss."

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With garbage piling up everywhere disastrously, everybody’s once more up in arms over this stinking problem. There’s nothing more indicative of government failure to deliver even the most basic of services than heaps of smelly trash and rotting basura piling up on everybody’s front door.

As expected, the San Mateo landfill had to be closed as promised to the angry residents and townsfolk along the route of those caravans of malodorous dump-trucks transporting "somebody else’s garbage" to the overflowing San Mateo site. With Payatas in Quezon City – where that awful garbage mountain landslide and methane gas explosions had snuffed out so many lives – also shut down with finality, where’s the garbage going? Secretary Robert (not "Robot") Aventajado, the President’s totum factotum in solid waste mismanagement and Abu Sayyaf frustrations is desperately trying to send Metro Manila’s garbage by sea all the way to Semirara on the island of Antique, whatta mess! That’s a long way to go, and, even if the current court "temporary restraining order" (TRO) halting the move is eventually lifted, we’d have to mobilize an entire fleet of garbage scows, a veritable navy, to keep the garbage flotilla going. What next? Garbage disposal by air transport?

Aventajado had better admit it. His grandiose scheme of using "landfill" instead of other, more logical methods, as a means of disposing of trash is a complete failure. Aventajado has, for more than a year, been stubbornly insisting that "landfill" is the only proven method kuno, while other methods are merely experimental. What we have seen is the creation of more dangerous "smokey mountains" (even worse than that in the old and monstrous mountain in Tondo) in every landfill dumpsite, smellier than ever and poisoning the atmosphere with incendiary and explosive methane gas. Landfill endangers not only the lives of scavengers and squatters in the immediate vicinity of dumpsites and neighboring communities as well as seeping into the ground and poisoning the water table and the food chain.

If I may be so bold, I believe that the hidden reason why the government and local politicians don’t want to abandon the insane "landfill" solution is that there’s millions of pesos to be made on the part of those handling garbage collection and the dump truck business. Surprise, surprise: Most of the operators are related, one way or another, to politicians, or the politicians themselves! If that’s the case, Mr. A included, we’ll never solve the garbage mess.

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It was foolishness on the part of the solons who hatched the Clean Air Act, for all its noble intentions, to have yielded to claims that "incinerators" were poisonous to the atmosphere and the environment and should be banned altogether. There are incinerators and there are incinerators. Some are, indeed, defective and, yes, "poisonous." But the more modern ones have licked the problem.

In fact, when you compare the toxins and poisons, methane gas included, generated by the overflowing dumpsites and the growing "smokey mountains", an efficient incinerator – strategically placed – eliminates the "waiting time" of the dump trucks and efficiently burns up garbage. (Among other fanatics, Greenpeace pushed for the banning of incinerators. Let them now collect the garbage.)

Then there’s the state-of-the-art third generation "Pyrolysis/Gasification" system which this writer personally pushed for over the past three years. Nothing happened. Nada. (I want to state at this juncture that I don’t own a single share in Phoenix Pacific Resource & Power Inc. which had offered the project and secured the approval, after testing, of the Department of Science & Technology, Environmental Management Bureau, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Energy, etc.) But Mr. Aventajado kept on insisting that the "Pyrolysis/Gasification" system, derived from space age technology and patented by the Balboa Pacific Corporation of California, was "not proven technology." It was stressed by the Balboa experts and technicians over and over again that the system was not an "incinerator" and that garbage, including hazardous waste, could by this method be disposed of without residue or any release of toxic gas or matter into the atmosphere. Moreover, it generated electricity, to boot.

Quezon City Mayor Mel Mathay made a "show" of signing a memorandum of agreement (MOA) more than a year and a half ago, verbally acknowledging it as a system not merely capable of handling and disposing of the 2,000 tons of waste generated by Quezon City per day, but much of the waste generated by the adjoining eight cities and eight municipalities of Metro Manila. However, Mayor Mathay never pushed it for approval by the City Council, which – after months of ignoring the project – rejected it entirely. The original plan would have decongested the Payatas dumpsite, and, if the Q.C. authorities had been earnest about installing the system, which had been proposed on a Build-and-Operate Plan, they even might have "headed off" the disastrous Payatas garbage-slide tragedy. I say "might", because government never acts with dispatch on anything, except in approving a junket.

Indeed, the American and Filipino businessmen and technicians who had been so eager to install this effective system have, I hear, packed up and given up on trying to secure approval here of this "Pyrolysis/Gasification" set-up which could have revolutionized the solution and helped in eliminating our mounting garbage problem. So, we’re back not just to square one, but ground zero. We’re stuck with the primitive "landfill" conundrum.

"Landfill" has worked in other countries, its proponents – particularly Mr. Aventajado – continue to chorus. Have they really examined what’s going on in the United States, for instance? New York, New Jersey, and other States are still quarreling over where each State should dump the garbage for "landfill." The universal cry is, always: "Not in my backyard!" After all, who wants garbage, even "scientifically processed", deposited near one’s bedroom or living room window?

It’s the trashy way of thinking of our officialdom which requires reform, really. That plus the "profits" going, thanks to the garbage collection and dump truck monopolies, into a few greedy pockets. The Roman Emperor Vespasian, when he imposed a tax on toilets, made the immortal remark: "Money has no smell." In our land, the opportunists run away with the money – leaving us, poor citizens, with the smell.