Mandaluyong's private armies

New BIR chief Joel Tan-Torres assures that not contributions but only election campaign expenses will be taxed 5-percent. Donations in cash or kind are exempted. But once spent for, say, printing of leaflets or purchase of t-shirts, the candidate must withhold 5 percent for the taxman, then pay the supplier the balance.

Still, the opposition worries about harassment. Particularly, the 1997 tax that will be enforced for the first time in the 2010 election can be used for nuisance suits against anti-administration candidates. This will be a hotly contested balloting, on which Gloria Arroyo’s future hangs. On the presidential and congressional outcomes will depend whether charges of plunder or genocide will be filed against her and minions. Naturally the admin will do everything to ensure victory of its bets. This includes mobilizing government agencies to hit at opposition men’s weak spots.

Opposition suspicion stems from distrust with the admin. Arroyo & Co. no longer observes public accountability. BIR officers, as her appointees, report to her alone. If called to Congress to answer opposition queries, Malacañang can invoke Executive Order 464, and bar them from heeding invitations or summonses. And if they do attend, they can invoke “executive privilege” to conceal the truth. For that reason, the opposition wants the BIR to scrap the tax.

Still the fact remains that the BIR is P39-billion short of its revenue collection target as of Sept. It must haul in P798 billion for 2009, but it’s doubtful if it will get the projected P240 billion more in the last quarter. Government services are in danger of not being delivered if unfunded.

Tongue in cheek, businessman Joey de Venecia suggests a solution. Let Malacañang tax the grafters who have pocketed hundreds of millions in dirty money, says the ZTE scam whistleblower. “Since the government isn’t prosecuting big-time grafters, it might as well just tax them.” What in effect Joey is saying is that if the BIR can’t collect any more tax, the admin should at least moderate its greed for public money.

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In Mandaluyong’s gridlocked Ortigas Center roam men in jackets marked “Ortigas security” or “Barangay San Antonio”. If they’re guards, why do they carry long arms while “patrolling” on motorcycles like cops? And by what authority do they apprehend motorists for road violations as if Metro traffic aides? They’re like vultures on the lookout for prey to mulct.

Ortigas tow crews are creepier. Complaints are piling against goons of Santo Niño Towing Co.; nobody at city hall seems to care. They swoop down not just on parked cars but riders. Make the “mistake” of stopping curbside to let a passenger off, and they’d chain your car and drag it to a yard on Fabella St. There they’d charge P2,000-“ransom” to return it.

Among last week’s countless victims were a chauffeured matron, her sister and young niece. She had gotten off at her mom’s house on Boni Ave. to quickly hand a food box over the gate. Whereupon Santo Niño Towing’s Jessie Hernandez popped up, accusing her aged driver of blocking the driveway and ordering him to step out of the car. As soon as the confused oldster complied, Hernandez grabbed the wheel and, with one rear door still open, sped off with the terrified sis and niece. Asked where he was taking them, he only growled, making the females think they were to be hostaged or robbed. Into the tow yard they were brought, the high steel gate shut behind them. Brusquely the supervising vulture Arturo Catindog and eaglet Allan Bucaso demanded P2,000. As the sobbing victims contested the supposed traffic breach, Hernandez brought in more captives. All were in shock. One was a pregnant woman who had pleaded in vain to be let off like her husband before their car was hoisted.

Mandaluyong officials had deputized Santo Niño’s street toughies as traffic-enforcers. Supposedly stubborn motorists need disciplining. But the tyrannical style is patently wrong, by modern police methods.

City Hall should study the success stories of William Bratton, police chief of Boston, then New York and, for seven years till Oct., Los Angeles. Bratton had brought down Boston’s crime rate from America’s highest to among its lowest. In New York he applied the “broken windows theory” to crime prevention. And he restored public trust in the LAPD, much reviled after white cops clubbed black Rodney King to submission. In all three posts Bratton transformed his men’s “warrior culture,” into “policing as something not done to people but with people.” By contrast, Mandaluyong’s way will only spur more street chaos.

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When OFW Beth Mossman retired to her hometown of Mauban, Quezon, over a decade ago, she dreamt a quiet life with childhood friends. It was not to be. A pollutive coal-power plant was rising on, of all places, the beachfront. At once Beth led the townsfolk in devising ways to ensure environment care. Soon she became Mauban’s foremost eco-activist, battling as well illegal logging and dynamite fishing. Local officials who coddled nature’s abusers denied her support. To fund her fast-growing Crusade for Sustainable Environment, Beth sold her priceless collection of housewares. She sacrificed all for her advocacy.

Last week Beth suffered a stroke, and is now fighting for her life at Mt. Carmel Hospital in Lucena City. Friends led by Aleli Pansacola are raising money for her mounting medical bills. Spare some help: Banco de Oro-Lucena City, SA No. 1820261679, c/o Bella Putong.

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 “A small good attained is better than a great good impossible to attain.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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