Strange that Beijing, Taipei quiet on drugs

SELECTIVE CLAIM: How come, this time, China and Taiwan are not quarreling for custody of several Chinese who have been caught in a series of buy-bust and followup operations on the trafficking of illegal drugs worth more than P2 billion?

Why the selective demand for deportation of their drug-pushing citizens?

Related questions: How come aliens found operating illegal drug laboratories are invariably Chinese? How come most of these Chinese caught red-handed are usually bailed out almost immediately and none of them are ever convicted?

Is it by design, Chinese or Taiwanese, to destroy this fair game of a country by massively flooding it with a variety of addictive drugs?

We know the answers to most of these questions. The bigger question is what is being done to combat the menace posed by drug-trafficking Chinese?

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TOO EASY: The drug traffickers’ operations look so simple that it is a wonder many of them are not caught and locked up, or deported, before they are able to set up laboratories, establish a distribution network and destroy lives.

The group that was rounded up in Paranaque last Wednesday yielded 8.5 kilos of shabu worth P42.5 million. A followup raid in San Juan led the police to a hoard in an apartment of some 190 kilos of shabu with a street value of P1 billion.

The catch in San Juan was the second biggest catch by the police so far, according to Director Nicanor Bartolome, NCRPO chief. Topping that was the 500 kilos seized recently from a former mayor in Quezon province.

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INVOLVE CHINA/TAIWAN: The arrests were part of NCRPO’s “Operation Meltdown,” which netted nine Chinese (again) after its launching last month. The suspects yielded some P1.769-billion worth of illegal drugs.

The government should formally ask either China or Taiwan, or both, why their citizens seem to be on a campaign to destroy this nation through addictive prohibited drugs.

What is being done to get the cooperation of both Beijing and Taipei in combating the scourge?

Chief Superintendent Miguel Laurel, head of NCRPO’s Regional Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Force, said the Chinese linked to the San Juan hoard have been renting the apartment for P33,000 a month for almost four years.

How come barangay authorities did not notice?

One of those arrested said their shabu supply came from China. What does Beijing have to say to that? Or are we too scared to ask?

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POLL CHEATING?: Some rivals of Smartmatic-TIM, the supplier of the computers used in last year’s presidential elections, appear bent on showing that what was generally hailed as a successful exercise actually saw massive automated cheating.

A problem here is that in their desire to pull down the consortium, they will necessarily put in question the integrity of the elections, possibly including the victory of President Noynoy Aquino and many of those who won with him.

Imagine a scenario where, by some technical demonstration, a group of experts would be able to show that there was high-tech fraud in the May 2010 polls.

That would throw this already divided nation into a crisis with the same destructive magnitude as the strife ripping some tightly-ruled countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

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UPHOLD POLL RESULTS: Even assuming there was scattered cheating last May, some of it marked by the manipulation of the vote-counting machines and the programs running them, it would be disastrous to undo the proclaimed results.

Like the US Supreme Court ruling on alleged computerized cheating in the elections that installed President George W. Bush, our Supreme Court may hesitate to allow the overturning of the 2010 presidential election results on the basis of scattered hardware and/or software manipulation.

Having to choose between punishing the culprits, if there be any, and the possibility of plunging the country into chaos, the SC is likely to choose to uphold the proclaimed election results.

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DECIDE FAST: It is dangerous to raise at this late date technical questions on the performance of Smartmatic equipment especially if by doing so we disturb the general results of the last presidential elections.

Tied up with the questions is Malacañang’s wish to have elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, set by law this August, postponed and synchronized with the May 2013 polls.

Some officials of the Commission on Elections have suggested the use of the same Smartmatic counting machines in the ARMM elections. The idea has triggered a renewal of hostilities between the firm and its business rivals.

A decision either way must be made quickly. With Election Day drawing nearer as the debate rages, the Comelec might end up being forced by the lateness of the hour to rely on the same computers for the ARMM elections.

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ASK NGOs: The government may want to listen also to such non-partisan groups as the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) and the Consortium for Electoral Reforms (CER) on whether or not to use the Smartmatic machines.

The vote-counting machines used last year were leased after a public bidding from Smartmatic. There were a few glitches but the consensus appears to be that they helped clean and speed up the elections.

PPCRV chairperson Henrietta de Villa was reported to have said that the use of the machines would also facilitate voter education this time around.

She said, “We prefer that the ARMM election be also automated so we could use the (vote-counting) machines again, so that we do not have to change our education methods, at least for ARMM.”

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