Search for suitable new Ombudsman

If forestry laws were only enforced, death and destruction from landslides in Compostela Valley would have been avoided. Precisely the Revised Forestry Code of 1975 sets aside hills, mountains, riversides and mangrove seashores for flora and fauna to thrive. All lands with slope of 18 percent (10.2 degrees) or over are deemed as forest reserves. Mining, woodcutting, and even home building are prohibited there. Yet from news photos, the Pantukan mountainside that the townsfolk were combing for gold, silver, bronze and copper had more than 45 degrees incline. Local officials were letting them break the law in the name of poverty. It was supposedly the only way the small miners could earn P300 ($7) a day.

Last Holy Week’s landslides weren’t Pantukan’s first. In 1996 mud engulfed dozens of homes and farms in Kingking village, from a hillside where a Canadian mining firm was drilling. The community chapel collapsed. In 2009 in Barangay Masara, in the adjacent town of Maco, 24 people perished when their homes fell down the mountainside that they and a British company were mining. Pantukan and Maco are part of the Diwalwal gold rush mountain range.

The Mines and Geosciences Bureau is supposed to restrict miners to legal areas. It blamed Pantukan’s latest fatal landslides on stubborn villagers who invoke the right to a living from crude mining. Allegedly the unlicensed small miners ignore safety rules on tunneling.

The locals retort that it’s all the MGB’s fault. Only last February they picketed the opening of new mines that the MGB had assigned to two giant firms. Purportedly the biggies employ environmentally damaging methods to overturn the earth for ore. Thirteen other firms are applying for claims in the area, ranging from 800 to 13,000 hectares.

If the Forestry Code is to be followed, both big and small miners should not be in Pantukan. The MGB must not allow them either in other forest reserves nationwide. The Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources should also bar local officials from opening housing projects on slopes 18 percent or over. That way the government can prevent the recurrence of disasters like in Ginsaugon in Southern Leyte, Ormoc City, Cherry Hills in Antipolo, and elsewhere.

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Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez’s resignation is a big relief. She had been a thorn on the side of a nation crying justice for the fertilizer, ZTE and plea-bargaining scandals, among others. Credit for Gutierrez’s departure goes to the whistleblowers who charged and the congressmen who impeached her. Also, to the predecessors, senators, private lawyers, and media men who dug up and exposed her faults. Faith needs to be restored in the Ombudsman as the leading fighter of corruption.

That work will be arduous. Former President Gloria Arroyo had left the Office in the hands of a pal to cover up her family and cronies’ scams. (So true was their friendship that Arroyo visited and cried with Gutierrez for two hours on the night she was impeached.) In the past five-and-a-half years Gutierrez accustomed her deputies to sit on or explore loopholes to dismiss cases relating to Arroyo. Deceit became the norm. In the P728-million fertilizer fund diversion to Arroyo’s election campaign, one of the cases for which she was impeached, Gutierrez since 2005 avoided indicting the officials whom senators had found culpable. Then, to pre-empt the impeachment trial this May, her office announced finally the “immediate filing” of cases against the two principals. But Arroyo was cleared, while the whistleblower and an official who has been dead for two years were implicated. (Incidentally as of her resignation last Friday, Gutierrez has not filed the case with the Sandiganbayan.) In the plea bargain with Gen. Carlos Garcia, Gutierrez claimed that the case built by her predecessor was weak. Yet in the same breath, she bragged that Garcia had agreed to return P135 million — more than double the P50-million threshold amount to constitute plunder — despite the supposedly frail evidence. Clearly all these need correcting.

The first step is to find a suitable replacement for Gutierrez. This person must be upright, energetic, persevering, courageous, and astute in law. Reforming the Ombudsman would need team effort. Capable replacements are needed as well for Gutierrez’s resigned and dismissed deputies. The names being floated, including a retiring justice, a former senator, and a fiery private prosecutor, fit the bill. The vetting is to be done by the Judicial and Bar Council. But the nominating is the duty of every concerned citizen, including President Noynoy Aquino through his designees in the JBC. With Gutierrez resigned, he cannot say anymore that someone is hindering his admin’s fight against corruption.

After fixing the broken Ombudsman, next would be to clean up other agencies. Included are the state corporations in which appointees of the past admin refuse to leave, and cases involving Arroyo, perhaps even those in the judiciary. Not to forget, offices erroneously placed in the hands of sleazy or incompetent Aquino supporters.

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The Hotdog sizzles again, but for one night only. The legendary Pinoy pop-rock band will reunite for a single show at the Dusit Thani Manila’s ballroom on May 16. Hotdog: the Reunion will bring together the original members of the iconic band that pioneered the Manila Sound of the 1970s. Bandleaders Rene Garcia (lead guitarist, vocals) and Dennis Garcia (bass) will be joined by Jess Garcia on drums, and Gina Montes, Maso Diez, Joy Reyes, and Rita Saguin Trinidad, all former vocalists of Hotdog at various times.

For tickets, first-come-first-served, call (02) 8866186, (0915) 3598228, or (0921) 2931784.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

E-mail: [email protected]