New mining rules: How fair is fair?

There’s more than meets the eye in the proposed punishment for Atty. Vitaliano Aguirre’s contempt of the Senate impeachment court. The prescribed maximum penalty for contempt of court is P2,000 fine or ten days in jail or both. The senators will discuss what is appropriate for Aguirre’s covering his ears while senator-judge Miriam Defensor Santiago shrilly castigated the prosecution lawyers.

At least five senators suggest tongue in cheek that Aguirre be detained for a day at the Senate, forced to listen nonstop to audiotapes of Santiago’s grating soliloquies against prosecutors engaging the judges in colloquies. Other senators chuckle that it would be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

Are they subconsciously telling us something? Do their words actually mean that they too can barely stand Santiago’s frequent hyperventilating over matters that can be stated calmly?

* * *

Many of us couldn’t care less if the Iglesia ni Cristo huge gathering at the Luneta last week was political or religious. What annoyed us majority Catholics was that it jammed traffic not only in its vicinity but all over Metro Manila. We hate it when other “religious sects” display their fervor to our inconvenience. But we are insensible about doing the same to them.

Last January we praised as “devout” hundreds of thousands of our fellow-Catolico-sarados who closed traffic for a whole day not only at the Luneta but all the way to Sta. Cruz and Quiapo districts, as they jostled each other for the chance to touch the statue of the Black Nazarene. That was in Manila alone. In May we will be blocking highways nationwide as we force other religionists to watch our barrio Santa Cruzan processions. And all year round we will be doing the same in each city and municipal main road as we mark the feast days of our patron saints.

In fact we impose everyday our 80-percent religious dominance over the 20-percent others. Tasked to deliver ecumenical doxologies, we open and close, unmindful of non-Catholics present, with the exclusively Catholic Trinitarian Sign of the Cross. Very consciously, however, we deride Malaysia’s momentary senseless ban on Christians from using the Arabic Allah to refer to the European (some say Persian) God.

* * *

Aware of the deep public division over the issue, Malacañang says its forthcoming new policy on mining will be fair. But how fair is fair, given that the pro- and anti-mining sides hardly agree on anything to be able to strike a middle ground.

Everyone needs mining, the pros say. We need mass transport, computers, dwellings, clothes, electricity, home gadgets — all of which have one or other kind of mined metal or mineral. The mobile phone, with which the antis mobilize pickets, for one, has 24 milligrams of gold, 250 of silver, 800 of cobalt, and nine of palladium.

That’s true, the antis retort, we all need modern tools. But should mining be at the expense of the environment? Mining suits continents like Europe, North America, and Australia. The bigness of the expanse enables nature to absorb the impact of upturning the earth, using toxins, and processing the ores. Not so with island ecosystems like the Philippines’. Clearing a forest for mineral extraction in one mountainside alone immediately upsets the island’s wildlife. Exposed laterite deadens soil fertility for agriculture or forestry. Sulfuric acid, used in leaching nickel and copper ores, poisons the rivers and coasts. Once in the waterways, the acid lowers the pH, virtually poisoning everything. Immediately the island is destroyed. It took but a decade to transform Nauru from a rich forest to a barren wasteland due to mining.

But the income derived from mining can be used to restore the site to its original pristine state, the pros insist. Meanwhile, the economy can thrive from mining. One of the most mineralized lands, the Philippines sits on $840 billion in gold, silver, chromate, copper, nickel, sulfur, coal, and gypsum. Not to mention, clay, limestone, marble, silica, phosphate, and magnetite from black beach sand. If extracted, that wealth will enrich the Filipinos.

Says who, the antis snort. How can miners restore a forest denuded, the soil reddened by laterite, and waterways poisoned for 25 to 50 years of the concession? It has never happened. Besides, miners have been paying only a pittance in taxes — the same 32-percent income tax and equipment import duties that all businesses pay, plus the same two percent excise tax that industries like fuel, tobacco and liquor pony up. The state, which owns all the Philippines’ minerals, does not get a fair share of the extracted natural wealth. The government recently proposed to collect five-percent royalty from mineral production. But the mining chamber is fighting it tooth and nail.

That’s because miners already devote millions of pesos in incomes to the host communities, the miners shoot back. They build and run schools, daycares, health clinics, potable waterworks, drainage, and electricity and telecoms systems. They hire locals for the mine operations, so improving their quality of life. The real enemy is poverty, not mining.

Phooey, the antis snap. Mines account for only 0.5 percent of employment. The hundreds of millions that mining firms invest is for their extraction and processing equipment. In the past decade mining made up only 0.5 to 0.9 percent of GDP. The agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors that it assaulted made up 16.5 percent. The islanders were already poor before the miners arrived, but at least they had food. Then they became more impoverished because the mines despoiled their forest, agricultural and fisheries food sources.

* * *

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

E-mail: [email protected]