News item: Transport officials foresee the long lines and frequent breakdowns of the MRT-3 commuter train to last two more years.
Read between the lines, this means the ruling Liberal Party that rules the Dept. of Transportation and Communications will continue to milk the MRT-3 dry till their administration ends in 2016. LP agents, as maintenance contractors in Global (PH Trams) Inc., already are filching the $1.4 million (P63 million) monthly budget. The yearlong P756-million contract is to expire on Friday, Sept. 5. DOTC Sec. and LP president Joseph Emilio Abaya unabashedly is extending it — by negotiation, instead of public bidding — by three years. They would have P2.268 billion to spend in the 2016 election and plunder rap defense, with huge remainders to retire on.
Back to the news: The transport men say salvation will come only with the 54 new trams from a Chinese state firm starting 2015.
Again read between the lines, they would collect huge kickback for every paid tram of Dalian Locomotive & Rolling Stock Corp. As proven in the NBN-ZTE scam of 2007 and a consequent US Congress inquiry, Chinese state firms operate by bribing foreign officials. Last Feb.’s bidding for the new trams was shady and hasty. It needs investigating.
Another news line: Also a relief for MRT-3’s 560,000 daily riders would be the railway’s total overhaul in 2015-2016.
Between the lines: This scheduled overhaul, for P6.8 billion, is of the trains, tracks, stations, power system, and signal system. To be replaced are the smallest passenger hand straps to the mainframe electronic communications among all trains and with the control center. Transport officials are banking on this overhaul to fix the railway, which they have allowed to deteriorate, as they stole the maintenance budget.
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Ombudsman investigators should find it easy to determine if the graft charge against the Cayetano political spouses have basis or not. The rap supposedly is based on a Commission on Audit report. Allegedly Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and Taguig Mayor Lani Cayetano blew P313.3 million on 3,188 ghost employees at the city hall in 2012. The couple denies the existence of any adverse COA findings, or the existence of ghost employees.
The COA report readily is verifiable. So is even just one of that many “ghosts.”
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Malacañang dismisses as an isolated incident Monday’s bombing attempt at the Manila international airport. This is to project an illusion of political stability. For, rumors spread that the arrested bomb makers, because army reservists, are anti-P-Noy admin putschists.
Pretentious admin mouthpieces would do well to stand aside. This is a criminal investigation. Weeks ago the NBI had detected the bomb plot, said to be by extremists disgruntled with P-Noy’s “softness” on the West Philippine Sea (WPS) issue. The NBI prudently had installed CCTV cameras at the airport parking lot to spot the plotters. Presumably there are more of them out there, who disagree by violence with P-Noy’s smart pitch for UN arbitration of the maritime row. Let the lawmen do their work without political interference.
Any anti-China mayhem should be suspect. The (foiled) bombing is as dubious as perennial calls for retaliatory violence against Chinese Filipino businesses. Thinking Malay Filipinos should be wary. Beijing no less might be fomenting havoc, as an excuse to escalate its sea invasions.
Beijing knows that the Philippines is militarily weak. A century of US military basing, Armed Forces corruption, and communist and Moro rebellions have left the Philippine navy and air force decrepit. Beijing is taking advantage of this to expand its sea territory into Philippine waters.
Years ago Beijing grabbed Panganiban (Mischief) Reef and Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal, to build naval facilities or station warships. Today it is embedding markers at Recto Bank, within Philippine territorial seas where lies the Sampaguita oilfield. It is also reclaiming with surrounding sand the Burgos (Gaven), McKennan (Hughes), Calderon (Cuarteron), Malvar (Eldad), and Mabini (Johnson South) Reefs.
Beijing’s intent shows in the work in Mabini. It now looks like an islet, with a concrete blue-tint building fronted by newly replanted palm and coconut trees. The “island look,” albeit artificial, is crucial for Beijing. For, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea considers only islands, not reefs or shoals, as baselines for sea territories. Beijing’s dress-up of Mabini still falls short of UNCLOS standards, though. The pact defines an “island” to have its own source of fresh water, which the stolen Philippine reef doesn’t.
Still, Beijing might well name its erection on Mabini the “Sonny Trillanes Hall.” The Philippine senator is shamelessly pro-Beijing. Two years ago when Manila’s Dept. of Foreign Affairs and ambassador to Beijing were denouncing the invasion of Panatag, Trillanes, then visiting China, declared there was nothing bad going on in the WPS. He claimed to know whereof he spoke as an ex-navy officer, whereas the Filipino diplomats supposedly were saber rattling.
Trillanes then outed himself to be in China as no less than P-Noy’s secret personal envoy. In truth he was also traveling in behalf of a Manila basketball association controlled at the time by notorious human trafficker Graham Chua Lim. Months later P-Noy reportedly deported the persona non grata alien. It came only after successive failures of five immigration chiefs, two Supreme Court rulings, and three Presidents to throw him out.
Beijing employs Filipino agents to promote its interests by various means — political, military, terrorism. Violence is a trademark of China’s communist rulers. Bombings and agitations to hurt Chinese Filipinos would divide the country, the easier for it to conquer. Beijing could instigate adventurist politicos and generals to strike at Chinese occupation forces in Philippine waters. This would mar not only Manila’s arbitration case at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, but also its lead role in ASEAN to get China to sign a long overdue Code of Conduct in the disputed waters. Beijing in turn would have all the pretexts to push its mythical Nine-Dash Line sea claim.
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