For sure, investigations of the “tanim bala” at the airport will get nowhere. Two reasons: President Noynoy Aquino assigned to do it his two men most liable for letting the racket fester to begin with: Manila International Airport general manager Angel Honrado and Transport Sec. Joseph Emilio Abaya. Too, apologists of the administration have begun blaming it all on “political opponents” of P-Noy and his Election 2016 standard-bearer Mar Roxas. So what will they investigate – a plot by Jojo Binay, Grace Poe, or Miriam Defensor Santiago, in cahoots with BBC, Time, and two international travel magazines, to embarrass Malacañang on the eve of the APEC summit in Manila and the Christmas homecoming of millions of overseas Filipinos?
Already the “investigators” are doing everything but investigating. Honrado vainly is justifying his shunning of lawmakers’ outcry for his resignation. And Abaya is blabbering that his Office of Transport Security (OTS) inspectors must arrest at once passengers found with bullets in their luggage.
Yet that’s exactly how the scam worked. Crooked inspectors would slip a bullet or two into a side pocket of a passenger’s valise, threaten to book him for terrorism, and shake him down.
So with Abaya’s marching orders, all the more the crooks would have official cover to extort cash from their frame-up victims. This, when the proper procedure is for the inspector, upon detecting by x-ray or frisking any forbidden item onboard a plane – lighters, knives, liquids or gels in excess of 100 ml – to confiscate these. And, in the case of firearms, ammunition, or explosives, to turn the passenger over to the PNP Aviation Security Group for prompt investigation and inquest. No conversing, no chance to haggle over how much grease money to be let go, no arresting by Honrado and Abaya’s untrained, unauthorized private army men, to which the OTS has deteriorated.
Honrado reportedly has barred reentry to the MIA of 40 OTS inspectors, but is quick to add that they’re not suspected of the “bullet planting” scam. So why banish them from their work posts at all? That’s probably because issuing day-passes to visitors at the MIA’s four terminals is, for Honrado, his biggest job as GM. Ask the businessmen who have companies located at or dealing with the MIA, and they’d say Honrado’s signing of such clearances takes up half his workday. The next half he spends resting, having very recently undergone heart surgery. As experts note, no inept exec ever realizes he has been Peter-principled. P-Noy’s appointee-cousin at the MIA does not understand that the first and last impression on the mind of any visitor to the Philippines is from its premiere international airport. The MIA under Honrado twice has been adjudged the world’s worst.
Abaya’s only other bright idea, aside from ordering the OTS to make arrests, is to install more CCTV cameras at the baggage inspection. Fine. But shouldn’t he have started with finding out what’s wrong with the existing ones, especially why the images oddly were blurry or the videos shut off just when a passenger was complaining of being set up for “tanim bala”? Shouldn’t he extrapolate who the scammers are from the time, inspection area, and personnel deployment in all the incidents of evidence-planting?
The way it looks, Honrado and Abaya are clueless on what to do. They seem to be just waiting for public suggestions streaming into the many live radio-TV talk shows and newspaper online editions.
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Meanwhile, these observations and laments from thinking citizens:
Howard, the businessman: “Bullets in luggage? What this needs is some crunching jail sentences for those perverting the course of justice. That’d stop it.
“Another item: Manila traffic. A friend of mine from Angeles City, Pampanga, just returned from Bangkok. He noted that it took three hours flying time, then five hours sitting in the car getting from the MIA to his city north of Manila. How can you build a tourist industry with this sort of traffic?
“Infrastructure in general: In Nov. 1975 I attended the groundbreaking ceremony of the Hong Kong MTR subway. The first section of line was opened to the public by Nov. 1979. The system never breaks down.”
Leo the info-technologist: “Filipinos are frustrated. Of all the scams ever perpetrated, this ‘tanim bala’ shows the level of depravity and the impunity to which supposed public servants have sunk.
“It also reflects the dark side of supposed ‘good Filipino values.’ Say, ‘pakikisama.’ Surely the other OTS staff who are not involved know the coworkers who are, yet they keep quiet. Not partaking of the loot but turning a blind eye is a sin in itself.
“’Honoring relatives’ is fine, but Honrado obviously is abusing it.
“’Utang na loob’ also is good, but becomes detrimental when such indebtedness blinds P-Noy to the true character of his appointees.”
Tommy, the gentleman-farmer: “Typhoon Lando extensively damaged rice lands in Central Luzon and Cagayan Valley. More than 300,000 hectares of crops destroyed. The sad part was that we were about to harvest in late Oct. to early Nov.
“The Dept. of Agriculture hasn’t been of much help. Like, fertilizer prices have not gone down despite the halving of crude oil rates on which it depends. No DA intervention there.
“Government agencies have been failing the people, their ‘bosses.’ No DA plan for the impending El Nino. Is the DENR addressing illegal logging? Modern technologies, such as drones, should have been used in uncovering woodcutting. Why hasn’t the DPWH dredged the rivers? Why do the DILG and LGUs tolerate the setting up of fish pens that impede river flows? Do we just accept that folks in some parts of Bulacan and Pampanga will have to live miserably when rainwaters from the North cascade to their farms and homes?
“Moving forward, the government can do the following: Organize observation trips to and secure technical assistance from Taiwan on, say, mini-dams. Make the Mines and Geosciences Bureau identify natural catch basins to locate such dams. Make LGUs and rural banks set up agri-coops to generate ‘economies of scale.’ Have the Philippine Crop Insurance Corp. support the coops.”
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