How many gangsters to make a syndicate?

Politicking in its “tanim-bala” report, the NBI adopted the Malacañang script that there’s no syndicate behind the repeated shakedowns.

It has been three years, one month and 28 days since Joseph Abaya began his P10.07-billion plunder of MRT-3. There has been no shame, remorse or letup by that Transport Secretary and Liberal Party president. And the authorities, starting with his appointer President Aquino, have let him get away with impunity.

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The NBI obviously played politics in its “tanim-bala” report. Too bad as it had started on the right footing in its investigation a month ago. It was able to confirm the modus operandi at the NAIA of planting a bullet or two in departing passengers’ carry-ons for shakedowns. That’s from many interviews with victims and witnesses, and pieces of evidence, it stated as an indication of its thoroughness. But then it hastened to add, very out of place, that “there is no syndicate” behind the repeated extortions. Why does it say so? Well, um, because, er, there are not too many involved in the racket. Duh!

One is tempted to ask the NBI: Pray tell, how many gangsters does it take to be counted as a syndicate?

The NBI found the exactions indisputable because the last 11 victims had no reason to be carrying bullets. They were neither terrorists nor superstitious demon-slayers by bullet. All were not gun owners; some had not even seen a live bullet before; three were merely transiting through NAIA and thus had been security-checked at their airports of origin. The mulcting security screeners played on their fears of being offloaded from flights and booked at the police precinct. All that already came out in national news and the televised Senate inquiry. Unbelievable was the Malacañang line that someone was only smearing P-Noy and his anointed successor Mar Roxas.

Nonetheless the NBI stuck to the Malacañang script. Part of it was P-Noy’s claim that “ media only sensationalized the news.” In blabbing that, out of 34 million who use NAIA every year, only 1,400 have been arrested for bullets and 70 charged in 2015, he tried to downplay the syndicated extortions. This was to cover up the gross ineptitude of his cousin, the NAIA general manager Jose Angel Aquino Honrado. Not to forget, also the equally inept Transport Sec. Joseph Abaya.

A “syndicate” is “a group, combination, or association of gangsters controlling organized crime or one type of crime, especially in one region of the country,” Random House Dictionary. Meaning, three members qualify as a syndicate, of “tanim-bala” type of crime, at NAIA region.

In the case of victimized American missionary Michael Lane White alone, the NBI is indicting six perpetrators. Two are from the Office of Transport Security, in charge of planting and “discovering” the bullets, and four from the PNP-Aviation Security Group, in charge of detention for shakedown. The OTS is under the Dept. of Transportation, while the ASG is with the Dept. of Interior. The combination of persons from two units at NAIA for organized crime can only infer “syndicate.”

Not all the NBI, but only a few sycophants, are to blame for this shameless politicking. The vast majority of investigators and officers surely wince at being shamed by those who blindly follow the leader. For them, there will be a day of reckoning.

As for Honrado’s mere presence at NAIA, nepotism is both mismanagement and misdeed, both punishable by law. And Abaya? His name now is being parodied by angry Netizens as “A-Bala,” in double meaning for “busy with bullets.”

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Speaking of NAIA, Abaya has ignored since 2012 offers of San Miguel Corp. to improve the airport at no cost to government. Could the reason be in the very phrase, “no cost to government,” which means no kickbacks to be had?

SMC president Ramon S. Ang’s proposal is two-phased. First, he would pave a new runway adjacent to the outdated T-shaped original. That would have solved the runway congestion – two hours delay in takeoffs and half-hours in landings, plus more in connecting flights and other airports.

The second part was to build an entirely new complex on larger acreage nearby south, with four runways, and modern passenger and cargo terminals. That would have put NAIA at par with Hong Kong and Singapore, and boosted tourism and investments.

But “over-educated” Abaya would hear nothing of it. He couldn’t deliver to SMC the right-of-way from the squatters occupying the site of the additional runway. Too, he wants any new complex to be located at Sangley Naval Base, in his Cavite congressional district, his political dynasty’s bailiwick. Such airport at Sangley would require billions of pesos in sea dredging and land reclamation, not to mention paving of new highways to replace the traffic-congested ones from Manila and the rest of Luzon.

Abaya’s predecessor as transport chief, Mar Roxas, had refused to make the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport an extension of NAIA. Reason: that bigger airport at Clark Field, north of Manila, is named after the father of their self-declared enemy Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

The small-mindedness, greed and incompetence have mutated into airport extortions and other rackets, runway and highway traffic, MRT-3 and LRT-1 and -2 deterioration, low tourism and foreign investments, crime, business and employment losses, and other miseries to Filipinos. And they say we should have six more years of this?

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