Joint exploration: Guard against repeat of sellout

Full disclosure is needed in any joint oil-and-gas exploration by the Philippines and China in the Recto (Reed) Bank. That’s so experts can alert Rody Duterte about potential pitfalls. Aptly he has been cautioned to first settle maritime jurisdictional tiffs with China. It’s but right for any party to gauge a partner’s trustworthiness. Four in five Filipinos (84 percent) are wary of Beijing. Diplomacy is the President’s prerogative but every Filipino’s right to know. Future generations depend on today’s acts. Duterte sees offshore fossil-fuel extraction as the catch-up for Filipinos with their rich neighbors. He’s doing it with the very regional bully that’s grabbing Manila’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Every Filipino must be watchful.

Already a past president had let China unconstitutionally explore Philippine territorial and continental seabed. That Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking, 2004-2007, encompassed the Palawan Sea 12 miles from shore and oil-rich Recto Bank a little beyond. It was kept secret from the public. Filipinos would have been clueless, had not a Singapore think tank gotten hold of and disclosed the provisos and maps. Without Congress consent $5 million was plunked into it by Malacañang. Yet Manila got no copy of the scientific report. It was forfeited when the President, under fire from an enraged people, no longer could renew the JMSU in 2008.

By the mere wordings alone Philippine sovereignty and rights were surrendered. Undisputedly territorial and exclusive zones were designated as “disputed waters.” In 2009 Beijing went to the United Nations unilaterally to file ownership of the entire South China Sea. It based its nine-dash line chart on unfounded historic rights. Undoubtedly from the JMSU it had gleaned data that the area near Palawan is oil rich. In fact, it is. The Nido, Matinloc, Galoc, Linapacan, and Balabac fields had been productive since the 1970s and 1980s. That’s why foreign and domestic firms were securing Service Contracts to explore and extract in nearby Sampaguita Field in Recto Bank. Much later Beijing sent warships to shoo away the exploration vessels. Under its spurious claim, even Malampaya gas field, from which Luzon gets nearly half its power, would be Beijing’s.

In exchange for the JMSU, China flooded Manila with $4 billion in loans and options. Among the projects was a NorthRail that was never laid down but which Filipinos paid $783 million. Another was the foiled $330-million national broadband network, that included $200-million kickback. At least $10 million was paid out on signing in Boao, Hainan, with China’s 50-percent state-owned ZTE Corp. Yet another was an unconstitutional grant to ZTE International of gold mining rights in Mount Diwalwal, Compostela Valley.

Lessons can be learned from that recent past.

(Read more in my compilation of columns, “Exposés: Investigative Reporting for Clean Government,” Anvil Publishing, 2012, available at National Bookstores.)

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Not only Super-typhoon Yolanda rehabs are long delayed. Graft was alleged in certain emergency works five years ago. Those too are taking so long to resolve. Only now, for one, are responses being taken from officials of Eastern Samar accused of plundering repair funds.

Raps were filed as far back as March 2016 at the Ombudsman-Visayas by Guiuan residents Kiriath Tumanda and Avelino Balagbis Jr. Supposedly bloated were repair costs of 59 barangay halls and 28 civic-daycare centers.

From P35,700 to P89,000 per square meter was spent to repair each standard 28-sqm structure. In contrast, the DPWH repair of similar 28-sqm classrooms in Guiuan was only P16,700 per sqm. Overprice allegedly ranged from P1.05 million to P2 million for the 87 barangay halls and civic-daycare centers, totaling P112 million.

Details were taken from the official programs of work. Doorknobs cost P2,000 each, half-inch plywood sheets P1,000, and 16-mm rebars P450 – when those were priced in local hardware stores at only P500, P650-P800, and P230-P260, respectively. 

Repairs at the town hall and public market allegedly cost too much too. And there was double funding for some of the projects.

Impleaded were mayor Christopher Sheen Gonzales, municipal engineer Arsenio Salamida, and then-DILG Region VIII director Pedro Noval Jr. The mayor’s brothers Vicente Leo and Mark Pol purportedly supplied the materials and labor, fronting for Gonzales no less and wife Eloisa Libanan.

An employee of the Gonzales spouses, Elvira Lace, swore that she was ordered to accept payments and issue receipts in behalf of Homonhon Enterprises. She claimed to have cashed the check payments at the bank and handed them over to the mayor. It turned out that, allegedly without her knowledge, she had been registered as the company owner.

Several other local officials were implicated. The Gonzaleses deny any wrongdoing. The Ombudsman-Visayas must evaluate the evidence and responses fast. It’s only fair – for the accusers, the accused, and the victims of the super-typhoon and possible super-sleaze.

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