12/20/2010
Coalition of the weak” and “lovely collection of rogues and cowards” are some of the pejoratives used for the countries that rejected this year’s Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo, Norway. Weak, rogues, and cowards… huh? Seriously?
Among the 18 or so countries that joined the boycott, Vietnam, Venezuela, Cuba and Russia are countries that have stood up to the foremost imperialist in modern times. The United States of America, for everyone’s information, maintains 800 military bases in 130 countries and continues to trigger wars in smaller countries on all continents of the globe (except Australia ).
Cuba, meanwhile, has withstood US economic blockade since 1960; Vietnam defeated the US in 1975; Venezuela has defied Uncle Sam to the benefit of Venezuelans and nationalized the oil industry which the US once controlled; while Russia has gone tit-for-tat with the US in arms control, missile defense, South Ossetian independence, and a lot more since Putin restored Russian sovereignty.
It would be more correct to describe the detractors of the Peace Prize boycott as a gaggle of weak minds for wittingly or unwittingly missing such obvious facts.
This gaggle among the local crop of naysayers should not surprise anyone anymore. The Philippine intelligentsia is still a colonial vestige that survives and thrives on the handouts of the imperial power. From the nurturing of their journalistic careers (with grants, scholarships, and visas), to the multi-national advertising money poured in for their media organizations, to funding for “human rights journalism” and recruitment to US academe, not to mention prestigious awards and prizes, this intelligentsia merely sucks from the great imperialist’s bosom.
Francisco Tatad, for instance, tells a story of this writer he saw decades ago in Washington DC. As he saw the latter tugging his luggage and making his way to State Department offices at the Watergate complex, the writer (now one of the most vitriolic in the Philippine Star on the Peace Prize issue) said, “Pera-pera lang ito,” revealing his role as a US hack.
The real surprise is that among the countries that boycotted the Nobel Peace Prize, Afghanistan and Colombia are both under US control. Were the leaders of these countries instructed to join or was it their way of nudging their American masters for more “aid” as it seems to be their habit?
The boycott from Ukraine is no longer surprising as it is under the new pro-Russia president Victor Yanukovych. Sudan, another country fighting off Western attempts to split it into two — the North whose President Bashir is persecuted by the International Criminal Court for “genocide,” a charge no African country believes, and the oil-rich South that has pro-US rebel forces — also joined the boycott. Iran, as we know, has defied the West’s nuclear apartheid for quite some time, so its boycott came as no surprise.
Other boycotting countries include Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Serbia (which has real issues against the West, such as the separation of Kosovo, later placed under the leadership of a Mafioso and organ smuggler), Pakistan (which has given the West the best runaround on its nuclear arsenal), Egypt , Morocco… and then the Philippines.
As I have said before, even if the Philippine boycott was for mistaken reasons, it was the “right” mistake, which may be a first step in wriggling a toe away from the US straight jacket. Hopefully it won’t go the direction of Gloria Arroyo who got one toe out in the Iraq pull-out but soon learned that the US will still give her free rein if only for corruption, subservience, and personal convenience — but never for political independence.
About the Nobel Peace Prize’s latest Trojan horse, Liu Xiaobo, few know that he rooted not only for the US attack on Iraq, but also praised the US-Nato-led Afghan War and campaigns for China to be fully westernized. For local intelligentsia such as the PEN writers who condemned China, westernization and colonial mind slavery are a ticket to more visas and Western literary awards or grants.
How can anyone with a right mind award a Peace Prize to a war monger, and worse, to one that seeks to erase Asian historical and cultural legacy? The mainstream of Philippine opposition to the Peace Prize boycott is conveniently weak, if not absent-minded. It likes to shoot from the hip while knowing very little about the Nobel laureate and hardly considers the recent turn for pro-war figures of the Peace Prize committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland, a Nato war hawk and concurrent chairman of the hawkish Council of Europe.
The Philippine anti-boycott voices reflect the prevailing colonial mentality of local intelligentsia. It explains why the Philippines is unable to break free from colonial exploitation and oppression, making the nation exceedingly poorer.
If the nation’s intelligentsia today were only half as proud and independent as those of Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, Iran, or China, our nation would long have stayed at the forefront of Asian intellectual leadership as the revolutionary intellectual Rizal and company showed. As things stand, a Philippines that exists only under the shadow of the US will never grow intellectually, cultural, politically, and economically.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
SLTC’s gall. Take the case of the Slex operator, South Luzon Tollways Corp. (SLTC) and its Malaysian partner, MTD Berhad. After perfunctorily attending a TRB “hearing and consultation” meeting a week or so ago in grudging compliance with the Supreme Court decision mandating it to hold such meetings before even announcing any rate change, SLTC issued out notice that: a) the TRB has approved its petition for provisional increase of 300 percent over the present rate by Jan.1, 2011 but that b) “‘out of goodwill’ and their sense of corporate responsibility they will “grant” motorists discounts up to March 31, 2011. What gall!
So, is the public supposed to thank SLTC and the TRB which is headed by the DoTC secretary, for this show of magnanimity? Are we supposed to sing hossanas to these guys? Of course not. If, as these guys reported, they can afford to offer discounts and take a P75 million cut, what prompted them to even ask for a 300 percent increase in the first place? And then, in the same breath, why are they now asking TRB to give them the means to “...recover P1 billion in lost revenues” since according to them the automatic toll hike increase as provided in their agreement was delayed since its implementation was suspended last July?
Obviously, these guys have a mastery of their numbers and the terms and conditions of what is now turrning out to be a “sweetheart contract” with the TRB so they can play around with all this false sense of responsibility and sensitivity to the fate of the riding public. As lawyer and consumer rights advocate Jun Francisco noted during the TRB hearing, the agency was not being fair and responsible in the discharge of its functions as it only gave the oppositors 24 hours notice to file their comments. Moreover, Francisco noted, the TRB did not even discuss the genuineness of the figures which the SLTC presented much more the accuracy of the same. He advised, for example, that the submitted P10 billion cost for the Slex rehabilitation and expansion submitted by SLTC’s Malaysian partner to the Kuala Lumpur Exchange where it is listed is very different from that which it submitted to the TRB. In the former, the cost was supposed to cover the stretch from Alabang to Lucena City while in the latter, it was adjusted to cover only the currently usable portion from Alabang to Calamba. That is a huge difference by any measure.
Given that submission alone, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that the SLTC can very well afford not to petition for any rate increase for the usable Slex stretch for the next six maybe even 10 years even if its agreement with TRB stipulates that it can do so every two years. That the TRB never even mentioned that huge differential in any of its issuances or, if it believes that Francisco’s data are wrong, to correct it shows how this regulatory agency has been captured by the entity it is supposed to be regulating.
To those in the know this sorry state of affairs at the TRB comes as no surprise at all. They tell us that Isaac David, SLTC’s president, and the other Filipinos who joint ventured with MTD Berhad and wangled this one sided contract with PNCC and thence TRB, were once connected with both entities. They were, in one way or the other, instrumental in the forging of these agreements whose incredibly disadvantageous terms they are now imposing on the public. In short, they are dealing with themselves.
MRT3, Stradcom redux. The sad, sad story of these “public service” operators and these include, as we earlier mentioned, the inter island shipping companies, domestic carriers and, yes, those in the power sector (remember the IPPs and the privatized entitities now all raring for rate hikes?), the water utilities and even the telecoms groups, aew the reality staring us in the face by 2011 and beyond. These guys have gotten themselves highly advantageous (to them and their owners and cohorts, in and out of government, of course) contracts which the regulatory agencies are hardly reviewing and whose contents they have yet to fully disclose to the public.
What makes the Slex issue especially problematic for Secretary De Jesus is the fact that he himself knows what these tollway contracts are all about having been the head honcho of the Manila North Tollways Corp. (MNTC) which is handling the North Expressway and recently the SCTex. With such knowledge and experience the public was reassured that which he did sensitively in the north he would or could do in the south. Unfortunately, he seems to have given up on this one and left everything to his subalterns and the likes of the TRB spokesman Julius Cesar Corpuz who is acting more like the SLTC defense lawyer than a government official. So, the question persists: can the DoTC still hack it?
That question gained more currency with the revelation that government will continue to subsidize MRT3 rates to the tune of P7 billion by 2011 on top of preparing the public mind for a possible rate increase on this facility. Again, the question being asked is: Has the DoTC taken a second even third look at the MRT3 contract, especially since it has been bruited about that government spent $800 million to and more than 80 percent of the “economic interests” of the MRT3 system? So, how does that “buy out” square with this multi billion peso subsidy and fare increase? It is time the DoTC comes out with its own study and assessment of this contract as it now stands given all the changes which have happened since the time it got on track to this time, six months after the P-Noy government’s take over.
The same can be said of the Stradcom contract which has metamorphosed into a multi hydra kind of operation with all kinds of fees being imposed on hapless drivers, vehicle owners and transport operators. Quite apart from refereeing the corporate intramurals which has consumed the company lately to the detriment of the public doing business with the LTO and LTFRB what has the DoTC done about this contract? Can it at least explain to us mortals what the features of this contract are, what is its standing at this point, how long will it still be in place and so on and on. In a word, can somebody from the DoTC tell us what is happening on this front and how much more suffering are we supposed to endure before we can see the light of day?
These and other issues are hounding and will continue to hound the DoTC until and unless it clears the air and truly provides a clear path out of these “sweetheart contracts” it has on its plate,most if not all of which this administration merely inherited. And because it so inherited these problems the more aggressively it should be able to secure solutions to these. That is, if it hopes to gain the people’s trust and not be cast like the others before it as a captive of the past. It is time the regulators truly become what they are supposed to be — regulators — not the regulated or the captured ones.
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101220com7.html
