Surpassed by Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia

GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star) Updated August 26, 2011 12:00 AM Comments (21)

The habeas corpus petition of Rowena del Rosario, Mike Arroyo’s personal bookkeeper, reportedly was re-raffled yesterday. It could have landed with any member of the Court of Appeals. But it had to be Justice Sesinando Villon. Wasn’t he a law school classmate of Arroyo?

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Mike Arroyo’s rights — to travel, to due process, and to equal protection — might be violated. So the Supreme Court unanimously restrained the executive from putting him on a travel-watch list. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and Immigration Commissioner Ricardo David must explain their side in 10 days.

Arroyo may be implicated in the fraudulent P105-million sale of used helicopters to the police as brand new. But since not yet indicted, he is still free to move around. He must not be singled out, while other persons incriminated by Senate investigations are not made to ask permission to travel. The justice department must justify its watch list aside from merely saying that the Senate requested it.

The Supreme Court is there to uphold every citizen’s freedoms. What it is doing for Arroyo, it must also do for 64,000 little folk whom Immigration brags to have stopped from leaving international airports since August 2010. They were as free to travel abroad as Mike was, and were not even in any watch list but only suspected of being unregistered overseas hires posing as tourists. They were singled out because they looked provincial, so deemed unfit to travel abroad. In the first seven months of 2011 Immigration filed 31 cases of human trafficking (as President Noynoy Aquino reported in his State of the Nation), but cannot account for the 64,000 other citizens it claims to have “saved” from slavery.

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Malaysia’s recent acquisition of two submarines may be padded with kickbacks. But the fact remains that it can afford them. Our Philippines, by contrast, has to content itself with a refurbished 46-year-old vessel from the US Coast Guard. We have added one ship to patrol our offshore oilfields in Recto Bank. Whereas, Malaysia now can project an invisible army to the seven seas.

Military capability draws from economic might. Malaysia claims to have no poor citizens, while three in ten Filipino families go hungry. Hardly any Malaysian is jobless, while most of our 750,000 yearly new adults who enter the labor force cannot find work. A major reason for the divide is in the treatment of investors, especially foreigners. Malaysia entices them with stable rules. We don’t, as seen in recent actions by the three government branches. The executive is revising two major foreign contracts and is delaying three others, but has recalled a blacklisted one back to work; the Supreme Court has redefined the limit of 40-percent foreign ownership in public utilities; Congress refuses to lift such limit despite meager domestic capital.

Comparing the two Malay neighbor-states is appropriate. But even if set beside Indochinese Vietnam and Thailand, our Philippines pales. Thailand and the Philippines had the same economic situations in the ’70s, population growths in the ’80s, and currency values in the ’90s. Both offer the same tax incentives, according to the World Bank. But in the ’80s when the Philippines bagged $2.14 billion in capital from abroad, Thailand got a double $5.08 billion. By the ’90s Thailand’s $31.46 billion was triple our $11.88 billion. In 2000-2009 Thailand’s $65.21 billion was quadruple our $16.34 billion.

Vietnam came out of 30 years of war in the ’70s. Its $56-million foreign invitee in the ’80s was puny, compared to our $2.14 billion. But by the ’90s its $13.38 billion already overtook our $11.88 billion. In the 2000s Vietnam’s $35.29 billion was double our $16.34 billion.

The difference: Thailand and Vietnam kept firm rules; we left it to the discretion of regulators.

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Is it true that a mere local-government corporation in Bicol now oversees mining in one of its congressional districts? If so, this is illegal, for it removes the authority of provincial, municipal and city councils over mineral resources in their locales.

Reportedly a Partido Development Administration advises the national and regional government on mining in the 4th district of Camarines Sur. This is by virtue of a memo of agreement it wangled last summer from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. (Partido is the name of the legislative district composed of ten towns; the PDA was quietly formed by Congress in 1994.) A three-man PDA committee now tells the DENR which applicants to grant mineral exploration and extraction rights. The body has no provincial rep. Although one of its three members is from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, it overrides the MGB’s duty to review and recommend license applications to the DENR secretary.

This is against the Mining Act of 1995, the Small-Scale Miners Act of 1991, the Local Government Code of 1989, and the Administrative Code of 1987. It contradicts the very law that formed the PDA, and a DENR order for mining firms to seek local government consent of their operations. In disempowering the local governments and the MGB, the signatories to the DENR-PDA deal could be charged with graft.

The PDA is the only local-government corporation in the land that is autonomous of the provincial capitol. It has power to secure loans and joint venture with private firms. Its purpose is to develop the 4th district. Since its foundation, however, the PDA has not fulfilled that function. Its one big project, an P831-million water facility, flopped. The national government had to absorb the loan, and water in the district became the country’s most expensive.

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My new e-mail: jariusbondoc@ gmail.com