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Admin ‘presidentiables’ squabbling, as expected

Admin ‘presidentiables’ squabbling, as expected

by | Sep 21, 2022 | Gotcha

GOTCHA

written on Mar 19, 2021

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

While diverse opposition forces unify for Election 2022, Rody Duterte admin figures are squabbling over who should succeed him. Being undermined by his own PDP-Laban partymates is the presidential positioning of Manny Pacquiao. And the boxing champ-turned-senator is slugging back.

Last weekend Pacquiao publicly scolded Energy Secretary Al Cusi for initiating a draft of Duterte as Vice President in 2022. “Don’t divide the party for your self-interest,” he said through reporters. “Stand by your word of ‘no politics for now, let’s just serve.’ If you go around to help our countrymen, I will applaud. But if you’re politicking, don’t poison the minds of the members.” Pacquiao is acting president, Cusi vice chairman and Duterte chairman of the ruling PDP-Laban.

Thirty party officers signed the plea for Duterte to seek the second highest position. It came after some Metro Manila mayors endorsed a similar call. “I did not allow that, it is not sanctioned, the resolution is unauthorized,” Pacquiao said of Cusi’s initiative.

Pacquiao is often bruited about as president. His name has been included in presidential surveys ever since winning in Congress in 2010. In celebrity- and money-oriented Philippine politics, his global fame and multibillion-peso prize earnings make him a shoo-in. He has not declared such ambition. But in recent weeks videos of him promising to solve poverty and squalor have been circulating in social media. No mention of any position nor of vote solicitation.

A Duterte-for-VP drive arm-locks Pacquiao, PDP-Laban sources say. As presidential contender he would want to pick his runningmate. Since Pacquiao is from Visayan-speaking Mindanao, that partner should be from Luzon, for geographic political breadth.

The only reason to hem in Pacquiao is to promote an admin presidential alternative, insiders add. Duterte often expresses desire to retire from politics after his term and has not reacted to the VP draft. Still his choice of successor carries weight.

Twice in recent weeks Duterte publicly called Senator Christopher Go “Mr. President”. Uneasy, Go requested that he not be addressed as such. Duterte’s longtime aide since Davao City mayoralty told the press the President was only joking. His 2019 senatorial win as PDP-Laban guest candidate has yet to sink into his mind and he wishes to finish his term in 2025, he explained. But pressed further, he said he might reconsider: “Kung ako lang po, hindi po ako interesado. Kung ako lang po, magseserbisyo lang po ako. Magpapabago lang po ng isipan ko, kung tumakbo po si Pangulong Duterte bilang Bise Presidente.”

Given his vast powers, the sitting President running for any other office can easily crush rivals. But it’s constitutionally questionable. The President is limited to a single term precisely so he cannot use the Executive for personal ends. Unclear is the stand of PDP-Laban executive vice chairman Senator Koko Pimentel, a stickler for legality. He has only denied any party rift in the wake of Pacquiao’s outburst against Cusi.

Also being pushed for presidential run is Duterte’s daughter, Davao City mayor Sara “Inday” D. Carpio. Last month videos circulated online of “Run, Inday, Run” tarps being mass-printed, posted in public and motorcaded by fancy sports cars. No “premature electioneering” there, the Comelec said, as no votes are sought. Duterte avows to be dissuading Sara “because the presidency is not for women.” Though non-committal about running she countered in her radio program: “That is his opinion. It is up to the people if they will respect or react violently.” Still, Duterte’s spokesman has signed up with the Inday Cares Volunteers.

Sara for President precludes a Marcos for VP. Having been finally declared loser as Duterte’s 2016 VP runningmate, Bongbong Marcos’ political career is over. Senator Imee Marcos is shut out too for higher office. An Ilocano Marcos-Sara tandem may enhance the Luzon-Mindanao formula, but not with two females, untried in political history.

Also mentioned in surveys is Public Works Sec. Mark Villar. Former and present senator-parents Manny and Cynthia Villar reportedly have long been grooming him for No. 1.

Sara and Pacquiao are shut out of converging democratic and patriotic forces against any Duterte anointed candidate. In yesterday’s launch of the new 1Sambayan coalition, the two were said to represent or support the admin’s extrajudicial killings of drug suspects, authoritarianism and acquiescence to China’s sea aggression. 1Sambayan declared to form a unified opposition ticket for president, vice and 12 senators. Unity can guarantee victory against the admin’s mighty organization and overflowing election war chest, said convenors Antonio Carpio, Albert del Rosario, Conchita Carpio Morales, Bro. Armin Luistro and Fr. Albert Alejo.

In attendance were other 1Sambayan movers: Rep. Antonio Tinio, lawyer Howard Calleja, former audit commissioner Heidi Mendoza, retired Army general Raymundo Jarque, retired Navy admiral Rommel Jude Ong, former governor Rafael Coscolluela, election educator Ricky Javier, beauty-titlist Gazini Ganados, trade unionist Sonny Matula, and former congressmen Neri Colmenares, Rene Magtubo and Etta Rosales.

1Sambayan offered good governance to replace “the incompetent and corrupt current regime.” Announced to be supportive were: present and former VPs Leni Robredo and Jojo Binay, Senators Grace Poe and Nancy Binay, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno and former senator Sonny Trillanes.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

New coalition to bat for patriots in 2022

New coalition to bat for patriots in 2022

by | Sep 21, 2022 | Gotcha

photo from 1Sambayan official page

GOTCHA

written on Mar 17, 2021

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Diverse groups agree: the 2022 presidential election is make or break. No room for mistake. A wrong choice can disintegrate the Republic. National survival compels the groups to converge.

They liken the situation to post-War Philippines. The country was in ruins in 1946 when Filipinos prepared to vote in a new set of leaders. People were dazed from a million slaughters, and millions more maimed and raped. Emaciated, they had no clothes, no homes, no work. Reconstruction required visionary patriots. But resistance fighting had decimated their ranks. Many of the candidates were enemy collaborators. The latter had the money and motive to cling to power. Paid off by the Occupation while most suffered, they needed political position to elude prison for treason.

Two grave issues confront voters as May 2022 approaches. The COVID-19 pandemic rages on. And China is stepping up its grab of food and resources in the West Philippine Sea. The leader to be installed must have the knack and resolve to turn back the twin evils. He must bring demoralized Filipinos out of crisis.

Recession, due to wholesale lockdowns, is the worst since the War. Four million are jobless. About 950,000 small businesses, the backbone of the economy, are crippled.

People are hungry, President Rody Duterte concedes. Vaccines are coming in trickles. Senators exposed a P64-billion overprice in a purchase from China. Government has no more money for “ayuda.” No more ideas either. As daily infections quadruple, health bureaucrats tell people to not call it a “surge.” They advise families, even if of the same bubble, to wear face masks and shields at home. Mayors are made to impose 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew, as if the coronavirus strikes only at night, forcing commuters to jam-pack scarce public rides home after dark.

Enter 1Sambayan, a national coalition for good governance in 2022. “Driven by patriotism,” it aims “to install a full slate of competent, trustworthy leaders – president, vice, 12 senators – to lift the country from crisis caused by the current regime’s incompetence and corruption.”

Five convenors in tomorrow’s launch represent 1Sambayan’s advocacies. Nonpartisan La Salle Bro. Armin Luistro, a former education secretary, and Jesuit anti-corruption crusader Fr. Albert Alejo thought of gathering democratic forces against authoritarianism. They teamed up with retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio, former foreign secretary Albert del Rosario and former ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, staunch opposers of Beijing’s sea aggression. In time, other eminent civil society figures, religious superiors, former officials, business executives and disgruntled Duterte supporters are to present themselves.

1Sambayan includes the legal Left Bayan Muna and the legal Right Magdalo. Heading Bayan Muna are former congressman Neri Colmenares and activist Renato Reyes. In Magdalo are former soldier-lawmakers Ashley Asedillo and Gary Alejano.

“Duterte won by mere plurality in 2016,” 1Sambayan says. “Counting the voters who did not fall for Duterte’s populist and authoritarian promises, he would have lost if there were fewer candidates who campaigned on more democratic, realistic and reasonable platforms.”

Gravitating towards 1Sambayan is the Visayas grassroots network of former Negros Occidental governor Rafael Coscolluela. Last month they initiated a signature campaign for Vice President Leni Robredo to run for president. The latter has yet to decide. Fed up with Duterte’s misogynistic and homophobic remarks during the 2016 election campaign, Coscolluela told him to desist or “settle our differences man-to-man.”

As its highest-ranking government official, Robredo chairs the Liberal Party. Despite having Senators Francis Pangilinan, Franklin Drilon and jailed Leila de Lima, the LP is in tatters. More than half its congressmen have defected to the pro-Duterte supermajority. All its eight senatorial bets in 2016 lost. The party can revive through 1Sambayan, like it did when Ninoy Aquino ran for parliament in 1978 under the Laban coalition against Marcos dictatorship.

Former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez earlier formed We Need a Leader-2022. Barnstorming the provinces, he is educating voters that the next president must have “brains, heart, courage and fortitude.” Curbing the pandemic would be relatively easy with basic science, Alvarez told Sapol-dwIZ the other Saturday. The bigger challenge is China in the backdrop of global geopolitics.

Who the leader is, Alvarez’s movement has yet to endorse. Candidacy filing is not till this October. From among the “presidentiables,” he intends a mass-based screening of character, experience and platform. The movement will support one and convince the rest to withdraw for a unified slate. With vote buying marring every election, Alvarez begs political leaders to spare the presidency this one crucial time in Philippine history.

A Duterte campaigner in 2016, Alvarez said the administration “has not met expectations.” After ouster by fellow-Duterte supporters in 2018, he left the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan and rejoined Reporma Party of former defense secretary Renato de Villa.

Drafted for president by several groups is Senator Panfilo Lacson. He is one of few national leaders most experienced in executive and legislative work. Lacson rose up the ranks to head the Philippine National Police before becoming senator in 2001. He is on his third senatorial term.

Awaited is word from former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. Expected for political comeback is former senator Antonio Trillanes.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Bodycams, not blah-blah, can dispel ‘massacre’ tag

Bodycams, not blah-blah, can dispel ‘massacre’ tag

by | Sep 21, 2022 | Gotcha

photo from Philippine News Agency

GOTCHA

written on Mar 12, 2021

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Video cameras on their chests and dashboards. Those can prove the official police version of the killing of nine supposed communist insurgents in separate, simultaneous house raids Sunday. Merely claiming that the nine had fired at the cops and so were shot dead won’t suffice. Their comrades cry that the fatalities were unarmed youth, environment and labor activists. Two were a married couple who left behind a nine-year-old son. Unedited recordings will end the he-says-she-says. The videos can even burnish the Philippine National Police image. They can show that cops abide by truth and rules. PNP Director General Debold Sinas must publicize the ultimate evidence.

Body- and dash-cams are now integral parts of police accessories, as basic as badges, batons, side arms, handcuffs, pen and notebooks. Reviewing the videos will show if operatives follow the Manual of Procedures. Rule 1 – Functions of a Police Officer – requires them to “serve and protect” and “observe human rights and respect the dignity of suspects.” From videos, superiors can collate best practices and correct lapses of their men.

Last Sunday’s PNP operations in Cavite, Batangas and Rizal provinces targeted “communist terrorist movements.” Arrest warrants were to be served and premises searched for illegal firearms and explosives. Rules 12 – Internal Security Operations, 13 – Arrest and 14 – Search and Seizure cover those. Aside from copies of the warrants, required paraphernalia are Miranda Rights card and Anti-Torture card that must be read. Plus, since 2017, the all-important video cameras.

“Body-cam sa katawan, dash-cam sa sasakyan,” Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto reiterated only two weeks ago. They are musts in police operations and patrols, he said in the aftermath of a botched entrapment in which Philippine Drug Enforcement agents and Quezon City undercover cops ended up shooting each other outside a mall. Each side lost two men and many more wounded in the hour-long gunfight. For neutrality, the National Bureau of Investigation stepped in. “It was again a bloody reminder of a missing but vital equipment in policing – video recording devices,” Recto sighed.

In 2017 Recto and then-senator JV Ejercito co-sponsored a P5.4-billion budget for new police equipment, including body-cams. But it took four years and five PNP chiefs to buy only 2,600 pieces last January. Failed biddings purportedly delayed the procurement. If 2,600 is the annual number of body-cams the PNP can buy, Recto said “it will take 100 years to provide every policeman with one. And about 20 years if the target is to buy 40,000, on the assumption that only one in every five officers would need to wear one at any given time.”

Cameras are relatively cheap, at a time when we are buying missiles, attack helicopters, destroyers and fighter jets, Recto added. “And if man can send a vehicle with a camera 200 million miles away to Mars, why can’t we equip our police patrol cars with dash-cams, which every car or food delivery bike seems to have these days? In this age of Facebook Live, that isn’t cutting-edge space technology.”

“Requiring police officers to wear body-cams during routine patrols and also for PDEA, NBI and military units during field operations will store evidence needed to prosecute criminals,” Recto explained. “Sabi nga nila, may resibo. Played in court, the footage is evidence hard to refute. It will also ensure that S-O-P is followed. And it cuts both ways. It protects citizens from abuse, and the police from unfounded charges of abuse.”

Presumably the PNP brass heeded him.

Last weekend’s slayings have dented the PNP’s credibility anew. Commissioner on Human Rights Gwen Pimentel-Gana likened them to the “brazen and brutal drug war killings.” The “nanlaban narrative” that the victims had violently fought back “should be determined by a competent court and not merely asserted without trial of facts,” she said. Church leaders doubted the police claim of legitimate self-defense. Calling it “bloody Sunday,” the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines said the deaths resulted from “intolerable impunity… We cannot allow our children to grow up thinking that life is not sacred.”

Even Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra admitted “disappointment.” Only days ago he had committed to the UN Human Rights Council better police operations, particularly against drug and terrorism suspects. “I was hoping our law enforcers would be more careful but these things continue to happen,” he said.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed horror: “We are appalled by the apparently arbitrary killing of nine activists… We are deeply worried that these latest killings indicate an escalation in violence, intimidation, harassment and Red-tagging of human rights defenders.”

The raids happened two days after President Rody Duterte told troops to “kill all communist rebels.” Vice President Leni Robredo linked that order to the “massacre.” The PNP denied any excessive use of force on civilians. Senator Ronald dela Rosa, Duterte’s first PNP chief, said his ex-boss was “merely hyperbolic.” But colleagues Panfilo Lacson and Richard Gordon countered that the commander-in-chief “can be misinterpreted.”

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Pork imports will placate only Metro Manilans, but ruin others

Pork imports will placate only Metro Manilans, but ruin others

by | Sep 21, 2022 | Gotcha

photo from Philippine News Agency

GOTCHA

written on Feb. 26, 2021

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Officials intend to flood Metro Manila with imported pork for a year. Such populism will please consumers in the capital short term. But in the long run it can kill the country’s P200-billion a year hog industry. Millions of families will be driven out of the business. That would be most tragic during the prolonged pandemic. They will go hungry.

Digest the data. The Philippines is the world’s tenth largest consumer, eighth largest producer and seventh largest importer of pork. There were 12.71 million hogs at the start of 2019, 0.83 percent more than the 12.6 million in 2018. Two in three of the raisers are small-scale, in backyard pens of less than 100 pigs. With the commercial growers they make up nearly a fifth, 18.28 percent, of agricultural output, next only to rice.

African swine fever (ASF) began decimating Luzon’s hog population in mid-2019. Government indemnified the smallest growers P5,000 per pig, but no more than ten, to surrender and bury diseased stocks. Left to fend for themselves, other backyard raisers hid the contagions. Thus the epidemic remained uncontained in 2020.

Relations strained between agriculture officials and raisers. Consultations apparently became few and far between. Today the Department of Agriculture says that 400,000 ASF-infected stocks have been culled; industry leaders insist it’s ten times more.

Another thorny issue was unabated pork and chicken smuggling, abetted by certain DA bureaucrats, growers allege.

Three successive typhoons in late 2020 further ravaged the hog and poultry industries. Fuel prices also rose. Pork retail rates in Metro Manila public markets soared to P400 a kilo. As consumers switched, chicken became costlier too.

Two obvious solutions were suggested. First, transport hogs to Metro Manila from cheaper sources in Mindanao, the Visayas and un-ravaged areas in Luzon. It had been tried and tested at the onset of ASF. Also, wait for another consumer shift – to fish. For protein Filipinos depend more on fish, two-thirds of our food, than on meat. In 2017 we each ate on average 8.9 kilos of pork (15.88 percent of our diet); 9.32 kilos of chicken (16.63 percent); beef 1.04 kilos (1.86 percent) and fish, 36.8 kilos (65.64 percent).

Galunggong (round scad), bangus (milkfish) and tilapia were aplenty: 202,656 metric tons, 422,789 MT and 304,421 MT, respectively, in 2020. Total commercial capture, municipal fisheries and aquaculture output that year was 4,403,709 MT. Metro Manila was the prime market. Pork price spikes eventually would subside.

The country is to import 54,000 MT of pork this year at preferential 30 percent tariff. Hog raisers proposed a third solution to the supply-price problem: Quadruple the import this year to 200,000 MT, but at 40 percent tariff for the increment. Then use the additional government revenue to wipe out ASF. How? Double the indemnity to P10,000 per surrendered infected pig. At that rate, hog raisers would be encouraged to restock.

The DA would hear none of those. Instead it got Malacañang to impose a two-month price freeze on pork and chicken. At the same time it promised to move tens of thousand of hogs per day to the capital but was able to bring in only a fraction, one-eleventh. Pork became scarce. Unable to sell at the prescribed rate, pork wholesalers and retailers went on holiday. Consumers shifted to the only available option: fish.

Now the DA is to enforce another scheme. Instead of only 200,000 MT this year as suggested by hog raisers, it would allow the import of 400,000 MT. It will also slash tariffs. Preferential tariff for the first 54,000 MT will be cut from 30 percent to only five in the first six months, then onto ten percent. For the additional 350,000 MT, tariff will go down from 40 percent to only 15 in the first six months then onto 20 percent. Imported frozen pork may even be sold in public markets unsafely without refrigeration.

Hog raisers will have no fighting chance. The imports can find their way to outside Metro Manila and undercut domestic producers nationwide.

* * *

“Turn away from mortals, who have only breath in their nostrils, for of what account are they?” Isaiah 2:22

God will humble the arrogant. The powerful but ungodly will be brought to ruin. Trust not in human power; it can evaporate like dew in the morning sunshine. Death limits human power. When the breath of a tyrant is gone, so is his power.

Once the life of an evil person is over, all that is left is the evil. Focus our trust on God. Anything else is a dim, small and distorted reflection. (Shared by a prayerful retired general.)

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Palawan plebiscite a preview of problematic Election 2022

Palawan plebiscite a preview of problematic Election 2022

by | Sep 21, 2022 | Gotcha

photo from Philipine News Agency

GOTCHA

written on Feb. 24, 2021

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Incumbents are using government resources for partisan ends. Public employees who must stay neutral are openly taking sides. Town halls are restricting the movements of rivals in the guise of pandemic safety. Voters are uninformed because of limited online and radio-TV coverage. Low turnout is expected on balloting day. Only a handful of electors will decide. The outcome will entrench political dynasties.

Those issues mar the coming plebiscite to split Palawan into three provinces. They also give a preview of undemocratic national-local elections in 2022.

On the surface, the division of the country’s largest province is economic and administrative. Having separate Palawan del Norte, Oriental and del Sur would “spark growth,” lawmakers said in enacting RA 11259 in 2019. Three provincial capitols would be abler to manage the island’s rich resources. More revenue shares from mining, fisheries and taxes would be retained by three local governments instead of just one.

NGOs oppose the split as potentially disastrous. If Balkanized, Palawan’s special three-decade old Strategic Environment Plan would be dumped. With three capitols allowing exploitation, the “last ecological frontier” would vanish. So will indigenous tribes and cultures. Local economies would sink, as befell earlier divided provinces.

Politics of the dirty kind taints the run-up to the March 13 plebiscite to ratify or reject the split. Political dynasties are mobilizing. They will benefit from having three provinces to rule rather than fighting over the present solo. More positions will be up for grabs: three governorships, vice governorships and sets of provincial boards. There will be four congressional seats from the present three: one each for the three provinces plus one for chartered Puerto Princesa City. Most enticing for the dynasts, splitting would enable them tighter grip of local businesses and investments – and the usual “tong-pats” (bribes) that come with it. Not only “powerlust” but also avarice spur dynasties.

The dynasts are incumbents. They use municipal funds, vehicles, equipment and staff to campaign for “yes,” cries the rejectionist Save Palawan Movement. The environment coalition complains of unfair tactics against their “no” drive. Culion parish priest Fr. Roderick Caabay alleges that a tarpaulin billboard and “no” posters in four barangay chapels were torn down. “Vote-buying has also been reported in many municipalities,” SPM says. Some are in the form of pandemic “ayuda” to barangays, notes Cynthia Sumagaysay del Rosario, convenor of One Palawan campaign. “Yes” proponents in Puerto Princesa city hall, though not part of the plebiscite, have clamped down on residents campaigning for “no” in outlying towns, she adds. A number of barangays have imposed two-week lockouts, choking the month-long campaign that started Feb. 11.

The SPM begs Comelec to enforce fairness. Still, pandemic constraints stunt the election body’s info drive. A Comelec roadshow of pros and antis was cancelled to avert COVID-19 infections. Both sides have been advised to make do with social and broadcast media.

Low turnout is expected due to lack of info, disinterest and coronavirus fear. Only a handful of locals can decide the fate of Palawan. The rule is majority of the votes cast, not majority of the 490,639 voters, says election commissioner Antonio Kho. If only the info drive can be stepped up, he hopes: “We cannot determine if there will be high voter turnout as this is the first time we will hold an electoral exercise with a public health emergency.” (The plebiscite was initially set last May, then moved to October, until approved for next month by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.) SPM does not have the cash to match the free spending of the incumbents. It foresees the other side transporting voters to precincts on plebiscite day.

Expect those scenarios on May 9, 2022, national and local Election Day.

Incumbent dynasts will be calling the shots. Having amassed congressional pork barrels and local government payolas, they can easily buy votes. They will also gain name recall via media advertising. Underfinanced political newcomers will be disadvantaged. Tens of millions of voters who lost livelihoods due to pandemic lockdown will only be too wiling to sell their votes. A hungry man is not a free man.

COVID-19 will discourage newbie candidates. Mass inoculation of 70 percent of the population for herd immunity won’t happen till 2023-2025, vaccine czar Sec. Carlito Galvez says. Meager candidacy filings are expected this October; campaign dropouts will be many starting January.

Invoking pandemic protocols, partisan barangay officials and local policemen can curtail the activities of the incumbents’ rivals. Community lockdowns against contending campaigners will be imposed precisely due to spotty vaccination.

Worse, Comelec will still use the hocus-PCOS (precinct count optical scanners) of Venezuelan voting-machine maker Smartmatic. President Duterte has yet to fulfill his promise to replace the unreliable, cheating-prone, expensive gadgetry. Turnout will be dismal.

A reformist congressman predicts Election 2022 to be the most undemocratic in post-Marcos history. The result will be Filipinos in the clutches of a handful of politicos and clansmen for many more years.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

It’s China that must be sued for sea theft, ruin

It’s China that must be sued for sea theft, ruin

by | Sep 21, 2022 | Gotcha

GOTCHA

written on Feb. 19, 2021

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Malacañang “hopes” no conflict erupts from China’s new coast guard law to fire on foreign vessels in waters it illegally claims. It’s feeble, critics cry. One doesn’t craft foreign policy on wishful thinking, former national security adviser Jose Almonte said in the 1990s.

China is escalating aggression in our West Philippine Sea. It continues to landfill seven reefs as island garrisons, occupy other sea features and poach millions of tons of fish. Filipinos are barred from traditional fishing grounds. Encroached is 40 percent of Philippine waters.

Total damage so far is $194.5 billion, or P9.725 trillion. Manila can seek indemnity since the Permanent Court of Arbitration has outlawed Beijing’s atrocities. But President Rody Duterte has set aside that 2016 ruling, for loans that hardly came.

Meantime, the Palace demands that America pay up for continuance of the Phl-US Visiting Forces Agreement. Broached is $16 billion that Pakistan received from the US in 17 years. The $3.9 billion given to the Philippines in the same period is paltry since it has big needs against COVID-19, the Palace says.

The VFA implements the Phl-US Mutual Defense Treaty. Forged in 1951, the MDT shields against the expansionist Chinese Communist Party. The CCP had just annexed Tibet and Inner Mongolia, and was infiltrating Indochina and northern Korea. Under the MDT the Philippines and America would aid each other if attacked in the Pacific and adjunct South China Sea.

It’s odd to befriend a bully who has taken our property, a retired general says. Odder still to take money from the guy we expect to help ward off the aggressor. Besides, the pandemic sprang from China, not from America.

Foreign affairs and defense officials oppose termination of the VFA. Not only will we lose US military aid but also more reefs. China harasses Filipino navy men resupplying Marines aboard a grounded vessel in Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal. Last year a Chinese warship locked in its weapons on a Filipino patrol near Rizal (Commodore) Reef. Sealifts to Pagasa island in Palawan’s Kalayaan town also are threatened.

One venue for redress is the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea. “Seek damages against China for barring our fishermen from our Panatag Shoal and Recto Bank,” retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio says. “Also for destroying our marine environment after we filed for arbitration.”

“We should not be afraid to do this,” Carpio says. “If we are afraid, then we will never be able to defend the WPS.”

The Philippines can secure an ITLOS award of damages. “We can enforce that anywhere in the world for China assets – in the US, Canada or the Philippines. It’s part of our legal strategy… that China cannot just grab our resources in the WPS.”

Carpio cites the Netherlands’ triumph at ITLOS against Russia in the 2013 Arctic Sea case. The Dutch government sued for damages in behalf of 28 environmentalists and a journalist jailed by Russia for protesting offshore oil drilling. Arbiters granted $6-million indemnity including for the damaged ship Arctic Sunrise; Russia haggled then paid $2.7 million. The case affirmed the right to recompense for aggression at sea. “Russia, a nuclear-armed state, paid the Netherlands damages set by a tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,” says Carpio.

The $194.5 billion, or P9.725 trillion consists of:

(1) $4.634 billion or P231.7 billion in damage to seven reefs in 2014-2020.

Concreting killed the corals, and fish that spawn and feed there vanished. The ecosystem was upset. Filipinos lost sources of rare metals, new medicines and biotechnology. Oil and gas fields cannot be used, as Chinese coastguards menace Filipino mineral engineers.

(2) $12.88 billion or P644 billion for 8.4 million tons of fish stolen in the seven years.

From the island-fortresses, China gunboats escort poachers to Panatag, Recto and Sandy Cay. Filipino fishing boats are rammed or driven away with machineguns and water cannons. The livelihoods of 350,000 suffered. Seafood prices rose archipelago-wide. Half the population lives in coastal communities and depends on marine resources for daily needs.

(3) $177 billion or P8.85 trillion in actual coral damage and “rent”.

The US paid $1.97 million (P98.5 million) for 0.235 hectare of coral that the USS Guardian gashed in the Sulu Sea in 2015. Extrapolate China’s damage on the 12,432 hectares stated in the Arbitral ruling, American geopolitics expert Anders Corr, PhD suggests. He adds the P10 billion per year that Manila sought from Washington for continued use of each of six US bases. Such “rent” should commence in 1988 when China grabbed Kagitingan, Zamora, McKennan, Calderon, Mabini and Burgos Reefs; 1995 in the case of Panganiban Reef; and 2012 for Panatag.

Manila can seek recompense in the US and “elsewhere China has substantial assets,” says Corr. “If China refuses, they can seek redress in foreign civil courts to attach China’s offshore assets – of which there are plenty.”

Former foreign secretary Albert del Rosario further proposes attachment of China state assets in the Philippines “to satisfy China’s debt to the people.”

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

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