NEWS
TRENDS
August 11, 2007
Politics
hound Senate reorganization
 Last
week, presidential ambitions and infighting hounded the selection
of the membership of the Commission on Appointments and chairmanships
of Senate committees.
As
disagreements regarding the controversial chairmanship of the Blue
Ribbon Committee ended when neophyte Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano became
its chair, Senate President Manuel Villar, Jr. was poised for another
round of infighting in the Senate.
Senators
found themselves at loggerheads over Senate membership in the bicameral
Commission on Appointments (CA) and the Senate Electoral Tribunal
(SET). The administration bloc said members of the CA should be
based on the current majority-minority bloc, i.e., the “Villar
Group” and the “true opposition group.”
Four
senators from the Liberal Party (LP), however, said membership in
the CA and the SET should be based on representation on political
parties, and not blocs.
Cha-cha
train to run again
 Brace
yourselves for another Cha-cha train.
Presidential
ally and Pampanga Rep. Carmelo Lazatin filed on August 7 a bill
resurrecting efforts in changing the Philippine Constitution. His
bill, HB 1876, calls for the “organization of a constitutional
convention and the postponement of the 2007 barangay elections.”
Charter
change has been one of the political agenda of the Arroyo administration
and the administration-dominated Congress since 2001 – and
even earlier since the Ramos presidency. But recent efforts to railroad
charter change through the House of Representative’s version
of a constitutional assembly were stopped in their tracks by an
anti-charter change movement in tandem with the opposition-dominated
Senate.
Bedol’s
case another ‘Garci’
 The
culture of impunity involving alleged election shenanigans continues
with Lintang Bedol’s bail from the six-month detention and
Php1,000 fine that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) imposed
on him. Like former Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, Bedol,
former Comelec supervisor for Maguindanao, has been linked to electoral
cheating in that province. And, like Garcillano, Bedol is now free
to roam the country, and has ironically offered to help electoral
reforms.
“It’s
easy to talk about how cheating is done if you are not guilty of
it,” Bedol said in an interview with a daily.
Comelec
had charged Bedol with indirect contempt for not heeding the poll
body’s summons to testify over alleged election irregularities
in the last May 2007 polls. The poll body was also preparing criminal
and administrative charges against Bedol for infidelity in the custody
of accountable documents and for violating the Civil Service Code.
Chief
executive office covers up controversial broadband deal
 Contrary
to presidential office claims that the National Broadband Network
(NBN) deal with ZTE Corporation “is non-existent,” the
Department of Transportations and Communications (DOTC) last week
confirmed having signed the U.S.$ 329 million contract.
Presidential
office executives declared the non-existence of the NBN contract
following reports it was marred by corruption.
Saying
the project was unnecessary, UP School of Economics professors Raul
V. Fabella and Emmanuel de Dios said that the NBN contract, as well
as the US$ 460 million plan to build an Information Technology (IT)
backbone for a proposed Cyber Corregidor, is unnecessary because
the government lacks the “core competence” to operate
IT infrastructures aside from those that already exist.
Earlier,
corruption watchdog Transparency and Accountability Network (TAN)
hit government’s refusal to disclose copies of the NBN contract
as a possible source of high-level corruption in the country.
IBON:
‘JPEPA an unfair agreement’
 More
than the environmental impact of the Japan-Philippines Economic
Partnership Agreement (JPEPA), the unfairness of the trade agreement
itself should be the main argument against its ratification, independent
think tank IBON Foundation said last week
The
delay of JPEPA’s ratification was reportedly due to concerns
that it will allow Japan to dump its toxic wastes in the country.
IBON
research head Sonny Africa said that JPEPA is unfair. While Japan
excludes 239 items from immediate reduction of tariffs, the Philippines
excludes just two items, rice and salt, he said.
This
unequal trade becomes even more glaring considering that the Philippines
relies more heavily on the agriculture sector than Japan does, and
that agriculture in the Philippines is more backward than Japan’s,
he added.
Japanese
economist Dr. Shujiro Urata of Waseda University Graduate School
of Asia Pacific Studies said the Japanese government tends to protect
its agriculture sector too much. He agreed that the Philippines
could have gotten a better deal in JPEPA.
DENR
air pollutions project costing health hazards, millions, environment
watchgroups say
 While
the controversy regarding the U.S.$6 million air pollutions project
remains unsolved, air pollution continues to threaten the health
of many Filipinos.
The
World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that Metro Manila is
now one of the most polluted cities in the world, next only to Mexico
City, Shanghai, and New Delhi. Air pollution in Manila kills 2,000
Filipinos a year, said the Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines.
The
$6 million-funded Ambient Air Network Project should have addressed
this problem, the environment group said. Signed in 2002 between
the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and a
joint venture of the Emissions Technology Inc. (ETI), a Guam-based
company, and Industramach, Inc. (IMACH), the project establishes
10 air monitoring stations in Metro Manila to measure ambient air
(or air outside and surrounding an air pollution source location)
and air pollutants.
But,
the green group Kalikasan said, the project has failed to efficiently
monitor and provide related information about air pollution. The
group linked this failure to the alleged corrupt and fraudulent
practices of ETI-IMACH, a change which was also raised by DENR insiders.
The
DENR's Office for Legal Affairs and Environmental Management Bureau
(EMB) have earlier called for the termination of the contract citing
its non-compliance with the EMB’s requirements.
Still
no fish in Guimaras
 One
year after the largest oil spill in Philippine history took place,
the residents of Guimaras still suffer the effects of the disaster
that endangered both their health and sources of livelihood.
Inhabitants
of Guimaras last week said that fish catch has not returned to pre-oil
spill days. Tourism, which had also been a source of livelihood
for the people of Guimaras, declined tremendously due to the oil
spill, reports also said.
They
said the money released by the International Oil Pollution Compensation
Fund was not enough to cover the damages and debts the people incurred
in the aftermath of the environment tragedy.
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