Hiding MMla from APEC / DOTC still muddying probe

In the ‘ 70s dictator Ferdinand Marcos occasionally showcased his supposed “smiling Martial Law” by hosting global conferences. Always First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos, as Metro Manila governor, handled the physical preparations. In turn her deputies deftly looked into the grandiose, like rushed erection of convention hotels and tens of thousands of schoolchildren waving little flags as airport welcomers, all the way to details like dinner menus and guest giveaways. Everything had to be perfect, and meld seamlessly with security arrangements.

Well, almost everything, except for those “unsightly” squatters along certain stretches of the motorcade routes. But not to worry, “Madame Meldy” had a nifty solution to the “eyesores.” She fenced the shanties off with tenfoot-high whitewashed walls – out of view of the visiting dignitaries. Thus did the Marcoses hide the true squalor of the national capital, with the glitter of cocktails of caviar and champagne.

The metropolis has since slid from bad to worse. Slums abound, bigger than ever in the peripheries. The inner city is crowdier. EDSA and Dewey (renamed Roxas) Boulevard remain the main thoroughfares. The commuter railways erected above or parallel to them are in disrepair, as with the crisscrossing and the exiting train lines. Traffic jams round the clock, the seaport and airport runways are congested, and the sidewalks have been taken over by wet-goods venders. Garbage litter the streets, the air stinks, beggars and abandoned waifs line major intersections.

Under such backdrop is the Aquino administration hosting, two weeks from now, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The issues of squalor and security have joined. To solve it, Malacañang will go more Imeldific than the original Madame of 35 years ago. Not just the pockets of squatters will be fenced off and whitewashed – but the whole of Metro Manila.

Schools forcibly will be suspended for a week, government offices for three days, and private companies for two days. Trucks will be banned, as with interchange constructions, a week ahead. Thousands of international and domestic flights will be cancelled, for a five-day no-fly zone over most of Luzon; Manila’s and surrounding seaports will be closed. Beggars and street children will be hauled away to seaside resorts south of the big city. Parts of EDSA and the whole of Roxas Boulevard will be for exclusive use of the 21 summiteers, and their coterie of 5,000 ministers, aides, spouses, and media men.

Metro Manila must shut down for the APEC. Its 14 million residents will have to stay home, or in malls far from the confab sites, or best be out of the way by motoring off – no flights – to the provinces. The economic costs, and income losses of hundreds of thousands of daily wage earners matter not. Businessmen, overseas workers, and vacationers who have long planned to fly in or out that week will have to rebook, with no help from the government. As for delayed office work, factory runs, import-export cargo, and the like, that’s the lookout of metro-based companies.

The cacique occupant of Malacañang has so decreed to all of us sacadas: cooperate with his APEC hosting arrangements, as the results would be for our good anyway. Duh?

Officials tasked to probe the “tanim bala” racket at the NAIA still don’t get it. They’re supposed to get to the bottom of reported framing-for-shakedowns of departing passengers by crooked security inspectors, with false raps of carrying bullets in their luggage. But instead of doing so, they’re mouthing alibis and non-solutions:

• Transport Sec. Joseph Abaya is telling Congress to lighten a new law that penalizes the illegal possession of either a single or a cache of ammo with six to 12 years in jail. He also cites immaterial statistics on arrestees for bullet possession being only 0.004%, or 5,736 of the millions of individuals who flew in and out of NAIA since 2012. ( The scam victimizes only departing passengers; there’s no baggage x-ray or frisking at arrival!)

• Absentee NAIA boss Jose Angel Honrado cites the one recent obvious instance of bullet possession to debunk five solid complaints of evidence planting by the extortionists. Too, he keeps mumbling “That’s their right” about lawmakers who demand his ouster or sue him for negligence. (That’s the smug line of grafters who have stashed enough loot to last several lifetimes, plus some to buy off lawmen and judges.)

• Office of Transport Security head Roland Recomono claims that only two of the arrestees since 2012 have filed charges. He hadn’t heard of the supposed modus operandi till only last Sept. ( Has he no deductive mind to consider that, with the tough new law coming into effect only in late 2014 due to delayed implementing rules since passage in 2013, the racketeers could have discovered a loophole for crime only recently?)

• Police Aviation Security chief Pablo Francisco Balagtas stresses that they must enforce the law no matter how harsh. (But of course!)

• All four chorus that the media have blown the issue out of proportion. (Yeah, sure, it’s those pesky media again.)

• For good measure, Abaya concludes that, since it’s election season, the outcry may be a plot to discredit the administration and the ruling Liberal Party, of which he is president. (He picked that up from a P-Noy apologist, and coupled it with Press Sec. Coloma’s dumb line to put the extortion incidence in “proper perspective.” Coloma is the same Cabinet cohort who defended Abaya’s deterioration of Metro Manila’s railways by telling commuters to go ride the bus for a change. If ever there’s a conspiracy behind the surge of “tanim bala” complaints, shouldn’t the theory be that Abaya likely spurred it to divert attention from his awarding of an anomalous P4.25- billion contract this week for an LP-mate to “rehab” the MRT-3? Could it not be Honrado’s need to cover up as well his spending of P300 million to pave two rapid- exit taxiways at the NAIA, for which the past admin had estimated only P200 million but for four such concrete ways?)

At any rate, citizens would have wanted to move on after P- Noy ordered an investigation of the scam that could victimize them, if not their Christmas homecoming or overseas worker-relatives and -friends. But because of all the obfuscating, more and more “tanim bala” victims are coming forward to narrate their harrowing experience. And they’re doing so not to the pseudo-investigators, but to the sympathetic press.

From their initial stories already is emerging a pattern: the bullet planters usually are female inspectors at the final security x-ray, and the superiors who do the extorting, including haggling over the amounts, also are female. ( Gotcha reader O. Espanola writes that he nearly was victimized as far back as 2004, also by a female checker, had he not bluffed his way out of it by claiming to own several licensed handguns, and that she could keep the bullet she had found in his carry-on if she wished.)

Either Abaya ( now nicknamed A- bala by Netizens), Honrado, Recomono, and Balagtas are ignorant of the mounting recollections, or are ignoring it. Whichever, that is their lookout.

And if they once more sneer that only so few of the 5,736 arrestees have complained, then let them be reminded:

Filipinos are too forgiving and forgetful – of their rights and duties – for their own good. And worsening such bad habit is the knowledge that there’s no justice in the Philippines – not after Mamasapano; or the multibillion-peso NFA imports of rice; the smuggling of garlic, onions, and ginger; the VIP life-termers with automatic weapons, video- recorders, and mobiles inside prison; the daily street murders by motorcyclists “riding in tandem”; the non-prosecution of LP lawmakers for pork- barrel plunder; and more examples under “Daang Matuwid.”

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8- 10 a. m., DWIZ, ( 882- AM).

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P-Noy is whitewashing the squalor of the big city in more Imeldific ways. Meanwhile, more excuses for “tanim bala.”