Duterte’s 2nd bout with dirty miners

President Rody Duterte’s second State of the Nation reviewed not his first year’s accomplishments but shortcomings. Still, from their televised reactions, various reformists were pleased.

Loudest to clap were the environmentalists. Duterte had lashed out at dirty mines that pollute farms and seaside, “the protein source for the day” of subsistence farmers and fishermen. The impoverished victims are archipelagowide. If miners irresponsibly fail to restore rivers and forests to life, he would “tax them to death,” the President warned.

Duterte attributed his awakening to Ted Failon’s recent ABS-CBN tele-docu. (Congratulations, Ted, take a bow). He remarked too how right had been Gina Lopez, his short-stint environment secretary whose nomination lawmakerminers had rejected.

Duterte cited the Mount Diwalwal gold rush site in Compostela, eastern away 94 small-scale mining permits. Most were outside the sites earlier approved by the provincial mining regulatory board. Five of the small miners sold their rights to three giant Chinese firms. Instead of just picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows, the Chinese miners fielded 3,500 excavators, bulldozers, and dump trucks. Large segments of the Caraballo Mountain Range were leveled for ore that was shipped out to China with no records shown or taxes paid. At one point four giant vessels would sail off per week. In China the nickel was processed for its steel and electronic industries, later for use in warships, weapons, and spyware to grab Scarborough Shoal (Bajo de Masinloc) from the Philippines. With their forests and rivers gone, their farmlands flooded and seas muddied, and air dirtied, the townsfolk became sick. For a year the health department declared the area worst in lung disease from dust and diesel emission (see http://www.