Jojo A. Robles
Manila Standard Today
The most strident defense against the allegations of laziness hurled against President Noynoy Aquino, apart from the one he himself put up, was made not by any denizen of the Palace propaganda group but by Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. But those who think that the nomination of De Lima to be Aquino’s Ombudsman is related to her unexpected apologia don’t have an iota of proof—and the justice chief has not been tapped for the overfilled position of Palace spokesman, either.
But it’s still interesting to listen to De Lima defend her boss, the same one whom she hinted that she wanted to leave after he mostly ignored her recommendations in relation to the Rizal Park hostage fiasco last year. According to De Lima, she is witness to how hardworking Aquino really is— how he gets angry when he isn’t briefed properly, how he asks so many questions that shows he’s thought long and hard about a subject, how he gives detailed instructions on how to government must act in particular cases.
Aquino’s own defense, aimed at two critical columnists, was less convincing. As proof, he explained to an assembly of businessmen that he spoke to last week that he can’t be lazy because he had to get up at 5:30 a.m. on that day to attend two wakes.
Imagine that: two wakes. Perhaps De Lima really needs to head up that worthless Communications Group, after all, instead of becoming Ombudsman.
Still, selling the idea of Aquino as a hands-on, hardworking Chief Executive who “burns the midnight oil,” as he says, will always be tough. For starters, nowhere in his resume is there any evidence that he worked hard at any point during his laid-back adult life.
And if becoming President has, in the span of a single year, transformed him into a workaholic, then perhaps that must be the really good news that Palace propagandists are looking to disseminate to the media. Except that we don’t really see him working, really.
The only evidence we have of Aquino’s presence has been confined to reading speeches, attending wakes and sightings of him in places like the hip Republiq bar at Pasay City’s Resorts World hotel. And when he buys a Porsche and publicly pines for the days when he could go out on dates and munch down on fast food anytime he wanted, it’s hard to imagine Aquino being so busy attending to weighty matters of state that he doesn’t even have time for some R-and-R.
Furthermore, when we keep hearing stories about how hundreds of appointment papers remain unattended to for months on Aquino’s desk, how promised projects take so long to get off the drawing board and how so much official time and resources are spent going after political enemies, we worry that not enough presidential brainwork is being employed to get really important things done. That’s why all this talk of “laziness” persists.
Still, if De Lima truly wants to avoid the potentially career-killing job of being Aquino’s Ombudsman, she should seriously consider replacing the entire CommGroup and continue to give us insights on the President’s industry. She’s so much more believable than Aquino himself.
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Speaking of disinformation, we’ve been told that a lot of it is being directed lately at the Rio Tuba mining operation and its “partner,” the Coral Bay processing plant, both in Palawan. To hear the anti-mining lobby tell it, however, mining in the province is about to denude the entire province and extend to the Tubbataha Reef and the Underground River.
Apart from the misdirected claims of wholesale environmental degradation (which are really the result of slash-and-burn clearing and “small-scale,” largely unregulated mining and quarrying), the Rio Tuba nickel mine and its processing plant are also being blamed for not uplifting the economic welfare of the people of the town of Bataraza, where the mine is located. Nothing, however, can be farther from the truth.
Bataraza’s population has grown to about 58,000 today from just 15,510 in 1975 when mining first started there. In the meantime, from being a poor town in the middle of nowhere, Bataraza has been transformed into a first-class municipality by mining activities that generate revenues and jobs for communities inside and near the mine sites.
Rio Tuba and Coral Bay have been giving back to its host community P60 million a year under the required Social Development Management Plan of the Mining Act of 1995. Schools both for elementary and high school levels, as well as a hospital, were built using the SMDP, providing free education to 1,250 students and serving 2,000 patients per year for free.
In collaboration with the Gawad Kalinga, 200 housing units thus far have been constructed and given out to indigenous people in the area. And like all large-scale mining operations, Rio Tuba and Coral Bay cannot use old growth or virgin forests, proclaimed watershed forest reserves, mangroves, national parks and other areas expressly prohibited under the National Integrated Protected Area System of Republic Act No. 7986 and other laws.
While it is always convenient for supposed environmental activists to lump all kinds of mining in one group, what cannot be denied is that small-scale mining, which gets permits from local government units that do not have the expertise or resources to oversee the safety of residents and environmental impact, is really the culprit. The recent Compostella Valley landslide is the current poster child of small-scale mining, not the big and heavily-regulated mining operations like Rio Tuba/Coral Bay.
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The hysterical assumption also being propagated is that the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development is opening the province to over a hundred large-scale mining operations. This has no basis in reality as of the over 100 mining applications in Palawan, only about one or two can be expected to be approved.
PCSD, out of the many mining applications, only approved two in 2006, four in 2007, five in 2008, none in 2009 and three in 2010. In those five years, the total area that has been approved for mining (a lot of it not yet being mined) is approximately 19,000 hectares or just 1.3 percent of the 1.4 million total land area of the province.
Rio Tuba Nickel Mining Corp. itself only has a mining claim of 5,265 hectares, of which 353 hectares are currently being operated. The first nickel deposits were discovered in 1967 and up to now the only land being mined covers 126 hectares.
But we’ve been told that the attacks on Rio Tuba are obviously intended to block other mining applications in Palawan, the largest province in the country whose land area has long been declared by government to be suitable for mixed use, whether for tourism, agriculture or mining and mineral processing. Why the anti-mining groups want to keep a proven revenue-generator for both government and the private sector under the strict and overly protective guidelines of the Mining Act for large-scale mines, only they can really explain.
But we’ve long been of the opinion that the trillions of pesos to be gained from a thriving mining industry, as long as the government continues to keep a tight watch on the stringent rules it has set, will be the engine of Philippine progress. Responsible mining can be our key to progress, if some misguided sectors will only allow it.
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