Too many cooks

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March L. Fianza

Last week, the provocative dispute about the tailings storage facility (TSF) of the Itogon-Suyoc Resources Inc. (ISRI) mining company reared its ugly head again.
    The issue has pitted family members against each other, to include brother vs. brother, cousin vs. cousin, and barangay official versus official.
    While big-scale mining activities have indeed provided employment and income that benefited communities, these factors should not be used as excuses to raise the physical height of the TSF which has been bringing anxiety to residents on lower levels without taking into account the concerns of the latter.
    At least, everyone affected by the operations of ISRI should be included in an agreement. The world knows that in a recent agreement that allowed the TSF to be raised by five meters, the signatories were selected and limited to those who were for the dam. Lately, I was told that the dam was being raised to 15 meters more without the benefit of an agreement.
Admittedly, mining activities whether big or small-scale, are destructive to the environment. Thus, aside from minimizing its destructiveness, there is no reason to add to the problem by employing deceptive means and skirting time-honored traditions of dialogue in attaining business objectives.
    It has been the situation in the past that mining exploits have enriched unseen investors and their minion-operators while the communities where the mining companies were allowed to operate through deception or due process always ended up as losers.
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Too many experts are talking but there is not one common agreement from them on how to solve a problem like the Ayungin Shoal. There are too many chefs in the kitchen but there is no list of procedures on how to cook a recipe called the “West Philippine Sea”.
    For the nth time, on August 6 a Chinese militia vessel bombarded with water cannons a Philippine ship from completing its resupply mission to Filipino troops stationed at the BRP Sierra Madre that has stayed permanently at the Ayungin Shoal since 1999.
    The following day, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. immediately sent a note verbale to China to protest the attack. Despite sending diplomatic statements and note verbale which was the president’s 101st since he took office last year, no positive reply ever came back.
    With that, one WPS expert said, China seems to know that we get disappointed but that would eventually fade away after some time until the next provocation comes. It is simply an analysis of what the expert had observed but no solution to the problem was suggested.
    In Congress, lawmakers urged PBBM to employ unconventional and more aggressive moves to make China answerable for its deeds. What were these steps, the lawmakers did not say.
    It only means that we are discussing but no clear plan on how to resolve the WPS issue exists.
    Some experts mentioned using military defense but that would risk lives and money that would not easily pass Congress. Even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) where the Philippines is a member does not have a clear role in disputes around WPS despite the UN arbitral ruling that the Philippines won.
    The Asean is an association that will not help secure ownership of lands of its members. If so, then the Philippines should take the lead in defending and protecting the territories that it claims within the WPS, not the Asean or the US. For WPS experts to advance the idea that the Asean or the US can fight a war side by side with Filipinos against China is out of place.
In the Senate, one of them moved to ban China-owned Chinese Communication Construction Co. (CCCC) that entered into a public-private partnership in the Philippines to build highways. It was suspected to be aiding China in invading our territories at the WPS.
    Then another senator asked his colleagues to pass mandatory ROTC to prepare the citizens for any imminent danger while another one suggested to exempt the Armed Forces of the Philippines from the procurement laws to acquire weapons faster.
However, another expert said that the government should avoid negative moves that could result in repercussions on the country's economy, including a possible pullout of investments and deportation of our OFWs in China.
    Then there was a Senate resolution urging the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to raise to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) China's incursions in the WPS but the Senate did not pass it because it was not legally binding. The DFA said nobody knows how UNGA members will support the resolution.
    After reading what many so-called WPS experts and lawmakers had to say, I have not heard any of them propose a summit to discuss what they can agree on as resolutions to the WPS issue. Not even a retired SC justice who keeps dipping his retired fingers into the issue has the answer. We are all the more confused.