Send Pong Biazon to Basilan

Alam ko na! Let us send Pong Biazon to Basilan before the training exercises with US armed forces personnel. This will give the former general a chance to show that Filipinos can get back the three remaining hostages of the Abu Sayyaf and also neutralize the terrorist group. For backup, Biazon can have former Sen. Kit Tatad as executive officer. And for commissioned and non commissioned officers, they can have Teddy Casino, Satur Ocampo and all of the noisy left, who are eager to prove that we can handle this "internal threat" on our own.

Hopefully, Pong Biazon will not fall apart at the first sound of gunfire because he had been away from the battlefield too long. And unlike in the coup d'etat he handled as AFP Chief of Staff, he won't have General Lisandro Abadia backstopping him. Frankly, I don't get the point of all the noise some senators and other publicity hungry characters are making over the training exercise with US forces in Basilan.

Assuming that President GMA is pushing the envelope to the edge and this is actually more of a military operation, what's wrong with that? We had our chance to solve the problem on our own. Our military officials even promised to have the hostages home for Christmas. But still, we have failed. The Americans will not steal the honor from our AFP in Basilan as Sen. Ople fears, simply because the AFP had more than a year to deal with the Abus and failed. The Yanks may even help the AFP regain lost honor in Basilan.

Maybe, there is something to what that Basilan Catholic priest is saying about a profitable conspiracy between the Abu Sayyaf and some military elements. If that is the case, then we will never be able to solve the problem. If it is true that the terrorist group is buying its arms from elements of our armed forces and national police, we really need a fresh, albeit foreign group, to get the result that has eluded us.

I noticed in the man-on-the-street interviews of ABS-CBN's TV Patrol that ordinary people are sick of all the politicking on the matter. The common thread of their comments is that we failed to handle the situation, there is nothing wrong with seeking help from the Americans to get the job done.

Even the warning that the country could be the next Afghanistan isn't too bad if in the end, we get rid of our Talibans in Basilan and Jolo. While that will not solve our problems in the South, getting rid of the Abu Sayyaf is the first step in getting the job done.

President GMA must be supported in her effort to clean up the mess we have around us so as to create a good environment to foster economic growth and development. Eliminating terrorism isn't easy, even with American help. But the job must be done. National sovereignty means nothing if our people can't live in peace and worse, don't have food on the table. Giving them peace and something to eat is precisely the job President GMA is trying to do. We should give her as much leeway as she needs to get the job done.

TRO

So the Bangko Sentral has cut its overnight rates by another quarter of a percentage point and reduced the bank reserve requirement by two percentage points to help spur economic growth this year. The central bank’s overnight borrowing and lending rates were also set at 7.5 percent and 9.75 percent, respectively, the lowest since September 1995.

The bank reserve requirement is back at 16 percent, the level before the BSP tightened money supply in late July and early August last year. The twin moves should free up about P26 billion in fresh loanable funds.

That should be good news for entrepreneurs. But the credit situation isn't going to improve soon, anyway. The Bankers Association of the Philippines has called the attention of the Supreme Court regarding the indiscriminate issuance of temporary restraining orders or TRO by lower court judges that prevent banks from liquidating their non performing loans.

The BAP rightly pointed out that the banks must be able to move on these non performing assets so that it can generate more funds that could be lent to new borrowers. As it is, billions of pesos of bank resources are sleeping idly in non performing loans that couldn't be touched because of these TROs.

In a sense, those who default from their obligations are abusing the legal system to delay the liquidation of their accounts. Banks can't do anything about their mortgaged assets to cover the obligations of defaulting clients because of court orders. Even the proposed Asset Management Company won't be able to do much if these TROs prevent it from touching these delinquent loans.

In a way, this is economic sabotage. The judicial system must not make itself an instrument of people who are unwilling or unable to pay their rightful obligations to the banking system. For our economic system to work properly, such obligations must be respected.

The bankers may not have said it outright but they implied the existence of a collusion between defaulting clients and the lower court judges in the matter of TROs. Rumors are rife that TROs are for sale in some salas, except that no one is brave enough to bring a specific case to the high court.

If only to protect the integrity of the judicial system, the Supreme Court must promulgate stricter rules and monitor more carefully the issuance of TROs. Erring judges must be thrown out of the system. I imagine that even without anyone executing an affidavit to the effect that a TROs had been bought, a review of a case should show if things are in the up and up or if something stinks.

Pretzels

From Jess Perucho, we received this e-mail: I love your articles! With regards to your latest article: There are pretzels that are hard as breadsticks! We can buy it here from any supermarket in Canada.

Maybe, that's the kind that choked Dubya. Oh well!

Speechless

From Dr. Ernie E., This is a true story... there’s a female news anchor who, the day after it was supposed to have snowed and didn’t, turned to the weatherman and said, "So Bob, where’s that six inches you promised me last night?"

Dead silence in the studio, speechless anchors followed by riotous laughter.

(Boo Chanco's e-mail address is [email protected])