Spray-paint Stanley Ho's Jumbo Palace Restaurant - Gotcha

Radio listeners chuckled when I broached the idea on Mainit na Isyu (DZXL, 558 kHz, Mon.-Fri., 7:15 a.m.). I meant to sound serious.

No less than Alex Melchor of President Estrada's Anti-Organized Crime Commission revealed official Canadian findings that Stanley Ho is using casino and entertainment operations as front for drug trade. PNP chief Gen. Ping Lacson confirmed it. So, since Ho owns the Jumbo Palace Restaurant anchored at Manila Bay, Interior Sec. Fred Lim should spray-paint the ship the way he does houses of drug pushers.

Doing so would prove two things: that Lim is after not only small-time street pushers but also big-time drug dealers, that Estrada means it when he says walang kaibigan.

Ironically, Estrada is defending Ho, saying his pal wants to invest in housing, not gambling, in Manila. Housing? Looks like the spray-paint business is in for good times. No, seriously....

Following his leader, Bangko Sentral Gov. Rafael Buenaventura is blaming the messenger for bad news. He says the press is scaring away investors with unfavorable reporting on the economy. Yet he is glossing over the unfavorable state of the economy.

Why, what "favorable" is there to report -- that interest rates remain low, that inflation is single-digit, that foreign reserves stand at $15 billion?

Bankers admit that interest rates are low only because there are no borrowers. Loans dropped in 1999 instead of rising from 1998. Traders decry poor access to credit while bankers sneer that they don't qualify to borrow to begin with. But the real score, Makati Business Club says, is that "demand is so weak that borrowers might not generate enough income to pay for loans."

MBC forecasts 3.2-percent GDP growth this year, a figure it says is optimistic. Such growth will come in spite of government. Seven out of every ten MBC members foresee growth in their respective corporate revenues. But it won't be due to administration policies, which they're sure will still flip-flop, but because the Asian crisis has taught them better cost-efficiency.

When still trade-industry secretary last year, Jose Pardo quipped to Binondo traders that inflation remained low despite a P115-billion budget deficit because of rice, sugar and chicken smuggling. Consumers' low spending offset government's potentially inflationary deficit spending. With no jobs or money, they kept purchases to bare minimums, seeking bargains from smugglers.

Now that he's finance secretary, Pardo is making bad news. Instead of increasing tax and duty collection targets for 2000, he cut it: BIR, from P413 to P398 billion; Customs, P100 to P92 billion. His figures represent an increase of only 16 percent from last year's actual collections, not the average 18-percent yearly increase in 1993-1997. (Predecessor Ed Espiritu had aimed for 20-percent.) Businessmen had hoped that, with new BIR boss Dakila Fonacier and Customs chief Ramon Farolan, Pardo would improve collection efficiency. What he plans instead are new taxes and a 20-percent increase in government fees for everything from drivers' licenses to business permits.

Sure, foreign reserves stand at $15 billion -- the highest in history. Yet Buenaventura can't explain why, when the peso used to remain stable with only $2 billion in reserves, it is still at P40:$1 today. Perhaps, it has something to do in part not with unfavorable economic news reporting but his failure to explain why he printed P110 billion in new cash last December. Perhaps, it has something to do with his inadequate report on two fires in two months at the Bangko Sentral minting-printing plant, where millions of dollars supposedly was wasted on the purchase of Korean paper that didn't fit on British presses.

INTERACTION. Sammy Yusico, Anaheim, Ca.: "Your reply to Vivian Syyap is funny but true (Gotcha, 19 Jan. 2000). Postal workers in RP must be, as you said, holding hostage the pics she sent to her family, till she sends cash next time around. A pal here sent the left pair of expensive shoes, thinking they won't steal it. It was never delivered to his dad. Following Rizal who threw in his right slipper after losing the left to the Pasig, my pal mailed the right pair anyway. It was never delivered, too, but we suspect that a postman there must be bragging about dandy shoes."

Now I've heard everything, Sammy.

Raymond Seneriches, usa.net: "Your opener, `what they obviously don't lack is self-esteem,' let us in on what the 150 delegates in the successor-generation's forum were unconsciously searching for: humility (Gotcha, 17 Jan. 2000). Reminds me of the story of the big truck that got stuck under a low bridge. Nobody knew what to do, till a small boy playfully let air out of the tires to lower the truck a bit. Delegates deserve a pat on the back for asking themselves, `what is wrong with us?' The answer may be in a best-selling book that says: `We brought nothing into the world and we will leave it with nothing. Let us then be content with having food and clothing.'"

Answers to most of life's questions are in that bestseller, Raymond, the Bible.

Dr. Romulo Tan, Medical Mission Group, Cebu: "There are other reasons why medicines are costly, aside from what you said (Gotcha, 15 Jan. 2000). Most pharmaceutical firms are multinationals; doctors and patients have no say in pricing of and access to medicine. Ownership of the drug industry by doctors, patients and med reps is the answer. It's been done."

Dr. Jondi Flavier said the same thing at the successor-generation's forum, Dr. Romulo. Let's do it -- fast.

Reymundo F. Yambing, i-next.net: "Oil Exchange what (Gotcha, 12 Jan. 2000)? Huge open markets exist worldwide; in our region, there's Singapore, Thailand, Korea. By some stroke of quixotic magic, Cong. Tet Garcia promises to supplant these and deliver to distressed Filipinos the lowest petroleum bids? Go ahead, repeal the law of supply and demand."

Garcia's Oil-Ex will not supplant but take bids from those markets, Reymundo.

Elizabeth Perez, bhint.com: "We've got all sorts of taxes to wipe us out (Gotcha, 10 Jan. 2000): VAT on transactions that banks pass on to the middle class, 20-percent tax on savings deposit interest, soon a consumption tax. What does the elected Millennium Bug want us to do -- deposit our money abroad?"

What did you just call him, Elizabeth?

Thank you, Rene Catalasan, Mike Toledo, Jingjing Romero, Victor A. Tan, Lanilyn T. Luzuriaga.

Task Force Aduana's house-to-house military raid in Ilocos wasn't the first. Soldiers, too, caught five ships loaded with smuggled rice and sugar in Ozamiz last month. Backed by helicopter gunships and armored personnel carriers, they forced open warehouses without search warrants.

YOUR BODY. Scientists have crafted a "DNA computer" from strands of synthetic DNA they coaxed into solving complex calculations, says the latest issue of Nature journal.

OUR WORLD. Are we Martians? Possibly, says an international team of astronomers and biologists who studied interplanetary exchange of primitive life forms. Mars could have ejected microbe-bearing rocks that seeded Earth with life billions of years ago, they say, or the exchange may have gone the other way: Martians are Earthlings.

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