Antediluvian excuses for today's Metro floods - Gotcha

Floods are upon us again. Just like last year. Just like the year before that. Just like last decade. Arrgh! Makes Metro Manilans wonder where hundreds of millions of pesos in flood tax that government collects from moviegoers go. Makes them worry, too, if their congressmen will impose a boat users' tax whenever motorists can't use flooded roads.

Through it all, government officials are blaming each other for the floods. Mayors say the public works department did not declog sewer pipes and dredge creeks before the rains set in. Public works engineers say that housing authorities did not move squatters away from creeksides so their dredgers could move in. Housing officials say the mayors allowed the squatters in to get reelection votes next year.

They're all at fault. Housing officials are too slow to build relocation sites for squatters. Public works engineers rushed to declog only last week, although Malacañang ordered them to start working as far back as April. Worst of all, mayors as usual did not stop squatting, and littering of creeks, streets and sidewalks, that caused the floods.

Under the infamous Lina Law on urban land reform, city councils are responsible for initiating the relocation of old squatters and preventing new ones from taking over cleared slums. Mayors are tasked to mobilize policemen and barangay officials to stop within 24 hours any squatter spotted erecting a shanty. City engineers must require building permits, and demolish structures that have none. Otherwise, citizens can hail them to court, and have them fined and jailed for goofing on their jobs.

Problem is, local officials know that citizens can't fight City Hall. A lot owner won't think of suing the mayor, councilor or city engineer if a squatter occupies his property. He'd beg or bribe them for help to kick out the pesky invader, then duck behind the fence when the demolition team arrives. Since it costs time, money and personal safety to evict a squatter from one's lot, the owner wouldn't think of having an entire colony ejected from a creekside he doesn't own anyway. Besides, he's already paying taxes for the mayor, councilor and city engineer to do that.

Yet officials use lot owner-taxpayer money not for the latter's benefit but to keep himself in power. They score brownie points with squatters who can give them votes by tolerating occupancy of riverbanks -- no-squatter zones even in the Lina Law's tolerance of land-grabbing. These officials also look the other way when street vendors illegally set up stalls on sidewalks and litter the area with trash that clog sewer pipes. Instead of driving away the illegal vendors and fining the litterbugs, they use the lot owner-taxpayer's money to hire more and more streetsweepers to clean after those who don't pay taxes at all. And they have the temerity to blame public works engineers and national housing officials for their faults.

They're offering antedeluvian excuses for today's floods. They're like Cain denying anything and everything when asked where his brother was.

Buckpassing is also hampering attempts to prevent any more computer hacking while dinosaurs in Congress take their sweet time to pass a cyberspace law.

NBI agents, in a hurry to get the ILOVE-YOU virus writers out of their hands, filed a case of violating the Access Devices Regulation Act, then passed it on to the justice department. Prosecutors, however, can't see how charges will stick because that law protects banks from computer thieves, not Internet password filchers and virus spreaders. Their best alternative is a case for malicious mischief.

The NBI is under pressure from the US-FBI to put away the hackers for 20 years under the Access Devices Law, not just six years for malicious mischief under the Revised Penal Code. The LoveBug had destroyed more than 40 million hard disks worldwide, and wasted a billion dollars in business losses, computer repairs and virus disinfectants.

Me, I'd suggest murder of the King's English. Imagine such ILOVEYOU e-mail message as "Kindly checked the important coming from me"!

Still another case of buckpassing is on the issue of fishing grounds. Governors and mayors are blaming environment and agriculture officials for allowing dynamite fishing and commercial trawlers. The latter claim they have no police powers, and must rely on barangay officers, the PNP and Coast Guard to drive away illegal fishermen. Barangay and police officers say they can't do anything because the dynamiters and trawlers are pals of provincial officials.

Again they're all at fault. But more so the governors and mayors.

They're tasked by the Fisheries Code of 1998 to mark municipal waters 15 kilometers from shore. They must mobilize seashore barangay officers to guard such waters against commercial trawlers, and policemen to run after dynamite users.

More often than not, however, these elective officials can't assert their moral authority over the police and environment or agriculture managers assigned by the Manila head office. Why? Because they're the biggest sand truckers, loggers, quarriers in their locales. They even use policemen to protect their illegal businesses. Leading by bad example, they can't order subordinates to enforce fishing laws.

Buckpassing has infected the government. National bureaucrats and local executives avoid decisions lest they be hailed to court or blamed by voters for the consequences.

They see nothing wrong with just coasting along, drawing monthly salaries while awaiting retirement or the next election. After all, they see the Chief Executive getting away with buck-passing: "the previous administration left me with a gaping deficit", "priests, pols and the press are destabilizing my tenure", "high fuel prices are caused by rising US interest rates and oil-producing cartels."

Why, two years in power and the Cabinet is still blaming the Ramos administration for not weakening the Moro Islamic Liberation Front before talking peace with it. Defense Secretary Orly Mercado even says the Ramos team allowed the MILF to set up checkpoints along Narciso Ramos Highway. Yet it was Estrada's peace negotiators who in February 1999 recognized as MILF territories the adjacent 10,000-hectare Camp Abubakar and 47 other MILF sanctuaries.

YOUR BODY. Dioxin, emitted from garbage incinerators and the pulp and paper industry, poses 10 times the cancer risk than previously believed for people who eat too much fatty meats and dairy products, the US Environmental Protection Energy announced over the weekend. More on this in cnn.com/health.

YOUR COMPUTER. Parents simply have to oversee their children's web surfing. A new US study of youngsters' computer habits worldwide shows that they readily divulge the family's private details to Internet marketers and unsecured sites.

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