Brunei’s going broke, Singapore’s in a s

Former Interior Secretary Alfredo Lim, a former Manila mayor, director of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and former top police general, is not to be taken lightly when he fingers Kim Wong as a suspected drug lord, and recalls that he had warned the present NBI Chief, Gen. Reynaldo Wycoco, and PNP Chief Director-General Larry Mendoza about Wong – long before the "scandal" exploded.

In accusing Wong (although he produced a photograph of the wrong "Wong"), Intelligence Chief Col. Victor Corpus may be on the right track, but it will take more than media "attack" to tag Wong and his cohorts.

The Americans have a saying: "There’s no such thing as a free lunch." This is translated as meaning, you don’t get a free ride and pay no "fare" in return. Any guy who gives you gifts will surely expect some profit from it. Senator (and former PNP Chief Director-General) Panfilo Lacson must have realized by now that "There’s no such thing as a free cellphone." Wong may have been a "good friend", but cops who accept freebies usually get their feet in the wringer (to mangle my metaphors). Look at Federal agent Eliot Ness and his "Untouchables", the brave handful who battled Al Capone and Chicago’s "Prohibition" era mobsters with dedication and courage: They were "untouchable" because they didn’t accept any "bribes" or "gifts", or donations for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade or the Police Retirement Fund.

What was Ness’s reward for all his years of service, valor, and dedication? When he died, he was buried in a simple grave, with no honors (many of the other "cops" hated him), and not many people bothered to go to his funeral. Only after a popular television series starring Robert Stack focused on his life and adventures, followed by Brian DePalma’s hit movie The Untouchables, starring Kevin Costner (as Ness), Robert de Niro (as Capone), and Sean Connery (as Malone, the cop who taught Ness how to beat the mob: "shoot fast and shoot first") was Eliot Ness recognized. His body was exhumed, given a hero’s funeral in which thousands marched, and re-buried in a more appropriate site.

The moral of the story is: Never underestimate the power of TV and the movies (Look at Noli and Loren). But a caveat. With this awesome power, too, must come responsibility.

* * *

The Kim Wong we’re talking about is not to be confused with an older Kim Wong (who knew Erap and Ping Lacson well, too) and was tagged as being a Chinese Triad member. The old Wong was linked to Peter Choi, a Japanese-speaking Taiwanese-Hongkong "businessman", deported after his underground activities in Kingsley Commodities were unearthed, as well as Peter Lim, a fellow named Co (father of the alleged drug-manufacturer Alfredo Tiongco), Lim Seng, who was Co’s chemist, and Lawrence Wang.

Remember how we tried to get Tiongco when his "alleged" shabu factory was discovered operating under the guise of a hollow block-manufacturing plant in Lubao, Pampanga – hometown of President Macapagal-Arroyo?

Senator Vicente "Tito" Sotto was accused of being Tiongco’s ‘protector", remember? Tiongco himself was extradited from Hongkong to face trial here. But the judge "cleared" him because his guilt had not been "established beyond reasonable doubt." See how hard it is to nail a "suspected" drug baron’s hide to the wall?

The tongue-twisted witness and ex-PAOCTF agent "Ador" Mawanay, indeed, side-swiped Tito Sotto anew when he blabbed in the Senate about the indiscretions of Senators. By the way, if Corpus wants to hold his case together, he had better get rid of Ador fast. Send him off to exile, or to confession, or to a secluded religious retreat under Father Tito Caluag, S.J. Everytime Ador opens his mouth, getting sidetracked from the Lacson Case, he makes the ISAFP exposé less and less credible. He’s a loose cannon, and some of that buckshot is puncturing the Corpus "revelations" with so many holes that their own ship may sink from such "friendly fire" (as they call it in wartime when you’re cut down by mistake by your own comrades and allies).

As for the younger Kim Wong, whether he’s innocent or guilty, the question nags: Why is he making "friends" with so many important people like police generals, lower-ranking cops, judges, fiscals and NBI agents? For instance, doesn’t he pal around with them at the Philippine Columbian Club in Dilao, Paco? (I won’t say, as the persistent rumors and chismis allege, that, in fact, Wong bought membership shares for these friends at that prestigious sports and social club). Is Wong also a "fixer" for others in the Chinese community?

In any event, he’s just too friendly.

* * *

Naturally we can’t afford to minimize the terrible danger we face from the burgeoning power, influence, and clout of the ruthless and filthy rich drug syndicates. (It’s a short skip, by the way, from jueteng to narcotics.) We indeed could deteriorate into a "narcostate."

That’s the current buzzword, and the example being dangled is that of Colombia, a South American country the size of Spain, with a population of about 38 million, plagued by 4,000 kidnappings a year, the control by FARC Leftist guerillas (an army, really) of huge areas devoted to the cultivation of coca and other narco crops, and the rampaging of equally murderous rightwing groups. Colombia, which used to be the home of beauty queens and one of South America’s most verdant countries, is being destroyed by two of the evil forces in the world – drugs and political terrorism. A merciless civil war, referred to wearily by Colombians as "La Violencia", has killed over 300,000 people. In 1996 alone, there were 26,000 homicides, most of them connected with drug trafficking. There were 3,000 political assassinations and murders, most of them the grisly work of rightwing death squads.

They say that Bogota may be the capital, but the nation is "ruled" by the Cali Cartel. Its violent rival, the Medellin Cartel is on the decline, its leadership decimated by either death or arrest and conviction to jail sentences (or being "kidnapped" in US covert operations). Yet, the drug trade goes on undiminished.

A United Nations study reported the other year that illegal businesses worldwide accounted for US $600 billion of which US $400 billion was earned by drug trafficking. In 1994, in Thailand, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) estimated that profits drom the drug trade amounted to US $85 billion per year in that country alone. This constitutes 21 percent of the world’s total profits, and represents double Thailand’s earnings from legitimate exports.

There is, of course, an alphabet soup of addictive drugs produced in Thailand alone: opium, marijuana or ganja (krathom in Thai), as well as elsewhere, amphetamines, known in Thai as ya ma, (horse pills) or ya ba (mad pills). I’ve written previously about Amazing Thailand and wonderful Bangkok. But, as I’ve said, the dark side exists, too.

Thailand is one of the sources of the "drugs" smuggled into our country by the Triads, who dominate the Golden Triangle – the area where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar (Burma) meet – which is the biggest site of opium and heroin production. It’s said that 60 per cent of all heroin sold in the US comes from this area.

Thailand, sad to say, is one of our local druglords’ best "connections." Drugs come in concealed shipments, for instance, of garments, used clothing (for charity), fake signature-brand handbags and watches (like the sort you buy by the bushel in Patpong’s night market or the Bangkok World Trade Center), pirate VCDs, and accessories.

On the other hand, Colonel Corpus and his ISAFP crew still have to show "proof", hard evidence, not throw about wild accusations virtually addressed "To Whom It May Concern." Justice and fair play demand it. We’re still supposed to be under the rule of law, not that of loudspeakers, insinuation, allegations and malicious gossip. People love to read or hear chismis and revel in exposés, until they’re the ones on the receiving end. That’s the long and short of it.

In a civilized, Constitutional country, that’s the very appetite we have to be careful to curb.

* * *

I hope President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is enjoying her five-day state visit to Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. Last week, however, Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Sinawatra already beat us to the Brunei bank, when he went over for a tete-a-tete with Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (who, Thaksin said later, had expressed interest in investing in Bangkok’s bond and securities market).

In any event, I trust GMA won’t have her begging bowl so eagerly out. For the awful truth is that Brunei, while still comparatively rich, is going broke and its oil and natural gas reserves are being quickly depleted.

The Sultan and his government were shocked in 1998 by the collapse of his brother’s former Finance Minister Prince Jefri Bolkiah’s mini-empire – the extravagant, scandal-wracked Amedeo Development Corp.

Profligate Brother Jeff had simply flushed US $30 billion down the toilet, when he had been supposed to have wisely invested Brunei’s cash. His lavish spending depleted Brunei’s reserves by half.

Brunei’s gross domestic product per capita, true enough, remains US $14,000 or the second highest in Southeast Asia (after Singapore) and, as the Asian Wall Street Journal revealed quoting the International Monetary Fund, the fourth highest in Asia.

There was a pathetic auction of the disgraced Prince Jefri’s remaining luxury items and art work from marble jacuzzis to gold-plated toilet brushes but the returns were minuscule compared to the billions of bucks thrown around, or invested in grandiose billion-dollar projects that simply went bust. The government has increased oil and natural gas production from 180,000 barrels a day to some 205,000 barrels daily, in a bid to balance the budget, but, at home, business is kaput. The latest Asiaweek (August 24) ran as its cover title: Going, going, GONE: Brunei’s bizarre auction exposes the reckless life of Prince Jefri – and cracks in the Royal House."

Inside, the headline article was dubbed: "Paradise Lost."

* * *

The news magazine reported that Prince Jefri Puilt, for the Sultan and the royals "a lavish polo club, where at its peak top players were flowm in from Argentina and 2,000 ponies were kept in air-conditioned luxury. The Sultan and Jefri played there regularly, as did visitors such as Britain’s Prince Charles."

In Buenos Aires, they told me that the Sultan and Jefri often flew in to play polo there too, bringing in their horses as well as polo playing friends from Europe and other continents. When I visited Brunei some years ago, I had to ooh-and-aah at that magnificent polo club, near which the Sultan had erected a palace for Wife Number Two. (What Number was the one who used to live in Makati?)

Describing the place where His Majesty probably received GMA and the First Gent, Mike Arroyo, Asiaweek’s William Mellor chirped: "Now this is a man who knows how to live. Sultan Masanal Bolkiah of Brunei rules his tiny realm from the world’s largest residential palace built on the edge of the Borneo jungle. The gold-domed Istana Nurul Inam has 1,788 rooms, which makes it bigger than the Vatican and on a par with Versailles. A banquet hall seats 5,000. There is an underground garage the size of a megamall parking lot. The office where the Sultan works resembles a super-luxurious hotel suite. The furniture is Louis XIV, and two Renoirs adorn the walls. Until this month, it seamed somewhat excessive for a monarch who rules over just 330,00 subjects."

What the writer didn’t mention, or didn’t know, was that the magnificent palace was built by Enrique

Zobel and his company, and used to be maintained by his son Iñigo. EZ had been the Sultan’s and Jefri’s polo crony before he suffered a terrible fall from his polo pony in Marbella, Spain, and was rendered paralyzed from the neck down.

* * *

As for the President’s arrival in Singapore on Friday, she’ll get a warm welcome, we’re sure. Singapore’s still git-up-and-go, but truth to tell, its electronics business is in a slump owing to the sinking of the United States economy, its biggest customer (accounting for 20 percent of global trade).

Alan Greenspan, the maestro of the Fed and guru of Wall Street, may have overreached when he imposed six rate increases in a row to cool off what he considered an "overheated" US economy, which has cooled off more rapidly than expected to become as frigid as the craters on the dark side of the moon. But then, nobody’s perfect.

An indicator of Singapore’s plight is the fact that the former strait-laced city-state, where "the streets were paved with gold", is now happy with the recent shore leave "visit" of 5,500 US sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Constellation. About 100 US naval vessels visit Singapore yearly, ever since we denied them Subic.

And the Yankee dollar, in these less prosperous times, is truly appreciated in the Lion City.

Yes, Virginia, there’s "sex" even in Singapore, behind the Puritan image and the glossy high-rise, upmarket facades.