What is wrong with Alvarez?

Problem with Sonny is he’s stubborn. All he has to do is promote a congressman’s son to assistant secretary, and his problems will be over. He’ll be confirmed.

Too often has that line been said in the House of Representatives – the bastion of patronage politics. Environment and Natural Resources Sec. Sonny Alvarez refuses to cooperate by dropping administrative charges he filed against Peter Abaya, erstwhile head of the Environment Management Bureau. Abaya’s congressman-dad in Cavite is rallying Southern Tagalog colleagues for reinstatement to a lateral position. Alvarez’s intransigence has divided the ruling Lakas party, of which he is secretary-general.

Is Alvarez no team player? "This is a matter of principle," he replies. "I have discovered a serious infraction. I would be remiss of my duty if I let it pass. I would not be worthy to serve in the Cabinet."

The infraction he is talking about concerns the Montreal Protocol of 1991. Under the international pact 167 countries, including RP, vowed to phase out by 2010 their use of ozone-depleting substances. ODS include chloro-fluorocarbons, carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform and halons that RP imports as cleaning solvents and coolants for refrigerators and air conditioners. The substances rip holes through Earth’s ozone layer huge enough to melt ice caps in Antartica, and heat up oceans and continents. Ozone depletion lets more ultraviolet rays drench Earth, thus raising the incidence of eye cataract and skin cancer among humans, but slowing the production of phytoplankton on which baby fish feed.

RP drew up a country program to gradually cut such imports. But in 2000, Abaya as EMB chief inserted a footnote to the program, altering the import figure and allowing it to increase by 75 percent. When Alvarez took over the DENR in mid-2001, he received a complaint from the compliance desk of the Montreal Protocol, which he had signed for RP when he was senator. He studied the violation and filed a case against Abaya, whom he had just assigned as DENR director for Western Visayas.

Abaya’s defense is that Alvarez miscomputed the ODS consumption data. He also wrote to a newspaper columnist that he inserted the footnote to legalize rampant smuggling of the ODS. Whether Abaya has authority to make smuggling legal instead of fighting it, Alvarez does not wish to argue in the press or in the Congress halls. The venue for the case is the hearing office at DENR. But Abaya’s dad has taken the matter to Congress in what seems a usurpation of the executive branch’s power to discipline its officers.

That Southern Tagalog legislators are taking the cudgels for Abaya is ironic, considering what Alvarez has done for their region. Last Sept. he had cancelled a midnight ECC (environment compliance certificate) that Canadian firm Placer Dome had obtained from Abaya and former DENR boss Antonio Cerilles. Issued on Jan. 19, 2001 while Joseph Estrada’s administration was crumbling with the defection of the AFP brass, the ECC was for Placer Dome to clean up Marinduque’s Boac River that it had polluted with mine tailings in the ’80s. Alvarez had discovered that Placer Dome would scoop up its tailings alright, but dump it into the nearest bay. It would clean up the river but pollute the sea. Besides, Placer Dome had collected $27 million in insurance from the mine disaster that choked Boac River, yet was proposing to clean up for only $13 million. Alvarez wanted it to recompense the people of Marinduque and traders from the rest of Southern Tagalog who had lost jobs and businesses due to the pollution.

All this is lost on Southern Tagalog congressmen who want horse-trading in lieu of clean environment. For the old pols, the key to Alvarez’s confirmation is his readiness to cut deals, not to file charges when needed. That, for them, would be the test of Alvarez’s fitness for Cabinet posting. Alvarez, as congressman in Oct. 2000, had drafted the impeachment complaint against Estrada. He came under tremendous pressure back then to drop the complaint, but he forged on.

The word in Malacañang is that President Arroyo has asked Alvarez several times if she should try to rally support for him through Lakas party lines. Alvarez, they say, has told her he can hack it, whether or not he seeks help from partymates who comprise two-thirds of Congress. Still, it would make sense for Mrs. Arroyo to go all out for Alvarez-not because he is the Lakas sec-gen, but because he represents new politics that she vowed to be the hallmark of her administration.

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In case you’re wondering how Enron got into so much trouble, here’s how a Texas professor of A&Ms (acquisitions and mergers) explained it in terms his students could understand.

Capitalism. You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, the economy grows. You sell all and retire on the income.

Enron capitalism. You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt-equity swap via an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred through an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by your CFO, who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on six more.

Now do you see why a company with $62-billion assets is declaring bankruptcy?

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Last Monday’s word game seems to have inspired more entries, like:

Jaworseki – the pits; as in, if you think you’ve seen everything in pols, jaworseki’s yet to come.

And these riddles, too:

Which senator is so young, may gatas pa sa dila? Nene.

And which senator is always japorms? Angara.

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