Time to resolve the airport mess

I’m astonished that Press Secretary Ignacio "Toting" Bunye – for the past two days, mind you – has been sounding so apologetic about the Communist Party of the Philippines’ and the rebel New People’s Army’s possibly hurt feelings.

What’s there to be worried about? It’s the United States of America which has just declared the CPP-NPA an FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization), and, unless I’m mistaken, Washington DC’s decisions aren’t dictated by us, not even by US President George W. Bush’s phone pal, our President GMA. If anything, the much-repeated charge hurled by the usual Leftists is that it’s the other way around.

So, Toting: Kindly stop fretting. And what if there are any "temporary setbacks" to the so-called government peace talks with the CPP-NPA-National Democratic Front (three organizational names for the same bunch of revolutionaries)? After all, those silly peace talks are already – thankfully – stalled, anyway. Indeed, it was a waste of time and saliva to discuss "peace" terms with an armed group which only wants the government to "surrender" so their insurgent case can prevail.

I’ve never understood what we gained, during the regime of ex-President Fidel V. Ramos, by repealing the Anti-Subversion Law which had previously outlawed the CPP, NPA and other subversive movements. How can you legislate an insurgent drive to overthrow the Republic out of existence? FVR, it’s explained, wanted to attract the Communist rebels to make peace with the government. This hasn’t happened – and, the way things are going, it never will, for all the bragging by Speaker Joe de Venecia, who’s famous for peddling "bottled sunshine" (not necessarily an evil trait in these dark and glowering times) that a peace deal is just around the corner. No way, Jose.

The NPA continue to make a nuisance of themselves. They raid police outposts, shooting up the place and grabbing the firearms. They ambush military convoys. They extort from the population, and ruin businesses by imposing harsh "revolutionary" or "progressive" taxes on them. If bus firms don’t cough up, they burn the company’s buses. If politicians don’t pay "permission-to-campaign" fees, the NPA brigands murder those politicians. Sanamagan, if this is "peace", then we’d better wage war.

Are they terrorists? Of course, they are. We don’t need the Americans to remind us of their basic – and very base – nature.

As for our…er "former" rebel friends – like Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo – who’re now in Congress, haven’t you heard the term "parliamentary struggle"? That’s what the Marxists, Stalinists, Maoists and perhaps the other Marx brothers, Groucho, Harpo, etc. used to say. If you can’t shoot them dead, by all means talk them to death.

* * *

I thought the President, responding to a torrent of public criticism, had decided to stop "presenting" kidnappers, captured rebels, and assorted criminals to the media, with Her Majesty, naturally, presiding over the affair. I was wrong. She stopped "presenting" those suspects in Malacañang. In the wake of criticisms that it was demeaning for crooks to be brought to the hallowed halls of the people’s Palace and the seat of government. But she didn’t give up her practice of exhibitionism. She simply changed the venue.

Yesterday, GMA went over to Camp Crame, the PNP headquarters in Quezon City, so she could exhibit five arrested carnappers being presented to her by Interior Secretary Joey Lina and Philippine National Police Director-General Hermogenes Ebdane. It was the same unrepentant "photo opportunism", but this time, from a different podium.

The Chief Executive’s and her administration’s fight against crime must, of course, never lag. Yet so much valuable time is squandered in preparing and undertaking such media extravaganzas, evidently in aid of reelection. Working officials, like Lina and Ebdane, who should be on the job, are, for their part, distracted by being utilized as carnival touts, screening for the TV cameras by presenting arrested criminals to the Commander-in-Chief, and constantly dancing attendance on her at her travelling court.

By the way, General Ebdane didn’t do his own image very much good when he went urong-sulong on one of the drug suspects unveiled at one of those presentations. The arrested suspect had identified himself as Oliver Ebdane, in response to which the PNP Director General Ebdane had declared to the media: "This is my first time to see him, but I would like to acknowledge that he is my relative."

A day later, after he belatedly discovered that the drug trafficking suspect has merely used "Oliver Ebdane" as an alias, the general went on the air to announce that this guy wasn’t his "relative", after all! Susmariosep, General. I know it’s petty, but people are now going around grousing: "How can General Ebdane and his police identify and catch criminals, when Ebdane can’t even identify his own relatives?"

He should have just kept quiet about it after he realized his mistake. His first mistake, really, was that he had been too quick to proclaim "Oliver Ebdane" was related to him. The trouble with our over-familiar society is that so many people love to strut around claiming to be kamag-anak ng bayan.

* * *

If she wants to resolve the mess at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in which the construction of airport Terminal 3 has been at a standstill for months, since there’s no money left with which to complete that embarrassing project, the President must take resolute action and rescind the existing PIATCO contract. (PIATCO, as you know, means the Philippine International Air Terminals Co., Inc., which is now completely out of funds to proceed with that dead-in-the-water undertaking.)

The contract is really called the GRP-PIATCO Amended and Restated Concession Agreement. After months of investigating what was wrong with it, on instructions of GMA, the President’s Adviser on Special Projects, Secretary Gloria Tan Climaco, came up with about 28 points for renegotiation. On the other hand, PIATCO, headed by Cheng Yong, Chairman, and his son Jeffrey Cheng, has been refusing to budge. They believe they have the upper hand.

And, perhaps, if you consider the awful and onerous "contract" entered into between the government and PIATCO during the Estrada administration, they might have. Can you beat it? The government had consented to "accepting" a one-sided contract in which everything is default against the government – never against the private individuals representing PIATCO. For instance, under the contract, the government was obligated – in case of breach – to pay PIATCO such penalties as underwriting all unpaid obligations, or the "appraised value" of Terminal 3; P180 million in liquidated damages; all guaranteed payments ranging from P310 to P710 million per year; PIATCO’s capital already "used" in the project, allegedly adding up to something like $189 million, plus the projected rate of return of PIATCO in the project!

When you tote up this absurd bill, it would come to the government anteing up – surprise – about P43 billion!

With such glaring "provisions" in that silly contract staring the government in the face, how can the GMA administration "negotiate"? The only way to deal with the Terminal 3 impasse is for the President and her government to declare the PIATCO contract invalid, and reject it completely.

Only then can the government begin to negotiate a compromise, with, for instance, the giant German firm of Fraport AG which is in despair, having sunk about $375 million ($109 million of that in cash) into the unfinished project – and seeing no way out of the stalled situation.

Last June, angry shareholders meeting in Dusseldorf urged Fraport Chief Executive Wilhelm Bender to pull out of the Manila project. As Klaus Nieding of the DSK shareholder lobby group exclaimed: "Rather an end to this nightmare than a nightmare without end!"

Fraport’s negotiators, however, have been meeting with Secretary Climaco, suggesting some sort of accommodation. The problem is, my insider Alikabok in Malacañang informed me, that Presidential Chief Legal Adviser Avelino "Nonong" Cruz, who is virtually the behind-the-scenes Executive Secretary as well, has been counseling GMA not to act. Why not? There’s a window of opportunity here that shouldn’t be missed – because it will close very soon.

* * *

Let me try to explain this latter observation.

Right now, Germany is in the homestretch of a hotly-contested election campaign – with election day looming in just six weeks, i.e. in late September.

At this stage, the incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) are running scared. In all poll surveys, they’re about seven percent behind their challengers, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the CDU’s standard bearer, Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber. Kanzler Schroeder’s only hope lies in the fact that about 30 percent of Germany’s voters are still undecided, and these "undecideds" might, at the last minute, go for Schroeder and the SPD.

What Schroeder has going for him is the fact that he’s urbane, experienced and charming, while his rival, Stoiber, is "Bavarian", bland, and colorless – never mind that he’s a Catholic as well. On the other hand, joblessness has worsened under Schroeder and his Socialites, and the hardline Leftwing of his party won’t permit him to introduce the reforms needed to kick-start the economy back into life in the current crisis of stagnation. The electorate knows this. Skeptical voters, analysts say, seriously doubt, despite the upbeat but stiffy predictions of the government Hartz commission on labor market reforms, that Schroeder and his SPD crowds can "create" more jobs. When a nation of 81 million has four million unemployed, or almost ten percent of its workforce out of jobs, that’s no joke – and the SPD is being blamed for this. Unless there’s a change in the wind, stern-looking, over-sober Stoiber and the CDU may romp away with the election next month.

After all, the Prussians and all those other Auslanders (as they crack in Munich) may poke fun all they want at the bucolic Bavarians in their lederhosen, but the fact remains that "provincial" Stoiber has been one of the most effective Prime Ministers in the land, and Bavaria itself the most prosperous of the German Lander.

How does this relate to Fraport AG, which is owned mainly by the city of Frankfurt (where it manages that huge airport) and the State of Hesse? Fraport AG is a CDU stronghold, and the last thing they want, or need, in this crucial homestretch of the election campaign is for the PIATCO Terminal 3 scandal to explode in their faces and become a last-minute "hot potato" issued in the polls. That’s why Bender and the Fraport officers are currently inclined to be accommodating – such as offering to guarantee a huge loan to enable Terminal 3 to be completed, and about $16 million or so to "buy out" the Chengs.

Before I reveal too many of the details, let me end here. But let me just reiterate: President Macapagal-Arroyo has to act, rescind the PIATCO contract, "work out" a new deal – and get the Terminal 3 project going again. Before it’s too late. Every day of delay counts against her.