Atienza claims no more action after MOU: false

Do metro-rail officials favor only malls? Mayor Rico Echiverri asks as MRT men keep rebuffing pleas to erect an extra stop along EDSA-Caloocan in extending from Quezon City to Monumento. Plans are to put up just one stop — in Balintawak, QC, atop a public market — and no more till the line ends at Monumento. That would deny rail transport to a million residents and thousands more workers in the zone in-between: huge Bagong Baryo and Morning Breeze barangays. There are no mega-marts but only small shops in the thickly populated area, unlike where most MRT stops are. Is that reason for MRT to snub it?

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Had DENR Sec. Lito Atienza been under oath in court and not just on cam for TV, he would have incriminated himself — twice.

First, he claimed that DTI Sec. Peter Favila’s July 12, 2006 Memo of Understanding was only an invitation for China’s ZTE Int’l. to invest in RP. The wording belies him. The MOU granted the foreigner, against law and Constitution, “exploration, development and operation of mining” in North Davao and Diwalwal. DoF, DTI, DILG, DENR, DoTC, DBM, NEDA “and all government agencies and offices” were compelled to ensure enforcement. Gloria Arroyo gave Favila “special authority” too to commit RP to whatever ZTE wished. After which, she toured ZTE signatory Yu Yong and chairman Hou Weigui to Compostela Valley where the two mines are. All the while, a court order was in place upholding the right of publicly listed Filipino firm Picop over the 8,100-hectare Diwalwal forest reserve. If they now belittle an MOU from which sprang the Apr. 2007 broadband deal, is it because they already collected the “tong-pats”?

Second, Atienza said that nothing came out of the MOU. False again, based on records. On July 27, 2006, two weeks after the signing, ZTE execs met with officers of the Philippine Mining Development Corp. (then called Natural Resources & Mining Development Corp.), DENR’s corporate arm. Discussed was how to disguise ZTE’s entry as a G-to-G deal to avoid public bidding, with a real Chinese mining firm as front for the telecom supplier. They resumed Aug. 7 at the same plush hotel to talk timetables for ZTE’s initial plunk in of $10 million. There was haggling of $19.5 million by the Filipinos and $15 million by the Chinese for fees and field tests for North Davao. The Filipinos offered 60:40 sharing of capital in gold and 50:50 in copper, but the Chinese wanted 10:90 as ZTE’s net profit split. In Oct. 2006 PMDC announced that ZTE was interested in Diwalwal, like 26 American, African and Australian mining firms.

It seems the PMDC staff was kept in the dark about the negotiations. Only when Favila admitted to the Senate last Mar. having signed the July 2006 MOU did the PMDC business developers seek advice from chief legal counsel Jaime de Veyra. ZTE’s interloping baffled them, for only by public bidding could any mining be let into Diwalwal or North Davao.

(Incidentally, de Veyra also wrote me to deny, like Atienza on TV, any PMDC deal with ZTE. “Nor do we have any agreement with GeoGrace involving any PMDC-owned or -administered property.” GeoGrace is the miner represented by Mike Defensor, Atienza’s party mate and predecessor at DENR, in a recent contract signing in China. Arroyo witnessed it, as she did ZTE’s in Apr. 2007. De Veyra’s denial comes in the wake of an Apr. 2008 memo for the PMDC brass to approve a joint venture as 10-percent partner of GeoGrace. Hmm.)

Atienza has yet to answer still another critical question: what has he done to protect Diwalwal and North Davao forests from destructive mining methods? If none, he can be jailed, sacked and forever barred from public office. The supposed small miners openly use mercury and cyanide that denude forests and poison farms up to 30 miles away. The DENR is so strict with big miners like Lafayette, Atlas, Lepanto or Philex, but soft on colorum ones who destroy farms and forests, rivers and pastures.

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American rulers hanged him under the Brigandage Act, enacted 1902 to try revolutionaries as bandits. Yet far from being a rustler, Macario Sakay co-founded the Katipunan in Tondo in 1896. He fought alongside Bonifacio against Spain, then with Aguinaldo in the Filipino-American War of 1899. After Malvar’s capture in 1902, General Sakay continued the independence struggle in Southern Tagalog — until arrested in 1906 by treachery. On Sept. 13 the following year he died at the gallows in his native Tondo. But not before declaring to the crowd: “Maaga man o huli, dumarating sa ating lahat ang kamatayan, kaya mapayapa kong haharapin ang Maykapal... Mabuhay ang Republika at isilang nawa ang ating kalayaan sa kinabukasan.”

Tomorrow, 101 years to the day, Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim unveils the first ever monument to Sakay, 8 a.m., at Plaza Morga, Tondo.

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