P500,000 per container!

After our column “Smuggling 101” came out last Tuesday, we received several calls reporting their recent experience with Customs personnel.

A group of Divisoria traders led by a 65-year old lady doing business at Divisoria for 38 years reported that every Christmas season starting September during GMA’s term they had to pay P250,000 per container which they pay because they can still make a handsome profit due to the brisk Christmas sales. To their surprise, they were informed last week that the “facilitation fee” is now increased to P500,000 per container. They said that their association who usually imports about 3,000 containers for the Christmas rush may not import this year. It is clear that money making is still the goal of Customs top brass.

A towel importer complained he used to pay P130,000 per container for the last five years. Now he is being asked to pay P6 per kilo or more than P500,000 per container.

Last Thursday, Commissioner Angelito Alvarez, the Alabang Golf Club member who cheated on his golf score, called a presscon to announce he was charging 5 Customs employees and one importer who smuggled 781 containers of rice totalling 312,000 sacks by misdeclaring it as Mung or Mongo beans from January to May this year. How can you now prove that it was rice, not mongo beans, when the rice is no longer in the warehouses and has been sold?

How can such a large quantity — 781 containers of mongo beans go thru the Customs gate without the Port Collector, the Deputy Commissioner for enforcement and intelligence and the Commissioner himself not noticing it? In addition to the 5 low level employees, 5 other top Customs officials should have been charged also by Alvarez. Customs brokers say this case is all one grand palabas.

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Women for divorce. Gabriela Party list Representatives Emmy de Jesus and Luz Ilagan’s bill legalizing divorce has kicked up a big debate. It is noteworthy that women, not men, filed the bill.

Immediately, President Aquino took a stand saying he is against divorce as they have in Las Vegas but in the same breath adds he is for legal separation but will allow the spouses to remarry. In effect, that is divorce under a different name. Bachelor President Aquino is not a lawyer and so is not aware that the difference between absolute divorce and legal separation, is precisely to ban remarriage.

As explained by Gabriela leaders, we had divorce in the Philippines until 1950 when the new Civil Code was adopted and we have divorce today for Muslims. Some Filipinos become Muslims to avail of the privilege. Allowing divorce for Muslims and banning it for Christians is violative of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. We also recognize divorce for foreigners married to Filipinas.  

In the great majority of separated couples, they get a new partner forcing them to live in sin and making their children illegitimate. If only for the illegitimate children, divorce should be allowed. After all, in our mother Spain, in the home of the Vatican in Italy and predominantly Catholic Ireland, absolute divorce is allowed. It is time for us to enter the modern age. In the UK, they even have a divorce tourism program. There is another good reason for allowing divorce. Under present law, when a person is absent for 7 years, he can be declared dead. Under the Gabriela bill, separation in fact, for 5 years is a ground for divorce. You can even make it 7 years. Akin to this situation is the case of a person sentenced to life imprisonment.  

How about the case of a spouse habitually beating up his wife, or worst who has tried to kill his/her spouse?

By the way, Sec. Ricky Carandang has now come out with this preposterous statement “President Aquino’s statement over the divorce issue is his personal opinion.” “We have no official position on that (divorce bill) since the matter was not mentioned in Cabinet meetings.” Hello! Anytime the President of the Philippines speaks, that’s official. Is the prohibition on wang-wang or the ban on a politician’s name in billboards then a personal position?  

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Onanisms. . . Health Secretary Enrique Ona announced that he is “cutting DOH training programs for doctors, nurses and other personnel.” Ona “noticed that there are too many seminars and training “and wants to focus on operations and implementation.” He cites training programs are wrecking havoc on the DOH budget. That policy is absolutely insane or maybe, call it “Onane”.

Advances in medicine happen every month, every week. How do you keep your doctors up-to-date to effectively treat their patients without training programs? Immediately, there should be seminars on how to deal with dengue, now on record 98.9% higher than last year. Note too, that the great majority of rural health physicians have not undergone residencies and should be regularly given in service training.

It is not the training program that “wreck havoc” on the DOH budget. It is the overpriced or unnecessary purchase of medicines and medical equipment. DOH bodegas have yielded medicines that were not distributed to the field.

The latest “Onanism”: “We believe that dengue cases have peaked and are now decreasing.” This is contrary to the latest report that from January 1 to August 28, dengue cases has reached 69,594 case with 501 deaths recorded.  

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Tidbits. . . After P-Noy admitted he does not have full trust and confidence in Jessie Robredo, that’s more than enough reason for Robredo to resign. DILG Usec Rico Puno is not a lawyer. He is a UP Los Baños Agriculture graduate and used to sell guns to the PNP. . . There are now 59 lady congresswomen, up from 45 in the previous Congress. Wonder how many will support the divorce bill? Congresswoman Gina de Venecia hosted a get to together for the lady solons. Gina heads a group of Northern Luzon Reps. including Kimi Cojuangco (Pangasinan, 5th); Marilyn Primicias Agabas (Pangasinan, 6th); Joy Bernas (Abra); Eleanor Bulut-Begtang (Apayao); and Anna Cristina Go (Isabela 2nd).