Blocking P-Noy's convoy - and his daang matuwid

A Chinese official’s proposal to arm 100,000 fishermen to roam the South China Sea and “defeat the Philippines and Vietnam” betrays two things. One, China’s is not a peaceful economic rise. Two, its military is too cowardly to start a war, and so must use civilians as cannon fodder.

He Jianbin, who came up with the strategy for confrontation, is no mean barbershop gossip. He heads the state-owned Baosha Fishing Corp. His comments were published in Global Times, the English arm of the Chinese Communist Party organ, People’s Daily. His views are official.

He’s wants to deploy 5,000 fishing vessels with 100,000 fishermen armed and trained by the People’s Liberation Army. The militiamen supposedly would make up a force stronger than the combined navies “of all the countries in the South China Sea.” They would confront states that have territorial claims contrary to China’s, namely, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. He said deploying that many fishing ships would be no problem, since Hainan alone has 23,000. By forming the fishermen into a maritime militia, he said the PLA-Navy could serve as rear echelon, not the front line and fall into the trap set by the US government.

Those are not the words of an official of a country that is striving peacefully to develop. Those are the words of a neighborhood gang boss threatening to let loose his armed goons to trespass and steal. China’s idea of economic growth is to grab adjacent seas to feed its population and fuel its industries, with no regard for neighbors’ legal rights. It flaunts military might to demand the neighbors’ consent.

China’s awesome war materiel notwithstanding, its army is not about to start conflict. It has had no recent experience in shooting, except at civilians at Tiananmen, Tibet and Xinjiang. And at unarmed Vietnamese sailors in the Paracels in the 1980s. To provoke war could backfire on the Communist Party. The PLA would be exposed all the more to be reporting so loyal to the party’s military commission, instead of to the people through the government’s defense ministry.

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Senior Police Officer Ricardo Pascua typifies the disorder plaguing the land. The law enforcer is its leading breaker. His many offenses came to light after he blocked the presidential convoy last week in Quezon City. All told, his ilk hinders Noynoy Aquino’s daang matuwid reforms.

Instead of slowing down when signaled by the convoy lead car, Pascua haughtily flashed a siren and drove on his minivan. Pulled over by motorcycle cops, he thrust a police badge at their faces. His unspoken message to them was clear: “I’m a man of authority so let me through.” As loud and clear as the points of local officials in killing nosy newsmen, or national bureaucrats in defying lifestyle checkers: touch me not. Or even of such cheap thrills as congressmen’s cars sporting the plate number “8” so they can get ahead in traffic. For the abusers it’s all about position and power. Such syndrome stifles the gifted and true, but holds up the inept and crooked. Uncured, it drives the middle class to emigrate where talent, not connection, is appreciated.

Booked for reckless driving, Pascua was found to have no driver’s license. No permit either to install a police siren. On his car’s front plate was emblazoned “QCPD” (Quezon City Police Department). Dark acrylic covered the rear plate, making the registration number “ZJK 679” hardly readable, and this turned out to be for another vehicle. Pascua’s misdeeds pile high. No different from malefactors in state agencies who persist to abuse, extort and cover up. He’s akin to the West Cove-Boracay Resort that operates sans municipal building, occupancy and business permits. It wangled a special grant over 900 square meters of adjacent forest for tourism, but fenced off 3,200 more, and even built prohibited permanent structures. Akin too to gambling lords, porch climbers, guns for hire, who operate with impunity. The Metro Manila crime rate has risen 64 percent; likely it’s up in most other regions as well.

Pascua was discovered to be operating the minivan as a mega-taxi, without a franchise. In short, he pays no fees or taxes. He is as colorum as thousands of buses on EDSA and other highways, and businessmen who issue no sales receipts. How could a rascal like Pascua have been recruited into the police force? The same way of course that West Cove et al are able to flout the law over and over: through abettors. In the case of Pascua, it’s dumb recruiters; in West Cove, pliant environment officers; in the colorum buses, senile franchisers. Could 17 roadwork constructors have asphalted 700 manhole covers in Metro Manila, thus causing floods, had it not been for negligence of highways officials?

And oh, it turns out that Pascua already was dismissed from the police service twice. The first time was in June 2001 for robbery, then in December 2002 for wrongful arrest. Somehow he was able to fool his superiors into believing he was reinstated twice. This shows how shot up police procedures and records are. As messy as the Supreme Court no less failing to enter or enforce its judgments.

Pascua has been infecting the service for years. He was exposed only because he happened to cross the presidential fleet no less. Remember how P-Noy got blamed by Filipinos and foreigners alike for a sacked Manila cop’s hostage-taking and massacre of Chinese tourists? A graft investigator’s P50,000-extortion to fix his case, and his superiors’ failure to retrieve his service rifle upon dismissal came to light only after the killings. Lives are lost when scalawags are allowed to get away with crime over and over. There are so many of them, infecting society in turn. That’s the sad state of the nation.

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