Why is P-Noy retaining failed agri-chief Alcala?

Beijing is demanding to be briefed on the foiled airport bombing by alleged anti-Chinese rightists. It even reminds of Manila’s duty under international law to protect foreign embassies. Yet it’s not far-fetched that Beijing itself is machinating the anti-Chinese attacks. Masters of violence, China’s communist rulers aim to sap Philippine security and diplomacy, while grabbing Philippine reefs (Gotcha, 3 Sept. 2014). The bombers’ suspected ringleader, an Islamist loony, is known from his book to be fanatically anti-US. His lawyer is a loyalist of the Marcoses, haters of Washington that hijacked them to Hawaii exile in 1986. Beijing accuses Manila of being a US pawn in the South China Sea superpower game.

Manila should spit the truth into the faces of Beijing insulters: we don’t need to be told of our job to protect its embassy. Our NBI nabbed the would-be bombers, to begin with. It’s Beijing that needs pounding on international law: aggress not your neighbor, internally or externally.

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Justice Sec. Leila de Lima, as anti-cartel czar, finds the Bureau of Plant Industry liable for the price surge of garlic last May-June. The BPI brass had let a notorious smuggler named Cruz corner the garlic trade and inflate prices twelvefold to P420 a kilo — for multibillion-peso loot. Then-BPI director Clarito M. Barron reportedly is to be charged for it.

Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala often defends Cruz as a “good woman.” The BPI is directly under him. He had handpicked Barron for the top BPI post. When Barron was sacked in July amidst a consumer uproar, Alcala took him into his office as special technical aide.

Presidential Assistant Kiko Pangilinan is scrutinizing the National Food Authority’s P1-billion overprice of rice cargo handling. It involves 800,000 tons of Vietnam rice, whose handling cost is $30-per-ton more than free-market rates during the contracting last Apr. Under fire are then-NFA chief Orlan Calayag and executive aide Dennis Guerrero, who had imposed on Vietnam a favored shipping firm (Gotcha, 21 May 2014).

Alcala, as agriculture chief, chairs the NFA. He had brought home Calayag, his ex-congressional staff, from the US to oversee food security. Totally unqualified, Calayag had no training or practice in food logistics; he is a US citizen, yet the NFA headship requires a natural-born Filipino. Alcala and Calayag are charged before the Ombudsman with P2.4-billion overprice of Vietnam rice imports in 2013.

When Calayag and Guerrero resigned upon Pangilinan’s takeover of the NFA as Palace point man for agriculture and food, Alcala came to their rescue. He moved them to his office as assistant secretary for planning and chief of staff, respectively.

Here is a coddler of agriculture saboteurs twice over. Here is the failed Cabinet man to improve domestic garlic harvests and keep retail prices down. Here is the false promiser of rice self-sufficiency by 2013, the year of record-high rice import overprice.

Observers are wondering why President Noynoy Aquino retains Alcala the flop in the Cabinet. It can’t be because P-Noy still regards him as a problem solver and not a problem maker, as he used to. For, he has put in a virtual second agriculture secretary in the person of Pangilinan. It can’t be because Alcala makes P-Noy laugh either. Unfunny is Alcala’s brag of outdoing himself in exporting 400 tons of special rice though targeting only 100 — and yet importing 800,000 tons.

The only reason observers can see is Alcala’s being treasurer of P-Noy’s ruling Liberal Party, the bad company he loves to keep. Perhaps it’s also because Alcala qualifies to wear pink shirt, salmon tie, sharkskin suit, and feathered fedora, like the Hollywood villain stereotype.

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Transport officials are frantic. They used Congress hearings early this week to snipe at Metro Rail Transit Corp., the private builder-owner of the MRT-3. This was to evade the issue of sleaze in hiring maintenance contractor-friends. This contracting of nonperformers has caused the frequent injurious accidents and operation breakdowns of the MRT-3.

They are even mulling charges against MRTC for allegedly giving up its maintenance duty. Yet it’s on record that then-MRT-3 head Al S. Vitangcol in 2012 had ordered MRTC to cede the maintenance to the Dept. of Transportation and Communications. This was so he and Sec. Joseph Abaya, also LP president, could transfer the maintenance from Japanese giant Sumitomo to fledgling, undercapitalized PH Trams. Paid P517.5 million in ten months, PH Trams was owned by Vitangcol’s uncle-in-law and Abaya’s LP financiers and party mates. Abaya and MRT-3 acting GM Honorio Chaneco later signed up for maintenance Global Inc., owned by the same PH Trams’ incorporators. Price: P756 million for 12 months. Both deals were negotiated, no public bidding. Co-signatory in both was U-Sec. Jose Perpetuo Lotilla.

Whether DOTC actually will sue MRTC leaves to be seen. Ten of MRTC’s 15 directors are high officers of state-owned Land Bank and Development Bank of the Philippines. They had taken over in 2010 in the wake of the 2008 MRT-3 bond scam allegedly perpetrated by then-first gentleman Mike Arroyo, financial adviser Bobby Ongpin, and DBP head Rey David. Sen. Serge Osmeña has investigated the forced bond purchase by DBP-LBP. The silence of Abaya et al about all this exposes the hollowness of their planned raps against MRTC.

Actually, it’s Abaya, Lotilla, Vitangcol, and Chaneco who should be sued. Their shady contracting has led to hospitalizations. They have failed over and over to deliver passengers to destination stations, in breach of MRT-3’s Certificate of Conveyance. They have caused income and business opportunity losses for the riders, whose fares they have not even refunded after the train accidents and breakdowns.

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