Finally, we have an anti-trust law!

Last Tuesday, President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III signed into law the Philippine Competition Act, which was sponsored by Sen. Bam Aquino. This is our version of the Anti-Trust laws of the United States, which is truly a milestone in Philippine legislation. Kudos to Senate Pres. Franklin Drilon and House Speaker Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte! This is the law that prevents the creation of monopolies or certain combinations thereof and puts certain restraints on companies that swallow up other companies. This law was signed together with the amendments of the Cabotage Law, which hopefully would bring down prices of goods.

I’m glad Pres. Aquino signed this anti-trust law before his term ends because of the up and coming ASEAN Integration where the Philippines has a distinct disadvantage as the only ASEAN member country without an anti-trust law. While I have yet to read what is written in this law, let’s all hope that this law would benefit consumers because from my understanding of this law, two or three competing companies can no longer buy the competition so that in the end, they control the whole industry!

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Now it can be told that part of the P3 trillion national budget for the year 2016 includes the proposed modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Of this fund, P25 billion ($552 million) would be used to purchase two frigates, two twin-engine long-range patrol aircraft and three aerial surveillance radars and payment for 12 FA-50 light fighters that we bought from South Korea. This is considered a record purchase for the Philippines, which for many years was forced to go on a budget belt tightening plan during the past administrations.

You may accuse me of being an armchair general, but if you asked me, I wouldn’t get those two Frigates and instead have our local shipyards come up with 20 low-draft Fastcraft (similar to our Supercat Fast Ferries that ply the Cebu-Ormoc route or the Cebu-Tagbilaran route) that can be easily built locally and armed with ship-to-ship missiles that can knock out warships five times its size. When will our AFP officers realize that we don’t need a deep water Navy. What we need are small fast ships that can patrol our large coastline, many of which have very shallow depths.

Ships can also carry Harpoon or Exocet ship-to-air missiles and thanks to its low draft, it can operate in the shallow part of the contested areas in the Spratlys or the Bajo de Masinloc. Best of all, it can be built locally (which means giving work to Filipinos) and maintained by our local shipyards. Since our AFP is tied with an umbilical cord to the US Armed Forces, maybe our Defense Department ought to check out what the United States Navy delivered to the Egyptian Navy two years ago, when they delivered the first of four Fast Missile Craft (FMC) under its Foreign Military Sales program. So why can’t the Philippines also be placed under this US Foreign Military Sales Program?

But in my book, this proposed modernization program is meaningless unless the Philippine government brings back the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) as a compulsory subject in our universities and colleges. There is no argument that the cheapest way to train potential soldiers for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is through the ROTC. In the first place, the ROTC was withdrawn as a compulsory subject in our schools due to problems like corruption and hazing of officers. But unfortunately, the hazing and the corruption have continued.

What the Philippine government should have done was to repackage the training of ROTC cadets. I still recall my ROTC days at the University of San Carlos (USC) when we used World War II vintage Springfield rifles. We even had a 105 Howitzer cannon. But when Martial Law was declared, all these weapons were confiscated by the military and replaced with wooden rifles and this was the start of the sharp decline of the AFP.

In the US, their Reservist Forces use state of the art weaponry… Abrams Tanks, F-16 Fighting Falcons and Black Hawk helicopters so that when these Reservist Forces are called into action, there would be no more need to retrain them. This what we should be doing to the ROTC and more. The ROTC cadets should also be trained for Disaster Preparedness programs. They can be trained to search buildings that collapsed due to earthquakes or become search and rescue teams in times of typhoons where warm bodies are needed immediately.

I don’t know how many columns we have already written about the return of the ROTC, which AFP officers welcome with open arms because they know too well that their modernization program would be worthless if they do not have soldiers to man those patrol boats, fly those new planes or occupy areas with boots on the ground. So let’s bring back the ROTC!

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