How come no Filipino gets caught abroad with bullets?

The Social Welfare secretary technically is right: they’re not hiding Metro Manila beggars and street children from APEC’s sight. For the information of prying bishops, only those in the routes of the visiting dignitaries have been rounded up for weeklong fattening in beach resorts. Meaning, around Malacañang, bayside Roxas Boulevard from Intramuros-Luneta to the Entertainment City casinos, the airport, and the Makati financial district. In the bulk of the metropolis’ 17 cities and towns remain the mendicants and waifs. They’re still panhandling, if not sniffing solvent to numb hunger or lying longingly outside restaurants. After APEC the regular occupants of the sanitized routes will be released, culture shocked, back to the streets “where they belong.”

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Needing hiding away too are Metro Manila’s ten million-strong middle class. They’re so pesky. Their daily commuting and motoring cause traffic, their air travels the “tanim bala” extortion racket, and their general presence the rising street crimes. Thus to be shut down for a week are their schools and offices, shops and factories, so they’d be tempted to drive out to the country – no sailing or flying because of the no-sail, no-fly rule during APEC – and be out of the way. To heck with business opportunity losses or delayed studies, messed up flights and disrupted lives as the rulers put their best foot forward for the visitors. To any bellyacher the haciendero at the Palace will snarl, “Buhay ka pa naman, di ba? (You’re still alive, aren’t you?)” After all, they’re all the same – the victims of the Luneta hostage taking and of Super Typhoon Yolanda, of the Zamboanga City siege and of the Mamasapano debacle, and those pesky Metro Manilans.

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The government is in grave danger. It has entrusted the APEC overall coordinating to un-factual Amb. Marciano Paynor II. Junior here has yet to learn the rudiments of lying that his haciendero bosses Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas have mastered, along with encargados Transport Sec. Joseph Emilio Abaya and NAIA general manager Jose Angel Honrado, and muchachos Roland Recomono (Office of Transport Security, OTS) and Pablo Francisco Balagtas (PNP Aviation Security Group, AvseGroup).

Those six imaginatively use statistics, albeit inapt, to bolster their tall tales. Paynor simply lies, as shown in his statements about the “tanim bala” controversy on the eve of the APEC summit.

“It’s a very local issue,” he said in trying like his fellow-fibbers to downplay the extortion scam at the Manila international airport. “It’s only in this country that we use bullets as amulets, and this is a reality.”

Like the six he is sweeping the problem under the rug by making it look like those caught with bullets in their carry-ons are just superstitious morons, not victims of shakedown. He forgets too that not only Filipinos have been arrested in the past two months, but also a Caucasian American missionary, a 77-year-old Filipino American, a crippled US immigrant, a Japanese tourist and a businessman, a Korean, and a Vietnamese. Like the Filipino victims they were not amulet carriers, but were merely forced to sign so, to be let off after forcible payoffs. As for Filipinos being the only users of bullets as amulets, Paynor had better not play anthropologist, as it’s true of all races.

Paynor said all the APEC delegates would be exempt from baggage checks. Hopefully he doesn’t mean that the crazy among them can bring onboard forbidden little items like lighters and explosives, firearms and knives, gels and drugs.

“As far as the (APEC) economies are concerned, all of them (would be) met and sent off (the airport),” he chortled. “So the probability of (bullet planting) happening is almost – well there’s nothing absolute in this world, but almost zero – 0.001 percent... I think it’s a local concern.”

So there. Paynor plays down the “tanim bala” only because he thinks the summiteers and their ministers, spouses, aides, media entourages, and other delegates would be exempted from usual flight security inspections, and fetched and escorted. Good for them. But too bad for the extortionists, who must forgo the P30,000 per victim for an entire week. But not to fret; they’d be back in business as soon as APEC ends. P-Noy and Mar’s, Abaya and Honrado’s, Recomono and Balagtas’ continuing denial of the racket’s existence will make sure of that.

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The release of 12 arrestees for bullets in their carry-ons is proof that the “tanim bala” racket exists. This is despite the continuing denials of the six-plus-one mentioned above.

Chief Prosecutor Nolasco Fernandez Jr. of Pasay City, where the NAIA is, has found no probable cause against the 12, who include a 71-year-old grandma, a 56-year-old domestic returning to work in Hong Kong, an American missionary, and a 77-year-old Fil-Am.

Fernandez noted that in all 12 cases, the OTS and/or AvseGroup failed to submit a crucial document; that is, the requisite certification of a breach of the firearms and ammunition law.

Why the charge sheets were defective is obvious. The OTS-AvseGroup had no real evidence to press charges. In the case of the 56-year-old domestic Nanay Gloria Ortinez, the OTS security screeners supposedly discovered in her bag a stubby .45-caliber bullet, a photo of which they submitted. But the actual bullet evidence presented by the AvseGroup was a thinner .22-caliber ammo half the length.

Fernandez recommended further investigation of the 12 cases. He would do well to look into the actions of the arresting officers. Invariably not one of them identified themselves. Not one read the arrestees the Miranda Rights. Not one is trained in arresting and investigating.

Another proof of the existence of “tanim bala” is Honrado’s latest action at the NAIA Terminal-3. There he has barred reporters, even if they hold the very access and accreditation cards that he himself signed in power trip. (Predecessors left such menial job to low subordinates.) Now why would Honrado bar newsmen from the premises where the racket is most prevalent, if he’s not hiding something?

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Yet another proof of the racket’s existence is the very statistics that Abaya waved in the faces of reporters last week, and which Roxas quoted in part. Supposedly there have been 5,736 arrestees in the two years and ten months since 2012. Mostly Filipinos, they’re all superstitious amulet carriers, if not careless visitors of firing ranges.

But think about it. If those 5,736 are amulet carriers, a good number of them must have attempted to sneak their bullets onboard their flights to the Philippines. Yet how come they were never arrested? Don’t tell us that the security screeners in America, Europe, Australia, China, and Southeast Asia are dumb, while the ill-trained, ill-equipped OTS-AvseGroup checkers are A-1.

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