Bamboozled! Before NBN and Garci, There Was Spratly
Before the Hello, Garci scandal that nearly had President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo out of Malacañang, we had The Spratly issue. But we would not realize the importance of this Spratly deal with China until just a month ago in the midst of the NBN deal scandal. It’s unfortunate however, because the China State Visit was reported heavily back in 2004. The Spratly deal was also reported widely as being in pre-exploration stage. The Northrail project was also reported on. And yet, there was no one. And I mean, no one, from where I sit, raised a hullabaloo until now.
Granted, in the last few years we have grown a bit wiser when it comes to President Gloria Arroyo. From the Hello, Garci scandal up until the NBN deal / ZTE scandal, and even all the way up to these extra-judicial killings. We have grown wiser. And yet, we have to ask ourselves, myself included, how come that media, lawmakers, politicians, reporters, government officials, and even the academe could not be more skeptical even before the Garci scandal.
First, of course, is the term pre-exploration. And then comes the terms like “investments” and “trade” and million dollar figures.
In the end, including the Spratly deal, all these agreements with China, we were all awed by China as they were willing to help out a less fortunate country in Asia. I believe, even the newspapers bought into the act, and we are reaping the rewards of our lack of skepticism, vigilance, research, and even a little investigation.
Even an Inquirer story after the China Visit back in 2004 gives us a sense of our own naïveté,
She was in seventh heaven. This was how President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo described her feelings yesterday as she prepared to fly back to Manila from a three-day state visit to China, bringing with her a harvest of nearly $1 billion worth of investments and soft loans, mostly in the trade, energy and agri-fisheries sectors.
She was expected to arrive in Manila late last night.
Hours before departure, Ms Arroyo witnessed the signing of five major trade agreements between Filipino and Chinese business executives at the Kerry Centre Hotel here.
The Philippine National Oil Corp. also hammered out an agreement with the Harbin Power to construct a $50-million coal power plant, according to Perez.
Earlier, China pledged to infuse some $400 million for the construction of phase 1 of the North Railway project, which runs from Caloocan through Malolos, Bulacan to Clark, Pampanga.
“The Northrail project will help ease the decongestion of Metro Manila, and develop Clark-Subic as logistics hub,” Perez said.
All the investments and loans amount to $992 million, officials said.
Other contracts that were proposed for signing.
These involved the the supply of 70 containers of coco coir, geo-textile, coco log and coco mat worth $1 million to China, the supply of 4,800 metric tons of coconut-based alkyd resin ($5.16 million), and the supply of 3,600 metric tons of coco fiber ($720,000).
With all these announcements, you would think that we were being given gifts, but as we now know, because of the education that The Filipino people have had these past few weeks with regards to the NBN deal, nothing in this world is FREE, especially when it comes from the China government in cooperation with The Arroyo Administration.
And because, we hadn’t realize the extent of the corruption stories which would envelope the Arroyo Administration after the Hello, Garci incident, we as a nation just couldn’t fathom such an intricate web of possible corruptive practices. Even if we just had overthrown such a President in Erap.
Ricky and Manuel have great coverage on The Spratly deal, as does Ellen. I’m still trying to go over the documents and trying to finally do a thorough research before I even try to attempt such an in depth article into the Spratly issue.
As we read articles from these three journalists, we do however, get a sense, that the extent with which The Spratly agreement with China was made to look good for the pubic, probably also fooled opposition lawmakers and private sector groups. And it was also the Arroyo administration that made sure that key information in Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking just wasn’t made known.
In fact, we have to look to the NBN deal for opening our eyes, and then realize that we have grown as a nation in the aspect of being more critical of government and having the skepticism to look at “agreements”, “deals”, “loans”, and “investments” in a whole new light.
The Spratly deal is another notch in The Arroyo Corruption timeline, now let’s see what the Senators can do with this information.
Lastly, again going back to Ricky in his continuing coverage on the Spratly issue,
tags: nbn deal, president gloria macapagal arroyo, spratly islands issueNote that the President is allowed to enter into agreements with foreign corporations to explore for oil, provided this is done in accordance with the law and provided Congress is notified of the agreements within 30 days of its execution.
Congress was never notified of the agreement and the Palace had no intention of doing so. In fact, the agreement has never been released to the public. So how did the Palace lawyers get around this?
By simply referring to the agreement as a pre-exploration activity.
The palace geniuses and their allies pushing for the deal argued that by labelling the seismic study as a pre-exploration activity, it did not constitute exploration per se, and therefore they had no obligation to notify Congress. But others raised the issue that seismic mapping was in fact already part of the process of exploration. In their eagerness to sign the deal, they said by simply referring to it as a pre-exploration agreement that would be enough to circumvent the constitution. The problem is simply declaring it as pre-exploration doesn’t necessarily make it so. But that’s why the text of the agreement refers to it as a pre-exploration activity. And that’s why the Palalce press release above made it a point to say that the agreement was not an exploration agreement, but merely a study.
The problem is that any oil industry expert will tell you that seismic mapping is in fact, part and parcel of exploration activity. In the oil exploration business, pre-exploration activity consists of mostly of studying the regulations, lining up the financing, and obtaining the licenses and the other government approvals necessary to begin exploration. Again, don’t take my word for it. Do the research. Talk to oil industry experts. Google “oil exploration” or “seismic exploration” and you’ll see ample literature out there on seismic studies and how they constitute part of exploration.
