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IT is
said that Sulpicio Lines has racked up more casualties
in civilian shipping than the German General Staff in
any comparable period of the War for the Atlantic during
World War II. There was Doña Paz with more than 4,000
casualties, which broke the Guinness Book of Records.
There
was Princess of the Orient with more than 200
casualties, and lately Princess of the Stars with close
to 800 people feared dead. You will notice that Sulpicio
Lines, unlike all but two other entities, is not
preceded by “the.” That is because Sulpicio Lines is as
closely associated with death as God and the CIA.
And, to
this day, Sulpicio Lines has eluded either full
accountability or correspondingly tighter regulation
than its funereal reputation might lead one to expect.
And the reason is that in cases like Sulpicio Lines, the
culpability of the subject of government investigation
offers, by the financial success of its risky
operations, the irresistible temptation to absolve it in
the teeth of incontrovertible evidence.
In
short, Sulpicio Lines is and has long been a very
profitable enterprise. To its credit, the reason is that
it offers the cheapest rates of any public convenience
on the high seas and apparently does so by cutting back
on basic safety and ordinary prudence. It is as
though—and it probably is because—both Sulpicio and the
government agencies that should be watching it merely
wait out the public interest, which is sure to make way
with the equally urgent public need to travel, and
travel cheap. In short, when nature calls, if you gotta
go, you gotta go. The owners of Sulpicio Lines and their
government protectors know this. Traveling on Sulpicio,
according to its critics, is like being forced to play
Russian roulette by your Vietcong captors. In bad
weather, four chambers are loaded.
Worse, a
rightly cynical public plays along with the owners of
Sulpicio Lines and its government protectors by saying
that nothing will come of the present investigation
anymore than anything came of the ones before. And so,
Sulpicio Lines goes its merry way, laughing delightedly
like its female spokesperson on TV, apparently over a
surprising—even to her—ability to speak some English.
The
problem with being cynical is that it is a self-filling
attitude. If you don’t believe anything will come of
anything, nothing will happen, indeed. And if you truly
believe Sulpicio Lines will literally get away with
murder, it will.
It is
time to do something about that attitude and about the
situation. It is time to prove the owners of Sulpicio
Lines and its government protectors wrong. And that is
not by haling the owners to a congressional inquiry or
before justice department investigation or even to
court. It is by government taking over the operations of
Sulpicio Lines so as to continue its public service but
with the precautions it has studiously ignored, and
denying the owners of Sulpicio Lines the wherewithal to
escape accountability again.
To be
sure, in the Steel Seizure cases, the US Supreme Court
struck down President Truman’s takeover of the
operations of steel companies that were essential, in
the executive’s view, to the Korean War effort. He
wanted to avert a potentially crippling labor strike.
But the Court there said the president, in that case,
could point to no legal authority for the takeover of a
private business, which was only a few of several more
and bigger steel companies.
That
would not be the case with Sulpicio Lines because every
legislative franchise to operate a public utility or
service provides for government takeover in an
emergency. There is legal authority for the President to
order a takeover.
Article
12, Section 17 of the Constitution provides that in
times of national emergency, when the public interest so
requires, the state may, during the emergency and under
reasonable terms prescribed by the state, temporarily
take over or direct the operation of any privately owned
public utility or business affected with public
interest. There is a constitutional mandate for the
President to order a takeover.
And
there is constitutional authority that this power does
not require enabling legislation, allows the President
herself to dictate reasonable terms to the enforcing
agencies and that any business affected with a public
interest like travel is covered. She can order it today,
and from as far away as Washington, D.C.
She must
use the military so that no conflict-of-interest issue
can arise, as would happen if she asked a competing
company to carry out her directive. And, of course, she
cannot order the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) to
do it because the Marina’s diligence is precisely in
question, as might be likened to asking Al Capone to
manage Alcatraz.
The
typhoon season is upon us, and it just started. People
need to travel, and most people can only travel cheaply
by sea. The government needs to assure their safety.
Note: The word is “assure,” which is to make provision
for safety. It is not “ensure,” which is to make
provision for loss. Sulpicio already does the latter, in
a token manner of speaking, for its insurer has fixed
the value of every life taken at P200,000, if the
victim’s family is willing and able to wait out the long
settlement process, or for much less if they need pesos,
pronto.
The
assurance of the government cannot come by way of yet
another warning on a recidivist management that knows it
can get away with murder again. The government’s
assurance must come by an actual takeover of the
operations of this particular yet essential public
utility so that the public will be safe and justice will
not be waylaid in the courts.
It is
also good for their souls that Filipinos see why
government takeovers are not bad, per se, but provided
in the Constitution because, when time is of the essence
and the public safety requires it, the government we pay
for must step in and take matters in its own hands. The
possibility of abuse in no way derogates from the
utility and necessity of this extraordinary power. That
would be real people power, for it fleshes out the
people’s primary right of self-defense. |
