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Office
staff, accounting clerks and receptionists do not
threaten, much less inflict bodily harm, as a matter of
course, or as part of their jobs as the back office of a
modest fishing company. They were paper-shufflers and
bean-counters—threats only to tuna and tilapia. They
were neither terrorists nor storm troopers. But the same
cannot be said of those who claimed that they were only
doing their jobs.
Last
month 60 government agents stormed and raided the
Navotas dockyards and the offices of one modest fishing
company. News reports say the agents “threatened to
shoot [the] two respondents with Armalites, handcuffed
and arrested [them] without any warrant of arrest and
allegedly mauled [them] even when inside the lawmen’s
vehicle.”
Two
contractors were forcibly taken, later released.
Consequently, the government agents were “charged with
slight physical injuries, violation of domicile, grave
threats and acts of lasciviousness.” On that last
curious accusation, the wife of one employee complained
her breasts had been fondled during the raid.
On the
part of the state, the accusation leveled against the
fishing company was that it “import[ed] diesel oil
without paying the necessary duties and taxes.” The
agents were armed with a letter issued by the Bureau of
Customs authorizing them to inspect one vessel for the
alleged importation. The basis for the raid were
surveillance reports as well as the account of an
unidentified “deep-penetration agent.” Never mind that
the company presented documentary proof its oil had been
purchased locally from Petron.
Likely
part of an overall strategy that falls under the
broadsword of energy security—where the latter is
defined not so much as independence from foreign and
aberrant influences of volatile supply and international
prices but more on domestic demand, illegal hoarding,
smuggling and local pricing—the draconian measures take
on an inordinate guise.
The
crudity is not unexpected.
The use
of brute and deadly force has increasingly become the
default economic policy, first threatened and then
brazenly brandished by ineffective economic governance
that finds in the martial option not merely comfortable
competence, but the only kind its mental capacities can
accommodate inside constricted medulla oblongata.
The
testosterone charge fits snugly inside the ordnance
chambers of gunpowder-filled cranial cavities and it is
discharged through rifled barrels. Typical of howitzers,
its blasts are loud but the aim is bad, the accuracy
indiscriminate. The military metaphor is appropriate
viewed against the staffing pattern of threatened
dispensations. In those, even among esoteric positions
that deal with economic governance, grunts with
gunpowder gonads for brains are appointed and the
martial option becomes the default.
In one
government department, this tact is quickly developing
into a refrain repeated often enough to insist the
imagery of success despite its mere insinuation. To
place money where its virtual mouth is, the department
has asked for P84 million to fund and fatten a
storm-trooper unit to carry out its options.
In a
report by the Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring
Office, this department seeks P1.1 billion or an
increase of 30.13 percent over its 2008 budget. Most of
these come not out of increased capital outlays that
enhance the energy infrastructure, but rather from jumps
in personal services of 12.4 percent and operating
expenses of 21.1 percent.
The
largest increase comes from an automatic appropriation
for a “special account” where the leap from 2008 is a
whopping 33.6 percent, surpassing all averages. The
special account will comprise as much as 87 percent of
the department’s total budget. If the expenditure is not
for infrastructure, what might that buy?
Under
“special account,” P49 million is earmarked for the
Presidential Task Force on the Security of Energy
Facilities and the Enforcement of Energy Laws and
Standards.
This
security and enforcement contingent will have P34
million in capital outlays with P13 million representing
buildings and structures, P11 million for office
equipment, furniture and fixtures, and P10 million for
machineries and more equipment. With the “special
account” under automatic appropriations, the total
amount for the security and enforcement task force is
approximately P84 million.
An
allocation of P84 million for virtual storm troopers is
questionable on two aspects. To appreciate the sense and
magnitude of the incremental P84 million so that the
department might have the benefit of an adventure into
the action-filled battleground of security and
enforcement beyond its staid and sedate policy-making
charter, let us match this amount with one of the
department’s dormant accounts.
The
department has under reconciliation various receivable
accounts totaling P130,773,057 which have remained dead
and dormant for over five years. In that time only 31.5
percent or P41,299,147 has been liquidated and the
balance over five fiscal periods has remained
unliquidated. Had the department been more diligent in
liquidating and reconciling receivables then a total of
P89,473,910 would not remain dormant and outstanding. In
effect, competent cash management might have more than
adequately funded the proposed task force rather than
add additional burdens upon the public’s broken backs.
On a
more existential level, relative to its charter, the
department is a policy-making body where brains count
more than brawn and where recent omnibus statutes
regulating its industry devolve enforcement and
quasi-judicial functions elsewhere.
Thus, an
army of troopers is out of place. The security of energy
facilities, depots, oil and fuel tank farms, pipelines
and conduits, transmission towers, power plants and gas
stations are under the ambit of military and police
forces. Same with the enforcement of energy laws when
these are police matters. This department has no
business playing with toy soldiers. |
