The Manila Times Debt servicing needs clarification


OR the first time since 1993, the proposed General Appro- priations Act submitted by Mala- cañang to Congress did not in- clude debt servicing. This means that congressmen and senators will have to look elsewhere for sources of funds for their congres- sional initiatives. For the past two decades, leg- islators had been cutting the ap- propriations for debt service and realigning the cuts to their favorite projects or depart- ments. This is no longer pos- sible because Malacañang re- moved the automatic appropria- tions, which include debt pay- ments, from the budget it sub- mitted to Congress. Budget Sec- retary Butch Abad explained that the spending for automatic appropriations does not need congressional authorization. Indeed, the “cuts” in debt serv- icing are more imaginary than real. There can’t be any actual cut


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because the government is obliged to pay for the debts. Now, if the realignment is followed by the Department of Budget and Man- agement (DBM), the budget deficit is certain to increase cor- responding to the amount cut from debt service.


I agree with the rationale of the DBM in withholding debt service from any congressional scrutiny. However, there are still some issues that must be clari- fied. What will Malacañang do if the estimated amount for debt servicing turns out to be in- flated? Debt servicing for 2011 amounts to P357 billion, of which P120.8 billion pertains to foreign obligations. The fiscal managers of the administration had assumed an exchange rate of P47 to the dollar but there are financial analysts predicting that the peso might even strengthen to P40 to a dollar! Sen. Ralph Recto said that


rate turns out to be lower than the assumed figure? Then that is added extra money. More money at Malacañang’s sole discretion? I hope that Congress could put


EFREN L. DANAO


every peso lower than the as- sumed exchange rate would mean a difference of about P2.55 billion. If the analysts are correct that a dollar would be worth P40, then the P7 differ- ence would translate to about P17.85 billion. How will this amount be used? Since debt service is not part of the na- tional budget, can Malacañang use it anyway it pleases, without congressional authorization? The actual amount of debt serv- icing is determined not only by the exchange rate but also by the interest rate. What if the interest


a provision in the proposed budget declaring any excess of the amount for debt servicing should be used for the unprogrammed budget. This way, Congress will have a say on how to use the ex- cess from the allocated amount for debt service. Incidentally, Sen. Frank Drilon, chairman of the Senate Commit- tee on Finance, said that 43 per- cent of the country’s debts were incurred by government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs). Why and how did this happen?


Sen. Edgardo Angara believes that the “extremely negative” fi- nancial position of several GOCCs is partially due to their “imprudence” in debt manage- ment. SEJA said that Presidential


A grammar conversation on parenthetical usage


ET me share with you an e- mail conversation I just had with a friend, Palanca Awards Hall of Famer, Ed Maranan: Ed: Joe, here’s a line from one


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of my children’s stories: “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose in- terest in his little birthday gift— and yes, pride in his grandpa— were growing by the minute.” Am I right in seeing more than one subject in the subordinate clause which calls for a plural form verb, or does the word “interest” subsume the rest of the clause and thus call for a singular verb? Me: The operative subject in the subordinate clause is defi- nitely the singular noun “inter- est.” The subject “pride” in the parenthetical “and yes, pride in his grandpa” doesn’t compound the operative subject (a paren- thetical being an optional gram- matical element), so “interest” is the only operative subject in that subordinate clause. We therefore have a subject-verb disagreement error here because the sentence uses the plural verb “were” for the singular noun “interest.” Ed: Aha, but if I were to con- struct the sentence in this manner:


JOSE A. CARILLO


“Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose in- terest in his little birthday gift and yes, pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute.” . . . would the sentence with the plural “were” now be correct? Me: Yes, definitely! It would greatly clarify matters, though, if the word “yes” is preceded by a comma to make it a full-fledged interruptive. Otherwise, some readers might misconstrue the whole clause “pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute” it- self to be the interruptive. Ed: Just a follow-up. Look at these two constructions: 1. “Those words seemed to


have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and, yes, pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute.” 2. “Those words seemed to


have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and yes, pride in his grandpa, were growing by the minute.” The first is your suggested place- ment of the comma—before “yes.” What if the comma were placed after grandpa? And here’s still an- other possible construction: 3. “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and, yes, pride in his grandpa, were growing by the minute.” Three commas in all. Would this not more fully solve the problem of ambiguity and observe the rule of agreement? You said that with- out the comma before “yes,” read- ers might misconstrue “(and yes,) pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute” as the interruptive, with a faulty agreement, but this would not be the case because “whose interest in his little birth- day gift” would then be a lost, dan- gling paraphrase without a verb, would it not? Me: I think the use of more commas to resolve the ambigu- ity in that construction just adds more grammatical and structural wrinkles to the sentence. In Sen- tence #2, in particular, putting a


Legacy pollution


ELLAGIO, Italy: This breath- takingly idyllic lakeside region in the Italian Alps is perhaps the inappropriate venue for a confer- ence on toxic wastes and “legacy pollution.” But given the severe and far-reaching health impacts of con- taminated bodies of water, air and agricultural land in over 80 coun- tries around the world, Lake Como’s pristine waters could well serve as a constant reminder of how natural ecosystems should remain undefiled to benefit humanity. Those of us participating in a roundtable on legacy pollution in developing countries—mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead and persist- ent organic pollutants accumulated over time and left indisposed after mining activities have ceased or military bases have long left—were given the lowdown on the extent of the problems facing many coun- tries in the developing world. In many of these low- to medium-in- come countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the former So- viet Union, communities continue to suffer from the debilitating ef- fects of mercury in the water, lead in the air, or pesticides and heavy metals in the soil. While most toxic pollution is localized, other pollut- ants, like mercury, are trans-bound- ary and find their way into food chains in oceans. We learned that in the Global


B NERIC ACOSTA Manila’s once-magnificent Pasig


River, the object of many poets’ or composers’ musings, is virtually dead, choked with domestic refuse and the effluents of countless indus- tries. The Manila Bay and the Laguna de Bay have sadly become gigantic cesspools, as are bodies of water in abandoned or existing mining sites—large-scale and artisanal— elsewhere in the country. To date, the government has yet to compel the United States to take responsi- bility for the reportedly unmanaged or untreated loads of toxic wastes left behind in Subic and Clark, as well as work out a compensatory or long-term remediation plan for the contaminated areas.


As such, legacy pollution poses a


heavy, long-term burden in that the “polluting activity is defunct and the polluter [is] no longer traceable or responsible.” But without serious


Inventory Project of the Blacksmith Institute and the United Nations Industrial Development Organiza- tion (UNIDO), which the Euro- pean Commission, the Asian De- velopment Bank and Green Cross Switzerland support, the Philip- pines has some of the most con- taminated sites. Toxic pollutants in these sites exceed international standards, directly affecting about three million people. The project also mentioned, for instance, the Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando river system in Bulacan as one of the most contaminated in the world, with high concentrations of ar- senic, lead, cyanide, cadmium and mercury. Factories of certain formal and informal industries, such as those engaged in recycling lead acid batteries, refining gold and pre- cious metals, making firecrackers or explosives and jewelry making, line the congested banks of the mean- dering tri-river system.


clean-up effort, these sites pose very real environmental and health threats. We only have to recall Marinduque’s Boac River two dec- ades ago, which was contaminated by the breaching of the tailings pond of the Canadian mining giant Placer Dome. Reports of high occurrences of skin disease, miscarriages, still- births, birth defects, heart ailments, leukemia and cancers have been le- gion. To date, litigation and class- action suits against the multina- tional company, which has since divested ownership of Philippine operations, remain locked in legal battles here and abroad.


In Mindanao and other mineral- ized areas where large- and small- scale mining activities operate, the lack of proper regulation or basic enforcement of environmental laws almost guarantees the proliferation of future “legacy pollution” sites. Diwalwal in Compostela Valley is a highly-contested zone where min- ers collude with local authorities, the police and military in a mad gold rush, stripping the biodiversity- rich mountain of much of its natu- ral wealth and dumping mercury into the rivers and streams that flow into the Davao Gulf.


Legacy—or “future legacy”—pol- lution sites may not be in the im-


Global view


mediate radar of government pro- grams and budgetary allocations for clean-up and remediation interven- tions, but addressing this problem is inextricably linked to more than just environmental imperatives— clean air, safe groundwater supplies, protected wildlife and biodiversity, conserved topsoil. Public health is also put at great risk, especially the well-being of women and chil- dren belonging to the poor and marginalized sectors.


This interaction of economic and industrial activity with ecol- ogy and human health has lasting implications for food and water se- curity. To allow this to go the way of unsustainable, destructive and life-threatening practices will only lead to negative and vicious cycli- cal impacts for poverty and eco- nomic growth.


Swimming in the placid, almost luminescent-in-sunshine waters of Lake Como, one realizes how such a simple recreational activity is— or should be—a fundamental right for all. And how, beyond provid- ing material security, the only real legacy we ought to bequeath to our children and all future generations is a “safe and healthy ecology.”


opinion@manilatimes.net


comma after “grandpa” detaches the interruptive “yes, pride in his grandpa” from the main sentence and makes the plural verb form “were growing” erroneous. Sentence #3 is better than Sen- tence #2 in that it provides a comma before “yes,” thus making it a full-fledged interruptive sepa- rate from the parenthetical “pride in his grandpa.” However, both sentences suffer from the same subject-verb disagreement error. We can make that error disap-


pear by simply using a pair of dashes instead of commas to set off the parenthetical from the rest of the sentence:


“Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose in- terest in his little birthday gift— and, yes, pride in his grandpa— was growing by the minute.” Here, the pair of dashes pro- vides a much stronger break in the thought and structure of the sentence and this prevents the parenthetical from messing up the sentence grammatically.


Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum at http://josecarilloforum.com


j8carillo@yahoo.com L


Decree 1177 or the Budget Re- form Decree of 1977 encouraged this “imprudence” by automati- cally backing all GOCC debts with government guarantee. In the Fourteenth Congress,


SEJA filed a bill seeking to end the government’s automatic guaran- tee of GOCC debts to make them more responsible for their debts. His bill also required the inclu- sion of the GOCC budgets in the annual budget of the na- tional government submitted by the President to Congress. That measure did not pass muster and was consigned to the ar- chives. Now that the excesses of the top officials of the GOCCs are unraveling, it is an opportune time for SEJA to refile that bill. Speaking of GOCCs, do you


know that the Philippine Recla- mation Authority (PRA) had mortgaged the Manila City Jail to the Home Guaranty Corp. for P1 billion? This was revealed last


week by lawyer Elmer Cadano, the HGC officer in charge, dur- ing an inquiry by the Senate Committee on Finance. Former Socio-Economic Plan- ning Secretary Winnie Monsod went into uncontrolled laughter when she heard this. Senate Presi- dent Juan Ponce Enrile and Drilon, however, did not find this a laughing matter. They want to find out how the PRA came to own the title to the Manila City Jail when its mandate is to reclaim land.


JPE also questioned how the


PRA was able to mortgage the city jail. “Can you also mortgage the Bilibid? Can you mortage Iwa- hig?” Enrile wanted to know. Sen. Serge Osmena said the P1 billion could have gone a long way in providing more housing loans to Pag-ibig members.


efrendanao2003@yahoo.com Green SONA


AST Thursday, the Green Con- vergence for Safe Food and


Healthy Environment, a loose coalition of networks and NGOs, held its third Green State of Na- ture Address (SONA). We were very appreciative that DENR Sec- retary Ramon Paje stayed the en- tire day to hear out our long com- plaints, urgent pleas and sturdy arguments particularly on for- estry issues and mining. He wowed the audience with his comprehensive knowledge of en- vironmental issues, familiarity with the bureaucracy and sincer- ity in making good PNoy’s prom- ise of a transparent and honest government. So different from former DENR secretaries who were almost all politicians (read: “full of sound and fury, signify- ing nothing”) who were fond of declaring motherhood state- ments, we are very hopeful that finally this administration will bring about significant change for our ravaged environment. The green SONA started with a description of the Philippines being a megadiversity paradise, a superstar of sorts when it comes to the variety of unique plants and animals. We outlined the major environmental problems that have wreaked havoc on our life support systems such as de- forestation and degradation of our coastal ecosystems, destruc- tive modern agricultural practices and worsening pollution. The environmental problems have resulted mainly from applying inappropriate technologies as well as social, economic and po- litical context of these applica- tions. The previous administra- tion’s paradigm of development is based on extracting resources and manipulating nature beyond what is sustainable. This paradigm flowed from government’s heavy reliance on the foreign capital in- vestment of transnational corpo- rations (TNCs) to spur and fi- nance national development that has resulted in a bias for foreign interests that have unfortunately ravaged our natural resources. This bias is concretely mani- fested in such decisions as the following: the Mining Act of 1995; the signing and ratifica- tion of the mega-bilateral treaty, the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement; the pro- motion of GMO products and genetic engineering, which pri- marily benefit TNCs; leasing large tracts of land for the food and biofuel needs of foreign na- tionals; plans to tap foreign companies for the proposed re- habilitation of the Bataan Nu- clear Power Plant (BNPP); and moves to amend certain eco- nomic provisions of the Philip- pine Constitution to allow for- eign ownership of natural re- sources and agricultural lands. If we continue to subscribe to this paradigm the problem of poverty and the widening gap between the rich and the poor can only worsen. We then presented a road map for the new administration that calls for the restoration of our forests particularly passing the Forest Resources Bill.


It will, among others, use the functional definition of forest; ensure protection of all natural forests, involve LGUs in forest management and implement as a priority the restoration of for- ests that will use native tree spe- cies. Furthermore, President Noy’ s administration should review all controversial and question- able mining project applications;


ANABELLE E. PLANTILLA


revoke EO 270-A or the National Policy on Revitalizing Mining in the Philippines; pass the Philip- pine Mineral Resources Act which is more protective not only of the environment, but also of people and of indigenous cultures. As President Noy has promised, the government must now impose a moratorium on new mining ap- plications while it reviews pend- ing mining applications. A shift completely, albeit gradually, to non carbon-based renewable and clean energy should be done. We should move from exploring coal and petro- leum to developing the potentials of wind geothermal and solar power, which are more than suf- ficient to meet the country’s en- ergy needs. Biofuels programs should not prejudice agricultural areas and forestlands. Further- more, applications for coal-fired thermal plants need to be stopped and the revival of the BNPP, nuclear energy develop- ment option and other future proposals for nuclear power plants must be rejected. We should abandon plans to con- struct large dams such as the Laiban Dam and encourage the more sustainable and more eco- nomical small community hydro plants. We need to develop a comprehensive electronic (e- waste) policy framework and im- plementation plan. It is time that the Philippines ratify the Basel Ban Amendment, which prohib- its all forms of toxic waste dump- ing from rich countries like Japan. Natural and sustainable agri- culture should be propagated and abandon the program of the pre- vious administration, which aimed to make the Philippines a major user and exporter of GMO products. Today, some enlight- ened LGUs have banned GMOs and have gone organic, namely, Negros, Mindoro and Bohol. We should enact laws for regulating, testing, labeling, and planting GMOs and even more urgently, ban them from the Philippines. Economic and socio cultural human rights must be protected by ensuring compensation and remediation is given to victims of corporate environmental disasters (eg Petron oil spill, Marinduque mines tailing spill) and stop- ping the militarization of rural communities affected by min- ing, logging and other develop- ment projects. Finally, since we believe in President Noy’s resolve to extir- pate corruption in government, a program that will address graft and corruption as well as pro- mote environmental justice in the natural resources sector should be developed.


The anti-corruption program should involve civil society in the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of all projects related to this issue. Secretary Paje promised to host the next dialogue with NGOs next month. We look forward to the continued discussions and open communication lines.


orgsus@haribon.org.ph


SATURDAY


September 18, 2010


A 5


opinion


FREE CORNER


ENGLISH PLAIN & SIMPLE


INSIDE CONGRESS


NATURE FOR LIFE


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