Businessmirror may 15, 2016

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Sunday, May 15, 2016 Vol. 11 No. 218

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TIDAL CHALLENGE

Oblivious of the dangers confronting them, two daring fishermen casually sail their fishing boat against the rampaging tides rolling toward them at El Presidente Beach in Buguey, Cagayan, up north straddling the Babuyan Channel. The tiny coastal town is said to be the “Crab Capital of the Philippines.” LEONARDO PERANTE II

Another round of incentives for solar-, wind-power projects China has reclaimed 3,200 acres in South T China Sea disputed area

By Lenie Lectura

president inaugurates Bicol’s first 4-lane bridge

By Manly M. Ugalde Correspondent

L

EGAZPI CITY—President Aquino inaugurated the first Bicol four-lane bridge here four days before the May 9 elections.

The President was accompanied

by Public Works Secretary Rogelio L. Singson, Albay Gov. Joey S. Salceda and City Mayor Noel E. Rosal.

Mr. Aquino proudly crossed on Thursday the P145-million, 135-meter-long Yawa Bridge. It spans the See “Bicol,” A2

A CELEBRATION OF LOVE Dear Lord, when we receive the Eucharist at Mass, it is also a celebration of love, a love for Christ who has become food for our hungry hearts; source of the strength that we need for the battles of life; source of consolation in our pains and sorrows; source of hope in a world shackled by the chains of vice, corruption, callousness, cruelty and despair. May we frequent to receive the Eucharist, thus making us closer to Christ, and making us holy in God’s mercy and love. Amen!

Word & Life, Fr. Sal Putzu, SDB, and Luisa M. Lacson, HFL

@llectura

HE National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) on Friday submitted a recommendation to the Department of Energy (DOE) to implement another round of feed-in tariff (FiT) incentives to developers of solar- and wind-power projects.

“We have already finalized our recommendation to the DOE for the next round of installation targets for solar and wind. It was submitted today [Friday],” NREB Chairman Pedro H. Maniego Jr. said in an interview.

The NREB is the body tasked by the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 to recommend policies, rules and standards to govern the implementation of the law, which granted fiscal and nonfiscal incentives to renewableenergy (RE) projects.

Continued on A2

Mining company paves 22-km road network for Didipio mine up north

By Leonardo Perante II Correspondent

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ANTIAGO CITY—The 22-kilometer service-road network developed by Australian mining firm OceanaGold (Philippines) Inc. to and from its mine site in Didipio, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, through Cabarroguis, Quirino, is undergoing pavement construction, with sharp curves and slopes given top priority.

“The upland highway does not only serve as a delivery road for mineral concentrates, but also serves as a farm-to-market road for large-scale agricultural crops and livestock from the mining village and contour farms nearby,” Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) Regional Director for Cagayan Valley Mario A. Ancheta said.

He said this first city in Isabela is a business confluence point in Cagayan Valley and is a major beneficiary of the farm products coming from hillside farms at the vicinity of the mining project.

Ancheta said residents from the project area, especially those who live along the service road, can now

PESO exchange rates n US 46.5840

Soldiers from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy watch as the USS Blue Ridge arrives at a port in Shanghai on May 6. Seeking to calm escalating tensions in the South China Sea, top generals from China and the US spoke by phone on Thursday, and said they were ready to work out an effective mechanism to prevent confrontation and maintain stability in the region. AP

W A 22-kilometer service road that connects the OceanaGold-Didipio mine site in Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, to the rest of the country undergoes pavement construction. Mines and Geosciences Bureau Cagayan Valley Director Mario A. Ancheta (inset) leads tight monitoring of the large-scale mining project. LEONARDO PERANTE II

reach urban centers, shopping malls, commercial banks, their favorite fast-food chains and university belts quickly via the mining road.

“Farmers in Barangay Didipio find it more convenient to transport their farm products now because of the all-weather road established by the mining firm, which is

gradually being paved. The upland highway was designed according to world-class mine-safety standards, which makes it easier for our MGB team to closely monitor the Didipio mining operation,” Ancheta added.

The MGB regional director said that, while the road was opened in See “Mining,” A2

ASHINGTON—China has reclaimed more than 3,200 acres of land in the southeastern South China Sea. But the country’s focus has shifted to developing and weaponizing those man-made islands so it will have greater control over the maritime region without resorting to armed conflict, according to a new Pentagon report.

In its most detailed assessment to date of China’s island-building program, the defense department said three of the land features on the Spratly Islands now have nearly 10,000-foot runways and large ports in various stages of construction.

And it has excavated deep channels; created and dredged harbors; and constructed communications, logistics and intelligencegathering facilities.

The report argues that the accelerated building effort doesn’t give China any new territorial rights. But it says the airfields, ship facilities, surveillance and weapons equipment will allow China to significantly enhance its long-term presence in the South China Sea.

“This would improve China’s ability to detect and challenge activities by rival claimants or third parties, widen the range of capabilities available to China and reduce the time required to deploy them,” according to the report released on Friday.

See “China,” A2

n japan 0.4273 n UK 67.3372 n HK 6.0037 n CHINA 7.1514 n singapore 33.9459 n australia 34.1228 n EU 53.0079 n SAUDI arabia 12.4221

Source: BSP (13 May 2016 )

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, May 15, 2016

Bicol…

Continued from a1

city’s Peñaranda route and Barangay Rawis that links the province’s Second and First Districts. Barangay Rawis is the site of the Bicol regional center.

In addition to the Yawa Bridge, the President also inaugurated the nearby P350-million Tibu River pumping station, which forms part of the P2-billion Legazpi floodcontrol project.

With the region’s 606 bridges scattered in six provinces including the island provinces of Masbate and Catanduanes, only a total of P1.3 billion have been earmarked this year for the widening of 33 bridges to four lanes. The bridges are within the Maharlika Highway route known as the primary national road, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) records showed.

The Bicol Maharlika Highway

Mining…

stretches the Manila-Quezon-Bicol route passing through the Camarines Sur area toward Sorsogon, bypassing the Camarines Norte route.

With the road widened to four lanes, motorists complained about the hundreds of short two-lane bridges that they claimed pose a great danger to motorists and the public.

For years, the Yawa River (Legazpi-Daraga) route has been a center of controversy as the alleged source of corruption for billions of pesos worth of dredging works.

The continued failure of private contractors and the government to finish dredging works prompted the Diocese of Legazpi to initiate opposition in 2005 against dredging contracts in Albay.

During Typhoon Reming in November 2007, close to 2,000 people died in Albay; 200 of them were residents living along the Yawa River.

Then-Albay Gov. Fernando Gonzalez heaped the blame on the DPWH, with only 25 percent of construction actually finished.

Both DPWH Regional Director Reynaldo Tagudando and Albay Second District Engineering Office District Eng. Danilo Vela cannot be reached for comment.

Rosal said he fought for the widening of the two-lane Yawa Bridge to four lanes as early as 2013, because of the tremendous traffic in the area during rush hour.

He said that, aside from the Yawa bridge expansion, the 500-meterlong bridge approach covering the front of the regional center has also been widened to five lanes.

The DPWH started its roadwidening projects in 2004, yet has barely completed 25 percent of total projects, according to its report during the last quarter of 2015.

Continued from a1

Quirino Province, the direct beneficiaries are local residents of Nueva Vizcaya since the gold-copper project is in the mining village of Didipio in Kasibu town.

“The road has transformed what used to be a sleepy village into a progressive commercial district like a tiny upland city. The direct employment of locals in road maintenance is a great advantage for residents who are always given top priority, including women who are assigned to manage road traffic,” Ancheta said.

The Didipio Corp. (DiCorp), a locally established company that caters to the daily meals of about

2,000 mining workers also employs a number of local residents in charge of road maintenance.

Many see the ongoing pavement construction of the road a favorable project, not only for laborers, but for everyone who regularly commutes to and from the community center and to the project site, because of the safe and friendly road design.

“The good road does not only give convenient access to the project site in general, but has given the ‘go signal’ for local residents to purchase their own service vehicles. Besides, in cases of emergency, the firm’s emergency response

team can easily transport patients to the nearest hospital downtown,” OceanaGold (Philippines) Senior Vice President for Communications and External Affairs Ramoncito Gozar said.

The good roads attract local businessmen from nearby towns to haul their merchandise direct from the farm since the prices of fresh agricultural products are cheaper at farm gate.

“Farmers who do not have the means to transport their harvests could simply call or text their business counterparts from the lowlands to pick up their produce right from the source,” Gozar said.

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Guimaras: There’s more to its world-famous mango than meets the eye

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HEN traveling to more popular local destinations has become commonplace to you and you want to discover a place less traveled, the island province of Guimaras should be a top-of-mind choice.

Located in the Panay Gulf between the islands of Panay and Negros in Western Visayas, Guimaras has many things to offer that sets it apart from its rivals in this part of the world.

The province’s laid-back style is best enjoyed while watching nature’s beauty: Its white-sand beaches, pristine seas, virgin forests, waterfalls, rivers, streams, springs and offshore islets.

While in the province, there’s never a dull moment if you just indulge in any of these activities: boating, bird watching, beach volleyball, trekking, windsurfing, mountain biking, rappelling, snorkeling, paintball and war games, and island-hopping.

There’s also the man-made attractions that will give you a glimpse of history: McArthur’s Wharf, the 18th century Guisi Lighthouse, Punta Blanco Target Range, Navalas Church and Roca Encantada.

Also “must-visits” in your itinerary are the vast mango plantations, the Igang Marine Station of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (Seafdec) and the Taklong Island National Marine Reserve of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, both in the municipality of Nueva Valencia and the windmills in the municipality of San Lorenzo.

Your Guimaras trip will not be exciting and complete without celebrating with the locals the province’s 23rd Manggahan Festival celebrated this year from May 11 to 22. A time-honored tradition closely followed by local folks and even tourists from neighboring provinces and abroad, the festival is the most ambitious and colorful event held annually in the province for the past 22 years. The main celebration showcases cultural, agri-tourism, culinary, entertainment and sports events.

With its theme “Forward we go. Together we grow. Padayon Guimaras,” the festival is led by Gov. Samuel Gumarin. The festival kicked off with the opening of the Agri Trade and Tourism Fair on May 11, which featured the food, crafts and other products made by Guimarasnons. Included here is its centerpiece—the Guimaras carabao mangoes and by-products—exported around the world and classified as pest-free.

On the same day, the Manggahan Photo Contest 2016 Exhibit was opened and the Pintraysekel, Pinta Basurahan sa Manggahan and Employees’ Day were held.

A regular feature in the festival was the Mango Eat All You Can on May 14, where interested parties can participate for free by posting their best GuimarasManggahan Experience Photo on Facebook, tag and mention the Guimaras Manggahan Festival Facebook page from March 7 to May 2. Ten winners will receive a free pass each to the Mango Eat All You Can and get a Manggahan Festival 2016 souvenir item.

Other highlights of the festival are the fifth Mango Man triathlon that started at the Alubihod Cove and wound up at the Provincial Capitol (May 14); Mutya ng Guimaras coronation night, Tour de Guimaras, Enduro Challenge, Kids Bike Challenge, second Provincial Rescuelympics and Health Day (May 20); and Tribes Competition (May 21).

There’s a mango-picking activity that is open to everyone.

Nightly live bands will enliven the festival starting at 10 p.m. at the Food Court area.

The Manggahan Festival 2016 will culminate with the Foundation Day Celebration on May 22, the day when Guimaras became a full-fledged province 24 years ago.

Comelec: IP voting in 2 Mindoro provinces successful

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HE Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Saturday said the pilot indigenous peoples (IP) voting conducted in Oriental and Occidental Mindoro during the May 9 polls was successful.

The Comelec said there were a total of 23 pilot voting centers in the two Mindoro provinces, where out of the 2,878 registered IP voters, 2,587, or 90 percent, went out to vote.

For Oriental Mindoro, there were 14 voting centers with separate polling places (SPP) and two with accessible voting centers (AVC). There were four voting centers with SPP and three with AVC. SPP are polling places in the established voting centers situated near the IP communities.

A joint security force of the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines in the concerned municipalities secured the transport of ballots from the established voting centers to the AVC.

“In order to observe the implementation of the pilot IP voting process, observers from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, the Commission on Human Rights and the Legal Network for Truthful Elections were deployed to different SPPs and AVCs on election day,” Comelec Spokesman James B. Jimenez said.

The pilot IP voting process was launched by the Comelec in order to address problems on access, discrimination and the so-called hakot of IP voters on election day.

Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

Another round of incentives for solar-, wind-power projects Continued from a1

Maniego refused to disclose the content of the board’s recommendation since “the DOE must first evaluate based on the active service contracts and the grid constraints.”

He said the NREB’s primary role is “recommendatory,” following its mandate in the RE Act of 2008.

When sought for comment, Energy Secretary Zenaida Y. Monsada said the possibility there would be a third round of FiT for solar-power projects depends on the NREB’s proposal.

“The NREB’s proposals should include justifications. The proposal should also zero in on the impact because we, at the DOE, are focused on providing consumers reasonable prices. It is up to the proposal of the NREB. Whatever their proposal is, NREB must be able to justify it,” Monsada said.

The DOE highlights that FiT subscriptions for RE resources have significantly increased to 806.82 megawatts (mW) from 646.65 mW installations since the

China…

start of 2016. The following are the FiT subscriptions to date: Biomass has 11 power plants with a total capacity of 94.25 mW; hydro has four accounting for 26.6 mW; wind has six accounting for 393.9 mW.

Meanwhile, as of March 15, 2016, the DOE issued Certificates of Endorsement for FiT Eligibility (COE-FiT) to 11 solar-power plants accounting for 292.07 mW to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

More solar-power projects may be issued COE-FiT at the completion of the ongoing validation and assessment of the submissions received by the DOE in relation to the March 15 deadline for the expanded FiT for solar-power projects.

The first tranche of the solar for FiT was at 108.90 mW at P9.68 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), while the second tranche was the remainder for the 500 mW installation target at P8.69 per kWh.

The DOE has yet to release the list of solar providers that made it to the March 15 deadline for the expanded FiT.

For solar, the DOE increased

last year the FiT-installation target from 200 MW in the first round to another 200 mW in the second round to 400 mW in total.

For the wind FiT2 rates, the ERC approved P7.40 per kWh, lower by P1.13, from the original rate of P8.53 per kWh.

FiT is one of the policy mechanisms eyed by the DOE, as it aims to maintain the share of RE to at least 30 percent of the country’s power mix.

Under the FiT system, qualified developers of emerging RE sources are offered a fixed rate per kWh of their exported electricity to the distribution or transmission network. This scheme excludes the energy utilized from RE plants eligible for their own use.

Consumers are the ones who shoulder the FiT-Allowance (FiT-All), a separate line component in the power bills. They pay P0.124 per kWh.

The FiT-All serves as an incentive to RE developers to ensure the viability of their projects. RE includes wind, run-of-river hydro, solar, geothermal and biomass.

Continued from a1

“China is using coercive tactics short of armed conflict, such as the use of law-enforcement vessels to enforce maritime claims, to advance their interests in ways that are calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking conflict,” the report adds.

The 3,200 acres only represents China’s reclamation in the Spratleys and doesn’t include its building in the Paracels, further northwest, including the contested Woody Island, in its estimates.

China has deployed antiaircraft missiles to Woody Island.

The Pentagon declined to release details on the amount of increased reclamation in the Paracels

or to provide a more concrete estimate of the increase in building in the Spratly Islands.

Chinese officials have defended the land reclamation by saying it is Beijing’s territory, adding that the buildings and infrastructure are for public service use and to support fishermen.

It accuses the Philippines, Vietnam and others of carrying out their own building work on other islands.

The report also notes that China has continued to assert sovereignty over the East China Sea, including the Senkaku Islands, which are administered by Japan.

Vietnam, China and Taiwan all claim the Paracels, and the three, along with the Philippines, Malay-

sia and Brunei Darussalam, claim all or parts of the Spratlys. The US says it takes no side in the territorial disputes, but supports freedom of passage through the area, which is one of the world’s busiest sea lanes.

China’s island-building, the report concludes, is designed to walk right up to—but not cross— “the threshold of provoking the United States, its allies and partners, or others in the Asia-Pacific region into open conflict.”

More broadly, the report says that China is steadily increasing its role and power around the world, while continuing to modernize and build up its military and inventory of ships, missiles and aircraft. AP

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo

Angeles group raring to meet replacement of Naia’s Honrado

By Ashley Manabat

@ashleymanabat Correspondent

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NGELES C I T Y— T he Pinoy Gumising K a Movement (PGK M) received, with reservation, and even contempt, the statement of Manila airport authorities that HONRADO the Ninoy Aquino International Airport had reached its limits and there is no solution to the congestion problem in the short term, except to use the Clark International Airport.

“Perhaps, airlines can start thinking of using Clark. There’s a big number of passengers from the north and plenty of slots, airspace and land space available there,” Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa) General Manager Jose Angel A. Honrado said.

Honrado added that Cebu Pacific, Cebgo and Air Asia can initiate the transfer to alleviate the air-traffic congestion in Manila.

But PGKM Chairman Ruperto Cruz questioned Honrado’s timing for his admission since he is on his way out as Miaa general manager and Clark International Airport Corp. (Ciac) director.

Cruz said Honrado is mainly responsible for stunting the growth of

the Clark airport.

“Don’t hoodwink us again. We don’t want to be fooled by Honrado and Mar [Manuel A.] Roxas [II],” said Cruz.

“This is the same promise made by Roxas in his failed presidential campaign,” Cruz noted.

“They were here for six years and they failed to develop the Clark airport.

They’ve done nothing and now they’re trying to promise us again,” he said.

“If they have good intentions, they should have started to develop the Clark airport during the six years that they were in power. But, instead, the opposite happened,” Cruz said.

“The PGKM has been pushing for the Clark airport as a legacy project of the Aquino administration and yet, nothing happened. It was apparent that they prioritized their political debts to pay their supporters in Manila,” he said.

Cruz said when Honrado was a Ciac director, he did not lift a finger when Air Asia Philippines and the other airlines opted to leave Clark.

“In fact, we suspect that Honrado must have been one of the people out to sabotage the development of the Clark airport,” he said.

“We’ve waited long enough, we don’t mind waiting for a couple more months for their replacements,” he said.

Honrado made the suggestion during a tripartite meeting and signing of memorandum of agreement to efficiently use the available slots for domestic air carriers.

San Miguel in serious talks with 4 Asian telecom companies as possible investor

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Correspondent

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HE Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is now gearing up for the second earthquake drill in anticipation of 7.2-magnitude tremblor hitting the metropolis.

MMDA officials, led by Chairman Emerson S. Carlos and General Manager Corazon T. Jimenez, have been meeting with other government agencies, as well as private-sector representatives for the scheduled Second Metro Manila Shake Drill (MMSD) and the Second Nationwide Simultaneous Earthquake Drill (NSED) on June 22.

Late last week Carlos met with mall operators in Metro Manila during the coordination meeting for the MMSD and NSED and discussed their respective roles in the event of the “Big One.” Other resource persons present at the coordination meeting were Director Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology and Defense Undersecretary Alexander P. Pama of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

Carlos, who will be acting as the Metro Manila Disaster Response Council head, said under the improved and expanded quick response and disaster-assessment plan, Oplan Metro Yakal Plus, four provinces—Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan and Rizal— will be tapped to conduct similar drills and help victims of natural disasters.

“Hopefully, the second quake drill would pave the way for the institutionalization of the shake drill,” the MMDA chief said.

During the meeting, Solidum said different scenarios will be realistically simulated in various areas in the event that the West Valley Fault moves and when the alarm sounds to signal the start of the drill around 9 a.m.

He noted that one of the concerns not addressed during the First Metro Manila Shake Drill was that

By VG Cabuag

@Vilygc

ONGLOMERATE San Miguel Corp. is in “serious” discussions with four foreign companies for its maiden telecommunications venture, which the company hopes to launch in the third quarter, its top executive said.

“There are a lot of foreign firms that approached us after the Telstra deal fell apart,” San Miguel President and COO Ramon S. Ang said, adding that the company is already in the early stage of testing its own telecommunication system.

San Miguel’s venture will become the third telecommunications company in the Philippines, which gained notoriety as among one of Asia’s worst telecommunication infrastructure long dominated by only two players.

Ang said the company is now in serious talks with at least four foreign companies, with the hope of finalizing a partnership with one of them as early as this month.

“We are in talks with Asian telecom companies, which are fast to talk to, much easier to deal with and much faster to decide,” he said.

“I think we will be on a make or break very, very soon. If something happens, hopefully, we can decide by May or June,

MMDA prepares for earthquake drill

By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

Sunday, May 15, 2016 A3

CARLOS: “Hopefully, the second quake drill would pave the way for the institutionalization of the shake drill.”

the participants were not debriefed after converging at their designated evacuation sites.

“There should always be an evaluation of the drill at the end,” Solidum said.

For his part, Pama said the objective of the Oplan Metro Yakal Plus is to “avoid an organized confusion” during a catastrophic earthquake, as each agency has been tasked respective roles and responsibilities to play.

“Kami sa national [level], will be providing resources that the regions could not provide,” he said.

Aside from instilling the “duck, cover, hold” position, Pama said the earthquake drill is aimed at increasing the awareness of people to learn to survive and be able to assist potential victims, as well.

On May 4 the MMDA met with representatives of national government agencies, including the Departments of Transportation and Communications, and Public Works and Highways; National Food Authority, National Housing Authority, Coast Guard, Manila International Airport Authority and Office of the Civil Defense for the review of the first Metro Manila quake drill conducted on July 30 last year.

Las Piñas winners

Elections officer Kimberly Joy Alzate-Cu; the City Board of Canvassers vice chairman, City Prosecutor Marilyn Cynthia Madamba-Luang and the Bureau of Customs secretary, Education Superintendent Loreta Torrecampo proclaims Imelda T. Aguilar (third from left) as Las Piñas City mayor and Louie Bustamante (second from left) as vice mayor. Aguilar garnered 184,437 votes, representing 90 percent of the total cast votes. She will replace her husband, incumbent Mayor Vergel Aguilar.

whichever way to go. Either we go with a partner, we go with whoever partner, or to do it alone. But even though we will do it with a partner or no partner, the launch will be delayed by three months,” Ang said.

He said one of the issues being raised by the foreign investor was San Miguel’s ability to interconnect with the two telco players.

Ang said he is in discussions with both Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Ayala’s Globe Telecom Inc. “If they are willing to cooperate and make this a level playing field to all three of us, then I am very willing to cooperate. I want to make sure that this venture will provide a better service to the consumers,” Ang said.

Australia’s biggest phone company, Telstra, and San Miguel had been in negotiations since last year.

Both companies, however, jointly announced in March that they had failed to reach an agreement to set up a joint venture in the Philippines.

GenSan starts using ₧219-M sanitary landfill

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AVAO CITY—The country’s tuna capital is now using a new P219-million sanitary landfill, that is believed to be Mindanao’s biggest.

The city government announced that the landfill began accepting garbage from the city’s households and industries after it was inaugurated on May 2.

The former garbage dump in Barangay Tambler was earlier closed. The current dump is located in the outskirts of barangay Sinawal. It has an area of 63.3 hectares.

The city information office has claimed that at its size, it would be the biggest in Mindanao, and that General Santos is only one of the few cities with a sanitary landfill.

The use of the landfill complies with the order of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources issued in 2010 that the city should construct its own sanitary landfill, as mandated by the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.

Mayor Ronnel Rivera said the cost of the construction was a sharp reduction from the previous cost estimate that reached P325 million. A Manila-based contractor was tapped to build the sanitary landfill.

The city is already planning the expansion of the dump.

An ordinance that laid out the city’s 10-year Ecological Solid Waste Management Plan was earlier passed by the Sangguniang Panglunsod.

In 2014 the World Bank granted P4.46 million to the Mindanao State University-General Santos City and Solid Waste Management Association of the Philippines Inc. for a project study on solid-waste management, which included the livelihood benefits to residents depending on the garbage poured into the previous dump. Manuel T. Cayon

SundayV

Busine

A4 Sunday, May 15, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

editorial

Privatizing Naia: We second the motion

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EVIATING from the hot topic of the day—the eightpoint program of the incoming Duterte administration—we recall that, until the 1970s, it was conventional wisdom in the Philippines to propose that the government did the job when the private sector was not ready to do it. Since then, apart from the clarification of “public good” and “private good” put forward by academic economics, two things have taken place: The rapid development of the private sector’s capacity for productive work and the steady deterioration of the government’s competence to carry out various tasks.

Result: The increasing transfer to the private sector of tasks previously monopolized by the public sector—through privatization, build-operate-transfer, public-private partnership and similar such arrangements.

It is not astonishing at all that there is now a proposal—from an academic thesis called the UK Essay—that the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) be privatized.

We wholeheartedly agree, regretting only that we didn’t think of it ourselves earlier.

Simple social costs-benefits analysis would show that the privatization of the Naia would result in a win-win-win situation for the government, the new private sector owner-operator and Philippine society as a whole. The government, on the benefits side, will be collecting amortization of principal over a period of time, and appropriate taxes and fees for as long as the terminal exists. Costs to the government: None.

Benefits to the private owner: Stream of profits after an adjustment period. Costs: Investment for modernization in the first two years to three years; losses in the first two to three years.

Benefits to society at large: Efficient, inexpensive and security-assured services to air passengers; growth of our air-transport industry; rise in international tourism; no more tanim-bala embarrassment; end to incompetence at high levels; improvement in our standing in the community of nations. Costs: Displacements and adjustments in employment in the initial phases of privatization.

The activities and operations of an international airport, as the study emphasized, are extremely diverse and technically demanding. There is, therefore, need to find a new owner-operator that is equal to the job in terms of experience and the people leading it, avoiding the incompetent dishonest lemons who now dominate the terminal’s leadership and personnel. We can trust the profit-maximizing motive of the private sector owner-operator to continuously find ways to maximize revenue and reduce costs—and make the airport a first-class facility.

But herein lies a danger—the adjustments in employment already mentioned. In the rush to first-class status—shuffling and reshuffling of personnel to streamline operations, among others—the new owner can overlook or ignore such little things as workers’ separation benefits, rights to tenure, to collective bargaining, to wage adjustments, etcetera. These are concerns that must be dealt with early on, lest they be obscured by the privatization euphoria.

With the Supreme Court recently requiring the government to properly compensate the terminal’s builders, thereby resolving the issue that has crippled the Naia in the last 20 years, let’s maximize social benefits from the terminal by privatizing it as soon as we can.

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NCOMING President Rodrigo R. Duterte must draw up a cohesive strategy to protect the country against cyber criminals, particularly hackers who have made the Philippines, with millions of Internet users, as one of their favorite targets.

T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Online Editor Social Media Editor

Chairman of the Board & Ombudsman President VP-Finance VP-Corporate Affairs VP Advertising Sales Advertising Sales Manager Group Circulation Manager

Lack of appropriate laws exposes the country to more cyber attacks

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Database

By Cecilio T. Arillo

The strategy must include formulating the right mix of laws to deal with cybercrime as a serious threat, among others, to national security.

The reason is not just the Supreme Court (SC) temporary restraining order (TRO) that suspended the implementation of the Cybercrime Prevention Act that was supposed to take effect on October 3, 2012, which, just six days later, the SC issued a 120-day TRO against the implementation of the law.

On February 5, 2013, to give way to oral arguments by 15 petitioners, mostly from the Left, the TRO was extended indefinitely, “until further orders from the Court.”

There are other causes: The persistence of a fragmented approach to attaining cyber security; loss of momentum following the shutdown of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) under Executive Order 269, signed by President Aquino on January 12, 2004; the deprioritization of cyber security in favor of cyber crime equipment; and a libertarian tradition that fiercely opposes protective restrictions, regardless of the risks of vulnerability to cyber attacks.

Philippine laws on the subject are outdated and inadequate. The ECommerce Act has no equivalent for the protection of national security.

The Data Privacy Act prohibits the government from eavesdropping on private electronic communications without a court order, yet private individuals can intrude into government web sites and invoke the right information.

After the demise of the CICT on June 23, 2011, at least the National

After the demise of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology on June 23, 2011, at least the National Defense College of the Philippines persisted in its cyber-security thrusts by conducting the Forum on Cybersecurity Awareness and Collaboration (October 26, 2011); the Cybersecurity Forum (February 27, 2012); the Seminar Towards ICT Development and Cybersecurity Enhancement (June 6, 2012); and the Cyber Security Enhancement Workshop (June 11, 2012).

Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP) persisted in its cybersecurity thrusts by conducting the Forum on Cybersecurity Awareness and Collaboration (October 26, 2011); the Cybersecurity Forum (February 27, 2012); the Seminar Towards ICT Development and Cybersecurity Enhancement (June 6, 2012); and the Cyber Security Enhancement Workshop (June 11, 2012). These are investments toward the establishment of the envisioned Cybersecurity Institute.

Where the defunct CICT shut down, the NDCP’s Cybersecurity Institute can restart and take off with the full support of the incoming president. With alumni who are wellversed in cyber security, the NDCP has the potential to become not just a national, but also a regional, center of excellence in cyber-security education, training and practice.

The right cyber-security capabilities can also enable the Philippines to slug it out with China, among many, in cyberspace. China, though, has a highly capable cyber- warfare machinery. In February 2013 Virginiabased cyber-security firm Mandiant Corp. implicated the People’s Liberation Army of China —in particular Unit 61398, or the second Bureau

of the PLA General Staff’s Third Department—as having systematically and massively stolen data from at least 141 mostly American military contractors, energy firms and other enterprises since 2006. The cyber espionage was waged from a building near Shanghai, Mandiant said in its detailed report. The London-based cyber methodology and findings is “the nearest thing to conclusive evidence.” Cyber-security expert Graham Cluley of British security firm Sophos said, “The cyber espionage signals a new era of state-sponsored cybercrime, which is interested in stealing secrets and getting military or commercial advantage.”

“But China’s cyberpower cannot be allowed to intimidate the Philippines. As the Love Bug worm had amply proven in 2000, Filipinos are capable of doing great global damage in cyberspace, as well,” the late Dr. Galileo C. Kintanar, a highly respected national security expert said, in his book National Security: In Retropect and Prospect, published in 2013 by the Truth and Justice Foundation Inc. Before Kintanar died last year, he provided this writer a wealth of information in a series of interviews regarding national security, including the stark details in this column.

It can be recalled that on May 4, 2000, the Love Bug worm started to cause widespread damage across the globe, among others, to two classified military computer systems, thousands of companies and tens of millions of computers. The source of this destructive software program, which stores usernames and passwords, was traced by the FBI to the Philippines. The culprit was identified as Onel de Guzman, a student at the AMA Computer College, who on May 10, 2000, admitted only that he might have accidentally released the worm; but because there was no law yet criminalizing what he did, he was not prosecuted, and instead became a sort of a celebrity.

Voices

essMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph • Sunday, May 15, 2016 A5

Special procedures of the Human Rights Council: Assessment and way forward

By Idriss Jazairy |Inter Press Service

G

ENEVA—In my personal capacity as an academic from the Global South and a retired international civil servant, I undertook a study for the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, which was published in November 2014. This was at a time when I had no idea that I would later become a member of this elite group of Special Procedures mandate holder. The study is entitled In Defense of Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council: An alternative narrative from the South.

The study makes the point that this mechanism was first initiated by the South and the countries of different regions of the South share with those of the North the paternity of this innovative way of ensuring independent monitoring of human rights worldwide. They all consequently have an equal right to contribute to enhancing the efficiency of this mechanism.

The study indicates how one can remove the barrage of objections raised by countries or groups headquartered in the North, who believe they are the self-appointed defenders of Special Procedures. They have tended to act in the past as if any suggestion for

improvement of Special Procedures coming from the Global South can only be motivated by a desire to undermine the independence and integrity of the said mechanisms.

In other words, this study is an appeal to the North whether to governments or to civil-society organizations from the North that they accept to discuss with the South such suggestions on their merits. It would warrant engaging with those who hold different views and seeking to broaden areas of consensus through bridge-building, as our chairman emphasized in his opening remarks rather than through “excommunication”!

I will raise five central issues: First, the process of selection of mandate-holders: The study reviews the process of selection of mandate holders, which has been improved as an outcome of the 2010 to 2011 Human Rights Council review process.

Henceforth, the president of the council has to give reasons if he decides to disregard the recommendations of the Consultative Group concerning the list of appointees.

This adjustment, indeed, makes for greater transparency, but it does not insulate the president from backroom political pressure from powerful quarters.

Second, the review, rationalization and improvement (RRI) of mandates: The challenge here is to change the cluster of 77 Special Procedure mandate holders into a system. This is what the council was mandated to do by General Assembly Resolution 60/25, o.p. 6, which directed it to “where necessary improve and rationalize all mandates… in order to maintain a system of Special Procedures.” Why has this not happened?

There are currently 77 mandate holders as against 44 when HRC was established and on current trends, their numbers will reach 100 in 10 years. No provisions for a sunset clause, for mergers or absorption are in the cards.

I recommend a revitalization of the RRI process in an open-ended working group of the council.

As a staying measure, the council should start by requiring initiators of new mandates to answer

such questions as: n Is there no other United Nations mechanism which addresses in part or in whole the issue proposed? n Is there not a Special Procedure which covers partly or wholly this issue? n If so, why not adjust the existing mandate for this purpose? n Could the new mandate not replace an existing mandate?

In parallel, the working group would review “all existing” thematic mandates to promote coherence, avoid duplication, determine protection gaps and determine whether the distribution of Special Procedures between individual mandates and working groups is still appropriate.

Third, the enhancement of the cooperation between states and Special Procedures: General Assembly resolution 65/281 of June 17, 2011, reiterating other similar positions incorporated in resolution 60/251 and in the Code of Conduct of Special Procedures stipulates that “The Special Procedures shall continue to foster a constructive dialogue

US buildup in Europe serves no purpose

W

HILE showing off some new UAZ Patriot pickup trucks armed with machine guns and grenade launchers to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, a general couldn’t open the door of one of the trucks and, in his desperate desire to please the commander in chief, ripped off the door handle.

Bloomberg View

By Leonid Bershidsky

“Well done,” Putin said, laughing.

Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) is debating how most effectively to deter Russia from invading the Baltic states. The US has already proposed quadrupling the budget of the socalled European Reassurance Initiative to $3.4 billion in 2017. A billion dollars of that sum is to add another armored brigade combat team, 4,000 to 5,000 strong, to the 35,000 US troops already present in Europe. Another $1.9 billion is earmarked for additional war-fighting equipment. Still, many US analysts still believe that may not be enough for deterrence.

They should watch the door-handle video and ask themselves if they aren’t being hoodwinked.

RAND Corp. recently held a war game to see if the Baltic states were defensible against Russia and concluded that, with the current level

of protection, the Russian military could get to Tallinn and Riga in as little as 60 hours. To prevent such an outcome, Rand concluded that Nato would need seven brigades, including three with heavy armor, “adequately supported by air power, land-based fires and other enablers on the ground, and ready to fight at the onset of hostilities.”

Writing for the Atlantic Council, Franklin Cramer and Bantz Craddock proposed reinforcing the Baltic nations’ defenses with additional air defense and antiarmor systems and setting up new multinational battalions former from Baltic, other European and US soldiers.

On the defense analysis site War on the Rocks, Elbridge Colby and Jonathan Solomon declared the planned additional US deployment insufficient, arguing that persuading the “increasingly capable Russians” to stand down would require “fielding a conventional military posture that includes substantial, potent forces permanently deployed forward in Central and Eastern Europe that can assuredly arrest any Russian military thrust into Nato member-state territory.”

These experts all discuss Russia’s resurgent military strength. RAND argues that forces in Russia’s Western Military District are far more powerful, in terms of numerical strength and equipment, than what Nato deploys in and around the Baltics.

Russia’s air campaign in Syria has also impressed many.

Watching the door-handle video or reading last year’s reports from Debaltsevo in eastern Ukraine, where local rebels aided by Russian troops encircled and defeated the Ukrainian army after weeks of heavy fighting, should sow some doubts in the minds of military specialists as to the Russian army’s readiness for a bold invasion of two or three Nato member-states.

Although Russia is undergoing extensive rearmament, a program to which Putin pays lots of attention, it’s plagued by typical modern Russian problems of inefficient, overly expensive procurement and shoddy quality. Demonstrating success to Putin is more important to the generals than actually achieving it and Putin, in turn, may well be more interested in showing off to the world in Victory Day

parades on Red Square, than attacking Nato. He pursues domestic goals, too, whipping up a patriotic frenzy to maintain his support. The climate in today’s Russia is one in which Kalashnikov, the assault rifle manufacturer, is having difficulty turning a profit from its main product—but is hoping to make up for that by producing a line of militarystyle clothing for patriots.

Russian troops can be effective against weak adversaries, such as the Ukrainian military or lightly armed Syrian rebels, but even then, they do not achieve lightning-fast results. The invasion of Crimea was scary, because unbadged Russian soldiers there wore modernlooking gear and looked dangerous, but they did not meet with any resistance. As the Wilson Center’s Michael Kofman argues on War on the Rocks, “the Russian army is simply not set up to occupy an invaded country, particularly one likely to resist. There are few permanent units based on Nato’s borders and no higher tier command structures to organize a fight using units pieced together from other districts.”

with States” (emphasis added). In its paragraph 94, the Mandate of Special Procedure (MOSP) reiterates this commitment but then illustrates it by saying “It is, thus, appropriate that reminders be sent to governments in relation to unanswered correspondence.”

Fourth is the broader issue of how the HRC can interact with Special Procedures on issues of methodology: This interaction has to reconcile the accountability of Special Procedures to the council, which appoints them with the full independence of judgment of these mandate holders in the pursuit of their monitoring mission.

Fifth, what future structure and funding for Special Procedures?

The dissemination of thematic and country mandates between different divisions or branches of Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the past has been a cause for concern about the preservation of the independence of Special Procedures. So has their authority to fund-raise individually as per paragraph 11 of MOSP.

More importantly however, none of the alarmist proponents of an increased US military presence in Eastern Europe can explain why Putin would want to invade the Baltics.

Countries don’t attack other countries simply because they don’t like them, or because they can. There has to be some strategic benefit to the attack. In the premise for its war game, RAND takes a stab at locating one: “The strategic goal of the invasion was to demonstrate Nato’s inability to protect its most vulnerable members and divide the alliance, reducing the threat it presents from Moscow’s point of view.”

It’s not clear why Russia would risk an all-out war with the US, including the prospect of a nuclear conflict, just to prove Nato’s vulnerability. The previous aggressive actions of Putin and his close circle suggest they do indeed consider Nato as a threat to Russia. But Putin backed separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and went to war for them in 2008, to make a destabilized Georgia unacceptable to Nato as a potential member. It has been feeding the unrest in eastern Ukraine with the same purpose.

Mexicans fighting back vs outrageous Trump attacks M

By Andres Oppenheimer | Miami Herald (TNS)

EXICANS have silently begun a campaign to debunk presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s bigotry, xenophobia and economic isolationism in an area where he is most vulnerable: The realm of accurate facts and figures.

To confront Trump’s daily Mexicobashing, the Mexican government will launch a US public-relations campaign in early June. Meantime, a group of Mexican-American businesspeople is launching a lobbying group, named American Mexico Public Affairs Committee (Ampac), modeled after the pro-Israel Ampac and other influential Washington lobbying groups. The new group has already started putting out facts and figures on social media.

“The best way to respond to xenophobic, or racist, or uninformed positions is with information, not with adjectives,” Mexican Foreign

Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu told me in a recent interview.

To be sure, Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has low popularity rates because of his poor handling of corruption and humanrights scandals, is hardly in a position to personally lead the charge against Trump. If Peña Nieto did that, he would lose badly. Trump would shower the Mexican president with insults, calling him a moron who hasn’t been able to keep drug baron Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman from escaping from prison and who has yet to give a good explanation for his government’s dubious investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in the state of Guerrero.

Peña Nieto took a shot at Trump on March 8, when he said the US presidential hopeful’s rhetoric is reminiscent of that of Hitler and Mussolini, but the Mexican leader has remained largely silent on the issue for months. Now, I’m told by diplomatic sources, Peña Nieto has

hired the WPP and Burson-Marsteller public-relations firms to design and execute a PR strategy in the US. It will include mass advertising and frequent responses to Trump’s attacks from Mexico’s new ambassador to Washington, Carlos Sada, who took office on Thursday.

“The strategy will be to have higher visibility,” Sada said. “The idea is to not allow ourselves to become anybody’s punching bag for not having a mechanism to react to attacks.”

The privately run Ampac, which was registered in Texas on March 18, will seek to counter Trump’s concocted “facts” about Mexico with real figures from reliable US sources.

The group’s Twitter account, @AMxPAC, started putting out tweets in late April.

Arturo Sarukhan, a Mexican former ambassador to the US and informal adviser to the PAC, told me the group was founded by Mexican-American businesspeople and that it receives “not 1 cent from the

Mexican government or state or local governments.” Sarukhan added that the group “is in the process of forming a nonpartisan Super PAC to challenge or support both Democrats and Republicans, depending on their positions related to the Mexico-US agenda.” He added, “Its objective is to send a signal; there will be a cost to using Mexico and the Mexican diaspora as a political piñata.” Ampac and the Mexican government will counter Trump’s misleading claims that there is an avalanche of Mexican migrants coming into the US, citing US Census figures showing that the number of undocumented Mexicans entering the country has actually declined substantially since 2008.

To counter Trump’s claim in his inaugural campaign speech that most Mexican migrants are “bad people” and “rapists,” Ampac tweeted that “Mexican immigrants generate $17 billion annually,” alongside a chart with Pew Research Center figures showing the details. Responding to

Trump’s almost daily accusations that Mexico is “killing us” in trade, the group tweeted that “40 percent of the content of Mexican exports to the US was originally manufactured in the United States,” a fact Trump conveniently fails to mention in his speeches. Also, the group tweeted US figures showing that US exports to Mexico are twice as much as to China, and that Mexico ranks among the top 3 export markets for 33 US states.

My opinion: To be sure, the Ampac Twitter site is still rudimentary, and we will have to wait until June to see whether the government-paid WPP and Burson-Marsteller campaign will be something more than a big money maker for the PR firms. But it was time for Mexico and Mexicans to wake up and do something to stop being Trump’s “punching bag.” Trump has gotten away for too long with fabricated or misleading statistics, without being confronted by Mexicans with more reliable facts and figures.

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A6 Sunday, May 15, 2016

House urges Senate to approve measure allowing wiretapping of drug suspects

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz |

T

HE House of Representatives recently urged the Senate to approve a measure authorizing wiretapping in cases involving violations of Republic Act (RA) 9165, or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Liberal Party Rep. Vicente Belmonte Jr. of Iligan City, principal author of the measure, said the proposal was approved on third and final reading by the lower chamber on October 9, 2015, and thereafter transmitted to the Senate for concurrence.

Belmonte is the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs chairman.

T he bi l l seeks to amend R A 4200, or the antiwiretapping law, to include operations against drug-related offenses as an exemption.

The law only allows wiretapping upon securing a court order for operations against treason, sedition, rebellion and kidnapping.

“We need to capture the kings and queens, not the runners. These

BELMONTE: “We need to capture the kings and queens, not the runners.

These contrabands empower the drug lords with their drug dealings within the confines of their detention facilities.”

@joveemarie

contrabands empower the drug lords with their drug dealings within the confines of their detention facilities,” Belmonte said.

Under the bill, “nothing contained in the act shall render it unlawful or punishable for any peace officer and law enforcer, who is authorized by a written order of the court, to execute any of the acts declared to be unlawful in the two preceding sections in cases involving the crimes of treason, espionage, provoking war and disloyalty in case of war, piracy, mutiny in the high seas, rebellion, conspiracy and proposal to commit rebellion, inciting to rebellion, sedition, conspiracy to commit sedition, inciting to sedition, kidnapping.

The court referred to in the section shall mean the regional trial court within whose territorial jurisdiction the acts for which authority is applied for are to be executed.

Meanwhile, the two Senate committees have already recommended the insertion of a Section 2 in Senate Bill (SB) 2139, which mandates the Philippine Drug and Enforcement Agency, in coordination with the Dangerous Drugs Board, Armed Forces, National Police, Department of Justice, National Security Council and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, to formulate the implementing rules.

In the committee report submitted on February 1, prior to the congressional adjournment, the Senate committees on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs, chaired

by Sen. Grace Poe, and on National Defense and Security, chaired by

Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, recommended the approval of SB 2139, which seeks to amend certain sections of RA 4200.

Moreover, Belmonte said RA 9165 has, for more than a decade, provided the drug law-enforcement units arsenal for the government’s all-out war against the drug menace.

However, Belmonte said, despite the accomplishments in supply-and-demand reduction, drug syndicates have become fearless and resourceful in plying their nefarious trade.

Convicted drug lords operate within the secured confines of their detention facilities; clandestine laboratories are set up in exclusive villages and highrise condominiums at the heart of Metro Manila; drug peddlers have grown in numbers, including children and senior citizens, the lawmaker said.

“There is an urgent need to equip our drug law enforcers with the capability to stop the drug menace at its very core, to cut the roots of the drug syndicates and convict drug lords, and not just the peddlers,” he added.

Belmonte said, that, in most antidrug operations, only the small players are rounded up, while the drug lords remain scot-free.

Marcos presses Comelec probe of Smartmatic ‘tampering’

By Butch Fernandez @butchfBM

S

EN. Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. is pressing the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to conduct a thorough inquiry into the unauthorized last-minute alteration of hashcodes used in the automated May 9 polls, warning this could jeopardize “the integrity of the electoral process.”

“Why were the changes done by a Venezuelan Smartmatic technician rather than a Filipino Comelec-authorized personnel?” Marcos asked.

The senator, who ran for vice president in last Monday’s elections, is also enlisting the support of information-technology (IT) experts to determine the full impact of the unauthorized alteration on election results.

“I call on Chairman [Andres D.] Bautista and the Comelec for a full and truthful explanation, so the public can best informed on this

Why did they [Smartmatic] have to change it in the first place while in the middle of transmission?

Why did they deny the change, only to admit it later on?”—Marcos matter before the official canvass begins,” Marcos said in a statement.

He warned that the inability of the Comelec to guard the automated election system has “cast a cloud of doubt over the integrity of the entire process.”

At the same time, Marcos aired an appeal for IT experts to “help us make sense of this very serious issue.”

“This is not just about guarding the votes of Senator Marcos, but the integrity of the whole electoral process,” he added.

According to Marcos, they were able to confirm earlier reports that

the hashcodes have been “changed at 7:30 p.m. on May 9 is true.”

“Earlier, two whistle-blowers came out in two newspaper articles confirming that there were alterations made and a video has been circulating in social media that changes, indeed, happened,” he said.

He noted that this development prompted Bautista to admit that, in fact, the changes occurred. “Chairman Bautista, who earlier claimed he did not know about it, now admits that it did, in fact, happen,” he said.

Asserting that “this is now a matter of grave and immediate concern,” Marcos disagreed with Bautista’s

New law allows Duterte to take oath before barangay chairman

F

OLLOWING the signing of Republic Act (RA) 10755, a lawmaker said presumptive President Rodrigo R. Duterte could set another milestone in the nation’s political history by breaking a tradition—taking his oath of office before a punong barangay.

Liberal Party Rep. Salvio B. Fortuno of Camarines Sur said Duterte may now depart from the old tradition of taking his oath of office before the Chief Justice, as President Aquino has signed into law RA 10755, which authorizes the punong barangay to administer the oath of office of any public official, including the president of the Philippines.

The law amends Section 41 of Executive Order 292, or the Administrative Code of 1987, giving public officials a choice on who among the authorized officials would administer their oaths of office.

“Certainly, this is in recognition of the very important role of the punong barangay in the political structure of the government,” Fortuno said.

Other officials who also have the general authority to administer oath are department secretaries, governors, vice

governors, city and town mayors, bureau directors, regional directors, clerks of court, registrars of deeds and other civilian officers in the government, whose appointments are vested in the president and are subject to confirmation by the Commission on Appointments, other constitutional officers, Public Attorney’s Office and notaries public.

“It would not be surprising if a downto-earth politician, like presumptive President Duterte, departs from the old tradition and further boost his mass appeal by taking his oath of office before a punong barangay in recognition of their sacrifices and unrelenting efforts to deliver frontline services of the government,” Fortuno said.

He said letting a punong barangay administer Duterte’s oath of office will surely endear him more to the more than 42,000 barangays chairmen in the country.

“Duterte could be writing history by being the first president, the highest elected chief executive, to be sworn into office by the lowest elected chief executive in the country, the punong barangay,” he said. Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

earlier claim that the change was something innocuous.

He invoked Section 28 of Republic Act 8436, which, he said, provides that any form of utilization without authorization or tampering with electronic devices or their components used in the automated elections is prohibited and punishable by law.

“Furthermore, Comelec rules also provide that changing the hashcode requires an en banc resolution, but as admitted by the chairman himself, even he was not informed about it,” Marcos added.

He argued that if the alteration were something innocuous, “Why did they [Smartmatic] have to change it in the first place while in the middle of transmission? Why did they deny the change only to admit it later on?”

Marcos added that the Comelec inquiry should also determine if there were “other modifications made and by whom and upon whose authority?”

Only 2 Osmeña Highway southbound lanes usable

F

OR three weeks, starting on Friday, the Skyway Stage 3 (SS3) contractor will begin the drainage work along the southbound direction of Osmeña Highway in Makati in front of Cash and Carry Mall up to Emilia Street.

This activity necessitates the reduction of the existing three serviceable road lanes to two lanes to allow the contractor to install a new drainage line and give way to the erection of SS3 columns in the area.

To avoid delay and traffic inconvenience during the road-lane reduction, southbound motorists are advised to immediately go up the Buendia Flyover to proceed to the Sky way System’s elevated and at-grade sections. Additional traffic enforcers will be deployed along the affected area to direct traffic and assist motorists.

T he said road lane-reduction scheme is being implemented in coordination w ith the Metro Manila Development Author it y and the Ma k ati Public Safet y Depar tment.

Team SS3 appealed for public understanding for any inconvenience the said activity may cause and will do everything possible to make sure that public safety is not compromised and that traffic slowdown is minimized.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Pinoy workers in Baghdad told to remain vigilant

By Recto L. Mercene

CATO: “Fortunately, there were no Filipinos among the dead or wounded in the latest attacks; but just the same, we would like to underscore the need for our kababayan in Iraq to remain vigilant.”

@rectomercene

T

HE Philippine Embassy in Baghdad has reminded Filipinos in Iraq to remain vigilant, after a wave of terrorist bombings shook Baghdad and left almost 100 people dead and many more wounded in just a span of 48 hours.

In an advisory, the embassy urged the close to 300 Filipinos working in the Iraqi capital to exercise caution and limit their movement, following the deadly explosions that were claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

On Wednesday terrorists carried out attacks in at least four locations in Baghdad, the deadliest of which was in the Shi’a enclave of Sadr City, where a powerful car bomb killed more than 60 civilians and wounded 87 others. On Thursday two suicide bombers detonated themselves at a police station in Abu Ghraib, killing five officers and wounded 12 others.

“Fortunately, there were no Filipinos among the dead or wounded in the latest attacks; but just the same, we would like to underscore the need for our kababayan in Iraq to remain vigilant,” Chargé d’Affaires (en pied) Elmer G. Cato said.

The embassy also called on Fili-

pinos to avoid demonstrations and other public gatherings, as these could also be targeted by extremists.

Cato also urged those among the 2,000 Filipinos working in Iraq who still have not registered to provide their contact details to the embassy, so that they could easily be reached in case of emergency.

The embassy said it is also ready to repatriate Filipinos in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq who want to return home due to security concerns.

More than 50 Filipinos have been repatriated since the government placed Iraq under Alert Level IV in 2014, after Isil captured large parts of the country.

The embassy also said the temporary freeze in the processing and deployment of new workers to Iraq remains in place, and that only Filipinos with existing job contracts in the Kurdistan region can be allowed to travel to the Philippines and return to their jobs in Iraq.

Salceda switch alters Albay election dynamics

By Johnny C. Nuñez

Philippines News Agency

L

EGAZPI CITY—The election in Albay easily qualifies as one of the most interesting episodes of the this year’s electoral exercise.

Pushed by Albay Gov. Joey S. Salceda, it was an easy glide for administration and Liberal Party presidential candidate former Interior Secretary Manuel A. Roxas II, who paced the race in the province, trailed by Sen. Grace Poe, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte and the rest, until shortly before election day.

For reasons considered completely valid, Salceda switched gears and shifted his support to Poe less than two weeks before voting day. The shift dramatically altered the pacing trend, with Poe inching up and dislodging Roxas from the top.

The eventual results of the presidential derby in Albay tell it all.

The unofficial vote tally of the 98.93 percent of total votes cast in Albay as of May 12 shows Poe with 219,202 votes, a slim margin over Roxas’s 218,933, followed by now winning bet Duterte with 79,215. Poe scored landslide wins in the second and third districts of the province with 78,500 and 86,607 votes, respectively. She conceded to Duterte hours after the polls.

Poe may have lost the national derby, but she can feel comforted in having won the presidential race in Albay by nearly 300 votes, after Salceda’s last-minute decision to shift support to her from Roxas.

Salceda said he had to work hard and was glad that, even if Poe lost her bid, Albayanos have heeded his call for the support shift, which enabled Poe to muster the majority win in the province, despite the tight and limited time of less than two weeks.

Salceda, whose third term as governor ends on June 30, ran and won Albay’s Second Congressional District seat with an overwhelming 92 percent of the district’s votes. He is credited for transforming Albay from an economically depressed province ravaged often by disaster to a vibrant local economy and a global standard model in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate-

SALCEDA

POE

change adaptation (CCA).

Aside from economic gains, the significant progress Salceda’s leadership has brought to the province is largely felt in health services, education, tourism and the soaring popularity of Albay as a pioneer in DRR and CCA. On account of his impressive accomplishments, he has gained respect from his peers and has successfully united the province’s political leaders. Albay, in turn, has gained national and global recognitions.

As a new congressman, Salceda said his priority bills include the cityhood of Daraga town; national higher education contribution system for private tertiary schools; scholarships in state colleges and universities; and establishment of Special Trust Funds of P20 billion each for business incubation, arts and culture, basic research and development, technology diffusion and extension, and international tourism marketing, among others.

Salceda said he is willing to help the economic team of incoming President Duterte if called upon once more. He confided the Davao City mayor had been his second choice, next to Poe. During his campaign sortie in Albay, Duterte himself offered him a Cabinet post as head of the National Economic and Development Authority.

“Duterte’s victory is a glorious event for the countryside and in Mindanao. He is my No. 2 choice to fulfill Bicolanos’ aspirations... to realize our dream to have a Bicol International Airport, a four-lane expressway from Metro Manila, and a totally restored Bicol railway,” he said.

Salceda also vowed to support Liberal Party Rep. Ma. Leonor “Leni” G. Robredo of Camarines Sur as vice president. “I’m willing to help her if she asks me. We need direct access to Bicolandia. Leni is a voice for Bicol,” he added.

Editor: Jun Lomibao • mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph

Sports MIAMI FORCES GAME 7 BusinessMirror

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IAMI—The Miami Heat went small, and came up big.

With that, another Game Seven awaits.

Goran Dragic scored a postseason career-high 30 points and Dwyane Wade added 22, as the Heat rode a small lineup to a 103-91 victory over the Toronto Raptors on Friday night, tying their Eastern Conference semifinal series, 3-3.

“Last year at this time, we were all on vacation,” Miami Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “So often in this business, people tend to want to search for the easy route. There’s usually not an easy way in a seven-game series, certainly not with a second and third seed going against each other. This is the path...,

Miami Heat’s Dwyane Wade (3) grabs a rebound away from Toronto Raptors’ Bismack Biyombo. AP

and now we’ve pushed it to a Game Seven.”

It comes on Sunday in Toronto. The winner will head to Cleveland for Game One of the Eastern Conference finals on Tuesday night.

Both the Heat and the Raptors won a Game Seven in the first round.

Kyle Lowry scored 36 points for Toronto, on 12-for-27 shooting. DeMar DeRozan added 23 for the Raptors, but their teammates combined to shoot 14-of-34 from the floor and manage 32 points.

“We came here to try to win the game,” Raptors Coach Dwane Casey said. “We didn’t come here with a seven-game series in mind.

It’s been a great series, they’re a championshipcaliber team, well-coached team, but we came in here to try to win the game.”

Joe Johnson had 13 points, Justise Winslow added 12, and Josh McRoberts scored 10 for the Heat.

Dragic shot 12-of-21, Wade blocked a game-high three shots and the Heat—despite

FIGHTING MAROONS NOTCH SECOND STRAIGHT WIN

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By Rick Olivares

NIVERSITY of the Philippines (UP) gave the College of Saint Benilde (CSB) a dose of its own medicine with an aggressive full-court defense for a 67-58 win in the Filoil Flying V Premier Cup on Saturday at the Arena in San Juan.

The Blazers harassed the Fighting Maroons into seven first-period turnovers that they converted into nine points for an 18-10 lead.

However, the Fighting Maroons turned the tables around in the second period that saw them close the gap to 25-25 at the half behind Jett Manuel, Diego Dario and Dave Moralde.

Fighting Maroons Head Coach Bo Perasol experimented with a four-guard lineup in the third period that paid dividends. The Fighting Maroons posted a 48-36 lead after 30 minutes of play, as they threatened to blow out the Blazers. CSB gave it one last push behind point guard JJ Domingo, who scored 10 points and issued two assists, but the Fighting Maroons proved to be more steady in the clutch, as they hit nine free throws while holding the Blazers to two points in the final two minutes of play.

After making their adjustments, the Blazers had no more second-chance points, while UP had 14 of its own.

They cut down their turnovers from 11 in the first half to seven in the second, while CSB nearly doubled its errors with 28. “We were able to make the initial stops but we’re giving Benilde lots of second chances. And we were not able to score. This is a team that needs to be encouraged all the time after being battered for so long. They are hungry for a win, but they do not believe they can win. So it was a matter of constantly repeating that they can win,” Perasol said of the huge win.

Fighting Maroons center Andrew Harris once more supplied the rebounds and the energy, as his infectious play rubbed off on teammates. Harris tallied seven points and 13 rebounds, with nine coming off the offensive glass.

“We were outrebounded again [48-41] but we found a way to win,” Perasol added.

The Fighting Maroons’ second consecutive win (they defeated FEU, 67-61, last Wednesday) gave them a 2-1 record, while CSB fell to 0-4.

Moralde led UP with 14 points, while Dario added 10. CSB was led by Christian Fajarito’s 14 markers, while JJ Domingo added 12, with forward Yankee Haruna chipping in 10.

PHOTO

University of the Philippines forward Dave Moralde (left) tries to stop Yankee Haruna of College of Saint Benilde. NONOY LACZA

FOTON PAIR SWEEPS ELIMS ROUND

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OTON’S Patty Orendain and Cherry Rondina easily dismantled the tandem of Aiza Maizo-Pontillas and Bang Pineda of Petron XCS, 21-9, 21-8, to sweep the elimination round of the 2016 Philippine Superliga (PSL) Challenge Cup beach volleyball tournament on Saturday at the Sands SM By the Bay in Mall of Asia in Pasay City.

Orendain and Rondina won all their three matches in Pool C to book a quarterfinals berth.

They beat Aileen Abuel and Princess Listana of Accel Quantum Plus and Mapùa’s Shaira Hermano and Niela Ramilo last week.

“Ine-enjoy lang namin, kasi alam naming mga beterano sila at magagaling lahat ng teams,” Rondina said. “Communication at team work lang inilabas lang namin yung natutunan namin sa ensayo kasi pinaghandaan namin sila.

Despite the loss, Pontillas and Pineda still advanced to the quarterfinals on Sunday next week, after finishing second in Pool C with 2-1 win-loss card. Norie Jean Diaz and Pau Soriano of Standard Insurance-Navy A also made it to the quarters after completing a two-game sweep in Pool A, the last one against Angelica Dacaymat and Jasmine Alcayde of University of the East (UE), 21-8, 21-11.

Diaz and Soriano opened their campaign

last week with a 21-18, 24-22 over Jennie de los Reyes and Gennie Sabas of RC Cola-Army B. In men’s action, Far Eastern University (FEU) A and Philippine Navy B beat their respective rivals for to remain unbeaten in Pool A. The tandem Franco Camcam and Joel Cayaban of FEU A scored a 21-18, 21-16 victory over the Wayuk pair of Philip Bagalay and Paul John Cuzon and followed it up with a hard earned 21-17, 14-21, 15-12 triumph over Geric Rodmar Ortega of University of the East (UE) to top Pool A. Pajiji Alsali and Milover Parcon of Navy B, on the other hand, also went 2-0 beating Wayuk, 21-17, 21-13, and 21-15, 21-15 over Arjay Salcedo and Bobby Gartidula of IEM. IEM split its two games after beating UE, 21-19, 22-20. UE and Wayuk went winless in their group.

Madsairi Nur-amin and Roldan Medino of Navy A prevailed in three-set thriller over Cignal Team Awesome, 23-21, 15-21, 15-10.

Anthony Arbasto and Kris Guzman of TMV, on the other hand, earned an easy win over FEU B, 21-16, 21-15.

Despite the loss, Relan and Rey Taneo of Cignal remain in the hunt for a spot in the next round after beating FEU B, 21-16, 21-12, earlier. Lance Agcaoili

Sunday, May 15, 2016 A7

some serious size deficiencies with injured starting center Hassan Whiteside still out— only lost the rebounding battle 43-41.

“I knew [Dragic] was going to have an amazing performance tonight,” Wade said.

“You could tell he was on the brink of one.”

Neither team divulged its starting lineup until warm-ups were under way. The Heat had reason for subterfuge, after choosing a supersmall starting five of Dragic, Wade, Johnson, Luol Deng and Winslow.

Desperation? Maybe.

The results? Splendid.

The Heat used eight players—the tallest being McRoberts, at six-foot-10. The average height of the others was just under six-foot-six.

Deng jumped center and Winslow got his first playoff start, three games after sitting out Game Three entirely. The Heat like using the term “positionless basketball” and Winslow epitomized it early—in a 60-second span,

the rookie guarded Raptors center Bismack Biyombo, brought the ball up like a point guard and made a corner 3.

“Justise did an amazing job,” Dragic said.

Whiteside, watching from the locker room, was thrilled.

“The guys played really well,” said Whiteside, who will fly with the Heat to Toronto, but said he would not play on Sunday.

“Goran got in the paint a lot and made it tough on their guys and D-Wade did D-Wade stuff.”

Dragic scored 14 in the second quarter, helping Miami take a 53-44 lead at the half. The lead got to 13 in the third, Dragic again coming up big with a three-point play, followed by a jumper. And when Toronto got within six early in the fourth, Dragic and Wade scored the next six points to keep Miami in control.

Miami is 6-3 all-time in Game Seven, having won four straight ultimate games (0-1 on the road). Toronto is 1-2 in Game Seven, 1-1 at home. AP

WILL DUNCAN, GINoBiLI RETURN?

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AN ANTONIO—San Antonio’s unexpected and abrupt end to the season brings on another stressful summer that begins with what has become an annual quandary.

Will Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili return?

“I really don’t know what they’re going to do,” San Antonio Coach Gregg Popovich said on Friday, a day after the Spurs’ season-ending loss at Oklahoma City. “But when they do decide to move on, sometime between now and the next five years—that’s a little bit of a joke—it will feel a little differently walking into the gym.”

Anything less than having both Duncan and Ginobili in uniform next season will be even more jarring for the Spurs than losing to the Thunder in six games in the Western Conference semifinals.

“We’ll see,” said Tony Parker, the other member of San Antonio’s Big Three. “It’s going to be a long summer for us.”

The Spurs did not expect their off-season to begin so early.

San Antonio appeared revived and renewed after re-signing Kawhi Leonard and adding marquee free agent LaMarcus Aldridge during the off-season.

But after winning the series opener by 32 points, the Spurs suddenly looked old and thin in comparison to the Thunder’s size inside and athleticism on the wings.

Still, the Spurs hope for the return of two of the franchise’s greatest-ever players.

Duncan, 40, and Ginobili, 38, both have player options on the

two-year contracts they signed last summer, but neither has given any indication what he plans to do.

Duncan said he would “get to that after I get out of here and figure out life,” when asked about his future following San Antonio’s 113-99 Game Six loss.

Ginobili said he would “take my time as always.”

Duncan has played 19 seasons, leading the Spurs to each of the franchise’s five championships. Ginobili has been a part of four of those titles over 14 seasons.

Popovich joked one thing is certain, the veterans won’t be turning to him for advice.

“I haven’t talked to Timmy in about 11 years, and Manu stopped talking to me about three or four years ago,” Popovich said. “So, I doubt it highly. They are just going to come in and say, ‘Pop, this is what I’m doing.’ And then whatever they say, that’s what I’ll do.”

It would officially mark the end of an era if either one retires, although San Antonio’s reliance on its Big Three came to a close this season.

Aldridge and Leonard became the focal point of the Spurs, helping the team transition for the future with All-Star seasons.

Leonard led the team in scoring for the first time in his five-year career, averaging 21.2 points and 6.8 rebounds. The six-foot-seven forward also won Defensive Player of the Year, becoming the first noncenter to win the award in consecutive seasons since Dennis Rodman from 1989 to 1991.

Aces try to stay alive again versus Painters

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Aiza Maizo-Pontillas (1) of Petron XCS blocks the attempt of Patty Orendain of Foton. ROY DOMINGO

LASKA tries to stay alive anew, as it battles Rain or Shine in Game Five of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Commissioner’s Cup finals on Sunday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

The Aces denied the Elasto Painters of a 4-0 sweep with a dominating 111-99 win in Game Four behind the solid games from import Rob Dozier, Chris Banchero, RJ Jazul and Best Payer of the Conference winner Calvin Abueva.

Alaska hopes to yield the same result in their 5 p.m. encounter and slice Rain or Shine’s series to one game.

“We showed up [in Game Four]. I really commended the players, I challenged them.

We did not make any adjustment. We just did what we have to do,” Aces Head Coach Alex Compton said.

“I wish we’d have been playing this earlier [in the series]. It really fells like us. I don’t feel the real us showed up in our last two games,” Compton added.

After a close first quarter, Alaska started to click on both ends of the court and take a commanding 54-39 halftime lead. The Aces never lost that big lead till the final buzzer to

spoil the sweep party of the Elasto Painters.

Rain or Shine rookie Maverick Ahanmisi’s career-high 30 points went down the drain.

Ahanmisi was the first rookie to score at least 30 points in a finals game since Ginebra’s Mark Caguioa in Game Five of their Philippine Cup finals versus San Miguel Beer.

Despite the Game Four loss, Elasto Painters Head Coach Yeng Guiao remains confident of their chances of winning the club’s second PBA crown on Sunday.

“We still feel we will the championship, not just on a Friday the 13th, but maybe on a Sunday the 15th it’s a better day,” said Guiao, who is eyeing his seventh league title.

Guiao admitted that Alaska’s perimeter game clicked in Game Four and vows to make the defensive adjustments in Game Five.

“We will make some adjustments with our defense. Dozier has just been scoring at will at the isolation at the post, so we have to look for something to solve that,” he added.

Rain or Shine import Pierre HendersonNiles played with a bad back in Game Four, and Guiao expects him to play better on Sunday and limit the production of Dozier.

Joel Orellana

Sports BusinessMirror

At Italian Open, Novak beats Rafa for 7th straight time

DJOKOVIC’S DOMINATION R OME—Novak Djokovic extended his recent mastery over Rafael Nadal with a 7-5, 7-6 (4) win in the Italian Open quarterfinals on Friday, coming from behind in both sets of a match he agreed was “a classic.”

Nadal wasted five set points in the second set of an encounter that went nearly two-anda-half hours.

“It felt definitely special to be on the court today playing against Rafa for several hours,” Djokovic said. “Thankfully, we didn’t play [like in] Grand Slams, best of five. Who knows when this match would finish?”

Djokovic has beaten Nadal in the last seven of their 49 encounters, the most in the Open Era. Overall, Djokovic leads the series, 26-23.

This was their last opportunity to play each other before the French Open, which starts in nine days.

“Winning against Nadal on clay doesn’t happen often, doesn’t happen every day, so it is one of the ultimate challenges, if not the ultimate challenge, we have in sports,” Djokovic said. “So I’m going to take this as a boost of confidence, no doubt, for the rest of this tournament, and then, of course, for French Open.”

While Djokovic has won 15 straight sets against Nadal, this marked their closest match since Nadal won the 2014 French Open final.

“I was not disappointed,” Nadal said.

“Overall, I am playing well.... I have been competing at the highest level against the best player.”

Djokovic’s semifinal opponent will be Kei Nishikori for the second straight week, and the fourth time this year. Djokovic has won each time, including their last seven matches since late 2014.

Nishikori took out Dominic Thiem, who has the second most wins on tour this year after Djokovic, 6-3, 7-5.

In the other half of the draw, Andy Murray overcame some trouble on his service games to beat David Goffin, 6-1, 7-5, and improve his record on clay this year and last to 27-3.

“I’m getting rewarded now for the work that I put in

Serbian Novak Djokovic celebrates after winning the first set against Rafael Nadal of Spain. AP

over the years on this surface,” Murray said. “I deserve it because I have worked hard for it.”

Murray’s semifinal opponent was French qualifier Lucas Pouille, who advanced when Argentine opponent Juan Monaco withdrew.

Organizers said Monaco had a problem with his left side.

In the women’s quarterfinals, top-ranked Serena Williams routed Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6-2, 6-0, and will play Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania, who defeated Misaki Doi of Japan, 6-2, 7-6 (3).

Also, Wimbledon finalist Garbine Muguruza beat Timea Bacsinszky, 7-5, 6-2, and will meet Madison Keys, who eliminated Barbora Strycova, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.

Seven-time champion Nadal and four-time winner Djokovic have combined to win the last 11 titles at the Foro Italico, and their match was billed as “a premature final.”

Djokovic closed out the first set by sticking out his racket at the last second for a volley winner to finish off a close exchange at the net,

concluding a long point that also saw the Serb spinning around far behind the baseline to retrieve a shot with a desperation backhand.

Djokovic reacted to winning the first set with a big fist pump, but then, after dropping his serve to start the second, he slammed his racket to the clay in frustration.

Nadal called for a trainer to examine his left foot while leading, 2-1, in the second set, apparently because the Spaniard was having trouble feeling his foot. The trainer tapped around in a few areas to see if Nadal could feel anything then cut off supportive tape around his ankle.

Serving for the second set at 5-4, Nadal wasted five chances to push it to a third, then shanked a forehand off his racket frame into the stands to set up Djokovic’s first break point of the set, which the Serb promptly converted.

Nadal was also up a break early in the first set.

“Toward the end of both sets I managed to find an extra gear and come up with some important play—aggressive play,” Djokovic said. “I won maybe a couple of points more than him in the match, so that says enough about how even this encounter was.”

Murray, meanwhile, hasn’t dropped a set this week and was a finalist at last week’s Madrid Open. He’ll return to No. 2 in the rankings ahead of Roger Federer on Monday.

The 52nd-ranked Pouille gained a spot in the tournament as a lucky loser after Jo-Wilfried Tsonga withdrew because of an adductor injury. AP

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unday, May 15, 2016 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

Another sprint for Greipel; Dumoulin keeps Giro lead

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OLIGNO, Italy—German rider Andre Greipel captured his second sprint victory in the Giro d’Italia, while Tom Dumoulin held onto the pink jersey after the seventh stage on Friday.

Greipel was behind the other sprinters going around high-speed curves, but then surged in front on the final straight.

“It was tough all day with a strong breakaway that was hard to catch,” said Greipel, who was nicknamed The Gorilla. “My team did an amazing job. The chase had to be a serious one. Before the sprint, we hit the front early.... The finish was nervous.”

Greipel clocked slightly more than five hours over the rolling 211-kilometer (131mile) route from Sulmona to Foligno.

The Lotto Soudal team has three consecutive victories after Greipel took Stage 5, and teammate Tim Wellens took Stage 6.

“If we were playing football we would say we’ve scored a hat trick,” Greipel said.

It was Greipel’s 19th stage win in a Grand Tour—five at the Giro, 10 at the Tour de France and four in the Spanish Vuelta—and the 131st victory in his career.

Italian riders Giacomo Nizzolo and Sacha Modolo finished second and third, respectively.

Dumoulin, who rides for Team GiantAlpecin, remained 26 seconds ahead of Jakob Fuglsang, and 28 seconds in front of Ilnur Zakarin.

Overall contender Esteban Chaves finished nine seconds behind the main pack and dropped to 11th overall.

Javier Moreno, a Spaniard with the Movistar team, crashed midway through the

Tom Dumoulin keeps the overall lead and the pink jersey. AP

stage and was concerned about his collarbone as he was loaded into an ambulance.

Of an early six-man breakaway, Stefan Kung was the last man to stay clear. The Swiss BMC rider was finally caught by the peloton with less than 7 kilometers (5 miles) to go.

Marcel Kittlel, the German who won the opening two sprints of the race, punctured a tire with about 5 km (3 miles) to go.

Stage 8 on Saturday is a 186-kilometer (116-mile) leg from Foligno to the Tuscan town of Arezzo, featuring a minor climb shortly before the finish.

Stage 9 on Sunday could be one of the most important of the race, a hilly 40.5-kilometer (25-mile) time trial from Radda to Greve in Chianti in the heart of the Tuscan red wine-making region. AP

Infantino says ‘crisis over’

DAY HOLDS 3-SHOT LEAD M IN STORM-DELAYed TPC

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ONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida—The sky was getting so dark that Jason Day could barely see the flag on the 14th hole, much less the small crowd that waited out a two-hour storm delay on Friday at The Players Championship. The way he was playing, he sure could hear them.

His 5-iron from 190 yards into a strengthening wind rolled to the back of the green and settled 2 feet away.

“A great shot,” said Day, who can be stingy with self-praise.

His second big birdie to end his long day stretched his lead to three shots before it was too dark to continue, and Day stepped into a van for a short drive to the clubhouse. His first task was to check the wind for the morning when he had to finish four holes.

He already was 14-under par. He was on a record-setting pace at the TPC Sawgrass. And he could only think about pushing.

“I’m at 14-under par, I’ve got a good lead going on, I just can’t sit back,” Day said. “I need to keep pushing forward. And the moment that I lose a little bit of focus and make a few mental errors and mistakes, that’s when I let the field back in. And I just can’t afford to do that.”

Shane Lowry had a 68 and was at 11-under 133, a solid round that only got going when he hit a wedge so badly that it didn’t each reach the island green at the par-3 17th. He managed to escape with bogey, and then holed a wedge from about 180 yards on the 18th hole for eagle.

Two tough pars at the end of his round meant he was likely to be in the final group with Day. Not bad for a guy who was hitting it so badly on Wednesday that he was dreading the thought of even playing.

“I thought I’d be booking a plane ticket now, how I was feeling on Wednesday,” Lowry said.

“Yeah, golf is a funny game.

Sometimes low expectations brings good results and high expectations brings no results.”

Jordan Spieth was just hopeful of a Saturday tee time, as was Phil Mickelson.

Spieth, looking frustrated as ever, got to the projected cut of 2 under with back-to-back birdies to start the back nine, only to catch a bad break when a rake kept his ball from rolling into the bunker and stayed on the steep slope leading to the sand. The best he could do was chip over the green and he made bogey, and his tee shot was wild to the right on the 15th when

they stopped because of darkness. Spieth was at 1 under.

Mickelson had to make an 8-foot par putt on the par-5 16th to stay at 1 under. He was to return at 9:15 a.m. to play the 17th and 18th, likely needing a birdie on one of them to make the cut.

Defending champion Rickie Fowler shot 71 and was at 1-under 143. He needed help to make the cut.

Greg Norman set the 36-hole record of 14-under 130 at The Players in 1994, the year the Shark made only one bogey the entire week. Day looks just as good and has yet to drop a shot over the 32 holes he has played. He ended his day with a 40-foot birdie putt down the slope at No. 13 and the 5-iron for his tap-in birdie at the 14th.

“Hopefully, I can hit some good, solid shots coming in and at least try to get a couple more birdies,” Day said.

Alex Cejka and Jonas Blixt each shot 67 and were at 10-under 134, along with Cameron Tringale (69).

Another day of calm and soft greens in the morning led to more record-tying performances, and a few irritated golfers who could have gone even lower. Colt Knost made a 15-foot birdie putt on the 17th to reach 10 under, only to three-putt the 18th and have to settle for a course record-tying 63. AP

FilipinoAustralian Jason Day follows his shot from the fifth tee during the second round of The Players Championship golf tournament. AP

EXICO CITY—International Football Federation (Fifa) corruption crisis was declared to be over by President Gianni Infantino on Friday as the scandalbattered governing body broke new ground by appointing its first female and first nonEuropean secretary-general.

Senegalese United Nations official Fatma Samoura has no experience working in sports, but Infantino hopes she can help Fifa improve its image and regain its credibility after far-reaching corruption, bribery and financial crimes by executives.

“Nobody can change the past but I can shape the future,” Infantino told his first Fifa Congress as president since succeeding the banned Sepp Blatter. “Fifa is back on track. So I can officially inform you here, the crisis is over.”

Blatter also said in December 2014 that “the crisis has stopped” after previous bribery cases. But within a year 42 officials and entities linked to soccer were indicted in an American investigation into bribery and fraud.

Samoura is set to replace Jerome Valcke, who was fired by Fifa and banned from soccer for 12 years over a ticketing and TV rights scandal, as well as expenses abuses. Blatter was also forced out of the presidency in disgrace over financial misconduct and is now serving a sixyear ban imposed by the organization’s independent judiciary. But in an expected move, Infantino effectively seized control of the disciplinary organs put in place by Blatter. The congress handed over power to the ruling council, which is headed by Infantino, to dismiss ethics judge HansJoachim Eckert, investigator Cornel Borbely and audit and compliance head Domenico Scala. The three men would not comment on the changes.

“It is the old model,” Fifa anticorruption adviser Mark Pieth said. “We desperately want to go beyond that now.”

Infantino defended the move, insisting it was just to provide “flexibility” for the council for the next year “to dismiss and appoint members if the council feels it is needed.”

Infantino has appointed the new secretary-general to serve under him without an open recruitment process.

In a shakeup of Fifa designed by a reforms panel in the wake of the body’s recent scandals, a separation of powers is being implemented that is intended to hand the CEO-like secretarygeneral control of business operations.

Samoura speaks French, English, Spanish and Italian, but appears to have no experience dealing with commercial deals and broadcasters—a key part of the job as Fifa’s top administrator. Infantino appears to have more experience in those areas, given he was elected Fifa president in February after nine years leading the Union of European Football business operations as general secretary. AP