Businessmirror september 06, 2016

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Tuesday, September 6, 2016 Vol. 11 No. 332

Lopez bucks plan to split DENR into two agencies ₧28.67B E

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

OUT TODAY BusinessSense BusinessMirror

WAGE WAR E1 Tuesday, September 6, 2016

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Who Are The Main Economic Losers From Low-Skilled Immigration?

I

LLEGAL immigration from Mexico is not quite a century old. A law in 1917 was the first to regulate the southern border of the United States. Stricter controls gradually followed all through the 20th century, often during the low points of a recurring cycle of sentiment toward immigrants. Economic booms have lured workers across the Rio Grande, encouraged

by American firms. Downturns have led to demonization of immigrants.

The 1930s and 1950s both saw indiscriminate mass deportations; in 1976 President Gerald Ford wondered how best to “get rid of those 6 to 8 million aliens who are interfering with our economic prosperity.”

The latest bout of Trumpian immigrant-bashing fits the mold in one respect: It comes on the heels of an economic downturn. But it is also strange, because the undocumented population leveled off after 2007. In 2015 there were just 188,000 apprehensions of Mexicans at the border, down from 1.6 million in 2000. This is partly because the recession reduced the magnetism of America’s labor market. But it also reflects a much more secure border—the number of border agents quintupled between 1992 and 2010— and changing demographics in Mexico, where the birthrate has been falling since the early 1970s.

Nonetheless, immigrants living in the US illegally still constitute 5% of America’s labor force. Distinguishing their impact from that of other immigrants is hard, because they are tricky to identify. Instead, researchers typically just rely on nationality. There is almost no way for low-skilled Mexicans who lack American relatives to migrate north legally. As a result, Mexicans make up about half of all immigrants living in the country illegally, but only a fifth of all immigrants living in the

country legally.

Mexicans tend to be less educated than other immigrants. In 2014 nearly 60% had less than a high-school education, compared with fewer than 20% of immigrants from other countries, according to the Pew Research Center, a think tank. Migrants who are living in the US illegally are more likely than those who live in the country legally to work in unskilled occupations like services and construction.

There is a vigorous—and sometimes ill-tempered—debate among academics about the impact of low-skilled migration, both legal and illegal, on wages. Most recently this has centered on a dispute between two economists, David Card at the University of California, Berkeley, and George Borjas at Harvard University, over the effect of an unexpected surge in Cuban migrants to Miami in 1980 (the so-called “Mariel boatlift”). In 1990 Card found this influx had no effect on the wages of lowskilled workers in Miami; Borjas has now revisited the analysis and claims that wages of high-school dropouts in fact fell substantially.

This dispute, however, is only part of a much broader debate. Most other research finds that immigrant flows harm at least some workers, as economic theory usually predicts they should when immigration changes the balance of skills in an economy. The

doNaLd TrUmp speaks at a campaign event at the James a. rhodes arena in akron, ohio, august 22, 2016. daMon winTer/The new York TiMes

NevadaNs line up to vote in democratic caucuses in Las vegas, February 20, 2016. Monica alMeida/The new York TiMes

“If you divide it—mining and the use of natural resources—you don’t allow those choices to be made. Once you choose mining, you don’t allow the possibility of agriculture and ecotourism to happen,” Lopez said at the House hearing on the DENR’s P28.67-billion budget for 2017.

See “DENR,” A12

Estero tales: ‘Bayanihan’ marks Filipinos’ flood-control initiatives

a Farmer cuts agaves at a farm in Canada de Negros, near Jalisco, mexico, may 25, 2011. In the state of Jalisco and nearby, new jobs for farmers cutting agave began to reduce the wage disparity with the United states in the 1990s, making illegal immigration less attractive. TYler hicks/The new York TiMes debate is over precisely who suffers, and how much.

The findings depend on two factors. The first is how to define unskilled workers. Card and others like to include both high-school graduates and dropouts. In 2014, there were 64 million such workers between the ages of 25 and 64 in America. Borjas prefers to treat high-school dropouts separately in his research, so that the lowest-skilled migrants compete with fewer existing workers: 20 million, at last count.

The second factor is whether, among those with similar education, migrants and native workers are substitutes or complements for each other. In 2011 a study by Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, two economists, found that immigrants seem to compete mostly with other immigrants, even when controlling for age and education.

One possible explanation is that unskilled natives respond to an increase in migration by specializing in work that makes better use of their command of English. Ottaviano and Peri concluded that between 1990 and 2006 immigration had a small positive effect on the wages of unskilled American-born workers, but reduced the wages of previous generations of migrants by 6.7%.

Card says the “worst-case scenario” is that immigration has cut the wages of high-school dropouts by about 5% over 20 years, which, compared with the effect of technology and other trends, is not much. Borjas says larger effects are possible. But everyone agrees that the more workers and new immigrants can substitute for each other, the more likely it is that immigration will change relative wages.

If the workers most comparable to Mexican immigrants who are living in the US illegally are the immigrants living in the country legally, they will be most likely to have seen their wages depressed by illegal migration. Any such effect would probably have been compounded by the fact that firms who hire workers who are off the books need not pay them the minimum wage or adhere to other regulations. One survey of lowwage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles

The budget being sought by the DENR for 2017

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and New York in 2008 found that 37% of workers living in the US illegally had been paid less than the minimum wage, compared with 21% of migrant workers who are legal residents.

Migrants who entered the US illegally also may find it hard to move jobs, especially in states that require employers to check their papers. Their immobility could reduce their bargaining power. It certainly seems to stunt their wage growth. In 2009 Pew found that among those who had been in the country for less than 10 years, migrants with legal residency earned 18% more than those without; among those with more than a decade under their belts, the gap was fully 42%. It is possible, though, that the wages of both these groups had still been dragged down relative to those of native workers.

The flip side of low wages for immigrants living in the US illegally, though, is greater economic benefits for those who are not competing with them for work. A rare study of the effect of immigrants who entered the country illegally specifically found that in Georgia, a one-percentagepoint increase in these workers in firms boosted overall wages by about 0.1%. One explanation is that such firms benefit from a richer mix of skills within their workforce. Another explanation is that they are sharing the spoils of the savings that stem from hiring workers on the black market.

Were a President Trump to deport all immigrants who are living in the US illegally, the economy would suffer greatly. Just ask Arizona, where a crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally in 2007 shrank the economy by 2%, according to a private analysis by Moody’s, a ratings agency, for The Wall Street Journal.

The incomes of most workers would fall. Yet strangely enough, those best placed to benefit from a mass deportation would be those who had crossed the border legally.

Traffic problem: Don’t blame progress

@joveemarie

nvironment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez on Monday dissuaded lawmakers from passing a law that will divide the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) into two agencies, stressing that a single body would better ensure that exploitation of mineral resources will not compromise the community’s welfare and other economic activities in a particular area.

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When is art ‘too filipino’ or ‘not Filipino enough’?

The Entrepreneur

D

uring the early 1990s the Philippines went through an energy crisis, characterized by widespread rotating brownouts. The crisis was preceded by the mothballing of the controversial nuclear-plant project in Bataan without undertaking alternative power-generation projects.

The energy crisis, which was affecting the economy, prompted Congress to grant then-President Fidel V. Ramos emergency powers, which accelerated the installation of new power plants by private investors.

Continued on A10

New appointments at D.O.T. announced

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

@Pulitika2010 Special to the BusinessMirror

T ART

By Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

Sports BusinessMirror

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@PsycheRoxas

| Tuesday, sepTember 6, 2016

mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao Asst. Editor: Joel Orellana

I

RAFAEL NADAL is upset in the US Open’s fourth round by 24th-seeded Lucas Pouille (left) of France, prolonging the 14-time Grand Slam title winner’s quarterfinal drought at major tournaments. AP

NADAL GETS DOOR More than four hours into the toughest test he’s put his left wrist through since returning from injury, Rafael Nadal faltered. He missed a short forehand, pushing it into the net. Nadal knew what he’d done and covered his eyes with both hands. One point later, the match was over.

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EW YORK—Nick Monroe went tumbling over the wall and suddenly realized it was a long way down, the world moving in slow motion as he fell head first toward the concrete floor.

The American doubles player was crumpled on the ground for more than five minutes during Sunday’s US Open match, too dizzy to stand up.

He was eventually able to walk back on court under his own power, and after passing a concussion test, he returned to finish out the last three games.

In the third set of his match with Donald Young on the new Grandstand, Monroe chased after a volley hit at a sharp angle and slid into a knee-high barrier along the side of the court. He flipped over the wall, and on the other side, the base of the stands is lower than the court.

“Just saw the ball and ran for it,” he said, “and didn’t realize the wall was there.”

Monroe added he was fairly certain he never lost consciousness and was aware of the score and the situation the whole time.

Young climbed over the barrier to check on him and Monroe could hear what he was saying, but he was too dizzy to move for a couple of minutes.

Their opponents, Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, also came over to see if he was okay as medical staff attended to Monroe. He was then taken inside for close to 10 minutes for concussion tests, as Young sat in his changeover chair and the Spaniards hit the ball back and forth to each other on court to stay warm.

The 34-year-old Monroe said he was put through a series of balance tests and asked to recite the months and the days of the week backward, and he passed everything.

The teams had split the first two sets and the Americans trailed, 4-2, in the third when the incident happened. Monroe held in his next service game, but the Spaniards closed out the 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3 victory to reach the quarterfinals.

Monroe said about an hour after the match that he was still a bit dizzy and medical staff wanted him to come back to the tennis center over the next few days to continue to check on him. He’s never had a concussion before. AP

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By Howard Fendrich The Associated Press

EW YORK—Rafael Nadal kept making a stand, kept coming back, kept showing he would not depart quietly from this US Open. Facing a much younger, much-lessaccomplished opponent, Nadal twice erased a set deficit.

Then he staved off a trio of match points.

And then, more than four hours into the toughest test he’s put his left wrist through since returning from injury, Nadal faltered. He missed a short forehand, pushing it into the net. Nadal knew what he’d done and covered his eyes with both hands. One point later, the match was over.

Nadal was upset in the US Open’s fourth round by 24th-seeded Lucas Pouille of France, 6-1, 2-6, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (6), on Sunday, prolonging the 14-time Grand Slam title winner’s quarterfinal drought at major tournaments.

“There were things I could do better. Had the right attitude. I [fought] right up to the last ball,” said the No. 4-seeded Nadal, a twotime champion at Flushing Meadows. “But I need something else. I need something more that was not there today.”

He breezed through his opening three matches at the hard-court tournament, dropping only 20 games. But Pouille, a 22-year-old with flashy strokes, presented a much greater challenge in the fourth round, pushing Nadal to the limit through entertaining, tense—and intense—exchanges.

“Every point was great,” Pouille said.

This was Pouille’s third career victory in a five-setter; all have come in his past three matches.

Since losing in last year’s French Open quarterfinals, Nadal has failed to make it beyond the fourth round at a major. And after winning at least one Grand Slam title each year for a decade, he’s now

N

UMPIRE warns Marcos Baghdatis for using cell phone during his match. AP

gone two full seasons without one.

In 2016 he lost in the first round of the Australian Open. Then he pulled out of the French Open before his third-round match because of a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist, an injury that forced him to withdraw from Wimbledon altogether and miss about two-and-a-half months in all.

After finally pulling even with Pouille by capturing the fourth set, Nadal broke to open the fifth, then went ahead 4-2. But Pouille broke to 4-all.

“Sometimes,” Pouille said of the raucous crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium, “I couldn’t even hear myself when I was saying, ‘Allez!

Allez! Allez!’”

Soon enough, they were in the tiebreaker, with Pouille holding his first three match points at 6-3.

Nadal—who came to the net far more often than usual— wouldn’t concede yet, though, and one forehand winner by him plus two tight forehands by Pouille evened the score. Anyone’s match to win.

“Well, at 6-3, I was like, ‘OK, you’re going to win this one,’” Pouille said. “And then, at 6-all, it was not the same.”

Pouille never had been to a Grand Slam quarterfinal until Wimbledon a couple of months ago, but it was Nadal who blinked at 6-6. Pouille played conservatively, hitting short shots and making sure they landed in. On one such seemingly easy ball to exploit, Nadal moved forward and whipped that big forehand of his, only to see his reply smack the net.

“I played the right point. I put [myself] in a position to have the winner, and I had the mistake. That’s it,” the 30-year-old Nadal said.

“You cannot go crazy thinking about these kind of things, no?”

Pouille’s take: “I couldn’t believe he would miss it. But he’s like every player. He feels the pressure, as well. Even if he’s one of the best, he feels the pressure.”

That error made it 7-6 in the tiebreaker, Pouille’s fourth match point, and he would not let this one slip away. On a 16-stroke exchange, Pouille delivered a gutsy forehand winner to a corner.

He dropped on his back, his tongue sticking out. As he rose with eyes wide open—and tongue still wagging—the last man from France to win any Grand Slam singles title, 1983 French Open champion Yannick Noah, whose son Joakim recently joined the New York Knicks, spread around high-fives in the stands.

Pouille was joined in the quarterfinals by a pair of countrymen, No. 9 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and No. 10 Gael Monfils, giving France three men’s quarterfinalists at the American Grand Slam tournament for the first time in 89 years. Tsonga, a 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (7), 6-2 winner over the last US man in the field, No. 26 Jack Sock, now plays No. 1 Novak Djokovic. The defending champion had his right elbow treated by a trainer early in the third set of his 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 victory over Kyle Edmund of Britain.

Pouille will face Monfils, a 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 winner over 2006 Australian Open runner-up Marcos Baghdatis, who received a warning for unsportsmanlike conduct for using his cell phone during a second-set changeover. Monfils is quite a character himself: In the middle of one point, he pretended to lean over to tie a shoelace before quickly resuming play.

In the women’s quarterfinals, it’ll be No. 2 Angelique Kerber against 2015 runner-up Roberta Vinci, and two-time finalist Caroline Wozniacki against 48th-ranked Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia.

sports

ADMONISHED FOR TEXTING

EW YORK—Like a schoolkid chastised by a teacher for texting in class, a player at the US Open was caught using his cell phone during a changeover and was admonished by the chair umpire.

Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus, the runner-up at the 2006 Australian Open, got in trouble on Sunday while losing his fourth-round match against 10th-seeded Gael Monfils of France, 6-3, 6-2, 6-3. Baghdatis explained to reporters that he was trying to send a message to his wife.

After getting broken to fall behind 4-1 in the second set, Baghdatis sat in his sideline chair during a changeover and fiddled with his phone, holding it near a white towel that was on his lap. Using a phone during a professional tennis match is not allowed, and chair umpire Alison Hughes noticed what was going on.

So after telling the two players the break was over, she announced to the crowd at the Grandstand, “Code violation.

Unsportsmanlike conduct. Warning, Baghdatis.”

Building in Makati City.

Alegre was appointed assistant secretary, along with other Asecs Gwen Cads-Javier, Daniel Angelo Ebarle Mercado, and Maria Lourdes Flor Japson. DOT Director for Public Affairs and Advocacy Czarina Zara Loyola said the agency is as yet unable to announce the specific designations of assistant secretaries.

Veteran tourism advocate Alma Rita de los Reyes-Jimenez also took her oath of office yesterday as Undersecretary for Tourism Regulation, See “Appointments,” A12

Estero Apacible in Manila. NONIE REYES.

nadal gets door

Doubles player suffers scary fall

HE Department of Tourism (DOT) on Monday announced five new officials appointed to the agency.

The B u s i n e s s M i r ro r ’s own Vice President for Corporate Affairs Frederick “Ricky” Monsod Alegre, along with four other officials newly appointed by President Duterte, took their oaths of office yesterday morning before Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo at the DOT

D4

Manny B. Villar

At the subsequent changeover, two games later, the 31-year-old Baghdatis stood near Hughes’s chair to discuss the warning and plead his case, offering this defense: “I cannot look at the time? [What] if I want to look at the time?”

Later, though, speaking with a handful of reporters, Baghdatis copped to what he really had been doing with his phone in his hand during a Grand Slam tournament.

“I was just writing a message to my wife,” he said with a smile.

Asked whether he thought the warning issued by Hughes was fair, Baghdatis replied: “Yeah, I mean, there [is] rules, so I guess I broke the rules. So I got a warning for it.”

A reporter wanted to know whether Baghdatis might reveal what he was typing on the phone in the middle of a match.

“No way I’m going to share what the message was,” he said, laughing heartily. “Nice try, though. No way.”

Baghdatis said this was not something he ever had tried before as a pro on tour.

“But,” he added, “I said, ‘Why not?’” AP

c1

Part Two

T has been five years since the Manila North Tollways Corp.

(MNTC) won the Anvil Award of Excellence from the Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) for its “Tullahan River: Cleaning it Up, Keeping it Clean” project.

And for Annie Baluyot, village council member of Barangay Ugong, Valenzuela, MNTC’s continuing commitment to help clean the 500-meter Tullahan River has

PESO exchange rates n US 46.6520

led to no-worry-nights and days during the typhoon season.

“Before, when typhoons would cause the waters of Tullahan River to rise, it would take six to as much as 12 hours [overnight] before the flood subsided,” Baluyot said. “Now, because of the constant cleanup drives, the water would recede in just two to four hours.”

Tullahan River covers Baluyot’s barangay—as well as Barangay Talipapa in Quezon City and Barangay 164 in Caloocan City.

The barangay kagawad said the

MNTC helped by providing cleaning materials, such as nets and brooms, and food for volunteers.

“We are appreciative of the efforts of Cherry de la Reya, corporate sector manager of MNTC, and the rest of the MNTC staff.”

The MNTC said the toll road projects-based business launched a cleanup drive for Tullahan River as it “expands the notion that the expressway is not only the road, but also the communities around it.”

The MNTC said it installed barriers to prevent the intrusion Continued on A2

Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo (third from left) on Monday swore into office the newly appointed officials of the Department of Tourism. Taking their oath at the DOT Building in Makati City are (from left) Assistant Secretaries Gwen Cads-Javier and Maria Lourdes Flor Japson; Undersecretary Alma Rita de los Reyes-Jimenez; and Assistant Secretaries Frederick Monsod Alegre and Daniel Angelo Ebarle Mercado.

n japan 0.4482 n UK 62.0612 n HK 6.0154 n CHINA 6.9817 n singapore 34.3282 n australia 35.2922 n EU 52.0636 n SAUDI arabia 12.4412

Source: BSP (5 September 2016 )

A2 Tuesday, September 6, 2016

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Estero tales: ‘Bayanihan’ marks Filipinos’ flood-control initiatives Continued from A1

of solid waste in the river and conducts regular cleanup drives with riverside communities. It, likewise, “educates residents along the Tullahan on advanced river cleaning and resource-management techniques in seminars and workshops that teach methods, such as recycling.”

Regular cleanups

THE Tullahan River is one of the major river channels of Metro Manila.

The Department of Environment and Nat ura l Resources (DENR) said the 23-kilometer Tullahan River system traverses the cities of Malabon, Caloocan, Valenzuela and Quezon City. The river is also a major spillway of the La Mesa Dam, which is a source of water for Metro Manila, and drains into Manila Bay, a DENR document said.

The MNTC became the privatesector partner in the cleaning of the Tullahan River in 2010, under the EMB-DENR’s Adopt-an-Estero/ water body project.

The DENR also partnered that year with the San Miguel Foundation Inc. (SMF) for the environmental improvement of a 1.7-km portion of the Tullahan River in Valenzuela City.

Baluyot narrated that a memorandum of agreement (MOA) was signed in 2010 between the MNTC, and the community leaders of Barangay Ugong, Barangay 164 and Barangay Talipapa, together with the EMB-DENR and the local government units (LGUs) of Valenzuela City, Quezon City and Caloocan City.

But according to Baluyot, it took time before community residents warmed up to the idea of cleaning the Tullahan River.

“Some dismissed the project as pure politics,” Baluyot said in Tagalog. “In time, we convinced the people through the holding of seminars on solid-waste management, coupled with memories of Typhoon Ondoy’s rampage in 2009 and the mountain of trash it emptied on the riverbank.”

Since then, Baluyot added, there have been regular cleanup

drives every third or fourth Saturday of the month.

“It didn’t matter whether it was raining heavily or there was Habagat,” she said. “We used the boats supplied by the MMDA [Metropolitan Manila Development Authority] and dredged the river.”

The Tullahan project has three cleaning stations. One is at Mindanao Avenue, the bridge there which serves also as boundary of Barangay Bagbag, Quezon City, and Barangay 164, Caloocan City.

Another station is Maceda Bridge along Road 1 and includes Barangay 164, Caloocan City. The third station is Tulay na Bato, the bridge across Road 10 and Maligaya Street and which serves as the boundary of Barangay Ugong, Valenzuela, and Barangay 164, Caloocan City, where riprapping has been done.

The EMB-DENR installed two garbage traps at Maceda Bridge at the boundary of Barangay Talipapa in Quezon City and Barangay Ugong in Valenzuela City.

The garbage traps installed at the Maceda Bridge are in the form

of grills made of heavy-duty fishnet measuring 30 meters wide and 1-meter tall.

Running parallel to the river, the water under Maceda Bridge is an effective spot for catching garbage. The water flows into inner city inlets, draining into the Pasig River and then to Manila Bay. DENR water experts said there was marked improvement in the water quality of Mindanao Avenue Station, Maceda Bridge station and the Tulay na Bato (stone bridge) station.

Initiative, caring

BALUYOT attributes the relative success of the Tullahan River cleanup project to “initiative and caring of the community residents.”

“This is the help we can give to the national government and to the LGUs,” she said.

Baluyot added that youth volunteers in Barangay Ugong, numbering 65, are taught early to care for the river and to see themselves as the “next-generation river protectors.”

Baluyot said there are now volunteers in all three communities.

“We started with the home-

owners’ associations of the different barangays around Tullahan River, especially those in Maceda Bridge and Tulaykawayan,”she said. “Now we have women’s groups, the San Juan dela Cruz C o o p e r at i v e f rom B a r a n g ay Ugong, and the PTA officers from Barangay Caloocan.”

Choleng Juan, chairman of Barangay Talipapa, Quezon City, said they convince their residents not to throw garbage in the river and to segregate waste.

“Residents now sell their di nabubulok [nonbiodegradable] as scrap and give to their pet pigs the nabubulok [biodegradable] waste,” Juan said.

Kit Ventura, MNTC assistant vice president for corporate communications, said during a discussion with an EMB executive the company is now on its sixth year of participating in the Tullahan River cleanup program.

“The participation of all the communities cannot be done by one agency alone. It cannot be done by MNTC only or the DENR only or the communities,” Ven-

tura said. “What is needed is that we should all be in this together.

Also, when you promise to help, you must deliver so you can gain the trust of the communities.

Teamwork is important.”

He expressed optimism that the Adopt-an-Estero program can be replicated in other waterways.

According to Ventura, MNTC parent Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC) is also helping in the cleanup of the coastal road near the company’s Cavite Expressway project. “There is also a river there and they are now planting mangroves to attract fish. We are looking at other things we can do. Yes, the program can be replicated, with the help, of course, of the DENR.” MPTC subsidiar y MNTC is owned by Metro Pacific Investments Corp. It holds the concession rights to construct, operate and maintain the North Luzon Expressway and the Subic–Clark– Tarlac Expressway. The company was acquired by the Metro Pacific group from the Lopez Group of Cos. in 2008. To be concluded

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Limited funding forces DENR to revisit coral reef-rehabilitation plan

By Jonathan L. Mayuga @jonlmayuga

T

he Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is seeking a P28.67-billion budget for 2017 and is setting aside about P600 million for coral-reefs rehabilitation and restoration. But with its limited budget, scientists and experts are now revisiting its coral reef-rehabilitation strategy.

Instead of planting artificial corals, Environment Undersecretary for Policy and Planning Marlo Mendoza earlier said they are looking at establishing more marine protected areas (MPAs), which would allow natural recovery of degraded coral reefs.

He said establishing additional MPAs is more cost-effective than rehabilitating damaged corals.

There are currently 240 PAs under the National Integrated Protected Areas System (Nipas) Act, 70 of which are MPAs. On top of these national MPAs, there are also 1,751 local MPAs as of 2015.

₧600M The proposed coral-reefs rehab and restoration budget for 2017

Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim of the DENR’s Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) underscored the need to establish more MPAs to protect more areas, including the existing corals that would allow faster recovery of the country’s spawning grounds for fish and other marine life. “ There are several reasons t hat we ca n att r ibute t his dwindling fisheries in our marine areas. One, unsustainable fishing methods, including illegal, unreported, unregulated [IUU] fishing, overfishing, over harvesting of other marine resources and harvesting of endangered, threatened mar ine species. Another reason is habitat loss—coral-reef destruction, smothering of sea grass beds and corals, brought about by pollution, both land-based and water-based, siltation, reclamation [also island-building], and heav y development in coastal areas,” she said.

Because threats are multifaceted, Lim said the DENR is addressing the problem in an integrated and holistic manner.

“As for the BMB, our focus is on establishing marine protected areas, or MPA networks, along with the local government units [LGUs]. MPAs maybe at the national level or at the local level. It is important to identify where our remaining rich marine ecosystems are and secure them so these can continue to be a spawning ground for our important marine and fisher y resources, and contr ibute to t he recover y of sur round ing degraded marine ecosystems.

We will look at interconnectivities of the marine ecosystems so we can develop networks of marine protected areas that will support ever y stage of the life cycle of keystone marine species,” she said.

According to Lim, strengthening law enforcement is also very important, underscoring the need for interagency cooperation to eliminate the threats to important marine ecosystems.

“We must work closely with our Bureau of Fisher ies, our coast guard, and other enforcement agencies, so that while we are protecting, poaching must also be reduced or eliminated,”

she said. Vincent Hilomen, executive director of the DENR-BMB’s Coastal and Marine Division, said the establishment of more MPAs would allow corals to recover naturally, which is more cost-effective than artificial coral rehabilitation or recovery methods.

Hilomen said coral-reef rehabilitation or recovery would cost t he gover nment around P500,000 to as much as P5 million per hectare, depending on the damage or areas to recover or restore, citing a report by the Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management. Such cost can be avoided by identifying areas that can recover faster on their own without human intervention, he said.

“Based on a new study that came out, there are strong recruitment or natural replenishment of coral larvae in Tanon Strait. The sources are reefs from all over,” he said.

According to Hilomen, instead of deploying artificial reefs or coral planting, they are now looking at simply protecting the area and removing or eliminating the threats.

“Why the need to spend if we reduce and remove that threats in the area for corals to grow, it would allow faster recovery?” he said.

According to Hilomen, natural recovery is better than any artificial rehabilitation or human intervention. “Coral reefs that recover naturally are more resilient than any artificial coral reef rehabilitation. Like in the case of mangrove forest rehabilitation,” he said, citing the onslaught of Supertyphoon Yolanda that completely washed away new mangrove plantations without any chance of recovery.

“The mangroves that were planted were totally washed away. Those that grew naturally are now recovering,” he said.

“Instead of rehab, we will just move for protection and remove the stress to allow our marine ecosystems to recover naturally,” he said.

The technologies developed or planning to be adopted by the DENR-BMB, he said, would still be useful in a few priority areas that are “small scale.”

“We can’t afford massive rehabilitation because it is too expensive. For example, there is one area that is significant, historically important, we can spend [money] there to jumpstart recovery and rehabilitation. The next step would be protection and stress reduction,” he added.

He said there are many technologies developed by marine scientists over the years, but these are still under review by the DENR. “There is no one plural technology that can be rolled out. The technology varies per site. One technology can work for one area but would fail in another. The applicability of the technology varies,” he said.

Meanwhile, Lim said, since declaring areas as MPA s reduces the fishing ground of coastal communities that depend on the mar ine resources for food and livelihood. She said there is a need to come up w ith a lternative sources of income that a re biod iversit y-f r iend ly for t he communit ies t hat wou ld be affected.

“We hope to mobilize bridging financing to support this initiative, while allowing the fisheries and marine resources to recover through the effective management of our MPAs. Awareness-raising and socia l marketing is also a key strategy to gain broader support for a really successfully functioning national integrated marine protected area system,” she said.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

A3

BSP plans exclusion of LGU officials from secrecy provisions

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By Butch Fernandez

@butchfBM

he Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) wants elected and appointed government officials to sign waivers allowing authorities to look into their bank accounts, instead of amending the law, to remove their exemptions from provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act covering suspicious transactions.

BSP Governor Amado M. Tetangco Jr. raised this option on Monday, as the Senate Committee on Banks, chaired by Sen. Francis G. Escudero, opened hearings on pending bills seeking to amend the New Central Bank Act and the secrecy of bank deposits law.

“Actually, the proposal of the BSP is to relax the bank-secrecy law so that the BSP can further strengthen its enforcement powers,” Tetangco told reporters after the hearing.

He clarified that “the BSP is asking for authority from Congress to be able to look into bank

accounts in the course of bank examination, when there is a reasonable ground to believe that fraud, unlawful activity, or irregularity has been committed or is being committed and being able to look into bank accounts would establish that such [is the case].”

Tetangco aired his concern “about the Philippines being one of the very few countries that have bank-secrecy laws and that the regulator is not exempted from the bank-secrecy law.”

T h e B S P c h i e f a d m it t e d that bank regulators were having difficulty enforcing the law, citing

their experience that “when fraud is committed, the proceeds of the crime will normally be deposited in a bank account and once that happens, the BSP can no longer pursue its investigation because it cannot look into those bank accounts.”

Asked about moves to exempt government officials from coverage of the law, he replied that regulators have yet to fully discuss the matter.

“I think that will still have to be discussed,” Tetangco said, pointing out that “the proposal now is to exempt government officials, elective or appointive; in other words, they will not be covered by bank secrecy, meaning their accounts can be looked into,” he said.

Tetangco, however, cited an “alternative” suggested by Escudero at the hearing.

“As you heard from the chairman of the Committee on Banks, there is another alternative, which is really to ask government officials to sign a waiver that would allow authorities to scrutinize bank accounts of public officials,” he said.

“Our concern, as far as banksecrecy law is concerned, is for BSP to be able to strengthen its power by being able to look into bank accounts when irregularity has been committed,” Tetangco said.

He suggested that safeguards

could be included in the remedial legislation to prevent potential abuse. “In our case, the safeguards would be that the secrecy law will be relaxed under certain specific conditions, as I mentioned: if there is reasonable ground to believe that fraud or unlawful activity or irregularity has been committed, and that there has to be a provision [imposing] sanctions for those who violate that particular provision.”

Escudero, in a separate interview, indicated that the committee is mulling over options to either “repeal or amend” the existing law.

“That will be the direction.”

The senator said another option is for Congress to pass an amendment to the law requiring a public official when filing Statement of Assets Liabilities and Net Worth to submit a written waiver in favor of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Ombudsman, the Anti-Money Laundering Council and the BSP to look into the deposits of any government official.

“If the official refuses to sign a waiver, then he should not enter government service,” Escudero said, adding: “No one is forcing them to run for public office or accept an appointment to a government post if they do not want to open their bank accounts.”

TRAVEL EXCHANGE SHOW A Mindanaoan tribal costume is among the highlights in the recently held Philippine Travel Exchange presented by the Tourism Promotion Board that accommodated more than 200 international buyers from across 37 countries worldwide and 199 local sellers from 132 companies across the Philippines. NONIE REYES

TRAVEL EXCHANGE SHOW A Mindanaoan tribal costume is among the highlights in the recently held Philippine Travel Exchange presented by the Tourism Promotion Board, which accommodated more than 200 international buyers from across 37 countries worldwide and 199 local sellers from 132 companies across the Philippines. NONIE REYES

Philippine nickel-ore exports seen falling 30 percent

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hipments of nickel ore from the Philippines may shrink by as much as 30 percent this year, as the world’s top supplier cracks down on errant miners and after some companies cut output in the first half due to weak prices and poor weather, according to the head of one of the biggest producers.

Volumes are expected to drop at least 20 percent compared with a year earlier, Dante Bravo, president and CEO of Global Ferronickel Holdings Inc., said in an interview. The suspension of mines during an audit initiated by President Duterte means that more than 100,000 metric tons of contained nickel production have been lost, Bravo said, citing a company estimate.

“This audit is a follow-through of what President Duterte said during the campaign, that he will take a look into mining,” said Bravo, adding that Global Ferronickel’s operations had been assessed and “we have complied with everything.”

While the latest audit applies the same rules as in earlier investigations of the industry, “what’s changed is the person in charge and the approach in regulation and administration,” he said.

The global nickel market is waiting for the full outcome of the examination amid concern that further mine suspensions may hurt supplies, potentially lifting prices

that gained to a one-year high last month.

Environment Undersecretary Leo L. Jasareno told Bloomberg last week that the government expects to present the findings on Thursday.

Most ore from the Philippines is shipped to China, the largest metals user, to make stainless steel.

“China will have to impor t more ferronickel, especially from Indonesia, to cope with the falling ore shipments from the Philippines,” Celia Wang, a researcher with trading house Grand Flow Resources Co., said by phone from Shanghai. “Nickel ore from other countries is still not competitive at the moment.”

The full impact from the audit is yet to be seen as mines shut by the audit so far aren’t producing or shipping much anyway because of weather and resource depletion, according to Wang. Chinese imports of ferronickel jumped 56 percent to 92,240 tons, the second-highest on record in July, as Indonesian shipments rose more than fivefold, according to latest data from customs.

Mine suspensions

In terms of output of contained nickel—the metal derived from nickel ore—Bravo said the Philippines had been forecast to produce 378,000 tons this year, down from 420,000 tons in 2015. Losing another 100,000 tons due to mine suspensions would leave production

at two-thirds of last year’s levels. “The audit is good as the compliant companies will be identified and will help clear the perception or conclusion that the mining industry is bad,” Bravo said on September 1. Those who stand to gain “are those who will be left standing. Those who are not compliant will be suspended, won’t be able to sell and will miss out.”

The Philippines accounts for about 20 percent of global mined nickel supply. Last year ore shipments were 32.3 million tons, down from 33.1 million tons in 2014, according to mines bureau figures. Bravo’s outlook suggests that in 2016 the country may export between 22.6 million and 25.8 million tons. Ore differs by grades and only a fraction of each ton can be converted into metal.

Responsible operations

S o far eight nickel operations have been suspended in the audit and under an earlier examination by the previous administration, according to Jasareno.

The government wants to ensure that all miners operate responsibly, and those breaching environment rules will be suspended, he said. Nickel fell as much as 0.6 percent to $10,005 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange and traded at $10,040 of 10:05 a.m. in Shanghai, 14 percent higher in 2016. The metal peaked on August 10 at $11,030 before giving up some

of its gains as concern about the Philippine audit eased, with Citigroup Inc. saying the checkup has had only a modest effect.

Global Ferronickel operates the Cagdianao mines in Surigao province in the south. After producing 5.4 million tons last year, it’s likely to miss this year’s target of 5 million tons after unfavorable weather and low prices in the first half, according to Bravo. The shares are 23 percent higher this year in Manila.

Missed target

“We will miss our target because of the weather and low nickel prices at the start of the year,” Bravo said. “Shipments of the industry will be more than 20 percent down and this could go up to 30 percent,” he said, adding that prices in China had risen amid concern about the impact of the audit.

Declines in nationwide ore supplies may come just as China’s economy shows positive signs, aiding the demand outlook, according to Bravo. China’s official factory gauge unexpectedly rose in August, climbing to the highest level in two years, according to figures last week that helped boost metals prices.

“China’s economy is stabilizing and fixedasset investment going up, particularly in the residential sector. Even the industrial production side is also going up,” Bravo said.

“We are still living in a metals age.”

Bloomberg News

BMReports BusinessMirror

A4 Tuesday, September 6, 2016

news.businessmirror@gmail.com

Airport authorities clamp tight security

A

By Recto L. Mercene

@rectomercene

LL four passenger terminals of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) remain on full alert since the Davao terrorist blast on September 2, as the authorities canceled all days off and vacation leaves of members of the Airport Police Department (APD).

Entry to airport Terminals 1 and 2 takes at least 30 minutes to one hour at the security checkpoints— one along Ninoy Aquino Avenue and the other at Naia Road—as the police subject each vehicle to close inspection. Related story on page B7.

“This is not to alarm the public. We have raised our alert status as proactive measures to ensure safety and security of airport users,” airport General Manager Ed Monreal said.

Monreal added that he had directed baggage screeners to remain vigilant and discerning and to conduct thorough inspection “only when the need calls for it.”

“We do not want to cause inconvenience in the process by creating long lines at the baggage-screening checkpoints,” he added.

The airport chief also said as a matter of procedure, during fullalert status, “we have full comple-

ment of the Airport Police Department. Days off are canceled, including no leaves of absence are allowed.” Monreal advised all airport users not to be alarmed by the increased police visibility within the terminal buildings and outer vicinity of the Naia.

“Our K-9 units will also be a common sight in the complex under this situation.”

He added that security checkpoints shall conduct random and rigid inspections on motor vehicles.

“The public is advised to oblige for their own protection,” Monreal said, adding: “Depending on intelligence reports, we may completely cancel issuance of visitors passes for everyone’s safety.”

“Together with the National Police Aviation Security Group, we appeal to everyone to bear with us during this time,” Monreal added.

In this connection, the airport

chief asked the full cooperation of law-enforcement agencies, especially the police.

“I want the full cooperation among each and every one to inform whatever observations you may see around of the complex. Let’s be vigilant and let’s be observant,” he said during flag-raising ceremony at the administration building across Nayong Pilipino.

“The Manila International Airport Authority has so many problems and one of them is the airtraffic congestion, but our Secretary Arthur P. Tugade is in the planning stage, asking experts and many more regarding the issue of air traffic and the solutions.”

Monreal said he cannot do the task alone and asked Naia employees to help “in the sense of moving forward.”

“Let us work together, walang inggitan, walang samaan ng loob at, higit sa lahat, walang chismis, lalo na kung hindi totoo [no jealousy or ill will and, most of all, no rumors, especially if not true].”

He appealed to the Management

Information System (MIS), who handles the finger scanning of every airport employees who undertake overtime, to shorten the processing and filing of overtime.

Monreal said he will issue a method how to shorten the processes, so long as it is legally allowed.

In this connection, the spokesman for the Bangasamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) said the bombing of the Davao City night market could have been meant to divert the Duterte administration’s ongoing military operations in Sulu against the Abu Sayyaf.

“The terror group [Abu Sayyaf] has its back against the wall and had to divert attention from Sulu to Davao,” said Abu Misri Mama, BIFF spokesman.

Mama said the deployment of additional soldiers and military hardware to Sulu to finish off the Abu Sayyaf could be the reason for the bomb attack, as the bandit group have been tagged in the series of kidnap-for-ransom and extortion activities in Mindanao victimizing local and foreign victims.

The public is advised to oblige for their own protection.

Depending on intelligence reports, we may completely cancel issuance of visitors passes for everyone’s safety.”—Monreal

PAL eyes DIA as next hub, lines up 2 new foreign routes The date is not definite yet. It depends on further planning and evaluation. Maybe it would be within one year.”—Bautista

By Manuel T. Cayon

Mindanao Bureau Chief @awimailbox

D

AVAO CITY—Flag-carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) is finalizing a plan to include the Davao City International Airport (DIA) as its next hub, initially for two new foreign routes, a ranking airline executive said over the weekend.

Vic Suarez, PAL SVP for sales in Mindanao, said Davao City will definitely emerge as their next hub in the next 12 months. The Davao area, he said, is most profitable station among all PAL stations.

A North Asian country, he added, is also being considered for a three-route flight, “mostly likely via Cebu” with the plan to launch the hub. An undisclosed long-haul second foreign route is also being considered to complete the launch of the new hub, Suarez said.

The plan to transform this airport into a hub for PAL augurs well for DIA to further expand its exisitng terminal building to accommodate more incoming and outgoing passengers.

PAL President Jaime Bautista also confirmed PAL’s plan for DIA. He, however, declined to provide further details. “The date is not definite yet. It depends on further planning and evaluation. Maybe it would be within one year,” he said.

Bautista attended the launch on Friday of the renovated office at the Ateneo de Davao University building along Roxas Avenue. He said a Davao ticketing office would be the first to be renovated in the country to represent the rebranding of PAL. The Davao hub is also part of the company strategy to skirt away from the congested Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia). It has already launched a direct Cebu-Los Angeles flight last year to start a non-Naia flight.

AseanTuesday BusinessMirror

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Southeast Asian leaders prepare to welcome Obama for last time

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arack Obama’s push to rebalance US foreign policy toward Asia will be the focus of his last visit to the region as president. With a trade deal hanging in the balance of a US election that has free-trade advocates in both major parties on the defensive, Obama will seek to reassure Asean leaders that the accord can get through Congress.

Joining Obama and the leaders of the 10 Asean countries in Lao PDR from September 6 to 8, will be leaders from China, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Russia for the East Asia Summit.

Here’s a look at the agenda:

US rebalance

The first sitting US president to visit Laos, Obama’s regular attendance at the summit has added significant weight to the annual Asian leaders meeting and further enhanced American engagement in the region.

The first US-Asean summit since the signing of last year’s “ strategic partnership,” White House officials say Obama will make a strong case for his signature Asia policies—the US economic and military rebalance to the region, rules-based order, respect for international law and peaceful dispute resolution. China has repeatedly painted the policy as an attempt to contain its economic and military expansion.

TPP treaty

The keystone of Obama’s engagement strategy with Asia, the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal covering 12 nations and 40 percent of world commerce has been targeted by both sides of the US presidential campaign. With sentiment in the US running against free-trade agreements, Obama’s only chance to see the treaty ratified will be to push it through Congress during the so-called lameduck session before he leaves office in January. W hite House officials say he’ll make a strong case for TPP in Laos. Seven member-nations will be represented in Vientiene, as well as China, which isn’t part of TPP. The deal would slash tariffs on goods and services and set labor and environmental standards.

Sea disputes

China’s claim to most of the South China Sea suffered a setback in July, when an international tribunal ruled that its territorial assertions had no legal basis. Five Asean nations including the Philippines, which instigated the case, and Vietnam also have claims in the waters that host more than $5 trillion in trade a year. China has said it will ignore the ruling. In June Malaysia released a statement after an Asean meeting identifying the dispute as “an important issue in the relations and cooperation between Asean and China.” China says the dispute isn’t a matter between itself and Asean.

Beijing pressured Laos to scrap that statement, according to a Southeast Asian official with knowledge of the talks. That’s why any South China Sea references in the final communiqué will carry extra weight.

Duterte debut

President Duterte, a longtime mayor who swept to power with his populist approach, makes his international debut. The diplomatically inexperienced President will navigate his first meetings with world leaders, amid global criticism of his deadly drug war. During his trip he’ll meet Obama and they’re expected to discuss both the South China Sea and rights issues, though Mr. Duterte has warned that the American leader must first listen to his defense of the drug war before raising concerns.

Regional leaders will be watching the way he balances interaction with both the US and the China, who he’s courting with an offer of two-way talks to resolve to the territorial dispute. Bloomberg News

Editor: Max V. de Leon • Tuesday, September 6, 2016 A5

Rare focus on little-known Laos as it hosts major Asean meeting

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he light was fading over Vientiane on a cool December evening when a Jeep was stopped at a traffic light. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) video later showed the occupant of the car being pulled out and taken away in a pickup truck, never to be seen again.

The disappearance of Sombath Somphone nearly four years ago is a reminder of the dismal human-rights record of the authoritarian government of Lao PDR, which prepares to host President Barack Obama and Asian leaders at a regional summit starting on Tuesday.

The government says it is investigating but has provided no leads into Sombath’s whereabouts, and no arrests have been made, leading critics of Laos’s communist government to believe that his disappearance was state-orchestrated.

“It’s a test case for Obama. If he mentions it publicly it would make it much more difficult for Laos to sweep it under the carpet. The fact that the most powerful man on the planet cares about Sombath will count for something,” said Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

The three-day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is a rare opportunity to put the spotlight on the landlocked nation of Laos, which usually stays under the radar. Along with Brunei Darussalam, it is the most under reported and under-scrutinized country in the 10-nation Asean.

Unlike fellow communist country Vietnam, the country of 6.2 million people is no economic beehive of activity. Nor does it have a democracy icon like Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar. Tourism, which has made Thailand a household name around the world, remains nascent; and it is not a US ally like the Philippines, Singapore or Malaysia. Nor is it the world’s biggest Muslim nation by population like Indonesia to give it prominence.

Little wonder then that what goes on in Laos, largely stays in Laos.

But by virtue of taking on the rotating chairmanship of Asean this year, it has suddenly sprung into

But by virtue of taking on the rotating chairmanship of Asean this year, it has suddenly sprung into limelight. It’s the first time a US president will visit Lao PDR. limelight. It’s the first time a US president will visit Laos.

Sombath’s disappearance on December 15, 2012, was captured on a traffic CCTV video, in which he is seen stopped at a police outpost and asked to step out of his Jeep, according to Amnesty International.

Within a few minutes a man on a motorcycle arrives, drives away Sombath’s vehicle and a pickup truck takes Sombath away with armed people riding a motorcycle leading the way. The passenger on the motorcycle fires a gunshot in the air, said Amnesty.

“More than three years have passed since Sombath Somphone was last seen. We have no alternative but to conclude that the authorities are either directly responsible for his disappearance, or have failed miserably to take all necessary measures to get to the bottom of what happened,” said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International’s director for South East Asia and the Pacific.

Sombath’s wife, Shui Meng Ng, was driving her car ahead of Sombath. She thought she had lost him in the traffic and didn’t see the drama happening behind her.

Flags of the member-countries of the Asean and their key dialogue partner-nations are raised in front of Patuxary Victory Gate in Vientiane, Lao PDR, on Sunday. The coming week will see a series of meetings of Asean leaders and their key dialogue partners scheduled to begin in Vientiane on September 6. AP

“I am sorry to say I have no new information to share, except that the Lao government has continued to stonewall any queries to his whereabouts. The government continues to maintain that ‘the state is not involved and the police are still investigating,’” said Ng, a Singaporean and a former UN official.

If Sombath was taken away by the government he was an unlikely target. The US-educated activist mostly worked in rural development, showing farmers how to use more creative ways to raise fish and make handicrafts. But he was also vocal about land deals that had left thousands of villagers homeless without compensation, sparking rare political protests. And he had international connections.

Sombath is not the only one to be a possible victim of a government crackdown.

In 2015 an ethnic Lao who is a Polish citizen disappeared while visiting Laos, according to his Polish wife, allegedly for posting critical comments on Facebook. He was subsequently charged in court and sentenced to prison for four years and nine months.

In March this year three young Lao migrant workers who returned to Laos to renew their passports

vanished, and reappeared on state TV in prison uniform to “confess” to using the Internet to “defame the government.” They have not been charged and their parents have not been allowed to visit them. Another dissident, Ka Yang, who had fled to Thailand was deported to Laos in 2011 and was imprisoned.

Most Laotians are unaware of such events because of the government’s watertight control over the media, the security forces and the judiciary. Those who know are too fearful to talk about it.

“Laos has now become one of the most rights-repressing countries in Asean: leaders in the region and from around the world must stop looking the other way, and demand Vientiane end its asphyxiation of independent civil society,” said Walden Bello, a former member of the Philippines Congress and vice chair of Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights.

Most of Laos’s top leaders are from the first generation of revolutionary fighters, and even those who have retired retain influence over the Communist Party and the government. But the leadership is passing on to a younger generation slowly, as seen in the party congress held this year.

While the top 2 posts—party

secretary and president—are held by an old guard, former Gen. Bounhyang Vorachit, the Cabinet has many young ministers, including Prime Minister Thongloune Sisoulith, the second-highest ranking person in the Politburo. There is hope that this transition will lead to change in Laos. Thongloune has acknowledged corruption in the government and has taken action to halt timber and illegal wildlife trade. Still, many problems remain, such as environmental degradation, forced evictions and illegal land concessions.

Also, Laos wants to improve its economy and the life of its people by attracting more foreign investments, especially from its Asean neighbors. It also wants to forge closer ties to the US as a counterbalance to China, which has a massive economic influence here.

“I believe that the Asean Summit provides some opportunities for world leaders like President Obama... to engage the Lao,” Ng said. “Such dialogue...may not lead to any immediate change but they can at least remind the Lao that improving its human rights record and relaxing control on civil society will, in fact, lead to real dividends for improved economic and social development in the long run.” AP

Summit may bow to Chinese pressure on South China Sea

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he draft of a declaration at a Southeast Asian summit reveals that the region’s leaders would skip mention of a July 12 arbitration ruling that shot down China’s expansive territorial claims.

The omission is being seen as a victory for Beijing’s diplomatic clout.

But the draft also contains strongly voiced concern over Beijing’s aggressive island construction in the South China Sea, which Southeast Asian countries fear could destabilize the region.

The draft, obtained on Monday by The Associated Press, after more deliberations will be released on Thursday at the end of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.

Officials say Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte plans to ask the Chinese premier at a separate meeting if China is trying to develop another disputed reef, the Scarborough Shoal, off his country’s northwestern coast.

China opposes raising its maritime disputes at international meetings, including the G-20 summit ending Monday in Hangzhou and subsequent meetings of Southeast Asian leaders and their partners in Lao PDR.

To Beijing’s pleasure, President Duterte said he will not raise the subject of China’s compliance with an international tribunal’s ruling that invalidated Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Preferring a quiet diplomacy, Duterte last month sent his special envoy, former President Fidel V. Ramos, to meet with Chinese officials and they agreed on the need to reduce tensions through talks.

“We will not raise hell now because of the judgment, but there will come a time that we have to do some reckoning about this,” Duterte said.

He said the Philippines can take only so much, with China insisting it owns the contested islands and refusing to recognize the arbitration ruling. “You cannot be slapped every day with those kinds of words,” Duterte said.

China has relied on its ally Cambodia to block any overt mention of tensions in the South China Sea in communiques following meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, because it doesn’t want to be confronted by a united bloc.

President Barack Obama was more forthcoming in expressing his

concerns over China’s behavior. He said ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Hangzhou that the US has been “very firm” in response to Chinese military assertiveness.

“We’ve indicated to them that there will be consequences,” he told CNN. Xi told Obama that China will continue to “unswervingly safeguard” its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Beijing’s next big move

There has been speculation that China might make even more assertive moves in the South China Sea after the G-20 meeting, including possibly launching reclamation projects in new areas or declaring an air defense identification zone over the crucial waterbody.

President Duterte said the Philippine Coast Guard had observed Chinese barges at Scarborough Shoal, a tiny reef China seized from the Philippines in 2012. The vessels may indicate that Beijing is planning new construction that could ratchet up tensions.

Michael Green, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said building at Scarborough Shoal before the G-20 or the US presidential election in November would be “very selfdefeating” for Beijing.

China also plans joint naval exercises with Russia in the South China Sea from September 11 to 19, a move criticized by the US as harming regional stability.

According to the Russian government’s Tass news agency, warships from Russia’s Pacific Fleet, including the anti-submarine vessels Admiral Tributs and Admiral Vinogradov, will take part.

Active Australian engagement

US Army Assistant Chief of Staff Col. Tom Hanson urged Australia to take a stronger position against China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. “It’s very difficult to walk this fine line between balancing the alliance with the United States and the economic engagement with China,” Hanson told Australia’s Radio National. “At some point there is going to have to be a decision about which one becomes more of a vital national

interest for Australia, in my opinion.”

Hanson wrote an opinion piece for the Australian Security and Policy Institute in May in which he argued for a “more visible and unqualified stance against Chinese territorial aggrandizement.”

“I think the Australians need to make a declaratory statement and some visible action that shows their concern and commitment to upholding a rules-based international order,” he said in the radio interview. “Clearly China believes they have an opportunity and they feel empowered to flout that, so a demonstration by Australia would be welcome.”

Australia has been supportive of the US freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea, and has regularly sent its own air force patrols over the region, drawing anger from Beijing. Yet, Australian public opinion remains strongly in favor of close ties with China.

“We are balancing relationships between our largest strategic ally and our largest trading partner with deft diplomacy, consistency and pragmatism,” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement. AP

The W

Business

A6 Tuesday, September 6, 2016 • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Politics, bad timing killed Zika deal in US Congress

W

Ballots are being counted after the election for Legislative Council in Hong Kong on Sunday. Bloomberg News

HK registers big turnout for legislative election

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ong Kong voters turned out in near-record numbers on Sunday for a legislative election that was expected to test the appeal of a new wave of anti-China activists and set the stage for future political fights over Beijing’s control over the city.

Election officials were working through the night to count about 2 million ballots cast for the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo), as voters waited in long lines even after polls closed at 10:30 p.m. local time.

Turnout hit 52.6 percent registered voters as of 9:30 p.m., approaching the previous high of 55.6 percent in 2004, according to the Electoral Affairs Commission.

Results are expected on Monday.

The legislative election was Hong Kong’s first since the police clashes with student protesters two years ago thrust the former British colony’s strug gle for greater democracy into the global spotlight.

The scuffles exposed rifts in Hong Kong’s political camps, with some prodemocracy advocates demanding a sharper break with China and other more establishment politicians calling for the ouster of the city’s Beijing-backed leader.

The result will impact Chief Executive Leung Chun-y ing’s ability to implement his agenda and get reelected in March to lead the Asian financial hub for the next five years.

Also at stake is the opposition’s capacity to block legislation with more than a third of the chamber’s 70 seats, a key barrier to controversial bills like the proposed election overhaul that sparked the mass “Occupy” rallies in 2014.

52.6%

The percentage of turnout of registered voters

“I’m hoping there will be a new dawn for our city,” said Candy Lam, 21, who voted to give one of Hong Kong Island’s six seats to student protest leader Nathan Law. “For too long, it’s been the same people using the same tactics and they haven’t made a difference. Maybe new blood will bring about another era in Hong Kong politics.”

Since the last legislative election in 2012, Hong Kong has seen a series of political clashes over whether China is preserving the “high degree of autonomy” it promised before regaining sovereignty almost two decades ago.

The disappearances last year of five local men who sold books critical of the ruling Communist Party drew international protests after they were revealed to be in the custody of mainland Chinese authorities. Underlying the election campaign are worries about rising competition from mainland Chinese workers, sky-high housing costs and a slowing economy. Growth in 2016 is forecast to slow to a

seven-year low of 1.2 percent, according to a Bloomberg survey.

“You may be disappointed by the fact that Hong Kong, the city we love, has not been making more progress,” Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, Leung’s top deputy, said after casting her vote on Sunday morning. “Indifference will not lead us anywhere. Your vote is a vote of confidence in Hong Kong.”

A lack of reliable polling and a complicated system in which lists of candidates vie for multiple seats in each district makes predicting the outcome difficult. Thirty-five seats represent geographical districts, while 30 are allocated for various professions, industries and special-interest groups, such as medicine, finance and agriculture. Five more “super seats” are selected by citywide vote.

Red line

Legislators under the “pandemocratic” umbrella currently hold 27 seats, compared with 43 in the pro-establishment group. That gives the opposition the power to slow legislation with filibusters and block changes to the city’s charter, which require support from two-thirds of the chamber.

That power held by the opposition “is the only thing preventing the government from reintroducing the political reform package against the will of Hong Kong people,” said Chung Kim-wah, a political scientist at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. “It is important for the opposition to hold that majority if LegCo is to remain a balance to the executive power,” he said, referring to the legislature.

The professional seats are dominated by Beijing loyalists, damping the fractious prodemocracy group’s hope of winning a majority for the first time since the UK handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997. Maintaining unity has become even more challenging as more-radical parties push for

self-determination or even independence from China.

The government has drawn a red line on advocacy of independence, barring six candidates f rom r u nn i ng a nd requ i r i ng hopefuls to sign a form acknowledging that the city is an inalienable part of China. Still, some so-called localists have made the cut. Success in Sunday’s vote could give them a greater platform to challenge China.

Anti-Leung campaign

One 71-year-old retiree who would give only her surname, Ho, said she was voting for the first time because she felt she needed to take a stand.

“I’m voting for the candidates who’ll defend my city from these types of troublemakers,” she said outside a polling station in the Hong Kong Island neighborhood of Sheung Wan. “All this talk of independence has come as a shock and there’s no way I’m going to stand by and just let these people destroy my city.”

Others chose candidates who have campaigned to replace the city’s unpopular chief executive. W hile Leung, who’s known as CY, hasn’t said whether he’ll seek a second five-year term next year, he has become the target of a cross-party campaign blaming him for failing to calm local political divides.

The chief executive is selected by a 1,200-member committee of political insiders dominated by China loyalists, and subject to approval by the central government in Beijing. Protesters in 2014 had sought free popular elections for the city’s top leader.

“I’m voting for someone who will lobby for us to remove CY from office,” said a 36-year-old shipping executive who gave only his surname, Chan. “I want a leader who will fight for Hong Kong and fight for Hong Kong people.” Bloomberg News

ASHINGTON—Democrats and Republicans were tantalizingly close to a deal on funding Zika-prevention measures this summer when it all fell apart in the final 48 hours, according to interviews with a half-dozen senior congressional staffers involved in the talks.

The staffers, three Democrats and three Republicans, spoke on the condition of anonymity. They described a week of intense talks thwarted by political entrenchment and unfortunate timing.

“I thought we were really close,” said one staffer, who was in the room the last time negotiators from both parties met in June.

Outside that room, partisan rhetoric was heating up. And time was running out.

The House had to pass a bill in time for the Senate to take it up before the Independence Day recess. After that, members of Congress would be out of Washington for the rest of the summer.

It was the last chance to increase funding to fight Zika before peak mosquito season hit and the country registered its first locally transmitted cases of the disease.

In an election year, it’s more tempting to beat up your opponents for intransigence than make concessions you have to sell to your own base. “The closer you get to the election, the more the whole thing gets tied up in the politics of the election coming up,” said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “This year in particular, the degree of polarization is very, very high.”

The parties’ presidential conventions were approaching, and it was becoming increasingly clear that control of the Senate was on the line in November.

Further complicating matters was a Democratic sit-in in the House to demand votes on gun control that began shortly before noon on June 22, the same day that Republicans presented their final draft of the bill to Democrats.

“It was not a good situation for kumbaya,” a Democratic staffer said. Pressure to fund a response to the Zika virus begin in February, when President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion to boost vaccine research and mosquito

control. Evidence was growing that Zika could cause debilitating brain damage in unborn children, as were fears of an outbreak in the continental United States.

On May 18 the House passed a bill to provided $622 million for Zika through September, only about a third of what Obama wanted. The money was entirely offset by budget cuts, with half of the money coming from unspent Ebola funds.

The bill also included grant-funding language for states and US territories that was so restrictive that even Republicans admitted it probably would prevent the use of the money for contraception, which was crucial to preventing Zika-related birth defects.

Obama threatened to veto it.

The Senate passed its own bill the next day. The bipartisan compromise worked out

by Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington sailed through by a vote of 89-8. That legislation would have provided $1.1 billion in emergency funds, which, by definition, did not have to be financed by any spending cuts.

There were no provisions about how states could spend grant money or language about lifting environmental regulations to spray for mosquitoes, even temporarily.

Blunt and Murray were among 32 members of Congress from both parties who were appointed to a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill.

That committee met only once, on June 15. The real work began afterward, at the staff level.

Staffers broke into teams to tackle different sections of the bill, hashing out details face to face, by phone and e-mail. By all accounts, the negotiations were intense but made progress for nearly a week until stalling over the final three issues: funding cuts, planned parenthood and pesticides.

Two senior Democratic staff members and two senior Republican staff members from the House and Senate appropriations committees led the talks in the final stages.

The four have decades’ worth of experience on the Hill and a tradition of working together across party lines. TNS

Clinton displays advantages, but Trump team is hopeful

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OLUMBUS, Ohio—Two months from Election Day, Hillary Clinton has a clear edge over Donald Trump in nearly every measure traditionally used to gauge success in presidential races.

She’s raising huge sums of money and flooding airwaves with television advertisements. A sophisticated data team with a history of winning White House contests is meticulously tracking voters in key battleground states.

Clinton also has multiple paths to the 270 electoral votes needed to win in November—so many that she could lose Ohio and Florida and still become America’s first female president. But Trump’s campaign believes there are pockets of voters eager to be persuaded not to back Clinton. While Trump squandered a summer’s worth of opportunities to court those voters, his campaign heads into the fall suddenly confident in its ability to make up lost ground.

Trump aides were gleeful on Friday over the release of Federal Bureau of Investigation notes regarding Clinton’s controversial e-mail practices while secretary of state. His campaign plans to come out of the Labor Day weekend, wielding the report as a warning about the Democrat’s judgment.

Getting Trump to make that kind of consistent case against Clinton has been a herculean task for much of the campaign.

But advisers say he’s more receptive to his new leadership team’s more scripted approach, mostly because it’s coincided with a tightening in the public polls he monitors obsessively.

“There’s a renewed focus on Hillary Clinton and her problems, which I think has been beneficial,” said Matt Borges, the chairman of Ohio’s Republican Party. “He’s got to sustain this for another couple weeks.”

Still, Trump aides acknowledge that the brash businessman needs to do more to address his own shaky standing with voters.

Trump’s campaign has spent no general election money on positive, biographical ads, despite having plenty of cash to do so.

Efforts to highlight a warmer side of the

New York real-estate developer at the GOP convention were quickly overshadowed by flaps of his own making.

He’s also angered anew Hispanics voters, a fast-growing segment of the electorate that Republicans are desperate to draw from, by holding fast to his tough immigration policies.

“He’s running up against a population trend and a demographic reality,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist. If Trump can reshape the race, he’ll need to do so quickly. Early voting begins in some states this month. North Carolinians can start submitting absentee ballots on Friday.

In Ohio—a state no Republican has won the White House without—people can start voting on October 12, a week before the last of three presidential debates.

Both campaigns expect enormous audiences for the debates. Clinton, who has been in intensive study sessions with her debate team in recent days, is sure to face higher expectations from voters. Trump’s political inexperience leaves him with a lower bar to clear.

Privately, Republican leaders say it will take more than strong debates for their nominee to alter a race that appears to be leaning in Clinton’s favor. While Trump publicly maintains support from numerous high-ranking GOP officials, a striking number of discussions among Republicans in Washington often begin with an assumption that Clinton will be president come January.

Trump advisers vigorously dispute that the race has slipped from their grasp.

They contend most Americans are just now tuning into the presidential campaign in a serious way.

“We’re very much on schedule to do what we need to do to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump,” said Bob Paduchik, Trump’s Ohio state director and one of the most experienced operatives on the Republican’s staff. Paduchik said Trump’s efforts heading into the fall are focused primarily on rallying “disaffected Democrats and independents.” AP

World

sMirror Merkel seen defying populists to stay her course into 2017 vote

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ngela Merkel’s humiliation in her political home state provides further evidence to her opponents that Germany’s first female chancellor has had her day. It may, instead, make her more likely to run for a fourth term.

The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, capitalized on public discontent with Merkel’s refugee policy on Sunday to overtake her Christian Democrats for the first time in a state election, raising questions over her political standing ahead of the next federal ballot in the fall of 2017.

While the result is an undeniable defeat, especially after she campaigned hard at rallies across the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania region, Merkel used a series of interviews with German media before the vote to signal that she’s holding fast to her open-border policy.

The election outcome, though a major embarrassment, is still unlikely to make Merkel budge, according to Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank.

“There is no rival, there is no alternative,” Schmieding said by phone. As a result, “there isn’t all that much they can do. She’ll have to sit it out.”

Political center

A year after her fateful decision to allow refugees’ passage into Germany from Hungary and one year out from federal elections, Merkel’s popularity has plummeted and her Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) allies have been lukewarm on supporting her to run again next year.

Yet, her Social Democratic coalition partner is plumbing historic lows and the AfD polls higher in state elections than nationally, where all surveys show Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU)-led bloc ahead.

Going into the election year, “nobody stands a better chance than Merkel,” Carsten Nickel, an analyst for Teneo Intelligence in Brussels, said by phone.

She “is the guarantee for the CDU to come in as strongest party and to make use of the coalition options that she has.”With her focus on the political center, “what she will do is keep calm and carry on.”

The defeat underscores the surge in public anxiety in Germany that’s put the chancellor on the defensive after more than 1 million asylum-seekers arrived last year. Merkel’s approval rating is at a five-year low and a poll in Bild am Sonntag newspaper in August showed that half those surveyed said they didn’t want her to run again.

December decision

Merkel has declined to say whether she’ll seek a fourth term. Still, she indicated that a

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decision could come by early December, when her post as CDU leader is up for renewal at a party congress in Essen, the same city where the party first elected her as chief in 2000.

“Merkel’s unpopular refugee policy is uppermost in every German voter’s mind right now,” Nicholas Spiro, a partner at London-based Lauressa Advisory Ltd., which advises asset managers, said by e-mail.

“The inescapable feeling is that, even if she decided to run for chancellor again, it will be extremely difficult for her to reestablish her authority and leadership.”

She’s already under pressure from her own bloc to change course. Wolfgang Bosbach, a CDU lawmaker and former chair of the interior affairs committee, told Monday’s Die Welt newspaper that the state election result will go down as a historic defeat and the government’s refugee policy was to blame.

He still warned against a debate over Merkel’s candidacy in 2017 as a result.

Merkel, 62, has displayed stamina more than once during a decade as chancellor, including during Europe’s debt crisis. In an interview with Germany’s biggest-selling Bild newspaper published on Saturday, Merkel was asked if she regretted any decision that led to the record refugee influx. “No,” she said, adding that she’d do the same again.

Influx peaked

In the formerly communist eastern state that’s home to her electoral district, Merkel’s party slumped on Sunday to 19 percent, a loss of 4 percentage points, while the AfD took about 21 percent on its first try, according to projections by broadcaster ARD. The Social Democrats, who have governed the region since 1998, won with about 30 percent, dropping the CDU to third place. A resumption of the coalition between the two parties with the CDU as junior partner still looks like the most viable option.

Germany’s refugee influx peaked in November and the number of people seeking asylum is falling from more than 1 million in 2015 to a government forecast of 300,000 this year. The European Union’s refugee deal with Turkey championed by Merkel, though fragile, remains in place. At home, Merkel’s coalition has stepped up efforts to make refugees fit in and return those migrants whose application to stay is rejected.

Merkel has already made Germany “less welcoming to refugees,” Schmieding said.

“That remains the hope for the CDU: because fewer migrants are coming and a lot is being done to integrate those that are there, the issue will lose a bit of its toxicity among parts of the population ahead of the next election” in 2017, he said. Bloomberg News

New air links raise hopes in Washington and Cuba ANTA CLARA, Cuba—The first off JetBlue 387 were the TV cameramen, the US secretary of transportation and the airline executives. As the tropical sun beat the tarmac, the VIPs traded congratulations on the arrival of the first commercial flight from the US to Cuba in more than 50 years.

Away from the cameras, a small, but potentially more important, group made its way through Santa Clara’s single-terminal airport: a pair of backpackers from Oregon and a book editor from Chicago and his 16-year-old daughter—the first US tourists on the newly reestablished flights.

By December, the four will have a lot of company, with some 300 direct flights a week scheduled from the US to 10 cities across Cuba. America’s biggest airlines and the Obama administration hope the planes will carry hundreds of thousands of US travelers, both Cuban-Americans visiting family and sightseers who will turn the largest island in the Caribbean back into a major US vacation destination.

For US airlines it’s a chance to move into an untapped market less than an hour’s flight from Miami.

Fo r Cu b a n s, i t m e a n s wave s o f demanding but high-tipping Americans could transform the landscape in cities, like Santa Clara, which have been off the well-trod tourist track for now.

“The best tourist there is, is the American tourist,” said 25-year-old Liban Bermudez, as he sold 16-year-old Sophia Compton a pair of handmade leather sandals from his stand off Santa Clara’s main plaza. “They’re the ones that buy the most.”

For President Barack Obama, the reestablishment of commercial air links with Cuba is the last major chance to make a key part of his foreign-policy legacy irreversible

www.businessmirror.com.ph | Tuesday, September 6, 2016

before he leaves office. In the year since the US and Cuba reestablished diplomatic relations, government ties have grown quickly, generating a string of bilateral agreements on issues from environmental protection to public health.

Commerce remains stalled by the 55-year-old US trade embargo on Cuba, and the difficulty of doing business in the island’s largely closed and centrally planned economy. The restart of commercial flights on Wednesday means 10 US airlines, including American Airlines, D elta, United, Southwest and JetBlue, suddenly have hundreds of millions of dollars in business due to US-Cuba normalization.

The Obama administration finalized the last of the new routes, 20 a day to Havana, the same day Flight 387 touched down in Santa Clara. A requirement that the airlines start service within 90 days means all the new Cuba flights will have to be running a month before Obama leaves office.

Pure tourism remains illegal under US regulations that allow 12 categories of travel to Cuba, including religious and sports activities and educational travel promoting “people-to-people” contact.

For Americans without family ties to Cuba, the most popular form of travel has been on tightly focused educational trips organized in conjunction with the Cuban government. The Obama administration lifted that group requirement in March, leaving Americans free to travel to Cuba, as long as they can credibly describe their trips as educational.

As a result, the ban on tourism has become effectively unenforceable, something that many more Americans are likely to realize now that they can instantly book travel on commercial flights instead of expensive, inconvenient charters. AP

British Prime Minister Theresa May talks to media with US President Barack Obama after their bilateral meeting in Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province on September 4 alongside the Group-of-20 summit. AP/Carolyn Kaster

May voices doubts about Brexit campaign’s promises

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nited Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Theresa May expressed doubts about key promises made by those members of her Cabinet who campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union (EU), including a points-based immigration system and leaving the single market.

Speaking to journalists as she traveled to China for the Group-of-20 (G-20) summit, May was dismissive of the immigration proposals made

by Boris Johnson, now foreign secretary, in the run-up to the June 23 Brexit referendum.

He had called for a “points-based” system, allowing people to move to the UK if they have sufficient qualifications or skills in demand.

“You really don’t want to ask a former home secretary about the intricacies of a points-based system because it might take a very long time to answer your question,” May said. “One of the issues is whether or not points-based systems do work.”

Johnson was the front man for a campaign that also promised to increase spending on the state-funded National Health Ser vice (NHS) by €18 billion ($24 billion) a year, cut taxes on energy bills and take Britain out of the EU’s single market.

May, who campaigned on the other side in the referendum, refused to endorse any of those commitments this weekend. Her only stated negotiating position is to introduce “controls” on how many EU citizens can settle in Britain. That statement, reiterated on Sunday, has been taken to mean that she no longer expects the UK to stay in the single market as EU leaders say full access is not possible without full freedom of movement. May took issue with that interpretation. “I’m going out there to get the best possible deal,” she told reporters. “What we will be

4M The number of online signatories in a petition that demanded a second referendum on UK’s exiting the European Union

looking for is the deal that’s right for the United Kingdom, which is why I say don’t look at a model and say—well if you do this you can’t do that. We’re going to go out, be ambitious and we’re going to achieve for the UK.” A points-based system was also supported by Trade Secretary Liam Fox, Brexit Secretary David Davis, International Development Secretary Priti Patel and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.

‘Difficult times’

“It’s now clear that very few of their pledges were worth the paper they were written on,” said opposition Labour lawmaker Chuka Umunna, chairman of the pro-EU Vote Leave Watch campaign.

“After barely campaigning for Remain, our unelected prime minister now contemptuously dismisses policies like increasing spending on the NHS, which people voted on in good faith and great numbers.”

Brexit Secretary Davis will deliver a statement in the House of Commons on Monday for the first time since taking office and call Brexit an ”historic and exciting” opportunity. Still, May warned there were “difficult times ahead” for the UK economy in the wake of the decision to quit the EU. “I won’t pretend it’s all going to be plain sailing,” she said. Recent data had sent “different messages” about how the economy was responding, but businesses she had spoken to had told her “let’s get on with it, let’s make a success of it.”

She said she saw a role for Britain as a global champion of free trade that delivers benefits for everyone.

Obama warning

May got an early taste of the difficulties to come after her first oneon-one G-20 meeting with Barack Obama. The US president told reporters he stood by his warning earlier this year that a trade deal with the UK wasn’t high on his government’s list of priorities.

“I never suggested that we will, quote unquote, punish Britain,” he said in response to a question from a UK journalist. “I was asked about the viability of negotiating a separate trade deal between the US and the UK.” He said the US was focused on its trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade deals and “it would not make sense for us to put those efforts aside.” Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a 15-page document setting out the concerns businesses in that country have about Brexit, warning that the head offices of Japanese firms in the UK could be shifted to the continent if EU regulations no longer applied.

“In light of the fact that a number of Japanese businesses, invited by the government in some cases, have invested actively to the UK, which was seen to be a gateway to Europe, and have established value-chains across Europe, we strongly request that the UK will consider this fact seriously and respond in a responsible manner to minimize any harmful effects on these businesses,” it said.

Parliament debate

May has dismissed the idea of a second referendum, a demand that has gathered more than 4 million online signatures in a petition to be debated in Parliament on Monday.

In a BBC Television interview recorded before she left for the summit, the prime minister confirmed that the formal process for exiting the EU will not be triggered this year, but pledged it would not be “kicked into the long grass.”

Britain, she said, would be a “bold, outward-looking country” forging its way in the world.

In China May also held one-toone talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and she’s due to meet Narendra Modi from India on Monday. According to the Telegraph newspaper, she’ll also meet Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull to shape the broad outline of a free trade agreement, Britain’s first new deal since the Brexit vote.

Hinkley Point

But her toughest conversation is likely to be with Chinese President Xi Jinping. She said she’s still making up her mind about whether to let the Chinese-backed Hinkley Point nuclear power station proceed.

The plant would be built in Britain

by Electricité de France SA and onethird funded by China General Nuclear Power Corp. Some in her team have expressed security concerns.

Asked if she trusted the Chinese, May replied, “of course we have a relationship with them and we have seen significant Chinese investment.

What I want to do is build on that relationship.”

She said her intended silence on the subject in China should not be taken as a sign she was against the project.

“This is the way that I operate,” she said. “I don’t just come in and say I’m going to take the decision, I actually look at the evidence, weigh up the evidence, take the advice, consider that and then come to my decision. That’s exactly the process I’m going through. I’ve said a decision will be taken in September and it will. It’s not to be taken now, it will be taken later.” Bloomberg News

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Tuesday, September 6, 2016 • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

The World BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Seoul: Pyongyang fires 3 ballistic missiles

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EOUL, South Korea—North Korea on Monday fired three suspected medium-range Rodong missiles that traveled about 1,000 kilometers and landed near Japan in an apparent show of force timed to the Group-of-20 (G-20) economic summit in China, Seoul officials said.

North Korea has staged a series of recent missile tests with increasing range, part of a program that aims to eventually build longrange nuclear missiles capable of striking the US mainland.

Such tests are fairly common when international attention is turned to Northeast Asia, and this one comes as world leaders are gathering for the G-20 summit of advanced and emerging economies in the city of Hangzhou in eastern China.

Beijing is the North’s only major ally, but ties between the neighbors have frayed amid a string of nuclear and missile tests and what many outsiders see as other provocations in recent years.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the three missiles, all believed to be Rodongs, were launched from the western North Korean town of Hwangju and flew across the country before splashing in the sea.

A Joint Chiefs of Staff statement described the launches as an “armed protest” meant to demonstrate North Korea’s military capability on the occasion of the G-20 summit and days before the North Korean government’s 68th anniversary.

In early August, another Rodong missile fired by North Korea also traveled about 1,000 km, the longest-ever flight distance by that missile. Japan’s Kyodo news agency said all three missiles on Monday fell in Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the Sea of Japan, which the Koreas call the East Sea. Japan’s Foreign Ministry says Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approached South Korean President Park Gewn-hye during a coffee break Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) listens to US President Barack Obama in Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province on Monday. Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Obama struggles to make a deal with Russia on Syria

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ANGZHAO, China— President Barack Obama’s emissaries spent much of Sunday talking with Russian officials here about how to quell the violence in Syria, but the president all but shrugged his shoulders when asked about the prospects of a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Given the previous failures of cessations of hostilities to hold, we approach it with some skepticism, but it is worth trying,” Obama said.

Hours later, Obama engaged in delicate talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose military has recently clashed with US-backed fighters in Syria, complicating the American strategy there and in Iraq.

“We discussed ways in which we can further cooperate in that regard,” Obama said after his meeting with the unpredictable yet crucial North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) ally, whose country is still feeling the effects of a failed military coup and a wide domestic crackdown on suspected instigators.

Despite strained relationships, Obama is obligated by a long list of world problems to engage with leaders, like Erdogan and Putin, with whom White House officials say he is planning to meet in the next day or so.

It is a signature feature of the foreign policy approach Obama promised when he ran for president—that he would talk even with the worst of the worst.

“You don’t negotiate deals with

your friends, you negotiate them with your enemies,” he has said.

Much of the difficulty Obama is encountering in China was anticipated. The Turks, for example, repeatedly have tried to blame the US in the weeks since t he fa i led m i l it a r y-led coup against Erdogan.

Erdogan’s gover nment has complained about the US refusal, thus far to, extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish cleric and former ally of Erdogan who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Erdogan blames him for plotting the coup and a host of other problems in his country.

In public, Turkish officials have been saying all the things Americans want to hear, particularly when they are talking to US officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, who visited the country recently.

On Sunday Erdogan was politely oblique. There should be no distinction between “good terrorists or bad,” he said, an indirect reference both to Gulen and to US support for Kurdish fighters in Syria whom the Turks regard as a threat to their national security.

The US and Turkey should adopt

a “common attitude” against terrorism, he said. Obama, who has dealt with Erdogan for nearly eight years, reassured the Turkish leader that the US will work to make sure the parties responsible for the coup come to justice. He condemned the overthrow before quickly noting the need to “further cooperate.”

US officials say they are awaiting sufficient evidence to justify Turkey’s request for the extradition of Gulen, who is 75 and claims to be in ill health.

In the same way, Obama’s White House aides maintained a sense of reserve as Secretary of State John F. Kerry met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an effort to work out a ceasefire between Syria’s government and at least some rebel groups, as well as possible enhanced military cooperation between Russia and the US in Syria.

State Department officials were optimistic that a deal would come together. But as Obama spoke to reporters early in the day, he was doubtful.

Every experience he has had with Putin tells him to be skeptical about whether a deal is possible and whether Putin would stick to one, said a senior aide, speaking anonymously to comment on diplomatic talks.

Kerry said he and Lavrov have worked out a number of technical issues, but not all of them. They plan to reconvene on Monday to try to reach a final agreement.

Throughout his presidency, Obama has sought one-on-one and small-group meetings with leaders, like Putin, Erdogan and China’s Xi Jinping, to try to form a sense of what motivates them and how they act.

As he closes his final year in office, that experience has largely been disappointing.

Despite seemingly end less talks, for instance, efforts to get Russian cooperation in ending the Syrian civil war have gotten nowhere.

With Xi, Obama and his staff have concluded that the only breakthrough they will achieve is the climate deal they worked out over the last year and ratified on Saturday. Xi wants to clear the air in his smog-choked cities, and by signing onto the Paris climate accord he can get US technical assistance in reaching that goal, as well as a figurative global Good Citizen medal.

T he W hite House believes that on all the other important items on the Chinese-US agenda—trade, cooperation on cybersecurity, human rights—Xi has determined it is not in his interest to work with Obama.

One volatile leader Obama will meet with on this trip presents a new challenge for the president. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was elected this summer despite charges that, as mayor of Davao City, his government had death squads that targeted suspected criminals.

Since taking office two months ago, Mr. Duterte has been accused by international human-rights organizations of fostering the same type of extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers.

But the Obama administration wants to lay a foundation for American interaction with the leader of a nation that remains crucial to US strategic interests in the region. The Philippines has been a leader in opposing China’s expansionist efforts in the contested South China Sea. Obama’s basic principle applies to President Duterte as to other leaders with troubling records: Engage rather than shun. TNS

at the G-20 and agreed to cooperate closely.

The White House said the United States was closely monitoring what it described as the latest provocation by North Korea.

President Barack Obama was in China meeting with the leaders of France and Germany around the time of the launch.

Before Monday’s launch, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, Park criticized the North for what she called provocations that are hurting Seoul-Beijing ties.

The latest firing won’t help the push by Chinese President Xi Jinping to get Park to scrap the planned deployment of a powerful US antimissile system in the South.

During a bilateral meeting on Monday’s final day of the G-20, Xi warned Park that “mishandling the issue is not conducive to strategic stability in the region, and could intensify disputes.”

China says the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, system is meant to spy on China, while Seoul and Washington say the system is intended solely to defend against North Korea’s missile threat.

The launch also comes days after South Korean and US troops ended annual joint summertime military drills, which North Korea regularly describes as a dress rehearsal for invasion. Last month worries about the North’s weapons programs deepened, after a missile from a North Korean submarine flew about 500 km, the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon.

In June, after a string of failures, North Korea sent an intermediate Musudan missile more than 1,400 km high in a test launch that outside analysts said showed progress in efforts to acquire the ability to strike US forces in the region. The United Nations Security Council in late August strongly condemned four North Korean ballistic-missile launches in July and August. It called them “grave violations” of a ban on all ballistic-missile activity. AP

Venezuelan protesters demand for vote recall against Maduro

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undreds of thousands of Venezuelans demonstrated in Caracas on Thursday in support of a recall vote against President Nicolas Maduro in the biggest display of discontent with the government’s mishandling of the country’s economy since a wave of protests in 2014.

Dressed in white to symbolize peace, the protesters marched down three avenues in eastern Caracas, many chanting “Recall Now!” in an event that had been dubbed the “Great Taking of Caracas.”

Pro-Maduro groups also rallied, in downtown Caracas, as the government stationed police and troops throughout the capital. Businesses closed, anticipating a spike in violence similar to the crackdown on antigovernment protests two years ago, when over 40 people were killed, but there were few signs of overt violence.

“The central theme is that the march achieved a remobilization of the opposition in terms of showing its capacity to get its supporters to respond to a call to march,” Luis Vicente Leon, director of Caracas-based polling firm Datanalisis, said in a telephone interview. “Marches don’t show the size of the government’s or opposition’s support base, but rather motivation. It’s clear that Venezuelans want change.”

While no official attendance count has been published, opposition estimates ranged from 300,000 marchers to over a million. In a statement read at the march, Opposition Alliance Executive Secretary Jesus Torrealba urged more mobilizations this month, including events across the country planned for September 7 and 14.

Supporters followed his call to bang pots and pans in the early evening, and the cacerolazo, as the type of protest is called in Latin America, could be heard in eastern Caracas for around 20 minutes.

“Today has been historic,” opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the twiceunsuccessful candidate for president, said in comments broadcast by VivoPlay. “We’re talking about the biggest mobilization in the country’s history.” That claim couldn’t be verified, in part because the government banned the use of drones, making it more difficult to estimate the size of the crowd.

The country’s benchmark dollar bond, due in 2027, fell the most in a month on Thursday, with the price dropping 1.22 cent to close at 48.5 cents on the dollar in New York.

Juan Guaido, the organizational secretary at the Voluntad Popular opposition political party and national assembly deputy, said any estimate is not precise, but that there could have been as many as 1.2 million people in the streets. Miguel Pizarro, an opposition

lawmaker from the Primero Justicia party, put the total at around 300,000.

Jose Rafael Leon, an independent expert on crowd sizes affiliated with the Central University of Venezuela, said 300,000 would be on the minimum end of the range.

“By far, it’s one of the largest marches there’s been in the last 10 years,” he said by telephone. “But it’s harder to calculate than it was for the marches in 2002 and 2003 because there were three different routes this time.”

Tear gas reported

There were reports of tear gas being fired and of the national guard blocking access to the city, and journalists were denied entry to the country, including reporters from France’s Le Monde, Al-Jazeera and the Miami Herald, according to the newspaper and New Yorkbased Committee to Protect Journalists.

After the formal march wrapped up around 2 p.m., some protesters scuffled with security forces on a nearby highway.

Later in the evening, tear gas was deployed in the upscale Altamira neighborhood, and the municipality’s mayor, Ramon Muchacho, attributed the confrontation to a “small group of infiltrators” in a post on his Twitter account.

The streets resembled a national holiday at times, with many shops closed and office buildings empty. Workers at state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA were seen earlier in the day dressed in red, departing for the rival progovernment rally.

Turnout crucial

Opposition leaders had been banking on a large turnout to ratchet up pressure on the government, as previous marches and rallies over the past year have been met with sparse turnout and heavy presence of state security forces. Racked by triple-digit inflation and empty store shelves, Venezuelans gave the opposition control of Congress in elections last year but quickly found their majority narrowed and initiatives blocked by the courts. Maduro has brushed off any chance of a vote before year-end.

“I am angry and feel like there’s no way out,” Ana de Dominguez, a 69-yearold homemaker, said at the march as supporters banged pots and pans. “I came today to demand the recall vote because we don’t want Maduro. This is the worst government we’ve ever had, and I’ve lived in this country for 65 years. I’ve never seen anything like it. We are dying of hunger and lack of medicine. Maduro is a coward and he’s afraid of us. But I’m not afraid anymore because I’ve got nothing left to lose. I’m not even afraid of death.”

Bloomberg News

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Tuesday, September 6, 2016

A9

Fate of pangolin, world’s most-poached mammal

A

s the congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) begins on Thursday in Hawaii, environmental policy-makers and conservation experts will discuss managing the environment, protecting wildlife and how best to chart the direction of conservation efforts.

High on the agenda is the pangolin. A largely unknown creature, the pangolin holds the undesirable title of being the most-poached and illegally trafficked mammal in the world.

Scientists estimate that more than 1 million have been killed in the last decade.

What is a pangolin?

They are burrowing mammals covered in protective overlapping scales made of keratin, the same protein that forms human hair and fingernails, according to SavePangolins.org, an online group that raises global awareness of pangolins and the efforts to save them from extinction.

They are solitary and nocturnal, and very little research has been conducted about their daily lives.

Found in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, there are eight species of pangolin, and they vary in weight and color, ranging from yellowish brown to dark brown. They feed on ants and termites excavated from the earth using their extraordinarily long and sticky tongues and elongated nails.

They often are referred to as being scaly anteaters, but they are not part of the anteater family, said Jeff Flocken, North American director for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. “They have no relatives on the planet.”

Why are pangolins prized, and how great is the threat to them?

Pangolins are commercially poached because their scales can be used in traditional medicine, as fashion accessories and eaten as a high-end cuisine.

“The threat is significant and escalating,” said Flocken, who also is a member of the IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group.

It’s impossible to know how many pangolins exist, environmentalists have said, but “due to the high demand for consumption, they are disappearing,” Flocken said. Pangolins most likely have vanished in China and are fast disappearing from Vietnam, Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia, wildlife experts said. In Africa, illegal trafficking is rapidly depleting their population.

The demand for pangolin in Asia has grown with the rise of the middle class and increasing affluence in countries, such as China, experts said. “Anything that is really rare and exotic is desirable. It’s a symbol of wealth,” said Crawford Allan, senior director of Traffic, a wildlife-trade monitoring network that works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals poses no threat to nature conservation. “Anything seen to be delicacy is now in vogue.”

Who are the culprits?

The poachers range from independent trappers to crime syndicates, and their level of destruction is staggering, wildlife experts said. There have been 11,000 pangolins trafficked in the past three months, according to data collected by the IUCN. For example, in June, authorities in Hong Kong confiscated 4.4 tons of pangolin scales hidden in cargo labeled “sliced plastics” from Cameroon. The haul was estimated to involve between 1,100 and 6,600

African pangolins, and was valued at around $1.25 million on the black market, according to IUCN Director General Inger Andersen.

It was one of the largest seizures of pangolin scales, Andersen said in a statement in June.

In July Hong Kong officials seized more than 10 tons of pangolin scales in shipping containers coming from Nigeria and Ghana.

And in August, Indonesian authorities confiscated more than 650 pangolin bodies hidden in freezers at a home on the island of Java, according to media reports.

Lisa Hywood, founder of the Tikki Hywood Trust, a Zimbabwebased conservation nonprofit that rescues, rehabilitates and releases pangolins, said her group had rescued 97 pangolins in the past three years. Five years ago, the rescue rate was maybe one a year, she said.

Last year 84 pangolin poachers were arrested in Zimbabwe; of those, 47 were convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison, Hywood said. Although not a significant consumer of pangolin products, the US is not immune to illicit trafficking of the animal.

Statistics confirmed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service show that 30,000 products made from pangolins were seized coming into the US in the last decade.

An agency spokesman said the products were predominantly “manufactured medicinal items that are labeled to contain pangolin as an ingredient,” but the import of such products is illegal without a permit. “If this level of industrial-scale illegal extraction and trafficking does not abate, pangolins could pretty soon be on the brink of extinction,” said Allan, the wildlife trafficking and trade expert.

What’s being done to protect pangolins?

Pangolins are listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which includes “species not necessarily threatened with extinction,” but may become so without trade restrictions.Many states in Africa and Asia have laws prohibiting the capture and trade of pangolins, but the laws are not always enforced.

On Wednesday a coalition of conservation groups passed a motion calling for all eight pangolin species to receive the most stringent international protection available, a move that essentially would ban all international commercial trade and ramp up enforcement.

The motion also appeals for more support and understanding of the pangolin. A decision is expected later this month in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Conservation groups also have submitted a technical science and trade petition to Fish and Wildlife requesting that all species of pangolins be listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. So far, only one species, the Temminck’s ground pangolin of Africa, is on that list.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service also has launched the Mentor-Progress on Pangolins fellowship program. Based in Yaounde, Cameroon, it is training a team of early-career Central African and Asian conservation practitioners to champion the conservation of pangolins in Central Africa. “You can pour as much money as you want into enforcement, but so long as the demand is still there and the consumer market is there and the price is so high, the criminal networks will always find a way to poach animals and get these stolen gems of nature to the black market,” said Allan, the wildlife specialist. Los Angeles Times/TNS

Liang Liang (left), formerly known as Feng Yi, a female giant panda from China, plays with her 1-year-old female cub Nuan Nuan, at the Giant Panda Conservation Center during her 10th birthday celebration at the National Zoo in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on August 23. The two giant pandas have been on loan to Malaysia from China for 10 years since May 21, 2014, to mark the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two nations. AP/Joshua Paul

Giant panda no longer endangered, experts say

B

EIJING—The giant panda, one of the symbols of China, is off the endangered list, thanks to aggressive conservation efforts.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a report released on Sunday the panda is now classified as a “vulnerable” instead of “endangered” species, reflecting its growing numbers in the wild in southern China.

It said the wild panda population jumped to 1,864 in 2014, from 1,596, the result of work by Chinese agencies to enforce poaching bans and expand forest reserves.

T he I UC N re p or t w a r ne d

1,864 The panda population in 2014

t h at, a lt hough bet ter forest protection has helped increase panda numbers, climate change is predicted to eliminate more

than 35 percent of its natural bamboo habitat in the next 80 years, potentia l ly lead ing to another decline.

Still, animal groups hailed the recovery of the bamboo-gobbling, black-and-white bear that has long been a symbol of China and the global conservation movement.

The panda population reached an estimated low of less than 1,000 in the 1980s due to poaching and deforestation until Beijing threw its full weight behind preserving the animal, which has been sent to zoos around the world as a gesture of Chinese diplomatic goodwill.

The Chinese government and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) first established the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province in 1980. Wild panda

numbers have slowly rebounded as China cracked down on the skin trade and gradually expanded its protected forest areas to now cover 1.4 million hectares.

I nte r n at ion a l g roup s a nd the Chinese government have worked to save wild pandas and breed them at enormous cost, attracting criticism that money could be better spent saving other animals facing extinction.

But the W W F, whose logo has been a panda since 1961, celebrated the panda’s reclassification, saying it proved that aggressive investment does pay off “when science, political will and engagement of local communities come together.”

China’s State Forestry Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment. AP

Religion, politics collide, grounding Israeli train line

J

ERUSALEM—Israeli commuters began their work week on Sunday with massive traffic jams and a cancellation of train service along one of the country’s busiest routes, following a religious and political scuff le that had threatened to shake the governing coalition.

The crisis erupted over the weekend, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, made an 11th-hour decision to halt routine railway repairs scheduled on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

Orthodox Jewish law forbids work on the Sabbath, and a religious party in the coalition had threatened to quit the government, unless Netanyahu halted the repairs.

Netanyahu’s Transport Minister Yisrael Katz canceled a key

train route on the Tel Aviv-Haifa line on Sunday because of the delayed repairs. The government dispatched extra buses for some 90,000 affected commuters. The resulting traffic jams offered a physical illustration of the outsized power the leadership of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority wields in Israeli politics.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish politicians offer Netanyahu support to stabilize his coalition, while the government carves out large budgets for ultra-Orthodox schools and seminaries. Recent reforms aimed at forcing religious youths to enlist for army service, which is compulsory for most other Jewish Israelis, have been scrapped. Netanyahu’s office accused Katz, a senior figure in the ruling Likud Party, of orchestrating the crisis to undercut the prime minister.

“Ministers are appointed to avoid crises and solve problems, not to create them,” Netanyahu said at the start of his Cabinet meeting, with Katz sitting next to him.

Katz and Netanyahu’s close relationship tanked last month when Katz, chairman of the Likud secretariat, held a vote to revoke some powers from Netanyahu to prevent him from being able to unilaterally appoint supporters to party positions.

That political drama dovetailed with ultra-Orthodox politicians’ complaints about Sabbath train repairs. Train-maintenance work has long taken place on the Sabbath, without drawing the ire of the ultra-Orthodox. According to Israeli law, repairs may take place on the Sabbath, if performing the repairs during the week would significantly inconvenience the

public. But ultra-Orthodox news sites doggedly covered news of the Sabbath train work recently, and ultra-Orthodox constituents egged on their politicians on social media to do something to prevent it.

“It’s a snowball,” said Shahar Ilan, an expert on the ultra-Orthodox and a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Calcalist.

By evening, train service resumed and the tempest quieted down. The chairman of Israel’s governing coalition announced that Netanyahu decided not to fire Katz over the crisis, and Israeli commentators said the ultra-Orthodox were not expected to make further threats to quit the coalition.

But Israel Railways said more midweek train services may be disrupted if Netanyahu continues to delay Sabbath repairs. AP

A10 Tuesday, September 6, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

Slapping the American eagle’s face

T

he Group-of-20 (G-20) nations held its 2016 economic summit in China over the weekend. The main topic for discussion was how these leading nations could best deal with sluggish global economic growth.

China took it as an opportunity to personally insult US President Barack Obama and humiliate the US at every turn while reminding the world that Asia is Chinese territory.

It all began at the airport with the arrival of the US president on Air Force One. Imagine President Duterte inviting the US Ambassador to Malacañang and then telling him he had to park his car outside the gates. For all the other G-20 leaders, the red carpet was rolled out. For President Obama, the Chinese did not even supply one of those portable airplane stairs, even without a red carpet. Obama was forced to deplane through the emergency exit of Air Force One. While other nations acknowledge that the US President travels with his own limousine carrying a US license plate, Beijing officials made the US use a Chinese license plate. Presumably, they gave it for free. Chinese officials were on hand to greet the other leaders at their airplanes. The US National Security Advisor Susan Rice was reminded by an unnamed Chinese official that “this is our country. This is our airport,” when Rice attempted to cross a roped off area for the press.

There is absolutely no question that all this was an insult, pure and simple.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan worked out a deal at the summit for a joint Russian-Turkish investment fund while probably deciding the course of the ongoing war in the Middle East. Obama was left to figure out why Germany’s Angela Merkel was standing next to President Xi Jinping while he was placed down the line in official pictures.

The US did its normal “everyone should follow international law” regarding the South China Sea. China reminded the US to mind its own business.

Obama called that all part of “a relationship that is on a strong and productive footing.” President Xi Jinping thanked Vladimir Putin for bringing him a gift of Russian ice cream that is his favorite. Xi told Obama that China objects to the deployment of a US missile shield in South Korea.

The Chinese pulled out Alibaba’s founder—and best friend forever of Obama and former President Benigno S. Aquino III—Jack Ma, the happy face of Chinese capitalism. Ma was there to “warn” the world that “globalization is good... when trade stops, war comes.” In other words, everybody better keep buying all the fake products from his web site or somebody is going to be in big trouble.

While Obama will no longer be US president after January 20, 2017, the G-20 meeting has made it abundantly clear that the US, as well as Obama, is in “lame duck” status as far as Asia is concerned. The great concern is how far will this attitude resonate with those nations outside of Asia.

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Traffic problem: Don’t blame progress Manny B. Villar

THE Entrepreneur Continued from A1

C

urrently, Congress is deliberating on the request of the administration of President Duterte for emergency powers to tackle the traffic problem in Metro Manila, which has reached critical proportions.

The energy crisis of the 1990s and the current traffic problem can be traced to a single factor: the law of supply and demand. The energy crisis came about because the energy sector could not produce additional electricity to fill the requirements of the growing population, businesses and the economy.

The Philippines is now hailed as one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia. Just like during the energy crisis, the transport sector has not been able to match economic growth.

Some former government officials said the traffic congestion in Metro Manila was the result of progress, implying (I hope not) that progress should be blamed for the daily headaches that motorists and commuters suffer on their way to and from work or school, and the losses that businesses incur because of lost revenues.

A study conducted by the Japan

PSE: It’s not Duterte’s fault

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International Cooperation Agency (Jica), in coordination with local agencies, found that productivity losses resulting from traffic congestion in Metro Manila averages P2.4 billion a day. It concluded that without intervention, traffic costs would likely increase to P6 billion a day by 2030.

I want to emphasize the impact of the traffic problem on the poor.

Based on preliminary analysis in the study, low-income households spend no less than 20 percent of their monthly income for transportation.

Jica estimated that if the problem persists, their transport costs will be 2.5 times higher by 2030. Imagine the tremendous burden that the poor families will bear if they have to spend half of their income, which is already inadequate for basic necessities, just to travel between their homes and their workplaces.

In one of the movies I watched, the

O

n July 16 I wrote: “For now, ‘Buy the PSE [Philippine Stock Exchange]. Buy the Philippines. It figures that would be the top on the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) at the 8,000 level. The PSEi had an increase of 14 percent since the presidential election, and I suppose it was appropriate that I would be on the wrong side at that 8,000 area.

But nonetheless, I also said the price rally really had little to do with the election of President Duterte and did have all to do with the fact that the election itself was valid and undisputed at the presidential level. The problem—if you can call it that—is that the PSEi 8,000 was a killer back in 2015.

I make absolutely no excuses for calling the market wrong. In fact, I assume that my predictions are

always going to be wrong. That is because the key to the deal in the stock market is not making money but not losing money. Remember Warren Buffet’s No. 1 rule: “Never lose money.” If not losing money was so easy, why would Buffett make it his primary goal?

But here’s the thing about the stock market since that top at the PSEi 8,100 level. The market is down only about 5 percent and that

The automotive industry is one of the beneficiaries of robust consumer spending, which is fuelling economic growth. Based on industry reports, motorvehicle sales by local assemblers totalled 288,609 units in 2015, reflecting a 23-percent increase from the previous year. For 2016, the industry is targeting total sales of 360,000 units. lead character said: “Desperate situations require desperate measures.”

If we apply the same description to our traffic problem, and follow the law of supply and demand, a simple solution would be to reduce the number of motor vehicles plying Metro Manila’s streets. After all, the number and size of the metropolis’ road system has not grown as fast as the vehicle population.

However, it would be truly desperate, if not economically suicidal, if we were to stop or slow down the production of motor vehicles by the automotive industry.

The automotive industry is one of the beneficiaries of robust consumer spending, which is fuelling economic growth. Based on industry reports, motor-vehicle sales by local assemblers totalled 288,609 units in 2015, reflecting a 23-percent increase from the previous year. For 2016, the industry is targeting total sales of 360,000 units.

I don’t think any policy-maker in

is certainly not a big deal. But what is amazing is the incredible price volatility of individual issues in July and August. The price movements we have seen are unprecedented in the last 10 years.

There have been much larger moves both up and down with the stock indexes during several sixto eight-week periods. But it is the price changes of individual issues combined with heavy trading volume that is different. Often we expect to see large price moves when there is little volume, as thin trading lends itself to wild swings. But this is not the case.

International Container Terminals Inc. was 4 percent higher in July and then rose 31 percent in August.

On the other hand, for August, Metro Bank, Globe Telecom and DMCI Holdings Inc. were all down about 12 percent. Manila Water Co., Inc. was up 7.6 percent in July and then down 7.7 percent in August.

When nearly half of the PSEi 30 issues move by 3 percent or more, going either way in a one-week pe-

his right mind will recommend stifling the automotive industry, considering the widespread adverse impact of such a move on the economy.

At the same time, while I agree that the traffic situation is critical, it is, by no means, desperate.

We don’t have to adopt desperate measures. On the other hand, simple measures, like traffic rerouting, while helpful, is not enough for a problem that did not just erupt overnight.

Like the energy crisis of the 1990s, today’s traffic problem is the result of years of delay, if not inaction, and inadequate resources, in regularly improving and expanding the transport infrastructure to keep at pace with the growing demand.

For many years, for example, government spending on infrastructure had been below 5 percent of GDP, the recommended amount for an emerging economy like the Philippines.

I welcome the Duterte administration’s plan to raise infrastructure spending even higher than 5 percent of GDP. The traffic congestion can also be traced to the lack or absence of policies that would have spread transport demand to areas outside Metro Manila, in the process preventing the problem from reaching critical proportions.

Meanwhile, what we need now is a creative approach to the energy crisis, which I will discuss in next week’s issue.

For comments, e-mail mbv.secretariat@gmail. com or visit www.mannyvillar.com.ph.

riod, those are huge moves. Further, because it is both higher and lower, the PSEi itself is barely changed by 0.32 percent.

According to some experts, it is because the “honeymoon” period of Mr. Duterte’s presidency is over. Maybe so. But perhaps, it is something else.

Prices must stop going down before they can go higher, which is actually part of that Buffett “never lose” rule. In other words, there has to be market selling capitulation. But during the last six weeks, every time prices seemed like they wanted to fall to a selling climax level, an unseen hand pushed them back up. But unseen hands never last for long. We will have that selling climax. It is only a matter of from what level will it occur. Then we will go higher, so for now, maybe better not to buy the PSE. And I’ll probably be wrong on that, too.

E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stockmarket information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.

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opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

Tuesday, September 6, 2016 A11

The issue of torture Thinking positively about aging and extrajudicial killings Cecilio T. Arillo

database

T

HE issues of torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings were matters the government should take responsibility for and the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos was prepared to confront these because he believed it offered him a chance for vindication.

Unfortunately, the Aquino administration never gave him that chance.

Neither was his widow, Mrs. Imelda R. Marcos, given a chance to confront the late President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, the late Senate President Jovito Salonga and her other yellow accusers in the New York trial.

Mrs. Aquino’s obsession and that of her yellow loyalists to damn and stigmatize the Marcoses, using torture, extrajudicial killings and other human-rights violations, was not just an inordinate waste of energy and resources: it also kept the nation divided.

Her Vice President, Salvador “Doy” Laurel, noted that, “her policy of vengeance and retribution fueled a power struggle that would last beyond the end of her term.”

The most authoritative book on the subject of the Marcoses’ trials in America, The Two Billion Dollar Human Rights Uproar, noted: “In effect, all the parties in the cases waived the Philippine sovereignty, except the Marcoses. This in itself was an anomaly. The rule is, only Congress can waive the State’s immunity from suit, but not even Congress—much less the Executive—can waive sovereignty.

“Very clearly, sovereignty has not been vested by the Constitution in either the Executive or the Legislative.

Sovereignty, as the Constitution declares, “resides in the people” (Article II, Section 1); the very preamble of the Constitution thus starts: “We, the sovereign Filipino people…

“Indeed, over an issue lesser than sovereignty, the Supreme Court later struck down President Aquino’s Executive Order 296, reminding her that, by herself, she had no authority to sell or lease out patrimonial lands of the Philippines in the Roppongi district of Japan.

“As to the Americans…they cannot to this day explain why the Marcoses had to be tried in America. Perhaps, because it was the first time that they had been pressed to accept a nation’s waiver of sovereignty, they were at a loss for words.

Political accommodation and publicity mileage for some politicians were obviously among the reasons, but these could hardly be offered as official and honorable justification. Many Americans, indeed, were scandalized by their government’s judicial imperialism.”

The situation eventually got out of hand. When Presidential Commission on Good Government Chairman David Castro on June 19, 1992—11 days from the end of Cory’s tenure—wrote US officials for the transfer to Philippine courts of cases pending against the Marcoses, he was disregarded. There was no respect left for Philippine sovereignty. In Hawaii the human-rights class suit against the Marcos Estate continued to be litigated until Judge Manuel Real reached a decision on January 27, 1995.

It may be recalled that President Marcos had reestablished Philippine sovereignty over the US military bases in the Philippines in 1979. In her hatred for the Marcoses, Cory trifled with sovereignty,

as if to undo or belittle what he had done.

This cheered not just the bounty hunters, who would stoop to any depth to get their hands on the assets of the Marcoses. Equally elated were the false nationalists of the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army and their National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) who cheered US judicial imperialism.

The Truth and Justice Foundation (TJF) said: “The NDFP rejoiced this stinging slap to Philippine sovereignty, as if only the Philippine government, and not the Filipino people themselves, suffered the humiliation. Jubilantly, they claimed Judge Manuel Real’s verdict as their own.

“So enthused were the communists and the NDFP by Judge Real’s verdict that they opposed its review by any Philippine court. Communist Party [founding] chairman and NDFP chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison has attacked as ‘utterly wrong and unjust’ the idea of subjecting the enforcement of the judgment ‘to court proceedings in the Philippines and to reporting by the Philippine government.’

“This unprincipled volte-face by the ultra-nationalists of yesteryears was precipitated by greed. The NDFP salivated at the two billion dollars that the US court adjudicated as damages for the claimants.”

The TJF asked: Was Cory vindictive?

She made efforts to shed the label, using the rhetorical eraser, the TJF said, quoting Cory: “The politics of revenge has had its day… I want to encourage people to seek redress in the law, despite the inconvenience, rather than in vindictiveness, which has no end.”

She was apparently no stranger to vindictiveness. She knew it well enough to discern that “it has no end.” In telling Congress during her State of the Nation Address on July 22, 1991, that the politics of revenge has had its day, she did not categorically deny having engaged in such politics earlier. As to the implied guarantee that there would be no more politics of revenge, subsequent events would establish that this was not matched by practice.

If the Filipino people and not just the Marcoses suffered concentrated misery during the Cory years, it was as much the fault of those who were beguiled into supporting her as a candidate and those who installed her in power after she had lost the snap elections.

Laurel provided this postscript regarding Cory’s ascent to power: “Cory was catapulted to power not because of personal merit but because she was the widow of a martyr. It was enough for the voters to believe that she was ‘not a politician’ and, therefore, blindly presumed that she would not know how to ‘steal or cheat.’ They did not bother to find out what else she did not know. All they wanted was—anyone but Marcos.”

To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@ gmail.com.

Edgardo J. Angara

L

ast Saturday I keynoted the Philippine Expo on Aging Well held at the Metrowalk, Pasig City. It was organized by AgeWell Philippines, a club of pharmaceutical giant Unilab that is dedicated to helping seniors and “soon-to-be” seniors stay healthy, happy and active.

During my keynote, I spoke about the need to change the conventional view that aging automatically comes with more disease, increased dependency and diminished productivity.

Such a pessimistic view is, in fact, counterproductive. Various researches have shown that this kind of negative outlook is selffulfilling. As one Wall Street Journal article suggests, if we think about getting older in terms of decline or disability, our health will likely suffer. If we adopt, on the other hand, a more positive view of aging—when we see it in terms of opportunity and growth—then our bodies will respond in kind.

Demographers and economists speak about the “graying” or the

“aging” of a population as if a massive crisis is looming, where ballooning social pensions will be too burdensome for governments and public health-care systems will be overwhelmed with age-related sicknesses. Aging is viewed with doom and gloom.

I have tried to change that mindset in 1992, when I successfully got Congress to enact the country’s pioneering Senior Citizens Act (RA 7342). The Act explicitly recognizes the elderly’s contribution to the Filipino family. It acknowledges the family practice of keeping the grandparents in the same household, rather than shipping them out to an old people’s home.

Through the law, we granted

seniors a 20-percent discount on various goods and services, as well as mandated government health facilities to provide them free medical and dental services. We even exempted seniors from certain levies and taxes.

Our Constitution even requires that families should take charge of the care of their elderly members.

Article XV, Section 4 of our Constitution states that caring for the elderly is the duty of the family. The Senior Citizens Act helps ease the financial burden associated with the discharge of this duty.

Easing the financial burden consequently opens up the opportunity for senior citizens to continue being productive members of society. That’s why RA 7432 also encourages senior citizens to render services to their communities, as tutors, consultants, teachers or lecturers. And to oversee such volunteer work, the Office of Senior Citizens Affairs has been established in each town and province.

These changes have helped nurture and foster in people a more positive, constructive and caring mindset toward the senior citizens.

More certainly still needs to be done to put this mental outlook into active practice. Senior citizens still are among the poorest sectors of Philippine society. According to the

Will telco deal now push through?

Ernesto M. Hilario

ABOUT TOWN

W

hen the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) announced a few months ago its approval of the P70-billion joint buyout of San Miguel Corp.’s (SMC) telecom assets, including the coveted 700-megahertz (MHz) band, by PLDT’s Smart Communications and Globe Telecom, Internet users and mobile-phone owners were overjoyed by the prospect of much faster Internet or broadband services coming their way soon.

But the good news was shortlived, as the newly created Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) declared that it was reviewing the P70-billion buyout deal. Now, it’s the PCC’s turn to come to grief as the Court of Appeals (CA) recently ruled that the PCC should stop its review of the buyout agreement.

In a seven-page resolution, the CA’s 12th Division granted the temporary restraining order (TRO) sought by the two telcos, and issued a writ of preliminary injunction against the unwarranted PCC probe. The order, signed by Associate Justice Ramon Bato Jr., forbids the antitrust body “from conducting further proceedings for the pre-acquisition review and/or investigation of the subject acquisition.”

The CA agreed with PLDT’s position that “due to the ‘deemed approved’ status extended to the subject acquisition…PLDT has a clear right to be protected from the preacquisition review and/or investigation conducted by respondent PCC.” The appellate court said the injunction was necessary to protect PLDT’s right to be accorded “safe harbor” or protection from challenge

under Republic Act 10667, or the Philippine Competition Act. Another issue raised by the court was the negative impact of the PCC review on PLDT’s financial status. It said PCC’s unnecessary muscle-flexing would adversely affect PLDT’s ability to raise funds to bankroll the “necessary infrastructure badly needed to improve the Internet speed and connection nationwide.”

Apart from this, the CA argued, delaying the implementation of the buyout deal might lead the NTC to penalize PLDT, considering that the commission had already approved the agreement with several conditions attached to it.

The two telcos have welcomed the CA’s order as this would allow them to continue with the implementation of the buyout agreement, including the use of the longidle frequencies in the 700 MHz. PLDT Head of Regulatory Affairs Ray Espinosa believes that the buyout agreement serves the public interest.

“On the one hand, it makes available powerful frequencies that can be immediately used to deliver a valuable public service to tens of

millions of Filipinos and to support economic and social development.

On the other, it leaves the door open for new entrants in the industry,” he emphasized.

Espinosa also noted that there is “a hidden cost to inaction,” as studies show that frequency left unused in mobile broadband leads to lost opportunities for economic growth.

The real value of the 700-MHz band acquired by Globe and PLDT/ Smart under the NTC-approved buyout deal is its longer range, better indoor penetration and capacity to provide wireless Internet connectivity, especially in the hinterlands.

For its part, Globe has also cited inconsistencies in the IRR of the PCC related to the buyout agreement.

According to Globe general counsel Froilan Castelo, PCC treated the buyout agreement differently from other deals when the P70-billion transaction was clearly within the “safe harbor period” of the PCC. “Stating that this transaction should still be subject to review despite its own rules, the PCC has changed the rules suddenly in the middle of the game and acted on it whimsically,” Castelo said.

The PCC chose to disregard its own rules and is now saying that it is not bound by them, with its insistence that the buyout agreement should still be reviewed even when it was already deemed approved before the effectivity of its final IRR, Castelo argued.

In the PCC memorandum circular, it said a deal is deemed approved if and when “consummated after the effectivity of the memorandum circular but before the effectivity of the implementing rules and regulations.”

What the two telcos have stressed is that they have complied with the law because under PCC Memo Circular 16-001, any deal forged before the

latest data from the Department of Social Welfare and Development, there were roughly a million senior citizens in poor households across the country in 2011.

In 2015 the Commission on Population (PopCom) said that while Filipinos are generally living longer, they are not necessarily healthier, given that their quality of life has not improved. PopCom Executive Director Juan Antonio Perez III even said that our social-protection systems have yet to catch up with social conditions and that the elderly are only partially reaping the benefit of better health care.

A 2015 University of the Philippines Population Institute study projected that the country’s senior population (60 years and above) would balloon from 6.8 percent in 2010 (around 6.2 million) to 10 percent in 2025 (roughly 12 million).

That means the country’s senior citizen population will double in less than 10 years.

Our society’s leaders do rightly to focus on nurturing our young. But we also need to start preparing for an aging population, for we can’t move forward and plan better if we get stuck to the obsolete view that aging is a burden.

E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com.

issuance of its IRR is deemed already approved.

The acquisition by PLDT/Smart and Globe of SMC’s idle 700-MHz band was consummated after the effectivity of PCC’s own MC 16001 and prior to the effectivity of its law’s IRR. Likewise, PCC was duly notified of the transaction with the required information as provided for in Section 2 of M.C. No. 16-001.

Hence, it follows that after the NTC thumbs-up, the deal was deemed approved and the parties may proceed to execute or implement the agreement. In the absence of any proof of any false material information in the notice, the agreement may no longer be challenged by the PCC. It should be pointed out that the PCC has no retroactive review power because the buyout contract was forged before the release of its IRR, legal experts say.

Moreover, the PCC review will delay and deprive the public of the use of faster and cheaper Internet services as promised by President Duterte.

Besides, stopping the implementation of the deal would cause irreparable damage to Globe and PLDT/ Smart, which have both started rolling out their respective 700MHz networks following the NTCapproved P70-billion deal. It should also be noted that SMC decided to sell its 700-MHz frequencies because, by itself, it could not raise the huge financial resources needed to build a digital network that could compete with PLDT/Smart and Globe.

Internet users in the country are expected to reach 44.4 million this year. Thus, Internet services should be vastly improved to meet fastgrowing demand.

E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com.

Similarity and difference between Rede Integrade de Transporte and the Intelligent Trackways

By Francis R. Yuseco Jr.

T

here is no question or argument that Curitiba, Brazil Rede Integrade de Transporte (RIT) started in 1974 and proper credit should all go to it.

At the same time, however, when the question arises that if I copied the Intelligent Trackways (Intel Track) system from the RIT and merely improved on it, I have to truthfully answer also that I did not. One can improve only on something if he knew of the existence of that something.

The principal reason I conceptualized the Intel Track was to liberate the Philippines from the onerous provisions

of foreign loans structurally designed to make the country perpetually dependent on foreign loans and technologies.

After I conceptualized it, I completed a case method study that would allow the Philippines to develop its own mass-transit system without having to resort to foreign borrowings and imported technologies. Then-Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) Secretary Rainerio Reyes, however, advised me to have my figures validated by the University of the Philippines Transport Training Center (UPTTC), which is now The Center for National Transport Studies.

The task was assigned to then-UPTTC Deputy Director Esteban Cases. After

several months, Deputy Director Steve Cases validated my study. He baptized my concept as the “bus train.”

Armed with the UPTTC study, I then went back to the DOTC to resubmit my bus train project. Unfortunately, DOTC Secretary Rainerio Reyes had already resigned. He was replaced by then-DOTC Secretary Oscar M. Orbos.

After several months our bus train project was rejected for being “unproven, merely theoretical and with a limited systems capacity.” Thus, contrary to the DOTC’s position, our bus train was, in fact, already “proven, no longer theoretical and with outstanding systems capacity” in Curitiba, Brazil.

However, no one in the Philippines

knew about the RIT in 1989. Thus, I and even Deputy Director Steve Cases had to humbly accept the DOTC’s position that year. However, even as our bus train was rejected, Gerhard Menckhoff, the World Bank expert on transportation, sought me out to inquire about our bus train, which I later named the Intelligent Trackways system.

Mr. Menckhoff then wrote a very positive Internal Memorandum about it and distributed his memorandum to the other World Bank officials assigned in different parts of the world. The memorandum is dated April 30, 1990. Again, Mr. Menckhoff never mentioned anything about Curitiba’s RIT. In any event, the Intel Track was

conceptualized and designed as early as 1989 not only to mass transport people but agricultural, fisheries and other cargoes, as well. Thus, it was conceptualized and designed not only for inner city but for outer city use, as well.

The difference is vast and as the Intel Track is more expansive. It was designed to also liberate our farmers and fishermen from stranglehold of middle men called viajeros.

When I am interviewed about this, I have to honestly say I never copied or improved on the RIT for the simple reason that I didn’t know of its existence.

This is not to discredit the RIT or the writers who want to write about the chronological sequence of events that

brought about the Intel Track.

However, in order to avoid any misunderstanding or misconception that the Intel Track is not a genuine Filipino invention as it is, in fact, far more expansive than the RIT or Rapid Bus Transits or Bus Rapid Transits as they are more popularly referred to nowadays. I would be more than happy just to call the Intel Track an Innovation rather than an Invention in order to once and for all dismiss all misunderstandings and misconceptions about it.

Note: Inventor Francis R. Yuseco Jr. sent this article to the BusinessMirror to clarify the issue and in response to online critics trying to discredit his invention.

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

A12

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Duterte: Nobody can meddle in PHL affairs

P

By David Cagahastian

@davecaga

resident Duterte on Monday said nobody among his fellow heads of state attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Leaders’ Summit in Lao PDR can meddle in Philippine affairs or lecture him on human-rights issues in the country.

In his departure news conference in Davao, Mr. Duterte said any attempt to question him on humanrights issues in the country could turn ugly.

The President was angered by insinuations that he would have to answer to the international community for the hundreds of killings related to his war against illegal drugs in just two months since he

came into power.

“The Philippines is not a vassal state. We have long before been liberated as a colony of the United States,” Mr. Duterte said.

“I do not respond to anybody, except the people of the Republic of the Philippines. Who is he?” he added, referring to United States President Barack Obama, who will also attend the Asean

DUTERTE: “I do not respond to anybody, except the people of the Republic of the Philippines.”

event in Laos and had earlier been vocal about the alleged human-rights violations under the Duterte administration.

Communications Secretar y Martin M. Andanar said that aside from Obama, Mr. Duterte will be meeting with 10 other heads of state in bilateral talks.

The President said the Asean Leaders’ Summit will focus on the Asean Community Vision 2025, which aims to make the Asean a people-oriented and people-centered regional grouping.

He added that he would push for renewed cooperation for a drug-free Asean community, and to address transnational crimes such as trafficking and terrorism.

Mr. Duterte said the Asean Leaders’ Summit in Laos would also “underscore the importance of the rule of law and the peaceful settlement of disputes,” but he did not refer to the dispute between the Philippines and China over territories in the South China Sea. Earlier, he said he would not bring up the issue on the favorable verdict issued by the United Nations’s Permanent Court of Arbitration in the arbitration case filed by the Philippines against China to resolve the territorial dispute, but he would speak in defense of the Philippines’s position should any of the participants bring up the matter.

In the weeklong Asean Leaders’ Summit in Laos, the chairmanship of the Asean will be passed on to the Philippines, which will host the Asean Leaders’ Summit and related meetings in 2017.

Duterte faces a packed schedule during his first foreign trip. He is expected to participate in at least a dozen meetings, not counting his bilateral meetings with counterparts on the sidelines of the Asean Leaders’ Summit.

Appointments. . .

Coordination, and Resource Generation. Jimenez is former president of the Tourism Congress and currently chairs the Management Association of the Philippines’s Trade, Tourism and Industry Committee. She is also president and CEO of Health Solutions Corp.

A long time marketing expert, Alegre told the BusinessM irror he was surprised that he was called for the oath-taking ceremony on Monday morning. “Biglaan! I thought it would take a week pa,” he said in a text message. He said he would be specifically handling the media affairs at the DOT, “a newly created position.”

He also disclosed that Secretary Teo “has asked me to be the spokesman” for the department, a position previously assigned to Undersecretary for

DENR. . .

Continued from A1

Lopez made the statement after Party-list Rep. Harry Roque of Kabayan sought her position on the proposal splitting the DENR into two—Department of Environment and Department of Natural Resources—since there is a conflict between protecting the environment and promoting the use of natural resources.

Roque said splitting the DENR into two agencies will help the Department of Environment to guard “those granted [mining] franchises by the government.”

Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez earlier said he would file a measure mandating mining companies to secure a legislative franchise before they are allowed to operate.

But Lopez disagreed. “I believe that resources of the Philippines should be utilized and enjoyed by the people of the Philippines. It’s all about choices. I don’t support this stand because it does not allow these choices to be made.”

“In each area, there are choices.

And, the reality is God has blessed us with a lot of minerals, but He has also blessed us with rich agricultural lands and He has also blessed us with beauty,” Lopez added.

Rep. Rodel M. Batocabe of Ako Bicol Party-list proposed the reorganization of the DENR into two separate departments to cope with the demands of time and prevailing environment conditions.

He said the reorganization is appropriate and necessary given the broad mandate, scope and responsibility that the DENR has to comply with.

Batocabe said the natural resources aspect of the DENR refers to its

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Tourism Development Planning Benito Bengzon Jr. Unlike previous DOT secretaries, Teo shuns “ambush interviews” from the press and has only called for two media briefings since she took over the DOT post on July 1.

Japson is a colleague of Teo at the National Association of Independent Travel Agencies Philippines Inc. (Naitas). She was Naitas auditor and owns Strikers Travel Services.

Mercado has worked in the insurance and business-process outsourcing industries. His last job was vice president and head of retail marketing for Philippine Prudential Life Insurance Co. Inc. He is also Mandaue Chapter president and regional council secretary for Region 7 of the PDP-Laban.

According to her Facebook profile, Javier was trade marketing and

www.businessmirror.com.ph management of sustainable development, protection of vulnerable areas, conservation of natural heritage and mitigation of natural disasters.

“This mandate includes water-resources management, soil conservation, promotion and development of small and medium industries, direction and control of energy resources development, and forest products research,” Batocabe said.

He said the DENR is also responsible for ensuring a healthier environment for the people through air- and water-pollution abatement, monitoring and control, and effective waste management anchored on the effective implementation of programs, projects and activities that protect life support systems to nurture the well-being of society and sustain the productive capacity of the environment.

Executive Order 192 issued by thenPresident Corazon C. Aquino on June 10, 1987, reorganized the Department of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources and created what is now the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Legislative priorities Meanwhile, Lopez asked lawmakers to prioritize the passage of several measures strengthening environment and natural resources-related law.

These priority measures include proposed amendments to the Philippine Mining Act, Sustainable Forest Management Act, expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System bill, National Land Use bill, proposed Land Administration Reform Act, Integrated Coastal Management Act, proposed Forest Boundary Limit Act, amendments to the Water Code of the Philippines and Indigenous Communities Conserved Areas Act.

business development manager at EO-Executive Optical, and was a former marketing manager at SM Cinema. The DOT failed to provide her résumé to the media.

Earlier, Katherine de Castro was appointed undersecretary for Administration and Special Concerns.

The DOT is facing serious challenges in its bid to double foreign visitor arrivals to 12 million by 2022.

Aside from a massive infrastructure backlog and air-traffic congestion at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, there are now even heightened peace and order issues that it faces, especially on the heels of Saturday’s bombing in Davao City.

Also, the DOT’s proposed budget next year was cut to P2.23 billion from its P3-billion budget this year, even as it tries to attract 6.5 million in foreign visitor arrivals and 73.3 million domestic tourists in 2017.