Aquino-Rychtar-Abaya scheme

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / October 16, 2013 / Daily Tribune

Our commuting public, including this writer, owes Metro Rail Transit (MRT) general manager Al Vitangcol a debt of gratitude. Vitangcol did the study and recommendation that became the basis for the bids and awards committee (BAC) to set the optimum price of a little over $1.8-milion/coach.

Czech company Inekon, which triggered the allegations of $30-million "kickback" demands by certain Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) officials, proposed as far back as 2012 $3.3-million per coach. It is the Czech company that painstakingly networked with relations of the Aquino family, employing Steve Psinakis' nephew Yorgis Psinakis as agent, linking with Ballsy et al through presidential cousin Jorge Aquino-Lichauco and working the DoTC through Rene Limcaoco, brother of Cory Aquino gofer Dodi, among others we name in next columns.

The difference in price of what is now the lowest bid in the MRT3 supply of coaches contract at P1.8 million and below the recommended optimum bid price and the final offer of the Czech company of $3.05 million is between 47 coaches against 25 coaches. It is easy to imagine how much more room and comfort our daily MRT3 commuters including me, and my sons who commute to Makati and to La Salle Taft, will enjoy with 47 more coaches against 25 more.

It is clear now that Czech Ambassador Rychtar created the ruckus to sow confusion aiming to abort the best plans of dedicated DoTC officials like first-time government executive Vitangcol who is being made a villain and a fall guy instead of the ideal public servant that he has tried to be.

Al Vitangcol was recruited by former DoTC Secretary Mar Roxas from the private sector, but Liberal Party honchos higher than Mar Roxas (who could be higher?) had other plans for the DoTC. In came Liberal Party stalwart Joseph Emilio Abaya who's not been shy to tell friends that the DoTC is his stepping stone to the Senate in 2016 and then the presidency beyond 2020, hence he had also brought in cronies from the Philippine Science High School and entrenched vested interests with conflict-of-interest within the DoTC such as Manolo Maralit, Wilson de Vera, Marlo de la Cruz (this links to Korina Sanchez and Mar), Dan Palami and Allan Dilay (now GM of PNR) who are all connected with MRT3 maintenance contractors PH Trams and Global APT; and more on these people next issues.

Other than the P 1.8-million recommendation for the optimum price of new MRT3 coaches, Vitangcol radically improved operations: maintenance fee reduced from P1.4-billion per year to P700 million; Insurance cover from reduced from P200 million per year to P96 million; fare box collection increased from 3 to 4 million per day in 2010 to 6 to 7 million in 2012. Averaging the fare box collection to P6.6-million per day, times 365 days a year the total revenues would be P2.34-billion per annum. Take that and less maintenance and insurance cost the MRT3 would still be left with P 1.58 billion. How can the MRT3 be losing money? The truth is, the MRT3 is profiting handsomely and all is paid to the Equity Rental Payments.

MRT3 general manager Vitangcol has been "requested" by the DoTC secretary to go on "indefinite leave" from his post. While Vitangcol had willingly acceded to one or two previous requests to go on leave to clear the air and pending investigations, we are told by our sources that this time Vitangcol has directed the DoTC request to a lawyer. Apparently, this last request for Vitangcol to go on leave is to ease him out permanently, but that's not going to happen without the DoTC mafia of Abaya being the ones to get the ax from the public. We have been shown the paper trail of the Czech company Inekon, the formal communications and instructions from Psinakis, Limcaoco, through Lichauco, to DoTC officials and the trail leads back to the Aquinos, Inekon, Abaya and cabal.

The DoTC and Inekon are now obfuscating the issue using the Yellow controlled or influenced mainstream media newspapers and broadcasters have either never aired the information they have presented or the interviews they have given, and the two major newspapers have even twisted the information they have provided to implicate the "whistleblower" instead. The Tribune, some Internet bloggers and independent columnists have been the sources' reliable avenues to bring the truth about the DoTC-MRT3 scandal to light. At this point this writer believes the DoTC, Inekon and the Malacañang relations' objective is to create confusion, try to bury Vitangcol into obscurity and attempt to disqualify the winning bidder with the $1.8 billion/coach price to supplant this with Inekon's $3.0 million/coach.

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The plunder ‘elite’

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 10/14/2013 / Daily Tribune

For three decades now we have heard and read how establishment institutions, from school books to Western media, such as Time/CNN, to local mainstream and the addled social media, have portrayed how "plundering" Ferdinand Marcos was. But the desire of BS Aquino, expressed through Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, to expand presidential discretion over, for instance, the disposition of government's share of revenues from the Malampaya natural gas facility reveals just who has the real plundering mindset. And it's none other than the jaundiced, Yellow Edsa I power elite led by the likes of the Aquino family and cronies such as Belmonte.

Marcos' earmarking of the Malampaya Fund to energy-related projects at the project's inception defined a clear sense of priority, propriety and foresight. It indicated the clear understanding of the Philippines' need for continued dedication to indigenous energy source development and protecting the revenues from the Malampaya project from diversion to anything other than that goal. Decades after Marcos set up the energy development programs to create a self-sufficient energy base for the country, we have been witness to a progressive dismantling of that energy self-sufficiency program and, now, the imminent threat of dissipating one of the last sources of funds dedicated to it.

Is the idea of dissipating the Malampaya Fund really BS Aquino's or is it simply Belmonte manipulating his little "tyke" from the Boston years of Ninoy Aquino's exile? The current House Speaker is seen as the epitome of the greed that marks the Yellow decades of governance in this country. In fact, if the public were to look for the root of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) schemes, it should call for the investigation of Belmonte and his coterie known as "the Quezon City mafia" that includes Executive Secretary Jojo Ochoa and a one-time treasury chief who is a master in packaging financial instruments to plunder government coffers. Not surprisingly, Belmonte, in the name of BS Aquino, has now set his sights on frittering away the Malampaya Fund to "alleviate poverty and job creation."

Just think about it: BS Aquino and his top House henchman have passed a national budget of over P2 trillion every year. They have allocated over P100 billion for the anti-poverty conditional cash transfer (CCT) program the past years and over P48 billion for 2014. Yet one cannot see where the poverty and unemployment alleviation goes. It's so bad that even BS Aquino and Yellow crony Walden Bello had to admit that recently in the news article, "Global poverty down, Philippine poverty remains high," given the National Statistics Coordination Board data that 27.9 percent live below the poverty line. Worse, National Economic Development Authority chief Arsenio Balisacan, in "Unemployment rate inches up to 7.3 percent in July 2013," even had to admit that the "September 2013 underemployment rate rose to 22.7 percent — the highest since July 2006."

So why is Belmonte coming up with this scheme to divert the roughly P150-billion Malampaya Fund? With three years left of the BS Aquino administration, this gang is showing its intent on cleaning out every fund it can lay its hands on, no matter the scandal that may ensue. This proposal for opening the use of the Malampaya Fund to other than energy-related purposes will ensure its travel down the long drains of official greed and corruption.

While we are wary of any "ouster" moves against a government or president without a prepared alternative, I'm afraid we have to join the call as nothing may be left of the government treasury after BS Aquino and his Yellow cronies are through with it.

Although weakened by the sinking US dollar, the Yellow ruling class, being a collaboration of the US neocolonial overlords and their traditional financial-economic-political oligarchy, prevails because of divisiveness built into Philippine society — from obscurantist religious sects, a military indoctrinated against genuine nationalism, to the addled middle class and "social media," etc.

Impoverished Filipinos now see through the Yellow Edsa I "democracy" and "growth" frauds. Hope lies in the rise of reformist young officers, the militant nationalists, principled "rejectionists" of the Left, and the latent Edsa III forces (if revived in the face of oppression), among other reform movements.

But for genuine social reformers to win, weaving a thread of unity across the progressive nationalist elements is a precondition. Only a meeting of minds of these anti-Yellow forces will suffice.

The time to stop and end the plundering elite around BS Aquino and the Yellows is now. The opportunity to coalesce and win for genuine change is approaching with the anti-presidential pork crusade rising and the US continuing its downward spiral into social and political chaos that not even the resolution of its "shutdown" and its "debt ceiling" crises will stop.

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Boomerang

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 10/7/2013 / Daily Tribune


Ireceived this from a source monitoring the anti-pork activities on the Web: "Peachy Bretaña is one of the organizers of the first Luneta anti-pork rally and the just concluded Ayala rally. The following post on her Facebook timeline is interpreted by many as an admission of her yellow agenda:

"It is with utmost sadness that I withdrew my video message for the MPM@Ayala just now, being in Singapore for a scheduled trip since June. I can't personally gauge it and reports have reached me that there are strong groups trying to hijack the messaging at the Ayala rally and turning it into an oust P-Noy messaging. 'This is not the intent.' Please, to these groups and you know who you are, 'Manggagamit lang din kayo.' You are no different from the congressmen and senators who have taken advantage of us all these years. 'Mahiya sana kayo sa ginagawa ninyo.'"

Tracing the Million People March (MPM) activities, we noted that Bretaña, after some Internet debate with other so-called "leaders," such as Inday Varona of ABS-CBN, missed the Sept. 21 activity at the Edsa Shrine (led by another PR operator Junep Ocampo) where anti-government protest placards were supposedly banned. Actually, from the very beginning, Bretaña and her ilk not only banned the "oust" message but all reference to BS Aquino's "porks."

Obviously, Bretaña was referring to the groups associated with Bayan Muna when she decried them as "trying to hijack the messaging at the Ayala rally."
I congratulated these militant groups even at the first Luneta rally for staging their own pocket rallies on the anti-pork issue, thereby unmasking the likes of Bretaña, whom I have long believed to be Malacañang operators using "pork" to divert from the Ballsy Aquino-Eldon Cruz Metro Rail Transit scandal.

These "militant" groups deserve thanks and kudos for being the only ones serious enough to be organized on the ground and deliberate in their strategy of "boomeranging" Malacañang's "anti-pork" diversionary attack on the legislative opposition, always bringing the rallies to Malacañang's doorstep at Mendiola.

While these militant groups worked on the ground, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada set the tone for the "boomerang" in his Sept. 24 privileged speech by exposing the gamut of pork of this administration and its party mates. Then, former Sen. Joker Arroyo exploded an even bigger bomb with his exposé of the Aquino-Abad Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) of P72 billion worth of pork.

On the Internet, the campaign to "boomerang" the anti-pork crusade was most effectively conducted by the group, Tanggulang Demokrasya (Tandem). Its members were among the first to spot the similarities between Bretaña's anti-pork posters for the first Luneta MPM drumbeating and those of BS Aquino's 2010 presidential campaign.

Later, Bretaña was compelled to admit that she indeed lifted the design from BS Aquino's 2010 posters. Moreover, she, too, has admitted to being a publicist or PR person for an international agency, a fact that took time to be discovered. But isn't it ironic that while she accuses others to be "users" ("manggagamit"), she herself spurs some rallies then disappears to foreign lairs?

When we discovered the MPM posters as a facsimile of BS Aquino's 2010 run, it became very clear what Malacañang's intention was on the supposed anti-pork campaign. I recall emailing to Tandem that we must begin figuring out some moves to "jujitsu" Malacañang's plot and turn it against the Palace. Little did I know then that the efforts of various groups to expand the search for truth would trip

Malacañang's plans completely, now having BS Aquino, Butch Abad, and all their partisans tightly by their necks with a "poor Nelson" wrestling hold. On the other hand, because Bretaña and company kept insisting on a no-Aquino-criticisms-allowed policy, their rallies just kept dwindling.

Malacañang had a complete PR plan laid out — starting with the anti-pork campaign then culminating in the musical advocacy we now see on the Internet. The "Kayanihan" song, penned by Ryan Cayabyab (the composer of choice of the Yellows), suddenly made the rounds on the Internet just before the MPM@Ayala, with a music video akin to "Ako'y Ninoy" and "Ako Mismo" targeting the youth with young faces interwoven with known images.

But PR or propaganda has its limits. As we can see the whole truth that is coming out, BS Aquino and his regime, much like the previous Arroyo government, are as synonymous to corrupted human nature at its core, where everyone and everything can be bought and sold, and where bribery rules the day.

Now, as for the Yellow taboo of ousting PeNoy, that actually is already in the minds of an unprecedented number of people I come in contact with — from FX and taxi drivers, to media camera crew, office staff, even priests and nuns, as well as radio anchors and listeners, ad nausea.

But, as we've had so many ousters before where we were merely thrown from the frying pan to the fire and then to purgatory, the next one for us might just be hell — unless we are prepared with a collective coalition that has a vision inspiring enough to overcome the fears of major power factions of society and capable enough to contain the financial mafia. Only the ripening crisis will reveal this to the nation; but now the forces have begun to coalesce.

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