The Senate wants to hold a hearing into the government’s quick purchase of train carriages from the Chinese company Dalian. The train carriages, it was discovered, were not compatible with the rails currently being used by Metro Rail Transit.
To continue using these train carriages whose wheels do not fit well with the MRT rails puts passengers. Derailment is a possibility. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Due diligence should have been done by the DTr and MRT officials.
A Senate inquiry by the Blue Ribbon Committee or the committee on public safety could uncover why there was a ma-dalian (or hasty) sale. For this oversight or deliberate nonexercise of due diligence, a citizens committee has filed graft charges against former Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya who signed the Dalian deal with China.
Although delivery took longer, the deal was signed in haste in what many see as a midnight madness sale at shopping malls. The Dalian deal was consummated in the last year of the Aquino administration.
Jun Abaya’s signing of the Dalian train carriages contract is rather suspicious as he was a ranking member of the Liberal Party and the LP campaign fund-raiser in the 2016 presidential election.
Why were the carriages bought in a multi-million deal that was done in a hurry? Although the train carriages were bought during the time of Abaya, Senator Grace Poe wants to know why present DoTr Secretary Arthur Tugade still allowed the use of the mismatched equipment.
The people, specially commuters who experience daily breakdown of the MRT, want heads to roll since the mismatched Dalian train wheels don’t run smoothly on the old rails.
Former MRT manager Al Vitangcol has been slapped with graft charges in the Office of the Ombudsman for signing a service maintenance contract with a little-known firm with no track record on train work. It’s only qualification was that a certain Soriano from Pangasinan was a relative of Vitangcol.
Still, it’s a mystery why only Vitangcol was charged while his immediate supervisor Jun Abaya was not—that is, until the citizen group’s complaint was filed last week with the Office of the Ombudsman. It’s like how former Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad was charged for graft in the Disbursement Acceleration Program but not former President Benigno Aquino III who signed the DAP executive order.
It must be a no- no to charge Noynoy with anything although he’s already out of power. Aside from the DAP ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, Aquino left 44 men of the PNP Special Action Force at the mercy of a combined Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters butchers in Maguindanao.
The law is the law and it must be enforced whether he’s the son of the assassinated former Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. and former President Corazon Aquino. Otherwise, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre would be seen as dispensing selective justice.
The Aquinos and the Cojuangcos still own the vast Hacienda Luisita farmlands. Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano, a former leftist militant, has not done much to recover Hacienda Luisita from the Aquino-Cojuangco clan.
Rumors are rife that farmers and the Kadamay group that took over a National Housing Authority project in Pandi, Bulacan might take action and occupy Hacienda Luisita. That would have a bloody consequence considering the Cojuangcos’ private army providing security to the. property.
Chinese warships dock in Davao
President Rodrigo Duterte welcomed three Chinese warships which made a port of call in Davao. Duterte even donned a Chinese navy baseball cap given to him by Chinese officials when he toured the lead warship.
While there was nothing illegal in allowing the Chinese war ships to make a port of call in Davao, the backdoor docking didn’t look good to many Filipinos. It’s all about public perception in anything the President does.
Meanwhile, questions are being asked on who will out-nonsense whom when US President Donald Trump meets with Duterte whom he has invited for an official visit to Washington.
Some readers suggested an imaginary exchange between the two presidents. Here are some examples of the one-on-one:
Trump: Why don’t you build a floating wall along the West Philippine Sea to keep out those Chinese from your territorial waters?
Duterte: I could do that and I think that unlike Mexico, China would be willing to pay for the cost of the wall. The Chinese built the Great Wall of China, after all.
Trump: I’m sure China will pay for the cost of the floating wall as long as their barges can siphon off black sand from the coast of Zambales. That’s how the Chinese built those made-made islands in the South China Sea using soil and black sand siphoned from Zambales, you know.
Duterte: Call it one of our major exports to China, aside from our bananas. Ore and other minerals extracted from our soil are used to make armaments which I’m sure China will not use against us.
Trump: As a good friend of Xi Jinping, can you please ask him to rein in North Korea’s Kim Jong Un not to unleash those long range cruise missiles at the US West Coast?
Duterte: Me? Why didn’t you tell Xi Jinping yourself when you met in Florida? Besides,you have the MOAB (Mother of all bombs), why don’t you drop them on North Korea?
Trump: Xi is not my buddy, he’s yours. I don’t want the world to think I’m trigger-happy.
On that note, the dialogue between the two ended.
