THE landslide may have been unavoidable. The resulting deaths were not.
Somebody botched his job and should be held accountable for it, be it for negligence, incompetence or dishonesty. The somebody is definitely not Naga City Mayor Kristine Vanessa Chiong.
Chiong did everything by the book when the matter of the fissures in barangay Tina-an was brought to her attention. She immediately issued a cease and desist order to prevent any quarrying in the affected areas until the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) has completed its study on the cracks and submitted its recommendations.
The MGB confirmed the existence of the cracks but said they were not remotely related to the quarrying and that they did not pose any danger to the residents. Then the tragedy struck.
A few questions immediately come to mind. How thorough was the MGB study? How competent were its inspectors? Were their findings tailored to clear the way for continued quarrying operations by Apo Land and Quarry Corp.?
Even assuming that the quarrying had nothing to do with the catastrophic soil movement, why wasn’t the MGB able to determine that such a disaster was waiting to happen? Mayor Chiong could have immediately ordered an evacuation if only the MGB had said that based on their inspection it was necessary.
The landslide may have been an act of God. But the deaths? Don’t blame God for our failures.
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I was 20 years old and a sophomore in law school when martial law was declared in 1972 and it galls me to hear someone like Juan Ponce Enrile claim in effect that those frightful years when you were uncertain of what would happen to you next were more imaginary than real.
Especially not Enrile, who as Marcos’s defense secretary, was the chief implementer of martial law. It was Enrile who signed the ASSOs and the PDAs, the full names of which I can’t recall now, but which meant certain and indefinite incarceration for the poor one whose name appeared on it. Ask retired Judge MenMen Paredes. Ask historian Resil Mojares.
I have many friends who disappeared during martial law and who would never be seen again. I know a number of people who were tortured, in the case of some women, raped, by their jailers. And martial law was peaceful and gentle?
I thought Enrile had redeemed himself after he and then AFP Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos broke away from Marcos, triggering the Edsa revolution that sent the strongman and his family and cronies packing to Hawaii. He had even confessed to faking his ambush to justify martial rule.
But what can you expect from someone who pretended to be sickly when he was in jail and convinced the Supreme Court to release him on bail for humanitarian reasons, only to emerge healthy after he stepped out of his cell?
Enrile must be in his 90s now, an age too late to continue lying. But I guess some people never change.