Alarming Chinese incursion

By Herbert Vego

I used to frequent the Multinational Village in Parañaque City to edit the newsletter of the DWXI Prayer Partners Foundation.

While I have not been there for a long time – no thanks to COVID-19 — I have been receiving calls from a resident bothered by the sudden disappearance of his neighbors who don’t live there anymore; they have either sold or leased their houses to Chinese newcomers.

My friend knows that while some of them work for the Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGO), some others could be engaging in suspicious activities because they often visit a newly-constructed firing range nearby.

He had reasons to be nervous. For example, a suspect involved in the killing of a fellow Chinese in a Makati restaurant last February was caught carrying an identification card naming his employer as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the armed forces of mainland China.

The number of Chinese nationals arriving in the country has tripled since President Rodrigo Duterte came to power in 2016. Senator Franklin Drilon estimates there are now 400,000 Chinese workers — including those without documents — in the country.

We wish we could believe that a newly completed beaching ramp built by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Pag-asa Island at the West Philippine Sea is really meant to counter the incursion of the Chinese naval vessels thereat.

But Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who was present during the ramp’s launching on June 9, 2020, sounded lame when he commented on Chinese incursion, “We cannot let them go back by our own forces. They can stay there. Hindi naman natin sila mapaalis eh. Basta huwag lang nilang molestyahin ‘yung ating fishermen.”

Alas, he must have forgotten the well-publicized molestation at West Philippine Sea on June 9, 2019: A local fishing boat, Gem-Vir 1, was rammed by a Chinese vessel. The 22-member crew of Gem-Vir 1 were left floating on the sea and fighting for their life by the Chinese crew before they were rescued by Vietnamese fishermen.

The diplomatic protest lodged by our Department of Foreign Affairs against the Chinese government has remained lodged in deaf ears.

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We are made to believe that the risk of catching coronavirus disease (COVID-19) could only be eliminated once a vaccine for that purpose would have been developed.

But as to whether most of us Filipinos welcome President Duterte’s assurance that we would be “prioritized” when China would have developed such vaccine, this corner doubts. We have gone “allergic” to anything made in China.

Why should we allow ourselves to be “guinea pigs” of the country where COVID originated?

The Facebook pages now show netizens sarcastically begging of high government officials to lead Filipino participants to the clinical trials.

Adding insult to injury is the news that  the vaccine is being developed by Sinopharm at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the COVID pandemic originated.

China has an unenviable track record in vaccine manufacturing. It was the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products that produced vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough (DPT) that caused paralysis in some of the 200,000 vaccinated  children in China and elsewhere.

As the saying goes, “Forewarned is forearmed.”

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It does not make sense that Panay Electric Co. (PECO) has asked the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to give back its provisional certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) as power distributor in Iloilo City so it could “serve efficiently” once again the Ilonggos.

It’s an exercise in futility. Having lost its congressional franchise to the new player More Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power), PECO has to find a valid reason to invalidate its successor’s franchise and regain its own.

One wrong way it did was to dramatize in the media the alleged disgust of consumers over the lack of experience and competence of MORE Power in the power sector, thus causing brownouts.

But brownouts had been the bane afflicting PECO’s customers in decades. No less than Mayor Jerry P. Treñas has defended MORE Power, telling us that the company had merely taken over through expropriation the “worn-out” facilities of PECO, hence necessitating preventive maintenance to prevent them from breaking down permanently

Lack of experience and incompetence could not be convincingly cited against MORE Power because half of its 122 technicians used to work for PECO on contractual status.

MORE Power’s President Roel Z. Castro, however, knows only too well that no miracle could revitalize obsolete equipment. His solution is to “modernize” within the next three years.

PECO could have done that, but it never did.