|
DEMOCRATIC SPACE
Letter to the Editor
October 25, 2004
Resist GMA’s
Policy of Plunder
in Favor of Mining TNCs!
Toronto Ventures Incorporated (TVI)
Resource Development – a paragon of everything that is wrong with the
government’s mining revitalization program – is not the only one that is
now commencing a massive and mad campaign to disembowel the earth and
drive our people to the fringes. With the government’s frantic search for
“new wealth” and transnational investors to save it from its fiscal
crisis, so too is the Arroyo government engaged in this mad and
anti-people campaign. Upon the government’s signal, the people in Siocon,
especially the indigenous Subanons, led by Timuay (elder) Jose Anoy, are
now being driven away from their land and ancestral domain.
After inauspiciously signing the
government’s Mineral Action Plan (MAP) last September, President Arroyo
signaled what is now becoming a frenzied rush to mine all of Philippine
mineral resources. Government justifies this as a means to resuscitate a
moribund industry, but MAP is clearly not about lifting this industry or
what is left of it.
All MAP projects, attuned with the Mining
Act of 1995, are solely and exclusively for the profits of transnational
mining corporations or mining TNCs. It is PLUNDER by no other name that
the Supreme Court earlier rightly sought to curtail, but which President
Arroyo and House Speaker Jose de Venecia are now treasonously praying the
high court will reconsider.
The plunder, however, has not just
continued, but by the government’s designs, is intensifying.
Barely has newly appointed Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) secretary Michael Defensor warmed
his seat, and already, the latter has approved two new mining projects.
The DENR’s one-stop-shops for mineral applications processing are now busy
churning out mining permits for large-scale projects mainly for mining
TNCs. Even the Supreme Court ruling on the unconstitutionality of
Financial or Technical Assistance Agreements (FTAA) does not stand in the
way of the Mines and GeoSciences Bureau’s goal to increase from 2 to 39
FTAAs on or before 2010.
The government has earlier given the
thumbs up signal to the full blast operation of the Australian Lafayette
Mining Corporation in the fragile small island ecosystem of Rapu-Rapu in
the Bicol region. Meanwhile, President Arroyo reversed the cancellation of
the permit of Crew Minerals, a Canadian company, in the watershed island
region of Mindoro Oriental. The long-awaited rehabilitation of the
massively destroyed island of Marinduque because of the excesses and
abuses of Marcopper-Placer Dome, also a Canadian owned mining TNC, may
even be overtaken by government plans to reopen large-scale mining in that
blighted province, Marinduque’s sick and dying people amidst a poisoned
and still unrehabilitated environment notwithstanding.
Many more large-to-medium-scale mining
projects are in the government’s drawing board, not the least are the Mt.
Diwalwal and Mt. de Oro gold finds, where the government itself decided to
dirty its hands by parrying small-scale miners in an obvious gesture to
prepare such finds for large-scale TNC profit-making.
On the other hand, even as the government
parrots about a new era of responsible mining dedicated to sustainable
development and environmental protection, a number of existing TNC
projects, like those in Palawan and Samar, are by themselves intrinsically
unsustainable and environmentally unsound by reason of their location and
ecological makeup as protected high-biodiversity areas. Yet that is not
within the purview of the MAP which even expresses concern for “rapidly
expanding” protected areas, allegedly restricting opportunities for
minerals development.
TVI, according to the government, is now
being followed with keen interest by foreign investors. Developments on
this front will allegedly determine future mining investments. But this is
one investment that the Philippines can very well do without. We can
mention three reasons:
TVI is an exemplar as an abusive
capitalist free-rider. It does not bring in new and substantial
investment, but is using borrowed resources from even local sources which
it will use to exploit and gain profits from local natural resources. This
is plunder, plain and simple.
It is not true that TVI is bringing about
order in the host community, sustainability and protection to the
environment that has been slowly degrading because of small-scale and
illegal mining practices. On the contrary, TVI has brought all the chaos,
violence and ecological destruction that threaten to rip apart what
remains of an environment previously ruined by foreign logging
concessions, even as TVI likewise operates illegally for lack of local
consent and public acceptability.
TVI does not and will not engage in
downstream industry development. All its operations will be hinged on
extracting full profits from all the minerals it will extract from Mt.
Canatuan and directly shipped to
Canada, as is the practice of all mining TNCs in the Philippines.
The Kalikasan-People’s Network Environment
(K-PNE) supports the call of the Subanon people and the various sectors in
Siocon for the withdrawal of TVI’s permit and the immediate cessation of
its activities in Zamboanga del Norte.
But even as we do, we are well aware that
such a call can only prosper under a dispensation that will do away with
the anti-people MAP and the anti-sovereign Mining Act. That clearly will
not be under the anti-people and pro-mining TNC Arroyo regime.
Scrap the MAP and the Philippine Mining
Act!
TVI, Out of Siocon!
Respect Indigenous People’s Rights to
Their Ancestral Domain!
Clemente Bautista Jr.
National Coordinator
Related articles
BACK TO TOP ■
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION ■
COMMENT
© 2004 Bulatlat
■ Alipato Publications Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified. |
