Restore nature or get taxed to death

One of the gravest threats that President Rodrigo Duterte gave in his second SONA was against irresponsible miners. He was practically vindicating all that the unconfirmed and replaced DENR secretary Gina Lopez had been espousing and advocating for. The president was emphasizing that, while it is the right of licensed mining companies to extract natural resources from the underground within the framework of our mining laws and the government regulations, these miners do not have any license to ravage the environment and to destroy the farms and fishing grounds of the poor, both small farmers and marginal fisher folks. The president expressed exasperation at the way and the extent the irresponsible miners have inflicted damage to our country and people.

The president is from the south. And Caraga, the mining region northeast of Mindanao, as well as Compostela Valley, had been extensively ravaged by many irresponsible miners who have no social conscience. President Duterte lambasted these mining moguls for amassing billions of wealth, while the farmers and fishermen, whose only sources of livelihoods are their small farms and limited fishing waters, are losing their income because of too much pollution caused by unabated mining operations.

This writer had seen the physical evidence of such environmental disaster in Surigao del Norte, Surigao del Sur, Agusan del Norte, and Agusan del Sur. And we could only sympathize with the small farmers and fisher folks. These four provinces had been abused by allegedly conscienceless miners, loggers, and other predators and vultures in their forests, rivers, and seas. What are the Caraga congressmen doing? Are they part of the solution or of the problem?

The president also bewailed the fact that the miners merely extract raw mineral resources from the grounds. Then they send these to other countries which process them into high-value materials and products. He called upon all miners to process the ores right here and provide more jobs and other sources of livelihood to the millions of unemployed and underemployed Filipinos.

This writer totally concurs with the president on this point. The government should not allow advanced countries and richer nations in the West to just exploit our country as the source of cheap raw materials and cheap labor, as well as consumers of their unhealthy, unsafe, and expensive products.

Thus, it was only just and proper that these vultures in our socio-economic life be scolded publicly by no less than our head of state and head of government. And it was also appropriate that the president would exercise the option of taxing these mining companies to death. Taxation, after all, is the state’s power to destroy. Businessmen who ravage the environment, cheat on taxes, and deprive employees of labor standards and security of tenure should be “slain” at first sight.  Taxing to death is a figure of speech, of course, that could only mean ordering the closures of such socially irresponsible business firms. We have a president who is not in the payroll of big business. We have president for the people, and that, to me, is what matters most.

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