Government incapable of finishing anything

Lowering the age of criminal liability from 15 will be another dead-letter law. Mal-intent dooms it. Ungrounded on science or fact, it aims only to please a President whose National Police chiefs have failed to curb narco-trade.

It obviously was “approved without thinking.” Monday the House committee on justice hastily set liability at age nine, “because of news” of crime gangs using minors as drug couriers. At once child and legal specialists pointed up its illogic. Nine is hardly an age of discernment, enactment would contradict UN statutes on children’s rights, it’s adult criminals who must be jailed for child abuse. (See Gotcha, 23 Jan. 2019) Retreating, the committee let House party leaders weigh between ages nine and 15. The plenary then hastily opted for the median: age 12.

Now it turns out that what they’ve passed – and the Senate is soon to follow suit – is but a repeat of three older dead-letter laws. Those are: (1) the setting in 2006 of criminal liability at 15, but which cops lazy to file reports misinterpreted as automatically freeing offenders that age or younger; (2) the 2013 amendment for the Social Welfare department to monitor mandatory youth rehab, with a funding of P400 million that never came; and (3) the 1992 act for “Stronger Deterrence and Special Protection Against Child Abuse, Exploitation, and Discrimination.”

How dead are those laws? Of one Bahay Pagasa youth offender rehab center required in each of 145 cities, only 63 were erected and five have closed down. Of the P400 million promised in 2016, only P40 million was given. It cost P15 million to build each 50-inmate facility, but only P5 million was granted in aid to only eight. A facility costs P6,500-P7,500 a day for food, utilities, a chief, three social workers, a helper, and a guard. In one such underfinanced clinic, says the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council, a lone social worker has to do all the case evaluations, plus the cooking. Without beds and basic amenities, some subhuman centers are worse than prisons. Unguided offenders naturally turn into recidivists.

Instead of solving that failure due to lack of legislative funding, lawmakers would pass a fourth law to be left unenforced.

They even justify their fixing liability first at age nine, then at 12, by citing other countries that have it at seven or eight, ten or 11. Phooey! If they must copy, then why from such lands as Afghanistan or Zimbabwe, or even troubled America? Why not copy from the known happiest states: Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland. All those Nordics have it at age 15 – which is what we already have. What we don’t have that they do is good government.

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In fact, our government cannot complete countless other projects. To name but a few:

• Employment – Overseas work was encouraged in the late 1970s only as a stop-gap. Today it is every poor family’s dream to have an overseas working member.

• Industrialization – Since the National Steel Co. bankruptcy, administrations have promised to revive an integrated steel industry, to make machines that make other machines. Nada.

• Agriculture – The Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute and UP School of Agriculture trained among the best Asian grain experts. They have in turn boosted harvests in Thailand, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, even California. Filipinos have turned arable lands into housing. And our agri-secretaries, mere backyard gardening hobbyists, keep yakking about rice self-sufficiency.

The Dept. of Agriculture distributed in 1994 soil samplings of each of 42,000 barangays, with suggested suitable crops. No one paid heed.

Now they’re talking of online agricultural marketing and statistics. That’s so farmers in Benguet, Pampanga, Laguna, and Bulacan won’t have to suffer unsellable oversupplies of vegetables, melons, tomatoes, or over-fattened chicken. My brother-in-law used to do that in Pangasinan in the ‘80s and Western Mindanao in the ‘90s, and all he had were diligence and a cell phone.

• Agrarian reform – Started in 1987, all distributable lands should have been sold cheap to peasants a decade ago. Yet they’re talking of extending the program another eight years.

• Health – Whether the untested Dengvaxia caused the deaths of 82 child vaccinees has remained un-established. There has been no monitoring or blood tests of the imperiled 835,000 injected nine- to 12-year-olds. There has been no replacement dengue epidemic drug either.

• Environment – Deforestation, destructive mining, and illegal quarrying were banned in 1935 – yet goes on for nearly a century.

The much-ballyhooed massive cleanup of Boracay remains unfinished. The western white-sand beaches have been cleared of rowdy partiers; their garbage continues to pile up on the other side of the island.

Now they’re talking of a Manila Bay rehab as if it’s novel. None of 23 national and local government offices that the Supreme Court ordered to do so as far back as 2008 has explained its failure all these years.

• Disaster mitigation - The Mines and Geosciences Bureau in 1999 distributed and posted online geo-hazard maps of municipalities and barangays. Identified were areas prone to floods, tsunamis, storm surges, and landslides. Officials continue to allow residents there, so thousands die each year.

• Transportation - Phase-out of wooden hull sea ferries had been ordered starting 1975; they’re still around, killing hundreds yearly in shipwrecks.

Railway systems were drawn up since the 1960s; there are still only the PNR, LRT-1, LRT-2, and MRT-3.

EDSA bus operators agreed to convert their drivers from boundary to salary system to end cutthroat competition. DOTr killed the plan by trying to sell them new diesel buses instead of their preferred emission-free electric models.

“Land port” Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange, the only project that DOTr was able to launch since 2016 flopped at once. That’s because the DOTr exempted 95 favored bus lines from loading and unloading passengers there.

• SAF 44 massacre, whose fourth anniversary we mark today - The five Moro separatist commanders and 85 massacrers of our 44 police commandos at Mamasapano, Maguindanao, had been identified since 2015. None has been arrested or indicted. The National Police hierarchs have moved on.

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