THE growth philosophy of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration is a 21st century version of South Korea’s strongman Park Chung Hee, who ruled that nation from 1961 to 1979. Park sponsored and vigorously promoted the rise of the conglomerates, the likes of Samsung, LG and Hyundai, to forcefully push for quantum leaps in South Korea’s development. Sacrificed in the process were human and labor rights. Collectively, these conglomerates were — and are still — called chaebols.
There was no need for strike breakers and scabs in the work sites of the South Korean chaebols because workers’ rights were nonexistent.
There was no need for the chaebols to go through regulatory hurdles, either. Park’s government made sure there were zero operational constraints in the pursuit of chaebol greatness. All the agencies and instrumentalities in the Park government with mandates over the economy served as adjuncts to the chaebols.
There is a bit of divergence, though. Park promoted an elite list of winners led by Hyundai and Samsung. Marcos panders to the needs of business across the board. The business of the Marcos government has been promoting business, regardless of size and scale. Still, those who took advantage of that pro-business philosophy were the deeply entrenched oligarchs who have easy access to the president. Remember the company Marcos kept during the foreign trips he made early in his presidency? It was always a planeload of oligarchs. The present-day photo-ops from Malacañang always show the president posing with oligarchs with diversified business interests — diversified business interests subject to state regulatory measures. Regulatory measures that the state always waives to pander to the needs of these business interests.
The pandering to and the pampering of the oligarchs naturally led to the feeling of invincibility. And the class of oligarchs granted the franchises to run public services mostly operated with a sense of impunity, untouchable despite the mind-boggling enshittification of the services they provide.
This current rainy season, that impunity was manifested in the epic failure of the toll road operator NLEX in fulfilling what it ought to do under its cash cow cum franchise: provide safe and efficient travel even in the flood-prone, low-lying parts of its franchise area. Specifically, that part of the NLEX in San Simon town, Pampanga.
The NLEX has been aware that the portion of the toll road in San Simon town is a low-lying area prone to flooding. Flooding in that particular stretch has been a “recurring problem,” posted Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, who was stuck there for five hours in a nightmarish carmageddon. Other motorists suffered worse. They left Metro Manila daytime Aug. 31. They greeted the “ber” months in Pampanga the following day as they were tied up for more than 12 hours in the same area where Cardinal David got stuck.
Awareness of the flooding history and the ensuing carmageddon on that part of the toll road should have taught the NLEX operator a lesson, said Cardinal David. It should have carried out the needed engineering solutions, which it did not do. Not only did it fail to do engineering solutions. NLEX even failed in the elementary task of posting warning signs and advisories.
Cardinal David said that motorists and the general a should react to those epic fails with defiance and explore possible collective legal actions against the NLEX owner, the people behind Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC).
During the dry season, the taps run dry — from almost dry to totally dry — in many towns and cities in Southern Tagalog and Central Luzon. The culprit is the water service provider Prime Water, the private company that quietly took over areas formerly served by the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) during the Rodrigo Duterte administration. Targeting the two regions was by design: Southern Tagalog and Central Luzon are the two biggest regional economies after the National Capital Region. Prime Water’s original owner was billionaire and former politician Manny Villar, a Duterte crony whose stewardship of Prime Water reminds us of a callous oligarch granted the franchise to provide a critical public service and operate with impunity.
After the congressional investigation into the massive incompetence of PrimeWater opened up and many cities and towns wanted to sever ties with Prime Waster and return to LWUA jurisdiction, Villar sold PrimeWater to another billionaire, Lucio Co of Puregold. The general consensus is that nothing has changed. There was no marked improvement in the services of PrimeWater under the new owner Co. Even with a rebrand — PrimeWater is now called Hiraya Water Corp. — a barrage of complaints on the alleged incompetent services of the former PrimeWater has reached the Senate.
Populous cities like San Jose del Monte in Bulacan and Batangas City are two specific areas with multiple complaints about Hiraya’s alleged inefficiency and incompetence, according to Sen. Raffy Tulfo.
Before I forget, whatever happened to the government inquiry, if any was done, on the collapse of the Binaliw landfill in Cebu City that killed 36 poor people, some of them scavengers. Was the landfill owner, Enrique Razon Jr., the country’s richest man and first trillionaire, given a slap on the wrist?
Of course, we all know the answer: Nada. Ours is a nation stricken with billionaire/trillionaire worship and we, including the state institutions with the mandate to rein in oligarchic abuses, suck up to people with extreme wealth and extreme power. Razon is deified. Those familiar initials, MVP and RSA, the two toll road kings, are likewise deified and fawned over as can-do-no-wrong tycoons by their flunkies in mainstream media.
