In yet another instance of a government official using Pope Francis as an excuse to get out of trouble, Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya asked to be excused from yesterday’s hearing at the House of Representatives. Abaya’s subordinates, whom he sent in his stead to answer Congress’ questions about the unprecedented MRT and LRT fare hikes, said the secretary had been called to a meeting at Malacañang Palace to help in the last-minute preparations for the visit of the pope next week.
Abaya’s absence at the House hearing disappointed many congressmen who wanted to get the truth from the secretary about the reason for the fare hikes—a reason which has been changing almost from day to day. From the first time the increased rates were announced, the Aquino administration has said that they were necessary because A) subsidies to train riders had to be cut and given to people in the provinces B) the trains needed urgent repairs and upgrading.
The subsidy-cut argument has apparently been abandoned by the administration when it discovered it could not explain where, exactly, the supposed P2 billion in annual savings that the increased fares would generate would go. Not even the most rabid of President Noynoy Aquino’s defenders could say if there was clear program for spending these “savings” extorted from the one million riders of both train systems, which the government seems to want to get its hands on right away.
The repair-and-upgrade defense suffered an even worse fate, when it became clear that the government had already been given P11 billion for that same purpose in the recently-approved P2.6-trillion national budget for 2015. The final nail on the coffin was hammered in by presidential spokesman Herminio Coloma, who declared that the government was pursuing the repairs and upgrading of the train systems regardless of whether the Supreme Court approved of the fare increases or not.
In other words, Coloma was saying that even if the high court stopped the collection of higher fares, the government was still spending money that it already had for repairs and upgrading—probably the same money that had been given to it by Congress in the regular budget. By the way, Coloma is also deeply involved in the preparations for the pope’s visit, which is why he probably slipped when he inadvertently made the admission about the plans to repair and upgrade the trains.
I really don’t know what Abaya’s involvement in the pope’s visit is, however. In all likelihood, the transportation secretary just hasn’t come up with a new reason for the fare increases—and so Francis has once again been pressed into service as the latest scapegoat of the officials hell-bent on lying to the people about the real reason for the increased fares.
* * *
But I’ve been told that the higher train fares were really imposed by the Department of Finance, which wants them increased preparatory to the handover of both MRT and LRT to private contractors—who will increase the fares even more, once they secure these transport systems. In particular, one conglomerate that has all but bought one of the train lines from government needs the higher fares so that it can use the money to start work on the extension and rehabilitation of a line that it is basically getting for the proverbial song.
In other words, the increased fares will be used by the private train concessionaire to jumpstart their own work, using the riders’ money instead of their own. As the Tagalog proverb says, this is the same as frying us in our own oil.
I wonder if the Aquino administration will ever come clean on the MRT-LRT fares hikes, something that hits the ordinary people in the gut and which no one of real importance (like, say, Aquino himself) is willing to really explain. At this point, perhaps our only hope is if Vice Ganda once again gets a chance to interview the President and somehow manages to get a question in edgewise about the new fares.
Until then, we will have to be content with liars and clowns like Abaya attempting to explain something they know they cannot explain. And then, only after Pope Francis has left, by which time perhaps the people will have gotten used to the higher fares—just like they’ve seemingly gotten used to the lies and lack of sympathy for their plight on the part of their rulers.
* * *
The chairman of the Metro Manila Development Authority, Francis Tolentino, will find out today, the Feast of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo, if his army of traffic enforcers will not leave their posts to answer the call of nature, now that they’ve been armed with adult diapers. I hope Tolentino doesn’t soil himself when he finds out that he has only succeeded in heaping more ridicule among his men, through an idea which he says he copied from the traffic enforcers in China during the Beijing Olympics.
When this administration is over, I hope Tolentino is exiled back to his native Tagaytay City, where he will be condemned to unravel the horrendous traffic jams in that resort town clad only in adult diapers. Now that would really be newsworthy.