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US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke trained in words
before finally settling down to formulating economic equations. He
was a Spelling Bee champion from small town America, which made
him grapple with words, before getting attention for his
graduate-school level work while an economics undergraduate at
Harvard.
He often puts his language training to good use,
as in his recent testimony before Congress on the darkening economic
clouds over the US. Brutal and curt language would not help a
country in a gloomy mood, Bernanke assumed, and he tempered his
description of the economic state of things in the US.
On exports and consumer spending, Bernanke said,
the growth has been at a “sluggish pace.” The appropriate word
would have been “lethargic.”
Housing, he said, “continues to weaken.”
Weaken is an understatement. We are all familiar with the housing
meltdown in the US and the collapse of retail banks and investments
banks that had been burned in the subprime housing mortgage crisis.
On the overall prospects of the US economy,
Bernanke said, growth is expected to be at a “ subdued pace.”
Meaning, a growth not worthy talking about.
The risks that the US economy face? Bernanke
said everything is “ skewed to the downside.” Down and out or
hopeless would have been the real description.
You cannot help but admire Bernanke’s deft
phrasing while reading the hopeless obfuscation employed by the
owners of Sulpicio Lines as they tried to blame everybody but
themselves for the sinking of their flagship passenger ship,
the Princess of the Stars, off Sibuyan island a few weeks ago.
First they blamed nature—Act of Nature. Then
they blamed God—Act of God.
Next, they turned their accusing fingers on
Pagasa’s supposedly flawed weather bulletins. Now, it is the
turn of the ship captain to get the full blame.
Ah, they are now raising the issue of an
“ecological time bomb” in the cargo hold of the sunken ship.
This was a pesticide cargo for a banana plantation down south which toxic
impact on the seas Sulpicio is now trying to magnify, perhaps to
divert the attention from the real issue—a horrible sea mishap and
hundreds of innocent lives lost.
The endless round of blame–tossing came with
crude, angry, coarse language, the type of language used by people,
who trained not in words but in cash registers. Sulpicio’s bottom
line is money and for this it has sent thousands of people into the
bottom of the sea.
What can government do to send the strong
message that, henceforth, the domestic shipping industry giants can
no longer play around with the rules of sea safety and vessel
seaworthiness?
1. Suspend the passenger franchises of Sulpicio
while a review is being undertaken on whether or not the franchises
merit cancellation;
2. Train and retrain its merchant marine
personnel, from captains to the ratings;
3. Undertake a thorough inspection of the entire
Sulpicio fleet to check on their sea worthiness;
4. Impose the heaviest penalties on the
government people that cleared the voyage of the Princess of the
Stars; and
5. Propose the creation of admiralty courts to
replace the ad hoc, toothless BMIs (Board of Marine Inquiry)
The review and inspection work should be
done by a multi-sectoral body. The Coast Guard and the Maritime
Industry Authority (Marina) have cozy ties with shipping
operators and they can’t be expected to render fair judgment.
Many in the Marina are de facto lawyers of Sulpicio Lines.
Rep. Roilo Golez, who was once a top official of
the Maritime Industry Authority, should be on that team. Golez is
familiar with ships. He trained at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Maritime tragedies are often taken advantage of
by people that clamor for the creation of a Department of Maritime
Affairs. This is not necessary. While it is true that we are an
archipelagic country and maritime affairs should be top government
priority, the creation of one line department from the existing
Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) will just
produce another bureaucratic layer.
Right now, there are too many government
agencies overseeing port and maritime affairs. Their functions
overlap. A streamlining of the functions and mandate of these
various port and maritime agencies is clearly the imperative, not
the creation of another line department.
mvrong@yahoo.com
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