Philippines: Greens hail 'end' of Australian mining project in Rapu-Rapu

This project has been panned by environmentalists ever since it started. Finally financial problems seem to be stopping the project when nothing else has seemed to work in spite of many reports critical of the environmental effects. Rapu Rapu is an island off the east coast of Luzon in Albay province.

Greens hail ‘end’ of Australian mining project in Rapu-Rapu

By Nora O. Gamolo, Senior Desk Editor

ENVIRONMENTALISTS welcomed news of a trading halt of Australian-owned firm Lafayette Mining Limited this weekend, believing that it signals a possible end to its controversial mining operation on Rapu-Rapu Island, Albay.

The environmentalists have never let up in their opposition to the flagship mining project on Rapu-Rapu island that has allegedly resulted in at least two mine spills and three fish kills since 2005.

The firm was also the subject of a controversial report commissioned by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 2006 that detailed environmental damages it had wrought, and allegations of faulty reporting of the company’s income that undercut the value of excise taxes it paid to the Philippine government.

Lafayette Mining Ltd. advised a trading halt in the Australian Stock Exchange from November 30 to last until December 3.

The company later decided to continue to suspend trading beyond December 3, with no date indicated to resume trading.

In another letter released on December 4, the Australian management advised an indefinite trading halt as the company “continues to hold discussion with its key stockholders regarding a new plan that can provide a viable basis for the company and its Rapu-Rapu project to move forward.”

“This development is a tactical victory over Lafayette. The investor pullout comes in the wake of strong protests by Rapu-Rapu residents and environmental groups to stop Lafayette’s mining operations as well as a devastating fish kill in October which is widely believed to be related to the mine project,” said Clemente Bautista Jr., national coordinator of Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, in a statement.

In a letter addressed to Nicholas Ong, senior adviser at the Australian Securities Exchange in Perth, and dated November 30, Lafayette Mining Ltd. requested an immediate trading halt in its securities after a new investor group announced its pullout from the Rapu-Rapu mine project.

An investor group had initially planned to buy the company out of its debt obligations of A$269 million, but this apparently fizzled out.

Early in October 2007, Lafayette announced a “major restructuring” and “recapitalization” of the project, which is essentially a buy-out of the bank lending group by a new “Special Purpose Vehicle” (SPV) jointly owned by Cornerstone Investors and South East Asian Strategic Assets Fund LP, a Malaysian private investment firm.

Under the preliminary agreement, the SPV will buy all outstanding debts, capitalized interest and fees owed by the project to the bank group. The SPV will purchase this for a proposed sum of $123 million (50 percent of face value).

Bautista said, “Cornerstone Investor’s pullout from the deal only and Lafayette’s crippling debt obligations only unmask how weak and financially unstable the Rapu-Rapu mining project really is. It is another reason why Lafayette’s mining project in Albay should be terminated immediately.”

As of June 30, Lafayette is “near bankruptcy.” “Based on its annual report, Lafayette has total liabilities of A$348,300,418, with a net loss of A$224,507,576. In 2006, it had a net loss of A$172,202,840.00,” he added.

Rapu-Rapu’s expected suspension of its operations will directly affect 300 workers, only 5 percent of whom are considered regular, and the rest contractual, based on a survey conducted by Ibon Databank.

Rapu-Rapu residents, meanwhile, vowed to launch more intense and massive protest actions calling for the immediate closure of the mine.

Antonio Casitas of

Coup staged from Luxury Hotel in Manila fizzles out.

Apparently there is quite a bit of unrest within the AFP so perhaps this group thought that they could just call for the armed forces to rise up against Arroyo and their superiors and have some chance of success. However some of these people were already on trail for mutiny. Trillanes and a couple of the military officers involved are more or less experts by now on how to fail at coups. I wonder who pays for repairs to the hotel. Although no one seems to have been hurt I imagine there was considerable property damage.



Botched coup bid in Philippines ends, no casualties


By Karen Lema and Raju Gopalakrishnan

MANILA, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Philippine military and police teams stormed a luxury hotel in Manila on Thursday to end a short-lived coup attempt by a small group of soldiers and others who had called on the army to mutiny.

Government forces fired teargas into the lobby of the Manila Peninsula Hotel and used an armoured personnel carrier (APC) to batter down its glass doors before storming in under cover of repeated bursts of fire in the air.

There were no casualties.

The rebel soldiers, a senator and a handful of priests who had occupied the plush icon in the sprawling city of 12 million people surrendered and were arrested.

"We are going out for the sake of the safety of everybody," their leader Senator Antonio Trillanes earlier told reporters. "For your sake, because we will not live with our conscience if some of you get hurt or get killed in the crossfire. We cannot afford that."

It was the latest in a series of coup attempts to plague the Southeast Asian nation since dictator Ferdinand Marcos was ousted two decades ago.

Thursday's drama attracted hundreds of curious onlookers, but no one voiced any support for those inside the hotel, and there were no reports of unrest within the military. Most of the guests had been evacuated before the assault, but over 100 people, including hotel staff and journalists, were caught in the midst of the action.

Trillanes, who led a failed mutiny in 2003 against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and was elected to the upper house in May, was hauled away in plastic wrist restraints.

Fellow mutineers, including around two dozen soldiers, a priest and a retired bishop, were also arrested along with scores of journalists.

Authorities said the journalists would be freed after identity checks.

"The wrong ways of some does not speak well for the nation or the armed forces and the police," Arroyo said in a brief television address.

"Just like before, we will impose the full force of the law strictly and without favour."

LATEST COUP ATTEMPT

The drama started when Trillanes and some other soldiers walked out of their own trial for the 2003 mutiny, escorted by guards assigned to keep them from escaping.

They marched to the Peninsula Hotel in Manila's Makati financial district and took over the building, calling for the overthrow of Arroyo.

"We have been witness and victims of the kind of ruthlessness this administration is giving to the people. Now, like soldiers we are going to face this," Trillanes told reporters, when asked if he was ready to face fresh charges over this incident.

Journalists trying to do live phone-ins spluttered and covered their faces with handkerchiefs as the tear gas rose from the lobby to higher floors.

Government forces closed down virtually the entire Makati area, and surrounded the Peninsula with troops and trucks. Five armoured personnel carriers were used in the assault on the hotel.

The rebel soldiers, who had earlier stopped people from leaving the hotel lobby as a 3 p.m. (0700 GMT) deadline for them to end their mutiny passed, later relented and let them go.

"I haven't been to bed yet," said Dave Anderson from Anchorage, Alaska, who had flown in overnight to Manila.

"They came and beat on my door and told me to leave by 3 p.m. They told me to take my bags, so here I am sitting in the lobby because I can't go out," he said before being allowed to leave.

Arroyo, deeply unpopular due to long-running corruption allegations, has survived at least two coup plots and three impeachment bids because the jaded middle class is sick of political instability, and she has a huge majority in the lower house.

She has also been buoyed by a strong economy.

The stock market and the peso currency pared earlier gains on the soldiers' actions but the main index still finished up 1.17 percent and has risen nearly 20 percent this year.

The peso is Asia's top performing currency, up 14.80 percent since the start of 2007.

"It hurts the whole country," said Vivian Yuchengco, a director of the Philippine Stock Exchange. "People like that should be thrown in jail."

The government imposed a curfew from midnight to 5 a.m. in Manila and two surrounding regions on Friday, a government holiday. Officials called it a precautionary measure.

Markets were unlikely to be much affected when they reopen on Monday, barring any further unrest, economic analysts said. (Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco and Manny Mogato; Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Jerry Norton)

Philippines: Quick end to investigation leads to frame-up speculation

This is from the Manila Tribune. There is a great distrust of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the National Police, and politicians in the Philippines. In fact of the three the politicians though widely distrusted are ranked third of the three in level of distrust in a poll published a couple of years ago.
Even though the National Police account seems at least to me an outsider perfectly reasonable--after all the Sayaff group have every reason to target the congressman--many people think the investigation was all a frame-up. The National police are just not trusted as independent investigators but are thought to frame the evidence to conclude what they want to conclude. Of course this mode of investigation may not just be confined to the Philippines!! They seem to have exported it to many other countries as well!!


Swift end to Batasan attack probe raises frame-up posit



11/18/2007

The unusually swift resolution of investigations into the bombing at the Batasan Complex, which was uncharacteristic of previous police investigations, had fed doubts that the capture of supposed Abu Sayyaf members was made up by the police to bolster the angle of a kill plot on Basilan Rep. Wahab Akbar.

Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., short of expressing doubts over the quick end to police investigations over the bombing incident that happened last Tuesday, called the raid on the suspected Abu Sayyaf lair in Payatas “spectacular.”

Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) spokesman Ka Roger Rosal, in a press statement sent to local dailies noted the “all-too-perfect coincidences” in the recovery of the deed of sale of the motorcycle used in the bombing, a number 8 vehicle plate reserved for vehicles of House of Representatives’ members and Congress staff T-shirts in the Payatas raid.

“According to the PNP (Philippine National Police) itself, the raid was carried out originally for an earlier unrelated case,” Rosal said.

Rosal said deep and widespread suspicions about the cover-up of the Arroyo regime’s hand behind the Glorietta mall blast carry over to similar suspicions of another cover-up of the Batasan bombing.

“There is widespread doubt that the ‘evidence’ was actually in the possession of the military and police and planted to mislead the public and hide the hand of the real bombers,” Rosal said.





“From the start, the PNP has been insisting that the Batasan bombing targeted only Congressman Wahab Akbar, one of four people killed, and was motivated by mere political rivalry or vengeance,” added Rosal.

“There now seems to be a dogged and concerted effort by Malacanang and Camp Aguinaldo to prove that the bombing targeted only Akbar in order to dismiss assertions that it was actually carried out to target some progressive members of Congress or was carried out with the general political aim of terrorizing the people,” he said.

The police, meanwhile, said the three suspected Abu Sayyaf members captured in the Payatas raid in Quezon City last Thursday were “very cooperative” and were providing investigators vital information on the deadly explosion at the Batasan Complex last Tuesday.

PNP chief Director General Avelino Razon Jr said the information provided by the three supported a police theory that the attack targeted Akbar.

Akbar was one of four people killed in the blast at the Batasan complex in Quezon City last Tuesday that also injured 13, including Representatives Luzviminda Ilagan and Henry Teves.

Information were taken from them. They (the Abu Sayyaf suspects) have been very cooperative,” Razon said in a radio interview.

Razon said police investigators are now relating the statements from the suspects with the physical evidence gathered from the House of Representative’s south wing entrance where the explosion happened.

The three suspected Abu Sayyaf members, Khaidar Awnal, Ikram Indama and Adham Kusain, were supposedly captured last Thursday after a shootout. Three other alleged Abu Sayyaf members were killed in the incident.

Police said that Redwan Indama was a former member of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and former municipal councilor of Tipo-Tipo, Basilan.

Hataman also confirmed seeing Ikram Indama as driver of Salapuddin, a former commander of MNLF, during his stint as congressman of Basilan in the 13th Congress.

Ikram Indama’s identification card was recovered by the policemen during the raid. It stated that he was detailed with Salapuddin.

Aside from Ikram Indama, two other suspected Abu Sayyaf rebels, Khaidar Awnal and Adham Kusain, were also arrested.

In the same raid, Redwan Indama, his wife Saing, and Abu Jandal alias Bong were killed.

CPP’s Rosal said those killed and arrested were fallguys who used to work as government agents.

“People are highly suspicious that the police raid of a supposed Abu Sayyaf hide-out in Payatas, Quezon City was actually a setup, those killed and arrested mere scapegoats or actually fallguys who worked as agents of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP),” Rosal said.

Ka Rosal’s view that the attack may have been directed against left-wing partylist House members were shared Ilagan, who is a representative for partylist Gabriela.

Razon said investigators have so far not gathered any evidence to bolster Ilagan’s claim that she was the target of the blast because she supported an impeachment complaint against President Gloria Arroyo.

“We have not found any evidence to support Ilagan’s assertion,” Razon said on radio.

Batasan complex security guards, meanwhile, identified two of three suspected Abu Sayyaf members, Indama and Kusain, as being in the area when the blast occurred. Indama was a former driver of former Basilan Rep. Gerry Salapuddin.

Salapuddin, former House deputy speaker for Mindanao, however, denied having a hand in the Batasan complex bombing.

He voluntarily appeared yesterday before the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) to clear his name.

Salapuddin was dragged into the Batasan bombing investigations after his driver, along with two other suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf, was captured in Payatas.

Salapuddin admitted to knowing two of the three men who were captured, Ikram Indama and Adham Kusain. He, however, said that while Indama was his former driver, it does not mean that he has knowledge of their activities, the report said.

The former congressman also said that his driver has relatives who are Abu Sayyaf members who may have prodded Indama to commit to a plot against Akbar who allegedly founded the group.

Authorities earlier said that while investigators have established the link between Indama and Salapuddin, the former Basilan congressman has not been named a suspect in the explosion.

“I don’t deny that he (Ikram Indama) worked for me as a driver. But after my term, I don’t know what happened to him,” Salapuddin said.

Salapuddin lost to Basilan Governor Jum Akbar, one of the four widows of the late Basilan Representative Wahab Akbar.

Despite their political difference, Salapuddin said a grieving person’s normal instinct is to suspect a political rival as the killer. But my electoral protest was not against Wahab Akbar. My protest was against his wife.

Razon said the Philippine National Police (PNP) is now considering to persuade one of those arrested to become a state witness.

De Venecia said the reward money put up by President Gloria Arroyo and members of the House have led to the spectacular breakthrough in the Batasan bombing investigation of the police.

During a breakfast meeting at Malacañang Friday, de Venecia thanked the President for putting up P5 million in reward money, as police sifting through the debris found clues that may have established a link to three Abu Sayyaf suspects shot dead by police operatives.

Quezon City second district Representative Annie Susano offered another P2 million and House members, following a resolution filed by Manila Representative Benny Abante, contributed a total of P1.2 million for the early resolution of the attack that police theorized could have been meant for Akbar.

President Arroyo, meanwhile, ordered the Philippine National Police (PNP) to strictly enforce existing laws on the possession of explosives following the Batasan complex blast.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said the President also called for an end to speculations on who the mastermind was and the motives behind the attack, adding that the public should wait for the PNP to issue its final report.

Bunye said Arroyo has commended the Armed Forces and the PNP for the raid in Payatas, which resulted in the death of three alleged members of the Abu Sayyaf and the seizure of equipment similar to those used in the Batasan bombing.

The President said the raid “provided a significant breakthrough in the Batasan blast investigation.”

Islamic leaders, meanwhile, are protesting insinuations implicating some Muslim personalities in the Nov. 13 bombing of the House of Representatives.

“Find first evidence supporting this claim before implicating such persons,” Philippine Muslim Council for Islam and Democracy (PMCID) lead convenor and ex-senator Amina Rasul said at the Kapihan sa Sulo forum.

She and PMCID co-convenor Nasser Marohomsalic made the call after former Mindanao Deputy Speaker Gerry Salappudin of Basilan province and Anak Mindanao partylist representative Mujiv Hataman were linked to the blast.

Rasul is concerned about such development as she noted there were leaks to media implicating both even if probe on this matter isn’t over yet.

“Normally, you don’t yet release such information especially if it’s politically sensitive,” she stressed.

Authorities are focusing on the theory Akhbar could have been the blast’s target allegedly for helping government’s anti-insurgency drive in Basilan where the rebel Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) he was once linked to operated.

Rasul said authorities must pursue other possible leads as well, however.

“They should perhaps study if a different group wants Akhbar out of the picture and if others were the blast’s real targets,” she said.

She also said authorities must look into whether the explosion was meant instead to trigger widespread fear among people.

Talks surfaced about Salappudin’s possible involvement after authorities said a witness identified Ikram Indama, an alleged ASG member who once worked for this solon, as among two motorcycle-riding persons who entered the Batasan Pambansa compound just hours before explosion hit the House’s south wing entrance.

Rasul said linking Salappudin to the blast defies logic because he will unlikely tarnish his reputation by helping mastermind such carnage, however.

“Why will someone of his stature be involved in this dastardly act perpetrated in a public place within the institution he once belonged to?” she asked.

Marohomsalic also expressed dismay Hataman’s name is being dragged into the controversy.

“I know him personally,” Marohomsalic said. “He’s ideological and neither a terrorist nor an anarchist. I don’t think he placed his fellow in danger. He knows he needs them. It’s out of character for Muslim leaders like him to do so.”

Marohomsalic also dismissed talks linking the blast to alleged political bickerings in Basilan, province of Salappudin and Akhbar.

“Basilan is the least prone to political violence and has no history of such,” he said.

He likewise pointed out it is unlikely for Salappudin and Akhbar to engage in violence since both belong to the Yakan tribe which is among Mindanao’s most peaceful groups.

Linking Muslims to violence merely because there’s strife in Mindanao is wrong, he continued.

To help promote a more thorough probe of the blast, Marohomsalic said an independent commission must be formed to undertake the work.

He said multi-sector representatives and multi-denominational religious leaders must comprise this commission since it’s unlikely they’ll allow a whitewashed probe. Tribune wires