It is part and parcel of a Marcos Jr.’s predilection for governance – resurrect his dictator father’s pet projects and then appoint people with ties to the Marcos family. Newly-appointed secretary of national defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. fits that bill to a T.
His father Gilberto Sr. was administrator of the Social Security System for twenty long years, 1966 up until the People Power revolt in 1986. That meant the father had the full trust of the conjugal dictators. His mother Mercedes Cojuangco Teodoro was the sister of the number one Marcos crony Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco. She also sat in the Marcos rubber stamp congress, the Batasang Pambansa, as a member of the Marcos party, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan.
Nikkei Asian Review, the Tokyo-based financial analysis news magazine, once asked the question: Who are the oligarchs likely to benefit most under Bongbong Marcos?
The case of the much-ballyhooed Tampakan mining in south central Mindanao is a recent case in point. The noise and uproar against its operations was something not exaggerated. For one, the Catholic Church’s Diocese of Marbel was against it, to the extent that Marbel bishop Cerilo Casicas called for a public protest march only in May of last year.
The main hindrance to the implementation of the project were two: the South Cotabato provincial government’s standing ban on open pit mining, and the mode of extraction. Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI), the proponent company, gives a rundown of the extraction size: the mine is estimated to yield an average of 375,000 tons per annum of copper and 360,000 ounces per annum of gold in concentrates over 17 years. It is said to be the largest untapped copper and gold minefield in the whole of Southeast Asia. At stake is 24,000 hectares of ancestral lands, forests and agricultural lands. Include several critical rivers and watersheds in that summary.
Since 2010, the South Cotabato provincial board had banned open pit mining in the province. It was SMI’s biggest regulatory hurdle. But local governments are made up of transactional politicians who need to preserve their lucrative political careers. Not far-fetched to think that they may even receive contributions from mining money for their electoral campaigns. In May of 2022, the provincial board lifted its ban by – hold your breath – amending its environment law, the South Cotabato Environment Code, to accommodate SMI.
Eleven members of the South Cotabato provincial board unanimously approved the lifting of the provincial ban on open-pit mining, exactly a week after the May 9 national and local elections (four board members were absent for the vote). During the voting, the board members did not even explain their votes.
The surrender did not take place only at the local government level. Five months preceding that controversial overturn, Roy Cimatu, the environment secretary under the Duterte government, rescinded a 2017 department order that banned open pit mining under his predecessor, the inimitable Gina Lopez. And despite his anti-oligarch bombasts, Duterte lifted in April 2021 a 2012 moratorium on new mining agreements, one of many confirmations that he was truly an oligarch coddler.
In June of 2022, South Cotabato governor Reynaldo S. Tamayo Jr. vetoed his provincial board and appealed to them not to override his veto. But he admitted that Duterte’s lifting of the moratorium supersedes local ordinance.
The bishop and the governor were not the only major opposition to SMI. In 2015, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons Dr. Chaloka Beyani conducted a 10-day fact-finding mission in SMI mining areas. The findings of the UN official were incriminating.
“I was alarmed that tribal leaders reported that their communities were consistently being manipulated and divided and that they had been harassed and received threats when they expressed their opposition,” Beyani told reporters. “Indeed some leaders and members of the indigenous communities have been killed over the past years reportedly due to their anti-mining activities,” the special rapporteur added.
Beyani had also bared that “Indigenous Peoples’ leaders were frustrated by the lack of consultation processes that meet the standards of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).”
In truth, IP communities were divided themselves. In the interregnum, SMI went on a human relations spree. It provided college scholarships for children of the B’laan and T’boli indigenous communities. The mining area covers four border towns: Tampakan and Kiblawan in South Cotabato, Malungon in Sarangani, Columbio in Sultan Kudarat, and parts of Davao del Sur province. It gave ambulances and rescue vehicles for municipalities, and provided alternative learning schemes for school children in local communities during the virus lockdown.
Indigenous groups in favor of SMI, speaking glowingly of the company’s largesse to their communities, went to the Court of Appeals. The petitioners questioned the October 2020 decision by Regional Trial Court Branch 24 Judge Vicente Peña, which upheld the prohibition on open-pit mining in the province’s environment code. In a decision dated August 22, 2022 but released only this March 2023, the CA ruled: South Cotabato’s ban on open pit mining was valid but it applied only to small-scale miners.
Who owned SMI? Behind the Anglo-Swiss venture was a multinational commodity trading and mining firm Glencore Plc. In 2015, it sold its remaining shares (62.5%) to the Alcantara Group (Alsons Prime Investments Corporation), which already had control of Indophil Resources NL (37.5% of SMI), thereby consolidating control of SMI. The Alcantara Group is related to Duterte’s finance secretary Carlos Dominguez III. No doubt Duterte was soft on the Alcantaras. No doubt Gina Lopez was left out in the cold after her appointment was not confirmed in Congress.
In a January 2022 interview, Bongbong Marcos said he was “a bit wary about open pit mining” because it causes pollution and contamination even after the mine has closed.
Under his administration, the controversial copper and gold mine of SMI will finally operate. We can bury his statement in the sands of Boy Abunda.
Who was chairman of the board of Sagittarius Mines since 2015? Gilberto Teodoro Jr. Who was chairman of the board of Indophil Resources, the controlling company of SMI? Gilberto Teodoro Jr.
South central Mindanao, prepare for toxic mine tailings.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.