The North Rail extra challenge
An issue as technical and complex as the North Luzon Railways Corporation (North Rail/NLRC) rehabilitation project requires careful scrutiny and detailed reportage. So far, media have been generally up to the challenge although not exactly beyond reproach.
Reporting on the issue focused on two distinct elements: First, the University of the Philippines Law Center’s (UPLC) study on the North Rail dispute; and second, the controversial relocation of residents in areas along the path of the 80-kilometer railway system.
According to the UPLC study, the contract is anomalous and disadvantageous to the Philippine government. To be funded by China under a government-to-government loan agreement, the railway rehabilitation project allegedly lacked the formal certification and did not go through the proper bidding process. The track record of its proponent, the China National Machinery and Equipment Corporation (Group), is supposedly suspect as well.
A number of journalists went to China to look into and report on the controversial project. Ces Drilon of ABS-CBN, Rina David of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Jarius Bondoc of the Philippine Star, Alvin Capino of the Manila Standard Today, Deo Macalma of Kabayan and DZRH were invited by the Chinese government through the North Rail Corp. office in Manila. They were toured by CNMEG officials who explained the loan agreement in a briefing and showed them the company’s railway projects in China. Part of the tour was a 12-hour trip from Beijing to Shanghai on board CNMEG trains. The entire trip was paid for by the Chinese government.
In her report for TV Patrol last Sept. 28, Drilon debunked the points raised by the UPLC study. She said the controversy would only drive a wedge between the Philippines and China, an emerging super power.
Virtually all the editorials and columns have been supportive of North Rail. Aside from David, Bondoc and Capino, the columnists who have defended the project were The Manila Times’s Larry Sipin, Inquirer’s Neal Cruz, and Star’s Max Soliven.
In arguing for North Rail, the columnists who were invited to China dissected the UPLC study and presented arguments against it by citing hard facts. Only BusinessWorld’s Dean de la Paz pushed for the scrapping of the contract.
For its part, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) came out with a two-part series on the plight of 40,000 families who have to be relocated to make way for the railway project. Through interviews with affected families and officials who are both for and against the project, it looked into the problems at the resettlement site. The Philippine Daily Inquirer made a similar investigative report in a three-part series from Oct. 12-14 titled “Great Train Robbery?”
The PCIJ attached the annotated UPLC study on its blogsite, but did not post the substantial parts of the 13-page briefing paper prepared by North Rail officials.
CNMEG or CNMEC?
At the outset, there was already confusion over the real identity of the Chinese firm tasked to undertake the rehabilitation of the railway system
The UPLC referred to the company as CNMEC, which supposedly stands for China National Machinery and Equipment Import-Export Corporation. A full-page ad by the North Rail Corp. published on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30 gave a different meaning to the acronym CNMEC — China National Machinery and Equipment Corp. Still other reports used another acronym – and meaning — for the project proponent: CNMEG for China National Machinery and Equipment Group.
In his column, Bondoc (Star, Oct. 7) said CNMEC or the China National Machinery and Equipment Import-Export Corporation is one of the subsidiaries of the mother company CNMEG. He gave a background of the company and cited its officials as his sources. Bondoc wrote three columns on the North Rail project (October 5, 7, and 17), while David and Capino had two write-ups each (September 28 and 30 in the Inquirer and October 4 and 14 in Manila Standard Today).
For its part, the UPLC team said its research on CNMEC/CNMEG was based on “NLRC’s own advertisements, and logically requiring a more extensive investigation of the matter.” The center did not cite any source of information except the internet.
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