WITH the Arroyo administration in an ?ala berde? mode, many public officials and opportunistic businessmen are scrambling to get juicy contracts from the government and provide for their future in the last two minutes before it bows out of office. (?Ala berde? refers to the old practice of opening the doors of the movie house to the public for free in the last half-hour or so before the theater closes.) In the last few months left to the Arroyo administration, many government contracts get approved under mysterious circumstances.

There is usually a price for every approval secured from the government, and government agencies approve as many applications as possible before the new administration takes over and, in so doing, provide for a future when they would be jobless. Then they say that if there is something wrong with the permit, it is up to the next administration to implement it or not. The outgoing officials have collected their part of the loot anyway.

This opens the door to a lot of lawsuits later on and wastes a lot of time and money of the government, considering how slow the wheels of justice move in the Philippines. There should be a law that would nullify all contracts approved in the last year of a lame-duck administration. The new president should at least issue a proclamation or executive order canceling all contracts forged by the outgoing administration to prevent midnight contracts and appointments.

The raging controversy now is the issuance of environmental compliance certificates (ECCs) by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to foreign mining companies, in partnership with Filipino firms, to put up mining operations on the island of Mindoro. The DENR gave the ECC to a Norwegian mining company, Intex Resources, to extract nickel from 11,600 hectares of forested area in a watershed lying in parts of the two Mindoro provinces. An ever bigger area, six times bigger, was granted for another mining operation on 60,000 hectares in Abra de Ilog, in Mindoro Occidental.

The officials and citizens of Mindoro, including the native Mangyans who would be ejected from their ancestral lands, oppose the mines but the DENR issued the ECCs anyway, saying that the ECCs were based on technical requirements and that it is up to the next administration to decide whether or not to implement regarding its social acceptability.

Mindorenos, including two priests, have started a hunger strike in front of the DENR offices in Quezon City, vowing to continue it until the DENR revoked the ECC or until they die. Without the ECC, Intex will not be allowed to operate. Instead of revoking it, the DENR merely suspended it for 90 days.

Not good enough, say the Mindorenos. After 90 days, we would be back to square one. The ECC has to be nullified.

Before the weekend, Environment Secretary Lito Atienza issued a statement that local governments of Mindoro have the last say on the controversial mining project, despite the issuance by his office of the ECC. ?If the people of Mindoro do not want the project, the ECC would automatically be moot, in accordance with law,? Atienza said.

But the DENR is ?disrespectful of our local autonomy,? said Mindoro Oriental Gov. Arnan Panaligan. The province has an existing 25-year moratorium on mining, issued back in 2002. But leave it to the Arroyo administration to scrape as much money as it can in the remaining days of its term. It is not only this mining project that it is giving out to carpetbaggers, many government properties?land, dams, power projects, corporations, anything that is not nailed down?are being sold. Angat Dam, source of Metro Manila?s water supply, is being sold to a power company when power is only a minor component. The major components are water for irrigation and water supply. The Food Terminal Inc. compound (FTI) in Taguig has already been sold. They tried to sell the Veterans Memorial Medical Center compound in Quezon City to a foreign land developer but the people vehemently opposed the projected sale.

Last Saturday, Mindorenos led by Vice Gov. Ester Aceron, Abra de Ilog Mayor Eric Constantino and Fr. Edu Gariguez of the Mangyan Mission explained to journalists at the Kapihan sa Sulo forum why they oppose the Mindoro Nickel Project:

1. The project is located in the Mag-asawang watershed, which is the source of irrigation for some 50,000 hectares of rice fields in the municipalities of Victoria, Naujan and Calapan, Oriental Mindoro. These three municipalities are responsible for 51 percent of the total rice production in the province.

2. This mining area and that in Abra de Ilog are thickly forested and are major biodiversity conservation areas. They are breeding grounds of the tamaraw, an indigenous pygmy buffalo that exists only in Mindoro. The mining operation would cut down the trees and raze the areas, thus removing the habitat for countless bird species and other animals. In fact, some people believe that the mining operations are just a ploy to get at the trees. Thus, the mining operations would also be disguised logging operations. The mine?s processing site falls within the Verde Island Passage Marine Biodiversity Area.

3. The project is inside the ancestral domain claims of the Alangan and Tadyawan Mangyans. Mining will have great impacts on their livelihood and culture.

4. The province of Oriental Mindoro has passed a 25-year moratorium on mining in 2002 prohibiting the entry of all large-scale mining. In Occidental Mindoro, similar mining moratorium ordinances were passed by the municipal governments of Sablayan, Abra de Ilog, Paluan, Looc and Lubang. Eight of 11 municipalities in Occidental Mindoro passed resolutions against the Mindoro Nickel Project.