A Turkey of a comment

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey, in televised comments after the Soma coal mine accident, coldly pronounced that “things like these happen all the time,” a rather objective assessment that I would not hesitate to make myself but not a very prudent political statement to make, enflaming the tragedy by making the families of the victims angrier in the midst of their instinctive grief.

Former Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won was more culturally strategic in the real sense, though no less authentic, in that he took full responsibility for the delayed response of the Coast Guard to the MV Sewol ferry sinking that might have saved more lives.

In the process, he also revealed that the incident was not just a freak occurrence but a consequence of a culture of corruption that permeates a broad spectrum of society, including the systemic violation of all regulatory provisions as a rule rather than the exception, from the safety in ship building to following limits of freight, the practice of securing cargo to balancing loads and accurately logging weights.

Let me get my experience into the picture. I used to live on an island off Cebu in the Visayas where the normal means of getting around to the other islands, as well as heading north to Manila, west to Iloilo, east to Tacloban, and south to Davao, is by ferry. The published reports of sinking during a typhoon or other conditions of inclement weather where a ship is either overloaded or severely handicapped by poor maintenance was common. But obedience to the regulatory provisions was often an exception rather than the rule. Thus, the frequency of ferry disasters.

The question the MV Sewol dramatically raised is whether we can continue with a systematic practice of regulatory corruption, particularly in transport systems like buses, trains, and planes? The additional profit gained accrues mostly to owners and operators. Victims are expendable.

There are certain conveyances and infrastructures needed as public service that cannot be left on profit motive alone, the same way we have schools, hospitals, water delivery, sewage disposal, electric generation, and yes, ferry boat supervision meant to serve the public well-being. They may start privately but cannot be sustained without public support.

Interisland short jaunts like the run between Saipan and Tinian cannot be left just to the devices of private enterprise without regulatory supervision, and we know how insidious it is when the private enterprise colludes with public supervision to hoodwink the public, all in the name of profit. 

If Korea focuses its emotional energy on paying attention to how it may systemically heed regulatory measures rather than conduct witch hunts after the fact, it can get its system in better shape. The resignation of officials like that of the prime minister and the obvious grief that has driven the president into public apology, can all be worth the while if we understand that, indeed, these “things do happen.” But when we focus on who to blame for the happening, and simply rearrange the furniture after the fact, we miss out on preventing it from happening again. Indeed, they can be avoided if we put the welfare of folks first above the bank auditor’s eye and grade on the bottom line.

Mei (coal) is the black heap in front of my former residence at the university, spread out in a wide open space to last the winter in firing the engines of a plant that sent hot water into our room radiators for five months. The plant is a modern facility equipped with the latest in filters and scrubbers but still add carbon into the air to add to the greenhouse effect on our planetary environment. The coal burning plants that dot the landscape of the foothills of Sichuan to the Mongolian steppes and the frosts of Heilongjiang await critical upgrading. The atmospheric particle reading on the skies of Shenyang where I live, but more so in Shanghai and Beijing, constantly raise respiratory alarms.

Mei/Coal is accessible and cheap, whether mined in Shaanxi, or Turkey, the Appalachia or India. That’s what makes the Turkey president’s comments reprehensible. Mining coal shows frequency of avoidable disasters because we do so for the bottom line profits rather than the welfare of the workers.

“Clean coal” is an oxymoron, making the Turkey incident doubly tragic. The mining of mei and its use are all in the name of industrial progress for the sake of economic growth at the altar of financial gain.

Tragedies in mei mining like the Turkey incident no longer need to happen. We have cleaner ways to produce power. Industrializing England sent its young to the pits to light up its streets rather than just leave the carbon stone alone on the ground! The world paid dearly for it. Might it be time to declare a moratorium on coal burning?  Would we dare?

This is where furtherance of the use of alternative energy—wind, tidal and solar—is so critical a function to demonstrate, which the CNMI can perform for the rest of the world. Would we care?