Laws do not implement themselves. That is why they usually come with implementing rules and regulations (IRR) and explicit provisions for their enforcement, such as budget allocations and clear transitory mechanisms. This is supposed to apply to the case of the 50-year mining moratorium ordinance passed by the Palawan provincial government exactly a year ago.
The ordinance provided for the creation of a Mining Moratorium Council (MMC) to be chaired by the governor, with the vice governor as co-chair. Its membership should include the DENR-PENRO, local chief executives of mining-affected municipalities and barangays, civil society representatives, the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development Staff, the Provincial ENRO, the Provincial Mining Regulatory Board, an NGO-nominated mining expert, and representatives from the Sangguniang Panlalawigan.
The MMC is supposed to be the all-important body that will oversee the implementation of the moratorium. Its creation is intended to support the entire enforcement architecture of the ordinance. Yet exactly one year after the passage of this policy measure, the provincial government has dropped the ball. There was not even a clear attempt to constitute and convene the body.
The moratorium ordinance came about with a striking absence of heated debate between the anti-mining lobby and the provincial government, which has historically aligned itself with the mining industry in recognition of the economic benefits the province has derived from mining. When the proposed measure came up for deliberation, there was no debate or standoff. The provincial board did not merely accept the 25-year moratorium that the mining lobby had tried from the outset to push. They even doubled it to 50.
On the surface, it looked like a triumph of environmental governance. But a critical mind may read it as a political calculation made with an eye on the upcoming elections at that time. The provincial government was still smarting from the defeat of its long-gestating political project to divide Palawan into three provinces, a move that was turned back by the same civil society that was also powering the anti-mining lobby. The plebiscite outcome had just served as proof that Palawan’s civil society has the reach, credibility, and moral authority to move votes at scale.
It is worth noting that Governor Amy Alvarez was not a party to the ordinance’s passage. The moratorium was ushered in during the term of her predecessor, Governor Victorino Socrates. The legislature that passed it is, however, the same legislature that sits today. The executive chair of the Mining Moratorium Council, a position that the ordinance explicitly assigns to the governor, now belongs to Governor Alvarez. While she did not author this ordinance, she inherited it. That does not diminish her obligation to abide by it.
The Narra local government’s endorsement of the Redmont project is troubling enough on its own. But the provincial board’s silence becomes more difficult to explain given that, according to the records of the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, the Redmont project does not even have a pending Strategic Environmental Plan clearance application. That this has been ignored even by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan in the exercise of its oversight function is a defining signal.
The provincial government has so far offered no public explanation for the inaction. This creates space for speculation that it is backtracking from this direction. When the local government of Narra endorsed the Redmont project last year, when the moratorium was supposedly already in effect, no one from the provincial board raised even a point of order.
The provincial government owes it to the public to state clearly where it stands. There are only two distinct policy directions to take: implement the mining moratorium ordinance or repeal it for being a dead letter law. Neither direction is necessarily right or wrong. What is wrong is the absence of a stand.
