We can expect the Philippines to become more pockmarked than ever before with open pit mines and more than ever underdeveloped with foreign and domestic mining corporations shipping out the mineral ores for processing in other countries now that Administrative Order No. 2021-40 of the Department of Energy and Natural Resources (DENR) dated December 23, 2021 lifting the ban on the open-pit method of mining for copper gold, silver and complex ores under DENR administrative Order No. 2017-10 issued by then DENR Secretary Gina Lopez.

Under the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 and DENR Administrative Order No. 2021-40, the foreign and local mining corporations can more than ever before plunder with impunity the natural wealth of the Filipino people, destroy Philippine agriculture with acid flows, landslides and floods and ruin the environment and bring on extreme climates such as super-typhoons, floods, droughts and heat waves. We can anticipate several times far more than the widespread open pit mines that proliferated during the years of 2017 to 2021 when Duterte and his DENR Secretary Roy Cimatu pretended to follow the DENR Administrative Order No. 2017-10 which had been issued by DENR Secretary Gina Lopez.

Duterte is a well-proven traitor to the Filipino people. He would auction away the national patrimony to foreign monopoly interests so long as they bribe him. We have seen how he has sold out the West Philippine Sea and its rich marine and mineral resources to China. He has allowed Chinese and other foreign mining companies to pockmark the entire country with open-pit mines and smuggle out the mineral ores. He is against the policy of national industrialization and conserve the natural resources and would rather allow foreign monopolies to ravage the Philippines at a rapid rate and process the raw materials abroad.

For Duterte and Cimatu the crooks, the current formal lifting of the ban on the open method of mining for copper, gold, silver and complex ores (including nickel iron, zinc, magnetite ore and rare earth metals) is well-timed for the 2022 elections. They are collecting big money from the mining companies for the electoral campaign of the Marcos-Duterte tandem and they are assuring the mining companies that they will be able to continue plundering the mineral wealth and ruining the environment of the Philippines.

In the years of 2017 to 2021, when there was supposedly a ban on open-pit mines, the people and social activists in the vicinity of these clamored for their closure. But the military and police running dogs of the Duterte have scandalously tried to stop the people’s outrage with shows of force and the murder of social activists, environmentalists and human rights defenders.

In the years to come, we can expect ever stronger popular resistance as Duterte and his kind of extremely brutal and corrupt bureaucrat capitalists betray the national sovereignty, sell out the national patrimony, oppose the progressive line of national industrialization and brutally enforce the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 and DENR Administrative Order No. 2021-40.###