oct 18. the good news. forbes asia names jaime zobel de ayala & family the richest filipinos, net worth $2B.
oct 19. the bad news. death and destruction at the ayala land inc.’s makati mall.11 dead, Php100M lost, and still counting. worse, the official finding is leaning toward some sort of gas explosion brought about by dysfunction in the bowels of glorietta 2.
what a double whammy for the oye-oye ayalas – major disaster na nga, baka daw kasalanan pa nila.
coming on the heels of being named the richest family hereabouts, the message depends on whether it was an accidental explosion or the handiwork of saboteurs.
if an accident, through no fault of ayala land inc. – nagkataon lang that conditions in the basement turned explosive just then, a technological- chemical snafu that couldn’t have been anticipated – then the message could simply be that even the rich suffer reversals, misfortunes.
if it wasn’t an accident, which means the explosion was intentional, then whoever the perpetrators – islamic terrorists, rebel military factions, the npa, or gonzalez & esperon, as alleged by trillanes – the message could be that being famous for being very rich can be dangerous to one’s wealth.
question is, why the ayalas? some, who suspect it’s a gonzalez-esperon operation, say the ayalas kasi are not sipsip to the palace, unlike the sys and the tans (2nd & 3rd richest).
or who knows, puwedeng nag-eenie-meenie-minie-mall lang ang perpetrators and minalas lang talaga ang glorietta?
but i’m not convinced that the blast was an industrial accident. i’m not convinced that the residues of rdx (royal demolition explosive) found were just by-products of some inadvertent chemical mix, or that it is found in cosmetics and deodorants and other everyday things. not so, sey ng newsbreak.
for sure ayala land inc. will contest any findings that blame them, one way or another, for the glorietta blast. so will makati mayor jojo binay. expect more fireworks, bloodless let’s hope.
Hi there! I also believed that it was a bomb that did it until:
1) Opposition Senator Lacson declared that the foreign intelligence agencies in the embassies do not have anything that pointed to bombings in Manila. That he himself was very cautious in his speculations.
2) Foreign services pointed to an accident as the most probable cause
3) I found out that even in other countries, entire buildings were demolished by accidental explosions.
As for the Ayala’s they need to publicize what they are doing for the families. being people in the hotseat, they should be able to show how nice they supposedly are.
Ciao!
You are right to point out that the Ayalas would certainly mobilize its resources to contest the police findings in court, and this provides an incentive for the police to build a solid case, otherwise they’d have egg in their faces. I think that in this case, regardless of how much we might Gloria and her minions, we just have to weigh the evidence.
One thing I’ve noted in my long blogs on the subject is that it has not been appreciated that police officers like Geary Barias in fact publicly announced they were exploring other possibilities even after Norberto Gonzales, Esperon, and Gloria were already trying to make political hay out of the terrorism angle.
Also, if you visit the ALI website and read their second press release on the subject, you’d find the claim that everything was normal in the basement, a claim now clearly belied by the facts released thus far.
I think Trillanes has no solid proof of his claims, otherwise he would already have released them to media. I find the guy a bit gullible, from his testimony in the Senate after the Oakwood incident.
I’m a chemical engineer and have worked in a power plant and trained in a petroleum lab. That gives me a little competence in the matter.
oo nga, you guys are right, benefit of the doubt na lang muna. maybe not a bomb nga, maybe a gas explosion nga, but that still raises the question of, accident? negligence? orchestrated?