-Manila Times September 22, 2012
Principles frequently clashed because two people or two groups are devoted to their beliefs. Mr. Pangilinan, being the CEO of PHILEX mining, is committed to deliver excellent value to its investors,
employees and other stakeholders hence he passionately espouse that mining can change the country and can contribute in creating jobs while the Ateneo calls for strengthening governance, transparency and capacity
in the mining sector and for applying a moratorium on approving new mining
projects until specific governance conditions for responsible mining are
in place, Naturally these two principles will collide because the most basic physics principles are at work.
The mechanics of the collision between Mr. Pangilinan and the Ateneo can be described as a contact force wherein principles touch each other and the forces of both players not only have magnitudes but directions as well. We call it vectors. This brings the mining discussion as net forces. Because there is more than one force acting on the system between the two players and the mining issue, the net force is a vector sum of all the forces acting on the system.
The interesting thing about the collision of mining principles is that it involves many agendas acting as different objects, all of which have different force vectors. According to Newton's Second Law, if Mr. Pangilinan and the Ateneo were traveling in the same speed and in this case, toward the mining issue, the players would collide and both travel in the opposite direction, this is without the consideration of the Ateneo basketball team whose small mass contributed slim to no effect on the collision.
Mr. Pangilinan severed ties with the Ateneo to reduce or terminate the collision velocities while Fr. Nebres resigned from the PLDT board to help the force spread over a greater time and make the change in momentum much smaller.
(Mr. Arnel L. Cadeliña is an MBA alumnus of Ateneo)