DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/24/2010
"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings."
-John F. Kennedy
Ten years ago the country and the world were full of hope. It was a transition not only from an old decade to another, not only from an old century to a new one but also from one old millennium to another. Hope abounded. The Cold War had ended and the nuclear MAD-ness (mutual assured destruction) was believed to be a thing of the past. The Dot.com boom reached dizzying heights and its wealth effect would touch every member of the global economy for the better. Political change was in the air; Bush Jr. became president in the US under the most questionable circumstances while in the Philippines Georgetown economics student Gloria Arroyo became president through a power grab, but the euphoria of change carried the day. Even the dreaded doomsday Y2K bug proved a dud, thereafter nothing seemed to be in the way of the new century and new millennium to spoil the good times ahead.
Little did the people of the World and of the Philippines realize that the forces that made a disaster of the last century were already at work to turn the new decade the start of another century of wars, exploitation and oppression. In the US, even before the old century ended, plans for global resurgence of US global pre-eminence was drawn up in the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) in 1997. It included a wish for "a new Pearl Harbor" is which many believe envisioned the 9/11 WTC "inside job" terror strike leading to the Iraq and Afghan wars. In the Philippines, a conspiracy to depose the elected president and install the vice-president already worked out in 1998 when the coup should happen (that is, less than half the official presidential term) to allow the installed vice-president to legally run for a new term and gain a full decade to solidify their gains.
The omens were clear: Bush Jr.'s electoral coup d'etat aided by the Florida voting machine fraud and the Republican dominated US Supreme Court thwarting the popular will of the American people, and in the Philippines, the Edsa Dos coup d'etat aided by the Davide Supreme Court thwarting the Filipino's popular will.
What followed in both countries was a record of misuse and massive abuse of political power triggering endless wars by the US president and endless larceny by the Philippine president, all of which benefitted the global and local corporatocratic aristocracy, institutionalizing their systematic looting and monopoly of political power and economic plunder. As that decade ended they prepared for the next with new elections that installed their own again; no change in American, no change in the world, no change in the Philippines.
Elections generally achieve only an illusion or change, little real change happens when structural foundations stay the same. The real power behind America today is still the financial class, despite its mess that collapsed the US economy and caused massive American jobs losses; Obama and the US Congress bails out the financial class and not the people. The same in the Philippines: New names on old, old programs, like old roads given new street names: the Build-Operate-Transfer law is still the basis for the "new" Public-Private Partnership projects, the Conditional Cash Transfer replaces the old Millennium Fund dole-outs same same. Some cosmetic changes have more psychological impact than others, such as the release of political prisoners that does not change the political equation but releases revolutionary fervor of formerly imprisoned reform leaders.
However, real change still can come under these difficult situations, such as from an unexpected turn of mind of those installed by elections, compelling drastic moves from the powers behind the throne, such as assassination, and frequently in US history. In the Philippines, a coup d'etat is normally sufficient, or its threat is usually enough to keep the installed leader on "good" behavior. The forces for real change, leaders that identify themselves with the welfare of the people, can also rise within the system and work stealthily both within and outside in springing surprises on the forces of the neo-aristocracy or corporatocracy. There will always be a sufficient number of leaders and forces for real change because oppression and exploitation are real. Suffering of all oppressed classes is real, and heightening of consciousness continues unabated especially in the alternative media like the Internet.
A holiday get together highlighted four generations of genuine and progressive change-leaders with ideologies ranging from communist/socialist, Marcos military, Yellow officers, young officers, church laity and Edsa Tres stalwarts, I was told by one reformist politician that the army for change is now three times larger than it was when it shook the Marcos and Aquino regimes; I added that the people's bitter experiences (as in the electric power plunder issue) and failed economic promises (increasing unemployment, for example) of the new US and Philippine establishment leadership also prepare the population to an insurrection against the oppressive order (as we see in Europe and smashing of Prince Charles' car window). One caveat was expressed, "When we strike against the oligarchy, it must be finished completely in one blow." I can see it all happening, beginning 2011.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., replay 11 p.m., Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.: "10 Minutes Lights Out vs Power Plunderers," 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Friday, December 24, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Vizconde Massacre Case: En banc 7-vote acquittal is unconstitutional
Alan F. Paguia
Former Professor of Law
Ateneo Law School
University of Batangas
Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila
alanpaguia@yahoo.com
December 16, 2010
Is the seven-vote acquittal rendered by the Supreme Court en banc in the consolidated cases of Lejano v. People and People v. Webb - constitutional?
It is respectfully submitted the proper answer is NO.
The dispositive portion of the Decision, dated December 14, 2010, reads:
“WHEREFORE, the Court REVERSES and SETS ASIDE the Decision dated December 15, 2005 and Resolution dated January 26, 2007 of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. CR-H.C. 00336 and ACQUITS accused-appellants Hubert Jeffrey P. Webb, Antonio Lejano, Michael A. Gatchalian, Hospicio Fernandez, Miguel Rodriguez, Peter Estrada and Gerardo Biong of the crimes of which they were charged for failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. They are ordered immediately RELEASED from detention unless they are confined for another lawful cause.
Let a copy of this Decision be furnished the Director, Bureau of Corrections, Muntinlupa City for immediate implementation. The Director of the Bureau of Corrections is DIRECTED to report the action he has taken to this Court within five days from receipt of this Decision.
SO ORDERED.”
1. The 15 Justices voted as follows:
a. Seven (7) for acquittal;
b. Four (4) dissenting; and
c. Four (4) took no part.
2. On the basis of the seven votes, all the accused were immediately released from prison.
3. The material provisions of the 1987 Philippine Constitution appear to be as follows:
“The Philippines is a democratic and republican State. Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.” (Sec. 1, Art. II)
“The Supreme Court shall be composed of a Chief Justice and fourteen Associate Justices. It may sit en banc or in its discretion, in divisions of three, five, or seven Members. Any vacancy shall be filled within ninety days from the occurrence thereof.” (Par. 1, Sec. 4, ART. VIII)
“All cases involving the constitutionality of a treaty, international or executive agreement, or law, which shall be heard by the Supreme Court en banc, and all other cases which under the Rules of Court are required to be heard en banc, including those involving the constitutionality, application, or operation of presidential decrees, proclamations, orders, instructions, ordinances, and other regulations, shall be decided with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon.” (Par. 2, ibid.)
“Cases or matters heard by a division shall be decided or resolved with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon, and in no case without the concurrence of at least three of such Members. When the required number is not obtained, the case shall be decided en banc: Provided, that no doctrine or principle of law laid down by the court in a decision rendered en banc or in division may be modified or reversed except by the court sitting en banc.” (Par. 3, ibid.)
“The conclusions of the Supreme Court in any case submitted to it for decision en banc or in division shall be reached in consultation before the case is assigned to a Member for the writing of the opinion of the Court. A certification to this effect signed by the Chief Justice shall be issued and a copy thereof attached to the record of the case and served upon the parties. Any Member who took no part, or dissented, or abstained from a decision or resolution must state the reason therefor. The same requirements shall be observed by all lower collegiate courts.” (Sec. 13, ibid.)
4. There are two ways by which the SC can decide a case:
(a) En banc, referring to the total of 15 justices; or
(b) In divisions of 3, 5, or 7 justices.
5. In EN BANC proceedings, the case “shall be decided with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon”.
6. In DIVISION proceedings, the case “shall be decided or resolved with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon”.
a. In a division of 3 Justices, a decision must have 3 concurring votes in order to be valid. This absolute minimum is by express provision of the Constitution. It can be readily observed that the required number of votes in relation to the total number of justices in the division is CONSISTENT with the cardinal principle of DEMOCRACY or the RULE OF MAJORITY.
b. In a division of 5 Justices, a decision must also have 3 concurring votes in order to be valid. This absolute minimum is by express provision of the Constitution. It can be readily observed that the required number of votes in relation to the total number of justices in the division is CONSISTENT with the cardinal principle of DEMOCRACY or the RULE OF MAJORITY.
c. In a division of 7 Justices, 4 would constitute a QUORUM. By mechanical application of the rule, 3 out of the 4 could render a decision. This is the problem. Why? Because 3 obviously do not constitute a majority of the total number of justices in the division.
7. Therefore, the rule cannot be mechanically applied. The rule is not clear. It is ambiguous. In divisions of 3 or 5 justices, the result of the application of the rule is consistent with the rule of majority; but, in a division of 7 justices, such application results in ABSURDITY. Instead of upholding the rule of majority, the result is the RULE OF MINORITY or violation of the cardinal principle of DEMOCRACY.
8. The same ABSURDITY arises from the application of the rule in en banc proceedings where 7 justices could rule over the 15 justices of the Court. Hence, the question is whether (a) 7 out of 15, or (b) 8 out of 15 – is the CORRECT MAJORITY.
9. Where the rule is not clear, it must be construed or clarified before it can be applied. There is no such construction or clarification in the case at bar.
10. Is the rule requiring the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon – consistent with the RULE OF MAJORITY?
The answer must be qualified.
(a) First, in divisions of 3 or 5 justices, the answer is YES.
(b) Second, in a division of 7 justices, the answer is NO.
(c) Third, in en banc proceedings, the answer is NO.
In other words, the proper application of the rule is qualified. Insofar as the second and third cases are concerned, the application must be consistent with the RULE OF MAJORITY. Ergo, in the second case, the required number of votes for a valid decision should be 4, while in the third case, the required number of votes should be 8.
11. QUORUM means MAJORITY. Since the mechanical application of the rule requires the majority of the quorum, it follows that the requirement is, in reality, a majority of the majority – which actually refers to the MINORITY. Hence, there would appear two kinds of MAJORITY: the TRUE MAJORITY which is democratic, and the FALSE MAJORITY which is undemocratic.
12. Is the 7-vote acquittal valid? NO. According to the Supreme Court, where the required number of votes is not obtained, THERE IS NO DECISION (Fortich v. Corona, 312 SCRA 751, at 758).
13. Is the order of release questionable? YES. It appears undemocratic. It is based on the RULE OF MINORITY, not the RULE OF MAJORITY.
14. Does the inconclusive acquittal render the case undecided? NO. By parity of reasoning with the doctrine laid down in Fortich v. Corona, ibid., there is still the Court of Appeals decision affirming the conviction of the accused which must stand in view of the failure of the Supreme Court en banc to muster the necessary vote for its reversal. Thus, the appeal is lost. The appealed decision is not reversed and must therefore be deemed AFFIRMED.
15. Is the lost appeal final? NO. All the accused have 15 days from receipt of the decision within which to file a motion for reconsideration. If the motion is granted and at least one dissenting justice changes his mind and votes for acquittal in addition to the 7-vote acquittal, then the appealed conviction would be REVERSED with finality. Otherwise, the conviction stands.
Former Professor of Law
Ateneo Law School
University of Batangas
Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila
alanpaguia@yahoo.com
December 16, 2010
Is the seven-vote acquittal rendered by the Supreme Court en banc in the consolidated cases of Lejano v. People and People v. Webb - constitutional?
It is respectfully submitted the proper answer is NO.
The dispositive portion of the Decision, dated December 14, 2010, reads:
“WHEREFORE, the Court REVERSES and SETS ASIDE the Decision dated December 15, 2005 and Resolution dated January 26, 2007 of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. CR-H.C. 00336 and ACQUITS accused-appellants Hubert Jeffrey P. Webb, Antonio Lejano, Michael A. Gatchalian, Hospicio Fernandez, Miguel Rodriguez, Peter Estrada and Gerardo Biong of the crimes of which they were charged for failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. They are ordered immediately RELEASED from detention unless they are confined for another lawful cause.
Let a copy of this Decision be furnished the Director, Bureau of Corrections, Muntinlupa City for immediate implementation. The Director of the Bureau of Corrections is DIRECTED to report the action he has taken to this Court within five days from receipt of this Decision.
SO ORDERED.”
1. The 15 Justices voted as follows:
a. Seven (7) for acquittal;
b. Four (4) dissenting; and
c. Four (4) took no part.
2. On the basis of the seven votes, all the accused were immediately released from prison.
3. The material provisions of the 1987 Philippine Constitution appear to be as follows:
“The Philippines is a democratic and republican State. Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.” (Sec. 1, Art. II)
“The Supreme Court shall be composed of a Chief Justice and fourteen Associate Justices. It may sit en banc or in its discretion, in divisions of three, five, or seven Members. Any vacancy shall be filled within ninety days from the occurrence thereof.” (Par. 1, Sec. 4, ART. VIII)
“All cases involving the constitutionality of a treaty, international or executive agreement, or law, which shall be heard by the Supreme Court en banc, and all other cases which under the Rules of Court are required to be heard en banc, including those involving the constitutionality, application, or operation of presidential decrees, proclamations, orders, instructions, ordinances, and other regulations, shall be decided with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon.” (Par. 2, ibid.)
“Cases or matters heard by a division shall be decided or resolved with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon, and in no case without the concurrence of at least three of such Members. When the required number is not obtained, the case shall be decided en banc: Provided, that no doctrine or principle of law laid down by the court in a decision rendered en banc or in division may be modified or reversed except by the court sitting en banc.” (Par. 3, ibid.)
“The conclusions of the Supreme Court in any case submitted to it for decision en banc or in division shall be reached in consultation before the case is assigned to a Member for the writing of the opinion of the Court. A certification to this effect signed by the Chief Justice shall be issued and a copy thereof attached to the record of the case and served upon the parties. Any Member who took no part, or dissented, or abstained from a decision or resolution must state the reason therefor. The same requirements shall be observed by all lower collegiate courts.” (Sec. 13, ibid.)
4. There are two ways by which the SC can decide a case:
(a) En banc, referring to the total of 15 justices; or
(b) In divisions of 3, 5, or 7 justices.
5. In EN BANC proceedings, the case “shall be decided with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon”.
6. In DIVISION proceedings, the case “shall be decided or resolved with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon”.
a. In a division of 3 Justices, a decision must have 3 concurring votes in order to be valid. This absolute minimum is by express provision of the Constitution. It can be readily observed that the required number of votes in relation to the total number of justices in the division is CONSISTENT with the cardinal principle of DEMOCRACY or the RULE OF MAJORITY.
b. In a division of 5 Justices, a decision must also have 3 concurring votes in order to be valid. This absolute minimum is by express provision of the Constitution. It can be readily observed that the required number of votes in relation to the total number of justices in the division is CONSISTENT with the cardinal principle of DEMOCRACY or the RULE OF MAJORITY.
c. In a division of 7 Justices, 4 would constitute a QUORUM. By mechanical application of the rule, 3 out of the 4 could render a decision. This is the problem. Why? Because 3 obviously do not constitute a majority of the total number of justices in the division.
7. Therefore, the rule cannot be mechanically applied. The rule is not clear. It is ambiguous. In divisions of 3 or 5 justices, the result of the application of the rule is consistent with the rule of majority; but, in a division of 7 justices, such application results in ABSURDITY. Instead of upholding the rule of majority, the result is the RULE OF MINORITY or violation of the cardinal principle of DEMOCRACY.
8. The same ABSURDITY arises from the application of the rule in en banc proceedings where 7 justices could rule over the 15 justices of the Court. Hence, the question is whether (a) 7 out of 15, or (b) 8 out of 15 – is the CORRECT MAJORITY.
9. Where the rule is not clear, it must be construed or clarified before it can be applied. There is no such construction or clarification in the case at bar.
10. Is the rule requiring the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon – consistent with the RULE OF MAJORITY?
The answer must be qualified.
(a) First, in divisions of 3 or 5 justices, the answer is YES.
(b) Second, in a division of 7 justices, the answer is NO.
(c) Third, in en banc proceedings, the answer is NO.
In other words, the proper application of the rule is qualified. Insofar as the second and third cases are concerned, the application must be consistent with the RULE OF MAJORITY. Ergo, in the second case, the required number of votes for a valid decision should be 4, while in the third case, the required number of votes should be 8.
11. QUORUM means MAJORITY. Since the mechanical application of the rule requires the majority of the quorum, it follows that the requirement is, in reality, a majority of the majority – which actually refers to the MINORITY. Hence, there would appear two kinds of MAJORITY: the TRUE MAJORITY which is democratic, and the FALSE MAJORITY which is undemocratic.
12. Is the 7-vote acquittal valid? NO. According to the Supreme Court, where the required number of votes is not obtained, THERE IS NO DECISION (Fortich v. Corona, 312 SCRA 751, at 758).
13. Is the order of release questionable? YES. It appears undemocratic. It is based on the RULE OF MINORITY, not the RULE OF MAJORITY.
14. Does the inconclusive acquittal render the case undecided? NO. By parity of reasoning with the doctrine laid down in Fortich v. Corona, ibid., there is still the Court of Appeals decision affirming the conviction of the accused which must stand in view of the failure of the Supreme Court en banc to muster the necessary vote for its reversal. Thus, the appeal is lost. The appealed decision is not reversed and must therefore be deemed AFFIRMED.
15. Is the lost appeal final? NO. All the accused have 15 days from receipt of the decision within which to file a motion for reconsideration. If the motion is granted and at least one dissenting justice changes his mind and votes for acquittal in addition to the 7-vote acquittal, then the appealed conviction would be REVERSED with finality. Otherwise, the conviction stands.
Monday, December 20, 2010
The colonial anti-boycott struggle
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/20/2010
"Coalition of the weak” and “lovely collection of rogues and cowards” are some of the pejoratives used for the countries that rejected this year’s Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo, Norway. Weak, rogues, and cowards… huh? Seriously?
Among the 18 or so countries that joined the boycott, Vietnam, Venezuela, Cuba and Russia are countries that have stood up to the foremost imperialist in modern times. The United States of America, for everyone’s information, maintains 800 military bases in 130 countries and continues to trigger wars in smaller countries on all continents of the globe (except Australia).
Cuba, meanwhile, has withstood US economic blockade since 1960; Vietnam defeated the US in 1975; Venezuela has defied Uncle Sam to the benefit of Venezuelans and nationalized the oil industry which the US once controlled; while Russia has gone tit-for-tat with the US in arms control, missile defense, South Ossetian independence, and a lot more since Putin restored Russian sovereignty.
It would be more correct to describe the detractors of the Peace Prize boycott as a gaggle of weak minds for wittingly or unwittingly missing such obvious facts.
This gaggle among the local crop of naysayers should not surprise anyone anymore. The Philippine intelligentsia is still a colonial vestige that survives and thrives on the handouts of the imperial power. From the nurturing of their journalistic careers (with grants, scholarships, and visas), to the multi-national advertising money poured in for their media organizations, to funding for “human rights journalism” and recruitment to US academe, not to mention prestigious awards and prizes, this intelligentsia merely sucks from the great imperialist’s bosom.
Francisco Tatad, for instance, tells a story of this writer he saw decades ago in Washington DC. As he saw the latter tugging his luggage and making his way to State Department offices at the Watergate complex, the writer (now one of the most vitriolic in the Philippine Star on the Peace Prize issue) said, “Pera-pera lang ito,” revealing his role as a US hack.
The real surprise is that among the countries that boycotted the Nobel Peace Prize, Afghanistan and Colombia are both under US control. Were the leaders of these countries instructed to join or was it their way of nudging their American masters for more “aid” as it seems to be their habit?
The boycott from Ukraine is no longer surprising as it is under the new pro-Russia president Victor Yanukovych. Sudan, another country fighting off Western attempts to split it into two — the North whose President Bashir is persecuted by the International Criminal Court for “genocide,” a charge no African country believes, and the oil-rich South that has pro-US rebel forces — also joined the boycott. Iran, as we know, has defied the West’s nuclear apartheid for quite some time, so its boycott came as no surprise.
Other boycotting countries include Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Serbia (which has real issues against the West, such as the separation of Kosovo, later placed under the leadership of a Mafioso and organ smuggler), Pakistan (which has given the West the best runaround on its nuclear arsenal), Egypt , Morocco… and then the Philippines.
As I have said before, even if the Philippine boycott was for mistaken reasons, it was the “right” mistake, which may be a first step in wriggling a toe away from the US straight jacket. Hopefully it won’t go the direction of Gloria Arroyo who got one toe out in the Iraq pull-out but soon learned that the US will still give her free rein if only for corruption, subservience, and personal convenience — but never for political independence.
About the Nobel Peace Prize’s latest Trojan horse, Liu Xiaobo, few know that he rooted not only for the US attack on Iraq, but also praised the US-Nato-led Afghan War and campaigns for China to be fully westernized. For local intelligentsia such as the PEN writers who condemned China, westernization and colonial mind slavery are a ticket to more visas and Western literary awards or grants.
How can anyone with a right mind award a Peace Prize to a war monger, and worse, to one that seeks to erase Asian historical and cultural legacy? The mainstream of Philippine opposition to the Peace Prize boycott is conveniently weak, if not absent-minded. It likes to shoot from the hip while knowing very little about the Nobel laureate and hardly considers the recent turn for pro-war figures of the Peace Prize committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland, a Nato war hawk and concurrent chairman of the hawkish Council of Europe.
The Philippine anti-boycott voices reflect the prevailing colonial mentality of local intelligentsia. It explains why the Philippines is unable to break free from colonial exploitation and oppression, making the nation exceedingly poorer.
If the nation’s intelligentsia today were only half as proud and independent as those of Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, Iran, or China, our nation would long have stayed at the forefront of Asian intellectual leadership as the revolutionary intellectual Rizal and company showed. As things stand, a Philippines that exists only under the shadow of the US will never grow intellectually, cultural, politically, and economically.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/20/2010
"Coalition of the weak” and “lovely collection of rogues and cowards” are some of the pejoratives used for the countries that rejected this year’s Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo, Norway. Weak, rogues, and cowards… huh? Seriously?
Among the 18 or so countries that joined the boycott, Vietnam, Venezuela, Cuba and Russia are countries that have stood up to the foremost imperialist in modern times. The United States of America, for everyone’s information, maintains 800 military bases in 130 countries and continues to trigger wars in smaller countries on all continents of the globe (except Australia).
Cuba, meanwhile, has withstood US economic blockade since 1960; Vietnam defeated the US in 1975; Venezuela has defied Uncle Sam to the benefit of Venezuelans and nationalized the oil industry which the US once controlled; while Russia has gone tit-for-tat with the US in arms control, missile defense, South Ossetian independence, and a lot more since Putin restored Russian sovereignty.
It would be more correct to describe the detractors of the Peace Prize boycott as a gaggle of weak minds for wittingly or unwittingly missing such obvious facts.
This gaggle among the local crop of naysayers should not surprise anyone anymore. The Philippine intelligentsia is still a colonial vestige that survives and thrives on the handouts of the imperial power. From the nurturing of their journalistic careers (with grants, scholarships, and visas), to the multi-national advertising money poured in for their media organizations, to funding for “human rights journalism” and recruitment to US academe, not to mention prestigious awards and prizes, this intelligentsia merely sucks from the great imperialist’s bosom.
Francisco Tatad, for instance, tells a story of this writer he saw decades ago in Washington DC. As he saw the latter tugging his luggage and making his way to State Department offices at the Watergate complex, the writer (now one of the most vitriolic in the Philippine Star on the Peace Prize issue) said, “Pera-pera lang ito,” revealing his role as a US hack.
The real surprise is that among the countries that boycotted the Nobel Peace Prize, Afghanistan and Colombia are both under US control. Were the leaders of these countries instructed to join or was it their way of nudging their American masters for more “aid” as it seems to be their habit?
The boycott from Ukraine is no longer surprising as it is under the new pro-Russia president Victor Yanukovych. Sudan, another country fighting off Western attempts to split it into two — the North whose President Bashir is persecuted by the International Criminal Court for “genocide,” a charge no African country believes, and the oil-rich South that has pro-US rebel forces — also joined the boycott. Iran, as we know, has defied the West’s nuclear apartheid for quite some time, so its boycott came as no surprise.
Other boycotting countries include Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Serbia (which has real issues against the West, such as the separation of Kosovo, later placed under the leadership of a Mafioso and organ smuggler), Pakistan (which has given the West the best runaround on its nuclear arsenal), Egypt , Morocco… and then the Philippines.
As I have said before, even if the Philippine boycott was for mistaken reasons, it was the “right” mistake, which may be a first step in wriggling a toe away from the US straight jacket. Hopefully it won’t go the direction of Gloria Arroyo who got one toe out in the Iraq pull-out but soon learned that the US will still give her free rein if only for corruption, subservience, and personal convenience — but never for political independence.
About the Nobel Peace Prize’s latest Trojan horse, Liu Xiaobo, few know that he rooted not only for the US attack on Iraq, but also praised the US-Nato-led Afghan War and campaigns for China to be fully westernized. For local intelligentsia such as the PEN writers who condemned China, westernization and colonial mind slavery are a ticket to more visas and Western literary awards or grants.
How can anyone with a right mind award a Peace Prize to a war monger, and worse, to one that seeks to erase Asian historical and cultural legacy? The mainstream of Philippine opposition to the Peace Prize boycott is conveniently weak, if not absent-minded. It likes to shoot from the hip while knowing very little about the Nobel laureate and hardly considers the recent turn for pro-war figures of the Peace Prize committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland, a Nato war hawk and concurrent chairman of the hawkish Council of Europe.
The Philippine anti-boycott voices reflect the prevailing colonial mentality of local intelligentsia. It explains why the Philippines is unable to break free from colonial exploitation and oppression, making the nation exceedingly poorer.
If the nation’s intelligentsia today were only half as proud and independent as those of Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, Iran, or China, our nation would long have stayed at the forefront of Asian intellectual leadership as the revolutionary intellectual Rizal and company showed. As things stand, a Philippines that exists only under the shadow of the US will never grow intellectually, cultural, politically, and economically.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Friday, December 17, 2010
Supreme blunders?
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/17/2010
The 19-year tale of blunders and consequent injustice marks the track of Philippine society, from the staggering blunder of elite families allowing their children to be swallowed by the drug culture and involvement (without saying that they are guilty) in such a heinous crimes (such as the 1997 Chiong sisters rape-slay in Cebu by scions of powerful families) to the deadly Keystone Kops or rogue cops character, law enforcement agencies and officers, through the hoodlums in robes in the nation’s courts; and to top it all, the supreme blunder of the Supreme Court (SC) in allowing a minority of seven of the en banc to carry the final day of the almost 20-year-old Vizconde saga. According to Law professor Alan Paguia, the Constitution, jurisprudence and decided cases require the majority of eight concurrences of the en banc to decide a case; and consequently the prisoners’ release is illegal.
This is not a discussion of the merits of the Webb case. It is about the cavalier way Philippine society treats law and law enforcement that bring endless blunders and injustice upon our society. Our Global News Network show, aired live and as breaking news as the SC spokesman Midas Marquez’s statements were being replayed on air, Paguia discussed this salient point of the Constitution and the law with our other guest, former senator and whom I call senior statesman Eddie Ilarde: that the concurrence of the majority of no less than eight SC justice sitting en banc, as distinguished from a division of three or five, is required for the en banc decision to be effective. This means that the SC’s seven acquit, four sustain (for the lower court decisions) and four abstain or inhibition is actually sustaining the conviction. Vizconde should take note of this and not blunder on, though the defendants could still petition for reconsideration.
The hasty order from the SC to the prison officials to effect the release of the accused is another disconcerting error that has raised cries of “foul” from the Vizconde family sympathizers. The normal process would bring the order for release to the Department of Justice (DoJ) first and from thence to the prison officials, which would take at least a few days. The injudiciously hurried release ordered by the SC has raised charges of bribery from Vizconde supporters, believing the hastiness was compelled by other than legal considerations. I sought second opinions: four out of five lawyers said that Paguia’s questions “have merit,” two pointed out that the question however would be judged by the SC itself if brought up and would not prosper, and the hasty release was “highly irregular.” The rest of the country, even Vizconde, has accepted the SC decision to be gospel truth, thus we continue to be a “blundering society.”
The blundering media must not be let off the hook. One of the factors that got the “trial by publicity” of the accused all stoked up was the ABS-CBN’s once TV talk show host, the late Sen. Rene Cayetano, who played up the case to build up his own political stock. The Pasay judge in the Vizconde case showed a penchant to ham up to media which media lapped up with gusto, and colleagues of the judge congratulated her upon being assigned the celebrity case the media had built up and which she could bask in the glory of “hanging” the accused and gain her ticket to promotions as other “hanging judges” paved their way to prominence and other careers upon retirement. The media glare brings out many questionable values in human beings. Even today, the media show their propensity for idiocy, swallowing like the rest of society the announcement from the SC as if it were gospel truth and not raising the questions that should be raised.
The foibles of media in the aftermath of the Webb release continue, one columnist lamented “trial by publicity” when he and his newspaper have been the major “crucifier” by publicity as they did to President Joseph Estrada. The DoJ is reopening the Vizconde rape-slay case and the media should be raising the questions, such as: the role of the “drug Indians” and the NBI which allegedly illegally sprung them and which Sen. Freddie Webb was investigating, a second set of suspects who were then discounted, inexplicable lapses in the consideration and care of evidence by the court and the NBI, etc. It remains to be seen if this time the straight path to the facts and truth be taken; but after the Hong Thai-Mendoza hostage-taking and apparent cover-up are any indication, Philippine government and society will continue to blunder along — until revolutionary change imposes a strong moral and ethical culture replaces what we have today.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S. — “10 Minutes Lights Out vs Power Plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/17/2010
The 19-year tale of blunders and consequent injustice marks the track of Philippine society, from the staggering blunder of elite families allowing their children to be swallowed by the drug culture and involvement (without saying that they are guilty) in such a heinous crimes (such as the 1997 Chiong sisters rape-slay in Cebu by scions of powerful families) to the deadly Keystone Kops or rogue cops character, law enforcement agencies and officers, through the hoodlums in robes in the nation’s courts; and to top it all, the supreme blunder of the Supreme Court (SC) in allowing a minority of seven of the en banc to carry the final day of the almost 20-year-old Vizconde saga. According to Law professor Alan Paguia, the Constitution, jurisprudence and decided cases require the majority of eight concurrences of the en banc to decide a case; and consequently the prisoners’ release is illegal.
This is not a discussion of the merits of the Webb case. It is about the cavalier way Philippine society treats law and law enforcement that bring endless blunders and injustice upon our society. Our Global News Network show, aired live and as breaking news as the SC spokesman Midas Marquez’s statements were being replayed on air, Paguia discussed this salient point of the Constitution and the law with our other guest, former senator and whom I call senior statesman Eddie Ilarde: that the concurrence of the majority of no less than eight SC justice sitting en banc, as distinguished from a division of three or five, is required for the en banc decision to be effective. This means that the SC’s seven acquit, four sustain (for the lower court decisions) and four abstain or inhibition is actually sustaining the conviction. Vizconde should take note of this and not blunder on, though the defendants could still petition for reconsideration.
The hasty order from the SC to the prison officials to effect the release of the accused is another disconcerting error that has raised cries of “foul” from the Vizconde family sympathizers. The normal process would bring the order for release to the Department of Justice (DoJ) first and from thence to the prison officials, which would take at least a few days. The injudiciously hurried release ordered by the SC has raised charges of bribery from Vizconde supporters, believing the hastiness was compelled by other than legal considerations. I sought second opinions: four out of five lawyers said that Paguia’s questions “have merit,” two pointed out that the question however would be judged by the SC itself if brought up and would not prosper, and the hasty release was “highly irregular.” The rest of the country, even Vizconde, has accepted the SC decision to be gospel truth, thus we continue to be a “blundering society.”
The blundering media must not be let off the hook. One of the factors that got the “trial by publicity” of the accused all stoked up was the ABS-CBN’s once TV talk show host, the late Sen. Rene Cayetano, who played up the case to build up his own political stock. The Pasay judge in the Vizconde case showed a penchant to ham up to media which media lapped up with gusto, and colleagues of the judge congratulated her upon being assigned the celebrity case the media had built up and which she could bask in the glory of “hanging” the accused and gain her ticket to promotions as other “hanging judges” paved their way to prominence and other careers upon retirement. The media glare brings out many questionable values in human beings. Even today, the media show their propensity for idiocy, swallowing like the rest of society the announcement from the SC as if it were gospel truth and not raising the questions that should be raised.
The foibles of media in the aftermath of the Webb release continue, one columnist lamented “trial by publicity” when he and his newspaper have been the major “crucifier” by publicity as they did to President Joseph Estrada. The DoJ is reopening the Vizconde rape-slay case and the media should be raising the questions, such as: the role of the “drug Indians” and the NBI which allegedly illegally sprung them and which Sen. Freddie Webb was investigating, a second set of suspects who were then discounted, inexplicable lapses in the consideration and care of evidence by the court and the NBI, etc. It remains to be seen if this time the straight path to the facts and truth be taken; but after the Hong Thai-Mendoza hostage-taking and apparent cover-up are any indication, Philippine government and society will continue to blunder along — until revolutionary change imposes a strong moral and ethical culture replaces what we have today.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S. — “10 Minutes Lights Out vs Power Plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
PeNoy to Pinoys: Eat lice
CONSUMERS DEMAND!
Mentong Laurel
12/13-19/2010
When PeNoy’s government raised the NFA wholesale price for rice from P23.50 to P25.00/kg and the retail price from P25.00 to P27.00/kg last December 7, it was literally telling poor Filipinos: “Go, eat lice.”
Hunger statistics of the past years already show that Filipino families who pass a day or more being absolutely without food, or experiencing “involuntary hunger” within a period of three months, comprise up to 25% of the population; while the “poor” as a percentage of the population can fluctuate between 50 to 75% depending on the price of rice and other foodstuff.
Every peso added to the cost of the people’s basic staple while wages and employment levels are at crisis levels translates to increasing hunger and poverty, and invariably greater social unrest and economic deterioration. The PeNoy government may argue that this price increase is for the good of the farmers who are among the very poor anyway, but this doesn’t sound plausible after the PeNoy Cabinet decided to cut the NFA budget at the onset of its administration.
Even more telling is the NFA’s official reason for the price increase, that is, to “ensure the viability of the agency.” Does this mean that it will mainly go to support the agency and not the farmers? One cannot conclude that what is good for the agency is automatically going to redound to the good of the farmers. The statement implies that the P2 price increase is not necessarily going to be passed on to the rice farmers as price support or a similar incentive. The highly sensitive statement, coming as it does from a superb wordsmith (having been a campaigner for PeNoy in the last election) who now heads the agency, couldn’t have been a mistake.
Frankly, I can’t blame the new NFA for scrounging around to raise funds for itself, especially with the way PeNoy’s Cabinet expressed its disdain for the agency by pulling out support for its clients--the rice farming sector--early on.
Still and all, there is a better way to go about the rice supply and pricing problem: Instead of P21 B for the CCT dole out program, the government can very well allocate just a third of this for farmers’ organizations. This will increase rice production by reviving moribund irrigation systems, supporting seed programs and organic fertilizer production, employing workers and farm hands, raising production and enriching the farmers a little. These will then redound to a stabilized rice supply situation and a lowered hunger and poverty incidence.
By the supply and price of rice do Philippine governments rise and fall, and this may just become the rice straw that breaks the camel’s back.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Mentong Laurel
12/13-19/2010
When PeNoy’s government raised the NFA wholesale price for rice from P23.50 to P25.00/kg and the retail price from P25.00 to P27.00/kg last December 7, it was literally telling poor Filipinos: “Go, eat lice.”
Hunger statistics of the past years already show that Filipino families who pass a day or more being absolutely without food, or experiencing “involuntary hunger” within a period of three months, comprise up to 25% of the population; while the “poor” as a percentage of the population can fluctuate between 50 to 75% depending on the price of rice and other foodstuff.
Every peso added to the cost of the people’s basic staple while wages and employment levels are at crisis levels translates to increasing hunger and poverty, and invariably greater social unrest and economic deterioration. The PeNoy government may argue that this price increase is for the good of the farmers who are among the very poor anyway, but this doesn’t sound plausible after the PeNoy Cabinet decided to cut the NFA budget at the onset of its administration.
Even more telling is the NFA’s official reason for the price increase, that is, to “ensure the viability of the agency.” Does this mean that it will mainly go to support the agency and not the farmers? One cannot conclude that what is good for the agency is automatically going to redound to the good of the farmers. The statement implies that the P2 price increase is not necessarily going to be passed on to the rice farmers as price support or a similar incentive. The highly sensitive statement, coming as it does from a superb wordsmith (having been a campaigner for PeNoy in the last election) who now heads the agency, couldn’t have been a mistake.
Frankly, I can’t blame the new NFA for scrounging around to raise funds for itself, especially with the way PeNoy’s Cabinet expressed its disdain for the agency by pulling out support for its clients--the rice farming sector--early on.
Still and all, there is a better way to go about the rice supply and pricing problem: Instead of P21 B for the CCT dole out program, the government can very well allocate just a third of this for farmers’ organizations. This will increase rice production by reviving moribund irrigation systems, supporting seed programs and organic fertilizer production, employing workers and farm hands, raising production and enriching the farmers a little. These will then redound to a stabilized rice supply situation and a lowered hunger and poverty incidence.
By the supply and price of rice do Philippine governments rise and fall, and this may just become the rice straw that breaks the camel’s back.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Monday, December 13, 2010
Pell-mell Peace Nobel
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/13/2010
Pell-mell: jumbled, helter-skelter, confused; that’s what the Nobel Peace prize has become. A third party observer such as the India Daily perceived this so clearly when its correspondent filed a report in response to the nomination of Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize with the headline, “Beijing denounces Nobel for Liu Xiaobo, after Obama, Gore, isn’t the Nobel Prize a joke?”
One definitely couldn’t get such a clear assessment of the Peace Prize from Western societies and media. I was almost ready to add the West’s minion states like the Philippines among those with the view skewed toward the West until the PeNoy government surprised us for once by doing the right thing, by joining the boycott of the Nobel Peace award to the questionable Liu Xiaobo.
From another third party point of view, Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly in Tokyo, comes this objective summary of Liu Xiaobo’s history: “Liu Xiaobo’s personal link with Norway started during his days as a visiting scholar to the University of Oslo in 1988... Back in those dark days of the Cold War, there weren’t many Chinese in Scandinavia, so Liu was a rare commodity — a scholar from Beijing who loathed Beijing. Whether Liu became a Nato asset is a matter of top-secret classification. Oslo’s repeated inquiries about him through two decades, the Western media’s patronage, and the Nobel selection over other Chinese dissidents indicate some sort of special bond. Whatever the hidden details of his foreign involvements, Liu’s Peace Prize is serving as the bugle call for Nato’s global crusade against so-called “tyranny.”
“The fact that an open warmonger heads the Nobel Peace Committee has completely discredited what was once the world’s most prestigious Peace Prize. That honor is now just another weapon in the arsenal of the Great Powers mobilizing to reassert their authority over their former colonial domain. The goal of the West is not democracy and human rights; what its leaders really desire is domination and warfare. The intentions are clear. Thus we must each prepare, in our different ways, for the coming bloodshed.”
The Indian and Japanese media can be relied on to be more level-headed about the issues given their experiences with Western imperialism and persistent nationalist pride, unlike many in Philippine media and human rights NGOs who genuflect before the journalism and human rights foundations as well as foreign funding agencies for their scholarships and whatnot.
This dubious award of the Nobel Peace prize to Liu Xiaobo was preceded by two of the same equally dubious awards to Obama in 2009, when the newly-elected US president had just taken steps to expand the American and Nato war in Afghanistan; and before that in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore for their advocacy of the “man-made global warming” theory and restrictions on industrialization, which have subsequently been put under serious disrepute by IPCC’s own admissions of prediction errors, precipitated by an e-mail scandal unearthed by an IPCC scientist (not by WikiLeaks) revealing climate date manipulation to suit global warming theories. But these are not the only controversies.
The 1973 award to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for the Vietnam peace talks compelled two Nobel Peace Prize panel members’ resignation; they could not agree on the nominees’ qualifications as men of peace. Kissinger is considered by many historians and students of the Vietnam War, and I among them, as a war criminal for the atrocities and murder of four million Vietnamese civilians committed by American forces under his policy direction.
A lesser known awardee in 2008 was former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari who executed the negotiations with Yugoslavia’s Milosevic that were so one-sided for the US and Nato that he was rewarded with a second assignment over Kosovo which ended with the latter’s declaration of independence. Gregory Elich of the Jasenovac Research Institute and adviser to the Korea Truth Commission says Ahtisaari’s Nobel was for services rendered.
In my political-economy classes at PUP up until 2005, I had always discussed the Nobel Peace Prize as a fraud and an instrument of cultural warfare to create icons favorable to Western purposes. I ask why, for example, the ultimate and historical paradigm of peace and peaceful struggle was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Isn’t Mahatma Gandhi the world’s undisputed premier exponent of peace? The Nobel Peace Prize had been given out nearly every year since 1901.
I explain to my students that Gandhi could never be a Nobel Peace laureate because he is an anti-imperialist icon. It’s about time all Filipinos learn this basic truth about the Nobel Peace Prize: It is intended mainly to promote the West’s ideal of the “peaceful” man who is on their side. Liu Xiaobo is on their side, yet there is more material on him on the Internet that the Peace Prize panel never touched on.
Whatever the real reason for the PeNoy government’s joining the boycott of the Liu peace award, even it was merely a right mistake taken to obfuscate a real rejection of US imposition on it, we anti-imperialist Filipinos welcome it. When I praised this apparently courageous act on my radio program last Friday night, a yellow butterfly (yes, this is true) fluttered from the window into the room where I was phone-patching. Was it a providential message that there is a hidden hope there somewhere? Wonders, accidents or not, may truly never cease.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S. – “10 Minutes Lights Out vs Power Plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/13/2010
Pell-mell: jumbled, helter-skelter, confused; that’s what the Nobel Peace prize has become. A third party observer such as the India Daily perceived this so clearly when its correspondent filed a report in response to the nomination of Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize with the headline, “Beijing denounces Nobel for Liu Xiaobo, after Obama, Gore, isn’t the Nobel Prize a joke?”
One definitely couldn’t get such a clear assessment of the Peace Prize from Western societies and media. I was almost ready to add the West’s minion states like the Philippines among those with the view skewed toward the West until the PeNoy government surprised us for once by doing the right thing, by joining the boycott of the Nobel Peace award to the questionable Liu Xiaobo.
From another third party point of view, Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly in Tokyo, comes this objective summary of Liu Xiaobo’s history: “Liu Xiaobo’s personal link with Norway started during his days as a visiting scholar to the University of Oslo in 1988... Back in those dark days of the Cold War, there weren’t many Chinese in Scandinavia, so Liu was a rare commodity — a scholar from Beijing who loathed Beijing. Whether Liu became a Nato asset is a matter of top-secret classification. Oslo’s repeated inquiries about him through two decades, the Western media’s patronage, and the Nobel selection over other Chinese dissidents indicate some sort of special bond. Whatever the hidden details of his foreign involvements, Liu’s Peace Prize is serving as the bugle call for Nato’s global crusade against so-called “tyranny.”
“The fact that an open warmonger heads the Nobel Peace Committee has completely discredited what was once the world’s most prestigious Peace Prize. That honor is now just another weapon in the arsenal of the Great Powers mobilizing to reassert their authority over their former colonial domain. The goal of the West is not democracy and human rights; what its leaders really desire is domination and warfare. The intentions are clear. Thus we must each prepare, in our different ways, for the coming bloodshed.”
The Indian and Japanese media can be relied on to be more level-headed about the issues given their experiences with Western imperialism and persistent nationalist pride, unlike many in Philippine media and human rights NGOs who genuflect before the journalism and human rights foundations as well as foreign funding agencies for their scholarships and whatnot.
This dubious award of the Nobel Peace prize to Liu Xiaobo was preceded by two of the same equally dubious awards to Obama in 2009, when the newly-elected US president had just taken steps to expand the American and Nato war in Afghanistan; and before that in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore for their advocacy of the “man-made global warming” theory and restrictions on industrialization, which have subsequently been put under serious disrepute by IPCC’s own admissions of prediction errors, precipitated by an e-mail scandal unearthed by an IPCC scientist (not by WikiLeaks) revealing climate date manipulation to suit global warming theories. But these are not the only controversies.
The 1973 award to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for the Vietnam peace talks compelled two Nobel Peace Prize panel members’ resignation; they could not agree on the nominees’ qualifications as men of peace. Kissinger is considered by many historians and students of the Vietnam War, and I among them, as a war criminal for the atrocities and murder of four million Vietnamese civilians committed by American forces under his policy direction.
A lesser known awardee in 2008 was former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari who executed the negotiations with Yugoslavia’s Milosevic that were so one-sided for the US and Nato that he was rewarded with a second assignment over Kosovo which ended with the latter’s declaration of independence. Gregory Elich of the Jasenovac Research Institute and adviser to the Korea Truth Commission says Ahtisaari’s Nobel was for services rendered.
In my political-economy classes at PUP up until 2005, I had always discussed the Nobel Peace Prize as a fraud and an instrument of cultural warfare to create icons favorable to Western purposes. I ask why, for example, the ultimate and historical paradigm of peace and peaceful struggle was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Isn’t Mahatma Gandhi the world’s undisputed premier exponent of peace? The Nobel Peace Prize had been given out nearly every year since 1901.
I explain to my students that Gandhi could never be a Nobel Peace laureate because he is an anti-imperialist icon. It’s about time all Filipinos learn this basic truth about the Nobel Peace Prize: It is intended mainly to promote the West’s ideal of the “peaceful” man who is on their side. Liu Xiaobo is on their side, yet there is more material on him on the Internet that the Peace Prize panel never touched on.
Whatever the real reason for the PeNoy government’s joining the boycott of the Liu peace award, even it was merely a right mistake taken to obfuscate a real rejection of US imposition on it, we anti-imperialist Filipinos welcome it. When I praised this apparently courageous act on my radio program last Friday night, a yellow butterfly (yes, this is true) fluttered from the window into the room where I was phone-patching. Was it a providential message that there is a hidden hope there somewhere? Wonders, accidents or not, may truly never cease.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S. – “10 Minutes Lights Out vs Power Plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Friday, December 10, 2010
People's Court for Aquinorroyo
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/10/2010
Unlike mainstream newspapers and apparently everybody else, I am not at all impressed by the Supreme Court (SC)’s junking of the Truth Commission or by the PeNoy administration’s avowals to continue the prosecution of crimes against the people committed under the Arroyo regime. I have always seen Arroyo and Aquino III as part and parcel of a continuum of the system ruled by Western neo-colonial powers in partnership with the local ruling class of oligarchs and corrupt politicians. The conflicts among establishment political parties and personalities are more distractive illusions or moro-moro and zarzuela than real antagonisms.
How can they really be antagonistic when they are all the same, except for the brief period of genuine candor under President Joseph Estrada? Cory, FVR, GMA and PeNoy merely sustain the plutocracy that carry on the exploitation of the people for the benefit of the exploiting class.
Buried beneath the hullabaloo over the Truth Commission fiasco now confirmed by the majority decision of the SC are the real crucial issues of the nation, such as the government’s increasing of the wholesale price of NFA (National Food Authority) rice from P23.50 to P25 per kilogram while retail prices have been increased from P25 to P27 per kilo last Dec. 7, which the NFA claims is aimed at “ensuring the viability of the agency.”
If I understand this logic right, the NFA is raising its price not for the direct benefit of the rice farmers but for sustaining the agency which clearly would be good for its personnel, particularly those recently appointed. Yet it remains to be seen whether this would be any good for the farmers and for rice production in the country at all. This is the solution the new government found to plug the budgetary hole when PeNoy’s Cabinet cut the NFA’s funding. What PeNoy has taken away will be replaced by what they now will take from the people’s pockets.
This price increase comes at a time when incomes are stagnant and real unemployment — not to mention underemployment — continues to soar at the highest levels, i.e. between 40 and 60 percent, when one counts unpaid family-based labor in or out of the employed sector. The NFA rice price increase is but one of the many other increases in basic commodities and services the government is poised to approve.
Power rates have continued to rise with the continuing implementation of the PBR (Performance Based Rate) scheme, wherein power companies target profit and alleged performance levels which the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approves to allow the collection of those rates in advance — clearly an unconstitutional system being challenged by anti-power plunder consumer groups before the SC. Aside from this, water rates continue to rise as well in the face of declining foreign exchange burdens for these privatized utility companies.
We can go on with the expanding list of cost burdens the government is passing on to the shoulders of the people, such as the South and North Luzon toll fees, as well as that of the SCTex; same with the MRT and LRT rates, all of which the government is just waiting for some opportune time to raise.
Even this short list already presents tremendous financial dislocation for our people — the masa as well as the middle classes. The aggravation of the political moro-moros and zarzuelas for the Aquinorroyo clowns is essential for the ruling class to continue distracting the people from the real issues. These are simultaneously critical for PeNoy’s ConGroup to lay the blame on the past regime while they continue to implement the same conditional cash transfer program initiated under Gloria Arroyo; the same BOT scheme now renamed as public-private partnership projects; as well as another round of increase in the eVAT from 12 to 15 percent.
The SC’s junking of the Truth Commission (TC) exposes the complete paucity of the moral and constitutional integrity of its chief, Hilario Davide, as well as the other retired justices who joined it, for accepting their posts in a constitutionally infirmed body created by incompetent legal minds of the Chief Executive’s office.
They show themselves as no better than the amateurs in Malacañang today, and raise the question of their competence when they were not yet retired from the high court. “Sabagay,” a voice echoed, “the people never had any doubt about the lack of integrity and competence of Davide whose appointment to head the TC crippled its credibility from the very start.”
If these former justices had any dignity, they would have committed seppuku already. The collapse of the TC now sets off multiple football scenarios — an appeal to the SC and a clamor for the Department of Justice to initiate prosecution, which brings the ball to the Ombudsman where Arroyo has another goalie guarding her rear. It’s really a circus.
If the ruling class and its minions in the political sphere were serious in pursuing the crimes committed under the nine-and-a-half years of Gloria Arroyo’s tyranny, they would have set up a special court with impartial and dedicated judges. But can we expect any sense of justice from them especially with the way they persecuted their nemesis President Erap, whose only crime was to oppose the exploitation they wanted him to bless with presidential approval?
Alas, the ruling class and the system it runs will never want a serious inquiry and exposé of the crimes committed under the Arroyo regime for it will expose them too.
The whole truth will have to wait until a genuine people’s revolution (hopefully a peaceful one) establishes a truly democratic government and a People’s Court to expose the complete historical truth and pursue the multitude of particular crimes to mete out justice with finality.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/10/2010
Unlike mainstream newspapers and apparently everybody else, I am not at all impressed by the Supreme Court (SC)’s junking of the Truth Commission or by the PeNoy administration’s avowals to continue the prosecution of crimes against the people committed under the Arroyo regime. I have always seen Arroyo and Aquino III as part and parcel of a continuum of the system ruled by Western neo-colonial powers in partnership with the local ruling class of oligarchs and corrupt politicians. The conflicts among establishment political parties and personalities are more distractive illusions or moro-moro and zarzuela than real antagonisms.
How can they really be antagonistic when they are all the same, except for the brief period of genuine candor under President Joseph Estrada? Cory, FVR, GMA and PeNoy merely sustain the plutocracy that carry on the exploitation of the people for the benefit of the exploiting class.
Buried beneath the hullabaloo over the Truth Commission fiasco now confirmed by the majority decision of the SC are the real crucial issues of the nation, such as the government’s increasing of the wholesale price of NFA (National Food Authority) rice from P23.50 to P25 per kilogram while retail prices have been increased from P25 to P27 per kilo last Dec. 7, which the NFA claims is aimed at “ensuring the viability of the agency.”
If I understand this logic right, the NFA is raising its price not for the direct benefit of the rice farmers but for sustaining the agency which clearly would be good for its personnel, particularly those recently appointed. Yet it remains to be seen whether this would be any good for the farmers and for rice production in the country at all. This is the solution the new government found to plug the budgetary hole when PeNoy’s Cabinet cut the NFA’s funding. What PeNoy has taken away will be replaced by what they now will take from the people’s pockets.
This price increase comes at a time when incomes are stagnant and real unemployment — not to mention underemployment — continues to soar at the highest levels, i.e. between 40 and 60 percent, when one counts unpaid family-based labor in or out of the employed sector. The NFA rice price increase is but one of the many other increases in basic commodities and services the government is poised to approve.
Power rates have continued to rise with the continuing implementation of the PBR (Performance Based Rate) scheme, wherein power companies target profit and alleged performance levels which the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approves to allow the collection of those rates in advance — clearly an unconstitutional system being challenged by anti-power plunder consumer groups before the SC. Aside from this, water rates continue to rise as well in the face of declining foreign exchange burdens for these privatized utility companies.
We can go on with the expanding list of cost burdens the government is passing on to the shoulders of the people, such as the South and North Luzon toll fees, as well as that of the SCTex; same with the MRT and LRT rates, all of which the government is just waiting for some opportune time to raise.
Even this short list already presents tremendous financial dislocation for our people — the masa as well as the middle classes. The aggravation of the political moro-moros and zarzuelas for the Aquinorroyo clowns is essential for the ruling class to continue distracting the people from the real issues. These are simultaneously critical for PeNoy’s ConGroup to lay the blame on the past regime while they continue to implement the same conditional cash transfer program initiated under Gloria Arroyo; the same BOT scheme now renamed as public-private partnership projects; as well as another round of increase in the eVAT from 12 to 15 percent.
The SC’s junking of the Truth Commission (TC) exposes the complete paucity of the moral and constitutional integrity of its chief, Hilario Davide, as well as the other retired justices who joined it, for accepting their posts in a constitutionally infirmed body created by incompetent legal minds of the Chief Executive’s office.
They show themselves as no better than the amateurs in Malacañang today, and raise the question of their competence when they were not yet retired from the high court. “Sabagay,” a voice echoed, “the people never had any doubt about the lack of integrity and competence of Davide whose appointment to head the TC crippled its credibility from the very start.”
If these former justices had any dignity, they would have committed seppuku already. The collapse of the TC now sets off multiple football scenarios — an appeal to the SC and a clamor for the Department of Justice to initiate prosecution, which brings the ball to the Ombudsman where Arroyo has another goalie guarding her rear. It’s really a circus.
If the ruling class and its minions in the political sphere were serious in pursuing the crimes committed under the nine-and-a-half years of Gloria Arroyo’s tyranny, they would have set up a special court with impartial and dedicated judges. But can we expect any sense of justice from them especially with the way they persecuted their nemesis President Erap, whose only crime was to oppose the exploitation they wanted him to bless with presidential approval?
Alas, the ruling class and the system it runs will never want a serious inquiry and exposé of the crimes committed under the Arroyo regime for it will expose them too.
The whole truth will have to wait until a genuine people’s revolution (hopefully a peaceful one) establishes a truly democratic government and a People’s Court to expose the complete historical truth and pursue the multitude of particular crimes to mete out justice with finality.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Monday, December 6, 2010
P6.5-B ghost surplus
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/6/2010
The elections of 2010 brought out one of the most unique transitions in the annals of Philippine local government history. The old regime in Quezon City (QC) turned over its reins to its anointed mayor, vice-mayor, and team of officials. Whereas in the past, the new, incoming local government, especially if from the opposition, usually discovered “ghost projects” stemming from the looting of local government coffers left behind by the past administration, such was not the case in QC — or so it seemed.
That should have been very good news to everyone concerned. Many, in fact, expected him to have a splendid time fulfilling his campaign promises, especially since his predecessor was said to have left a budget surplus of P6.6 billion!
But poor little new mayor of QC: He suddenly realized that he won’t have a chance to be such a spectacular mayor after all. With his city’s coffers actually running empty, how on earth can he deliver on all his campaign promises? How could this have happened when QC is RP’s richest city, with a budget well over P9.5 billion that surpasses even that of Makati? And if there had been that surplus kept intact, where did it go?
Much to his consternation, the new mayor found that he was not going to have that claimed P6.5-billion inherited from his predecessor after all. Worse, he could not even talk about it nor explain to the public why he can’t do anything at all because the previous mayor is his mentor and his vice-mayor is the previous mayor’s daughter. He knows that he’d commit political suicide when he comes out with this in the open.
The significance of this revelation about the ghost QC budget surplus is far greater than the importance of the city itself, which neither has the business significance of Makati nor the political significance of Manila. It lies in the fact that the previous mayor of Quezon City represents a far greater political culture and clout than just local city politics because that previous mayor is now the Speaker of the House; and among the wards he trained and employed in his city administration is now Executive secretary in Malacañang.
Lurking in the shadows of this chief factotum of the Chief Executive is a coterie of Rasputins of the former QC mayor, such as the one whom more than a decade ago served the most unpopular Chief Executive then (beaten only by Gloria Arroyo), Fidel Ramos.
This coterie of Rasputins include the draftsman turned public housing developer nurtured by the former mayor when he was head of the premier public pension organization of the country. This housing estate developer dummy figured in the recent urban settlers demolition and relocation project in QC, which was reportedly due to the failure of this housing developer’s relocation site preparations that was 80 percent short of his promised delivery.
But since he’s a relative of the ward of the former mayor who is now Secretary No.1 of you-know-who, there has been no sanction for this failure. The National Housing Authority has been left to hold the bag. But this latest failure of this team of the former QC mayor is no longer new as it has been the greatest sandal of the city in the past 10 years — so much so that despite its almost P10-billion annual budget, Quezon City remains the largest squatter city in the country.
How is it that a grandly ballyhooed P6.6-billion surplus, supposedly accumulated by the previous mayor over nearly a decade of “superb” management, turned out to be a complete hoax and nobody was the wiser all that time?
This speaks of the link between media ownership and politicians in the country, as the mayor in question owns (or used to own) one of the mainstream newspapers and commands serious leverage in the community of journalists and journalism. That newspaper, founded by the former mayor’s late wife, was used to propel the Yellow movement, as well as the former mayor, into power. That newspaper gave this former QC mayor starring role in the Yellow movement that has dominated Philippine politics for two decades and a half and running. The Yellows’ gratitude is such that they named a street and an LRT station after his deceased wife.
This coterie of shadowy figures is now the real powerhouse in the present government. They have their tentacles not only in the House but all the way inside Malacañang as well as in Quezon City Hall itself. Moreover, they continue to control the quiet real estate scams that transfer QC properties to private titles.
The former QC mayor, meanwhile, assumes a greater political role today as the “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” i.e. the channel between Gloria Arroyo and Aquino III, as he ensures the smooth continuity of policies between the two, such as the Conditional Cash Transfer and Public-Private Partnership projects (previously known as BOTs), the unbroken protection of the oligarchs in the privatized public utilities, namely, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, Meralco, Manila Water, Maynilad, Energy Development Corp., AboitizPower, ad nausea.
Will the ghosts of Christmas ever really come to save the Philippines?
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S. – “10 Minutes Lights Out vs Power Plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/6/2010
The elections of 2010 brought out one of the most unique transitions in the annals of Philippine local government history. The old regime in Quezon City (QC) turned over its reins to its anointed mayor, vice-mayor, and team of officials. Whereas in the past, the new, incoming local government, especially if from the opposition, usually discovered “ghost projects” stemming from the looting of local government coffers left behind by the past administration, such was not the case in QC — or so it seemed.
That should have been very good news to everyone concerned. Many, in fact, expected him to have a splendid time fulfilling his campaign promises, especially since his predecessor was said to have left a budget surplus of P6.6 billion!
But poor little new mayor of QC: He suddenly realized that he won’t have a chance to be such a spectacular mayor after all. With his city’s coffers actually running empty, how on earth can he deliver on all his campaign promises? How could this have happened when QC is RP’s richest city, with a budget well over P9.5 billion that surpasses even that of Makati? And if there had been that surplus kept intact, where did it go?
Much to his consternation, the new mayor found that he was not going to have that claimed P6.5-billion inherited from his predecessor after all. Worse, he could not even talk about it nor explain to the public why he can’t do anything at all because the previous mayor is his mentor and his vice-mayor is the previous mayor’s daughter. He knows that he’d commit political suicide when he comes out with this in the open.
The significance of this revelation about the ghost QC budget surplus is far greater than the importance of the city itself, which neither has the business significance of Makati nor the political significance of Manila. It lies in the fact that the previous mayor of Quezon City represents a far greater political culture and clout than just local city politics because that previous mayor is now the Speaker of the House; and among the wards he trained and employed in his city administration is now Executive secretary in Malacañang.
Lurking in the shadows of this chief factotum of the Chief Executive is a coterie of Rasputins of the former QC mayor, such as the one whom more than a decade ago served the most unpopular Chief Executive then (beaten only by Gloria Arroyo), Fidel Ramos.
This coterie of Rasputins include the draftsman turned public housing developer nurtured by the former mayor when he was head of the premier public pension organization of the country. This housing estate developer dummy figured in the recent urban settlers demolition and relocation project in QC, which was reportedly due to the failure of this housing developer’s relocation site preparations that was 80 percent short of his promised delivery.
But since he’s a relative of the ward of the former mayor who is now Secretary No.1 of you-know-who, there has been no sanction for this failure. The National Housing Authority has been left to hold the bag. But this latest failure of this team of the former QC mayor is no longer new as it has been the greatest sandal of the city in the past 10 years — so much so that despite its almost P10-billion annual budget, Quezon City remains the largest squatter city in the country.
How is it that a grandly ballyhooed P6.6-billion surplus, supposedly accumulated by the previous mayor over nearly a decade of “superb” management, turned out to be a complete hoax and nobody was the wiser all that time?
This speaks of the link between media ownership and politicians in the country, as the mayor in question owns (or used to own) one of the mainstream newspapers and commands serious leverage in the community of journalists and journalism. That newspaper, founded by the former mayor’s late wife, was used to propel the Yellow movement, as well as the former mayor, into power. That newspaper gave this former QC mayor starring role in the Yellow movement that has dominated Philippine politics for two decades and a half and running. The Yellows’ gratitude is such that they named a street and an LRT station after his deceased wife.
This coterie of shadowy figures is now the real powerhouse in the present government. They have their tentacles not only in the House but all the way inside Malacañang as well as in Quezon City Hall itself. Moreover, they continue to control the quiet real estate scams that transfer QC properties to private titles.
The former QC mayor, meanwhile, assumes a greater political role today as the “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” i.e. the channel between Gloria Arroyo and Aquino III, as he ensures the smooth continuity of policies between the two, such as the Conditional Cash Transfer and Public-Private Partnership projects (previously known as BOTs), the unbroken protection of the oligarchs in the privatized public utilities, namely, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, Meralco, Manila Water, Maynilad, Energy Development Corp., AboitizPower, ad nausea.
Will the ghosts of Christmas ever really come to save the Philippines?
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S. – “10 Minutes Lights Out vs Power Plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Friday, December 3, 2010
Abetting treason and corruption
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/3/2010
The House finally approved the amnesty bill for the military protestors who are better tagged as “conscientious objectors” rather than “mutineers.” This brings the nation closer to an act that is long overdue: A recognition of the protest actions of the Bagong Katipuneros (a.k.a. Magdalos) led by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Para sa Bayan (PsB) of Gen. Danilo Lim as just and courageous.
These soldiers are finally getting the justice they deserve even as the truly guilt-riddled Gloria Arroyo generals such as Reyes, Esperon, Ebdane, Mendoza, Espinosa, et al. remain scot-free for their gang rape of the Constitution in 2001 and their continuing transgressions thereafter, including the 2004 “Hello Garci” episode and their rape of the national coffers by partaking in the feeding frenzy throughout nine-and-a-half years of Arroyo’s misrule.
Instead of helping and supporting these conscientious and patriotic soldiers, a mainstream newspaper has joined the ranks of some Joker Arroyo factotums in Congress, i.e. Edcel Lagman and company, to demand an apology as condition for the amnesty.
But amnesty, as distinguished from a pardon, has never required an admission of anything. Even as the latter can only be granted after a conviction, the former is unconditional and erases whatever charges there are. Every lawyer worth his salt confirms this — most notably Alan Paguia, who backs up competence with proven integrity. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, probably the only Cabinet member who enjoys some degree of credibility, has likewise buttressed this position.
The fact is, this grant of amnesty, albeit political, is a recognition of the overwhelmingly moral justification for what Sen. Sonny Trillanes, Gen. Danny Lim, and their men did as part of their bounden duty as citizens — and even greater responsibility as “soldiers of the people” — to defend our nation from the treason committed by the corrupt and rapacious usurpers in government.
The people had already twice “amnestied” these patriotic soldiers: First in the electoral victory of Senator Trillanes in 2007 and secondly in the most recent elections where Gen. Danilo Lim obtained a sizeable number of votes but obstructed from actual victory by the “Hocus PCOS.” All that was lacking was a formal amnesty by the “institutional” authorities that the military, police and government organizations recognized.
The Inquirer, hewing to the line of those factotums, issued an editorial on Nov. 24, 2010, saying: “We wonder if he (Gen. Danilo Lim) is aware of the irony of it all. The protector-of-the-people provision was one of those post-Marcos innovations in the Constitution, designed precisely to prevent the use of the Armed Forces for political or partisan purposes. Lim joined the service at a time when the AFP had been completely corrupted by Marcos, when officer and men, like Lim himself, thought it was only natural for them to take an active part both in government and in business. The new provision was designed to help reorient the thinking of the military, to remove them from the exercise of political power and to demilitarize the political culture. Now, Lim cites this very provision as his justification for attempting to seize political control.”
But what supreme irony! The Inquirer conveniently omits the fact that it was that very same provision used by the Edsa II coup plotters to oust a popular and duly-elected president, a historic transgression which that leading Yellow army paper had stoked, supported and reveled at.
The leading role of the military generals in the Edsa II coup was openly boasted, as Gloria Arroyo was caught on video acknowledging the generals involved, from Espinosa, Mendoza, to Ebdane and many others, one by one. Then, there’s that infamous statement from Angelo Reyes, confirmed by witnesses, who told the busload of generals he waylaid to the Edsa shrine: “Gentlemen, we are committing treason.” The SYM (Sorry Yellow Movement) confirms all these.
Unlike the Yellows and the Arroyo generals, Trillanes and Lim never went against any legitimate government. And in Gloria’s case, her regime was not only an illegitimate government twice over but one that was horrendously corrupt and had gravely impoverished the nation. Trillanes, et al. raised the issue of corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that opened a Pandora’s box of cases, including Gen. Carlos Garcia’s multi-hundred million scams.
The Magdalos focused our attention on the plight of officers and men who died in the frontlines for lack of communication as well as medical equipment and supplies while higher officers diverted funds to graft and arms to insurgents who could pay for them. The indignation of the idealistic Magdalo and Para sa Bayan soldiers grew even more after the miscarriage of the 2004 elections which Arroyo generals Esperon, et al. stole in broad daylight for their principal.
The Inquirer harps that Lim “subverts the fundamental principle of civilian supremacy over the military… effectively trains the guns the people have provided the military, not on enemies of society, but on the people themselves… Not least, it gives unelected men and women like Lim the right to intervene.”
Yet the unelected and unelectable elite participated in 2001 with their treasonous and corrupt AFP generals to subvert the will of the people that saw the overwhelming victory of President Joseph Estrada in 1998.
In May 2001 at the gates of Malacañang, unarmed Edsa III protesters were fired at in defense of the illegal (and Yellow) Arroyo regime, bloodying and killing dozens. The SYM has already said mea culpas for these. But the Inquirer, instead of showing integrity by apologizing, still attempts to coddle the treasonous and corrupt by perpetuating the lies.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes of lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/3/2010
The House finally approved the amnesty bill for the military protestors who are better tagged as “conscientious objectors” rather than “mutineers.” This brings the nation closer to an act that is long overdue: A recognition of the protest actions of the Bagong Katipuneros (a.k.a. Magdalos) led by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Para sa Bayan (PsB) of Gen. Danilo Lim as just and courageous.
These soldiers are finally getting the justice they deserve even as the truly guilt-riddled Gloria Arroyo generals such as Reyes, Esperon, Ebdane, Mendoza, Espinosa, et al. remain scot-free for their gang rape of the Constitution in 2001 and their continuing transgressions thereafter, including the 2004 “Hello Garci” episode and their rape of the national coffers by partaking in the feeding frenzy throughout nine-and-a-half years of Arroyo’s misrule.
Instead of helping and supporting these conscientious and patriotic soldiers, a mainstream newspaper has joined the ranks of some Joker Arroyo factotums in Congress, i.e. Edcel Lagman and company, to demand an apology as condition for the amnesty.
But amnesty, as distinguished from a pardon, has never required an admission of anything. Even as the latter can only be granted after a conviction, the former is unconditional and erases whatever charges there are. Every lawyer worth his salt confirms this — most notably Alan Paguia, who backs up competence with proven integrity. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, probably the only Cabinet member who enjoys some degree of credibility, has likewise buttressed this position.
The fact is, this grant of amnesty, albeit political, is a recognition of the overwhelmingly moral justification for what Sen. Sonny Trillanes, Gen. Danny Lim, and their men did as part of their bounden duty as citizens — and even greater responsibility as “soldiers of the people” — to defend our nation from the treason committed by the corrupt and rapacious usurpers in government.
The people had already twice “amnestied” these patriotic soldiers: First in the electoral victory of Senator Trillanes in 2007 and secondly in the most recent elections where Gen. Danilo Lim obtained a sizeable number of votes but obstructed from actual victory by the “Hocus PCOS.” All that was lacking was a formal amnesty by the “institutional” authorities that the military, police and government organizations recognized.
The Inquirer, hewing to the line of those factotums, issued an editorial on Nov. 24, 2010, saying: “We wonder if he (Gen. Danilo Lim) is aware of the irony of it all. The protector-of-the-people provision was one of those post-Marcos innovations in the Constitution, designed precisely to prevent the use of the Armed Forces for political or partisan purposes. Lim joined the service at a time when the AFP had been completely corrupted by Marcos, when officer and men, like Lim himself, thought it was only natural for them to take an active part both in government and in business. The new provision was designed to help reorient the thinking of the military, to remove them from the exercise of political power and to demilitarize the political culture. Now, Lim cites this very provision as his justification for attempting to seize political control.”
But what supreme irony! The Inquirer conveniently omits the fact that it was that very same provision used by the Edsa II coup plotters to oust a popular and duly-elected president, a historic transgression which that leading Yellow army paper had stoked, supported and reveled at.
The leading role of the military generals in the Edsa II coup was openly boasted, as Gloria Arroyo was caught on video acknowledging the generals involved, from Espinosa, Mendoza, to Ebdane and many others, one by one. Then, there’s that infamous statement from Angelo Reyes, confirmed by witnesses, who told the busload of generals he waylaid to the Edsa shrine: “Gentlemen, we are committing treason.” The SYM (Sorry Yellow Movement) confirms all these.
Unlike the Yellows and the Arroyo generals, Trillanes and Lim never went against any legitimate government. And in Gloria’s case, her regime was not only an illegitimate government twice over but one that was horrendously corrupt and had gravely impoverished the nation. Trillanes, et al. raised the issue of corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that opened a Pandora’s box of cases, including Gen. Carlos Garcia’s multi-hundred million scams.
The Magdalos focused our attention on the plight of officers and men who died in the frontlines for lack of communication as well as medical equipment and supplies while higher officers diverted funds to graft and arms to insurgents who could pay for them. The indignation of the idealistic Magdalo and Para sa Bayan soldiers grew even more after the miscarriage of the 2004 elections which Arroyo generals Esperon, et al. stole in broad daylight for their principal.
The Inquirer harps that Lim “subverts the fundamental principle of civilian supremacy over the military… effectively trains the guns the people have provided the military, not on enemies of society, but on the people themselves… Not least, it gives unelected men and women like Lim the right to intervene.”
Yet the unelected and unelectable elite participated in 2001 with their treasonous and corrupt AFP generals to subvert the will of the people that saw the overwhelming victory of President Joseph Estrada in 1998.
In May 2001 at the gates of Malacañang, unarmed Edsa III protesters were fired at in defense of the illegal (and Yellow) Arroyo regime, bloodying and killing dozens. The SYM has already said mea culpas for these. But the Inquirer, instead of showing integrity by apologizing, still attempts to coddle the treasonous and corrupt by perpetuating the lies.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes of lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Monday, November 29, 2010
The nation and the SYM
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/29/2010
I received this text a few days ago: “Gud pm, Ka Mentong, r u aware of d SYM goin on? TY.” The text came from an old-time Edsa III Kabansang Leth (or compatriot Leth, as we call each other in the movement). I really wasn’t familiar with what SYM stood for. It was the first time I encountered it.
When Leth texted again with “Sorry Yellow Movement,” it was then that I recognized the words that I have long been hearing the past few months from many former loyal Yellow stalwarts who have finally given up believing that the Yellow legacy holds any remaining promise of change and hope for its believers and the broad masses of the people.
I discussed this on the latest episode of our radio show and I said that I had been “Sorry Yellow” long, long before — ever since the last few years of the Cory Aquino administration.
The newcomers to this “Sorry Yellow” tribe are therefore more than welcome. They can in fact be a “boon” to the nation and a tremendous help in freeing the minds of the remaining wayward souls aboard the Yellow train. After nearly 25 years of domination in the Philippine scene, the Yellow era in our politics and governance has failed miserably — nay, criminally — to bring its promise of democracy, economic development, and prosperity.
Instead, what it has given is reinforced neo-colonial chains by the plutocrats who pull the strings on corrupted national and local, election, judicial, security, defense, and other officials in a sham, make-believe democracy that nurtures and entrenches an army of career sycophants all the way to the top, so long as they pay homage to the US Ambassador, sing paeans to “foreign investors,” and genuflect before “globalization” and “privatization.”
A historical perspective to the “color revolutions” is useful at this stage. I have said that the Philippines is the political-economic laboratory of American imperialism. The US has time and again shown that it exercises in-depth mind and political control over this country very successfully.
My first impression of RP being a testing ground for US imperialist programs came from a study of the Philippines’ transition from the “Filipino First Policy” under President Carlos P. Garcia to the “decontrol” period of Diosdado Macapagal — a process imposed by the earliest “structural adjustment” programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which included liberalization of foreign exchange and trade controls.
In the decades that followed, “structural adjustments” became a byword in IMF-Third World relations (which is now being imposed on European countries). Also, the “Yellow Revolution” was soon followed by the “Rose” and “ Orange ” revolutions in former Eastern Bloc countries similarly destabilized by the US.
In all, crucial ideas forming the ideology of a nation’s sovereign governance changed with these color revolutions. The downgrading of the state (with its government) and the rise of the corporatocracy by the transfer of public assets to private transnational and local conglomerates (through privatization) placed the real power shift to the plutocrats.
The downgrading of productive industries also resulted as the economy was “financialized,” with the ascendancy of “shareholder value” and “capital markets” that create the “virtual” economy of financial and stock market speculation by the likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, and the infamous Ponzi man Bernie Madoff.
All these as local oligarchs feed their respective nations to these speculators via the “debt sentence” amid booming stock markets in bankrupt economies marked by “jobless growth.” The net effect: The killing of the real, physically productive economy, with GDP and GNP indicators replacing genuine “development” in such areas as health and education.
The “Sorry Yellow Movement” must rise above personality politics and the prevailing materialistic culture into a higher plane of thinking where a moral and spiritual vision for a better country and a better life for all Filipinos and all nations is upheld. But this must also be grounded on historical empiricism, i.e. knowledge from evidence-based experience, against the quasi-occultism of the Ghost of Edsa Shrine historiography and Yellow necromancy around the death masks of its idols.
What is the better model of development in real terms (i.e. long-term vs flash in the pan), the balanced political-economy of Singapore and Malaysia as well as China ’s social-market and market-socialist system, or the ultra-capitalist system exemplified by the US? After 25- and 50-year cycles, the consistent developmental economics of China et al. outperforms the boom and bust-driven US system.
The chromatic symbolism of the Philippines must return to the multi-colors of the flag that evolved from the Katipunan’s sun and black or red background to the multi-colors of the flag of the First Republic representing the true nation-state republic that Apolinario Mabini and the other founding heroes envisioned. The yellow of royalty, theocratic power, and privilege — not to mention, cowardice — must be thrown into the dustbin of history where it belongs. The Republic represents the people; and as it is a government of, for, and by the people, it should stay that way.
The “Sorry Yellow Movement” must begin to understand these before it becomes, as some have already declared, the even sorrier “Very Sorry Yellow Movement.” And while they say goodbye to their old ways, we from the genuine mainstream of the nation of Filipinos — patriots by natural law — say “hello” to welcome them back to the fold.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on “RP’s Home Mortgage Crisis: Ready to Explode,” on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes of lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/29/2010
I received this text a few days ago: “Gud pm, Ka Mentong, r u aware of d SYM goin on? TY.” The text came from an old-time Edsa III Kabansang Leth (or compatriot Leth, as we call each other in the movement). I really wasn’t familiar with what SYM stood for. It was the first time I encountered it.
When Leth texted again with “Sorry Yellow Movement,” it was then that I recognized the words that I have long been hearing the past few months from many former loyal Yellow stalwarts who have finally given up believing that the Yellow legacy holds any remaining promise of change and hope for its believers and the broad masses of the people.
I discussed this on the latest episode of our radio show and I said that I had been “Sorry Yellow” long, long before — ever since the last few years of the Cory Aquino administration.
The newcomers to this “Sorry Yellow” tribe are therefore more than welcome. They can in fact be a “boon” to the nation and a tremendous help in freeing the minds of the remaining wayward souls aboard the Yellow train. After nearly 25 years of domination in the Philippine scene, the Yellow era in our politics and governance has failed miserably — nay, criminally — to bring its promise of democracy, economic development, and prosperity.
Instead, what it has given is reinforced neo-colonial chains by the plutocrats who pull the strings on corrupted national and local, election, judicial, security, defense, and other officials in a sham, make-believe democracy that nurtures and entrenches an army of career sycophants all the way to the top, so long as they pay homage to the US Ambassador, sing paeans to “foreign investors,” and genuflect before “globalization” and “privatization.”
A historical perspective to the “color revolutions” is useful at this stage. I have said that the Philippines is the political-economic laboratory of American imperialism. The US has time and again shown that it exercises in-depth mind and political control over this country very successfully.
My first impression of RP being a testing ground for US imperialist programs came from a study of the Philippines’ transition from the “Filipino First Policy” under President Carlos P. Garcia to the “decontrol” period of Diosdado Macapagal — a process imposed by the earliest “structural adjustment” programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which included liberalization of foreign exchange and trade controls.
In the decades that followed, “structural adjustments” became a byword in IMF-Third World relations (which is now being imposed on European countries). Also, the “Yellow Revolution” was soon followed by the “Rose” and “ Orange ” revolutions in former Eastern Bloc countries similarly destabilized by the US.
In all, crucial ideas forming the ideology of a nation’s sovereign governance changed with these color revolutions. The downgrading of the state (with its government) and the rise of the corporatocracy by the transfer of public assets to private transnational and local conglomerates (through privatization) placed the real power shift to the plutocrats.
The downgrading of productive industries also resulted as the economy was “financialized,” with the ascendancy of “shareholder value” and “capital markets” that create the “virtual” economy of financial and stock market speculation by the likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, and the infamous Ponzi man Bernie Madoff.
All these as local oligarchs feed their respective nations to these speculators via the “debt sentence” amid booming stock markets in bankrupt economies marked by “jobless growth.” The net effect: The killing of the real, physically productive economy, with GDP and GNP indicators replacing genuine “development” in such areas as health and education.
The “Sorry Yellow Movement” must rise above personality politics and the prevailing materialistic culture into a higher plane of thinking where a moral and spiritual vision for a better country and a better life for all Filipinos and all nations is upheld. But this must also be grounded on historical empiricism, i.e. knowledge from evidence-based experience, against the quasi-occultism of the Ghost of Edsa Shrine historiography and Yellow necromancy around the death masks of its idols.
What is the better model of development in real terms (i.e. long-term vs flash in the pan), the balanced political-economy of Singapore and Malaysia as well as China ’s social-market and market-socialist system, or the ultra-capitalist system exemplified by the US? After 25- and 50-year cycles, the consistent developmental economics of China et al. outperforms the boom and bust-driven US system.
The chromatic symbolism of the Philippines must return to the multi-colors of the flag that evolved from the Katipunan’s sun and black or red background to the multi-colors of the flag of the First Republic representing the true nation-state republic that Apolinario Mabini and the other founding heroes envisioned. The yellow of royalty, theocratic power, and privilege — not to mention, cowardice — must be thrown into the dustbin of history where it belongs. The Republic represents the people; and as it is a government of, for, and by the people, it should stay that way.
The “Sorry Yellow Movement” must begin to understand these before it becomes, as some have already declared, the even sorrier “Very Sorry Yellow Movement.” And while they say goodbye to their old ways, we from the genuine mainstream of the nation of Filipinos — patriots by natural law — say “hello” to welcome them back to the fold.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on “RP’s Home Mortgage Crisis: Ready to Explode,” on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes of lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)
Friday, November 26, 2010
Truth, the first casualty of war
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/26/2010
"The first casualty of war — Truth.”
At any point in history, wars are being waged on a daily basis on one level or another. This week in the Philippine and world stage, several exchanges of fire and eruptions of abnormally high intensity conflict have been reported by both the local and international media and, as expected, have led to tremendous distortion and disinformation.
As the North and South Korea conflict literally exploded just days ago, most of Western and Philippine media pinned the blame perfunctorily on “Stalinist” and “provocative” North Korea, when the fact is, South Korea fired the first artillery shot.
As an Associated Press (AP) report noted: “The skirmish began when Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills in the area, according to South Korean officials. When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations...”
North Korea has been accused as “provocative” and “aggressive,” as well as an “agitator” in this exchange of artillery fire. But the AP report objectively revealed that it was South Korea’s military forces that made the provocation.
This bolsters the conviction of some analysts that it is one of the US’ attempts to start a much needed war in this region to revive its economy, in line with US military-political think tank RAND Corp.’s proposal of two years now.
It is important for the Filipino nation to be informed of the facts underlying this build-up of tension in the Korean peninsula. Our countrymen shouldn’t be victimized by war-mongering Western propaganda which seeks to draw the Philippines into “their” wars. By setting the record straight, we are reminding the Filipino people that there is never any positive payback for being sucked into conflicts or wars designed for other countries’ interests.
The lesson from the WWll for the Philippines is there for all to recall: Manila became the second most devastated city in the world when General MacArthur decided to use it as a center stage for his own glorification.
The American and Western economies are now in shambles, so their ruling classes desperately need to create wars (while profiteering at the same time) to distract attention from their domestic crises and their own culpability for these.
In the Philippines, the wars of the social classes continue: The ruling class, represented by the Yellow political regime and its variations (including the Liberal, Lakas, Kampi and Nacionalista parties, the Aquinorroyo leftists and civil society, such as Etta Rosales, Karina David, et al., plus the oligarchs, ad nauseum) is constantly pitted against the people.
This week, Pag-IBIG, HUDCC, NHA and other government home financing borrowers are rising up to oppose their eviction from homes which they have been amortizing for over a decade but have had difficulty keeping up with due to loss of employment, shrinking purchasing power (with the lion’s share gobbled up by power and water overcharging), and the oppressive financial policies of financing agencies raring to turn these homes over to foreign mortgage buyers such as Deutsche Bank. And this is something that mainstream media won’t be carrying in their news.
Rising political alternatives to the dominant Yellow regimes continue to be suppressed, as with the unjust detention of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV who embodies the hopes of millions of Filipinos. The Aquino III administration may be going through the motions of responding to the cries for justice and the early release of Trillanes, but its moves in sync with like-minded Yellow elements are making a joke of this. Make no mistake: Joker Arroyo is Yellow to the core and he opposes the amnesty for our patriotic and idealistic soldiers who stood against the Gloria Arroyo regime only to mask his own complicity in one of the darkest periods of Philippines history and an era of untold suffering for the Filipino masses.
As Joker tries to put up more legal obstacles in this Palace show, suspended lawyer Alan Paguia says: Amnesty is an unconditional, political act; it does not require any admission of guilt, and requires no apology (and certainly not to Gloria as the Joker demands).
Joker Arroyo is, among other things, a legislative enforcer of the ruling class. He gave away Meralco without any compensation to what the public paid for when the state expanded its franchise coverage by four times, and allowed the electricity consumers’ payments to pay for what the Lopezes owed the government for getting it.
It is even said that when those blessings were being bestowed, Joker’s most beloved was working as a lawyer for the other party, constantly whispering into the ears of one who would decades later utter the empty phrase, “Kung Bad Ka, Lagot Ka.”
Joker complains about Trillanes’ “mutiny” against a clearly corrupt regime, but wasn’t his Edsa I made possible by the mutiny of a segment of the military against Marcos for a shallower reason — the rivalry between Generals Ver and Ramos? The truth is indeed the first casualty of war, and more so in an information war.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on “RP’s Home Mortgage Crisis: Ready to Explode,” on Global News Network, Destiny Cable, now Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/26/2010
"The first casualty of war — Truth.”
At any point in history, wars are being waged on a daily basis on one level or another. This week in the Philippine and world stage, several exchanges of fire and eruptions of abnormally high intensity conflict have been reported by both the local and international media and, as expected, have led to tremendous distortion and disinformation.
As the North and South Korea conflict literally exploded just days ago, most of Western and Philippine media pinned the blame perfunctorily on “Stalinist” and “provocative” North Korea, when the fact is, South Korea fired the first artillery shot.
As an Associated Press (AP) report noted: “The skirmish began when Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills in the area, according to South Korean officials. When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations...”
North Korea has been accused as “provocative” and “aggressive,” as well as an “agitator” in this exchange of artillery fire. But the AP report objectively revealed that it was South Korea’s military forces that made the provocation.
This bolsters the conviction of some analysts that it is one of the US’ attempts to start a much needed war in this region to revive its economy, in line with US military-political think tank RAND Corp.’s proposal of two years now.
It is important for the Filipino nation to be informed of the facts underlying this build-up of tension in the Korean peninsula. Our countrymen shouldn’t be victimized by war-mongering Western propaganda which seeks to draw the Philippines into “their” wars. By setting the record straight, we are reminding the Filipino people that there is never any positive payback for being sucked into conflicts or wars designed for other countries’ interests.
The lesson from the WWll for the Philippines is there for all to recall: Manila became the second most devastated city in the world when General MacArthur decided to use it as a center stage for his own glorification.
The American and Western economies are now in shambles, so their ruling classes desperately need to create wars (while profiteering at the same time) to distract attention from their domestic crises and their own culpability for these.
In the Philippines, the wars of the social classes continue: The ruling class, represented by the Yellow political regime and its variations (including the Liberal, Lakas, Kampi and Nacionalista parties, the Aquinorroyo leftists and civil society, such as Etta Rosales, Karina David, et al., plus the oligarchs, ad nauseum) is constantly pitted against the people.
This week, Pag-IBIG, HUDCC, NHA and other government home financing borrowers are rising up to oppose their eviction from homes which they have been amortizing for over a decade but have had difficulty keeping up with due to loss of employment, shrinking purchasing power (with the lion’s share gobbled up by power and water overcharging), and the oppressive financial policies of financing agencies raring to turn these homes over to foreign mortgage buyers such as Deutsche Bank. And this is something that mainstream media won’t be carrying in their news.
Rising political alternatives to the dominant Yellow regimes continue to be suppressed, as with the unjust detention of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV who embodies the hopes of millions of Filipinos. The Aquino III administration may be going through the motions of responding to the cries for justice and the early release of Trillanes, but its moves in sync with like-minded Yellow elements are making a joke of this. Make no mistake: Joker Arroyo is Yellow to the core and he opposes the amnesty for our patriotic and idealistic soldiers who stood against the Gloria Arroyo regime only to mask his own complicity in one of the darkest periods of Philippines history and an era of untold suffering for the Filipino masses.
As Joker tries to put up more legal obstacles in this Palace show, suspended lawyer Alan Paguia says: Amnesty is an unconditional, political act; it does not require any admission of guilt, and requires no apology (and certainly not to Gloria as the Joker demands).
Joker Arroyo is, among other things, a legislative enforcer of the ruling class. He gave away Meralco without any compensation to what the public paid for when the state expanded its franchise coverage by four times, and allowed the electricity consumers’ payments to pay for what the Lopezes owed the government for getting it.
It is even said that when those blessings were being bestowed, Joker’s most beloved was working as a lawyer for the other party, constantly whispering into the ears of one who would decades later utter the empty phrase, “Kung Bad Ka, Lagot Ka.”
Joker complains about Trillanes’ “mutiny” against a clearly corrupt regime, but wasn’t his Edsa I made possible by the mutiny of a segment of the military against Marcos for a shallower reason — the rivalry between Generals Ver and Ramos? The truth is indeed the first casualty of war, and more so in an information war.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on “RP’s Home Mortgage Crisis: Ready to Explode,” on Global News Network, Destiny Cable, now Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Monday, November 22, 2010
Charge of the 'light brigades'
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/22/2010
For the past weeks, we have focused on the skyrocketing rate increases and leapfrogging net incomes of power companies. We highlighted Meralco’s 60-percent jump in profits from September last year of P7 billion to its target of P11 billion this year, which it even projects to surpass.
A week later, we zeroed in on Aboitiz Equity Venture’s 187-percent surge in net income to P16.8 billion, of which 80 percent came from its power generation ventures. This included the two power barges it bought at a huge bargain from the National Power Corp. (Napocor), which were later overpriced for Mindanao’s use and set as the basis for the island group’s new exorbitant electricity rates.
Last week, we highlighted the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (Wesm)’s petition for a rate increase for the “commodity” being auctioned through its trading floor to the power distribution networks; upon which we concluded that the profiteering “…just goes on and on, keeping our power rates the highest ever in Asia.
And yet, this week brought us a new shock report: the Lopez-owned First Gen Corp. reported a net income of $66.5 million (P2.8 billion), or P301 million in just nine months. First Gen said that its unit, Energy Development Corp. (EDC) — the Napocor geothermal company privatized under the tenure of Gloria Arroyo-appointed president Paul Aquino who then joined the privatized EDC as CEO (so much for the ethics of the Aquinos) — generated the gargantuan increase in its profits. According to First Gen president Giles Puno, “…earnings growth was delivered by EDC coming mainly from the increased contribution of the plants that it acquired last year. We are fortunate that these developments are aided by the positive sentiment and growth in our economy today.”
So, a national patrimony such as EDC, which gave us very cheap electricity, is privatized so that prices can be jacked up just to profit one family’s firm. The profit swell for the four privatized power operations here brings the additional burden on the Filipino power consumers from Luzon to Mindanao to at least P28.766 billion; and these are just four of several dozens upon dozens of privatized power companies we have counted.
This added burden to consumers would not have been there if privatization had never been inflicted on us. This is P28.766 billion less money for Filipinos who would otherwise have spent it on other needs and consumables — from food to medical care, to education and entertainment, to clothes and transportation costs, to more visits to the malls and trips to provincial relations, or a trip to the beaches to spread a little more money to the rural areas.
Privatization of power is not just sucking us dry, it is sucking us dead. How do we fight back? Let’s organize into “Light Brigades” to promote the struggle, starting with the “Lights Out” campaign to continue disseminating information.
Still, after this constant focus on the matter of our debilitating power costs, a moment of comic relief did come along. It started when a wayward cellphone rang inside the session hall of the Senate, which triggered the harangue of Miriam Defensor Santiago on the “lightweights” in Malacañang, or around what Linggoy Alcuaz calls the “happy hour kitchen Cabinet.”
Santiago does have good reason to pick up her lance and charge at the lightweights, particularly Secretary Armin Luistro, who is nothing but a factotum of the Catholic hierarchy and naturally expected to execute the agenda of the Catholic Church in a government that is supposed to be separate from any religious bias. Luistro was a key element in the mobilization against the duly-elected government of President Estrada; clearly, this Luistro is not a trustworthy individual to function for a secular, democratic state.
The only problem with Miriam’s assault on the “lightweight” brigade of the Palace is that she can also be charged for the same thing. One can only imagine what Santiago faced at that moment, paraphrasing from Tennyson, “Cellphone rings to the left of her, cellphone rings to the right of her; volleyed and thundered, stormed up with shot and shell” and so she had to sally forth too. Most of the three hundred or so of our legislators today can also be included in this category, which explains why this country continues down the crazy path of deterioration.
Neither the legislature nor Malacañang has done anything to alleviate the dire plight of the nation’s residential and industrial power consumers, making millions upon millions of us suffer along with the national economy from the highest power costs in Asia, if not the world.
Fortunately, there are hopeful signs in Congress that some individual legislators are standing up to be on the truly courageous “Light Brigade” that brings to light the prevarications of state regulatory agencies. One of them, a guest in our last GNN program, Rep. Bernadette “BH” Herrera, is standing up to the oligarchs’ predatory manipulation of water and power rates. She is ably joined by the amiable congressman from Navotas-Malabon, Toby Tiangco, who will also guest with us next. Of course, there’s our own “Light Brigade” that meets every Saturday and farms out everyday to keep the struggle going. So let us all charge forth with the light that will obliterate the power pirates’ darkness!
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable, now Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/22/2010
For the past weeks, we have focused on the skyrocketing rate increases and leapfrogging net incomes of power companies. We highlighted Meralco’s 60-percent jump in profits from September last year of P7 billion to its target of P11 billion this year, which it even projects to surpass.
A week later, we zeroed in on Aboitiz Equity Venture’s 187-percent surge in net income to P16.8 billion, of which 80 percent came from its power generation ventures. This included the two power barges it bought at a huge bargain from the National Power Corp. (Napocor), which were later overpriced for Mindanao’s use and set as the basis for the island group’s new exorbitant electricity rates.
Last week, we highlighted the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (Wesm)’s petition for a rate increase for the “commodity” being auctioned through its trading floor to the power distribution networks; upon which we concluded that the profiteering “…just goes on and on, keeping our power rates the highest ever in Asia.
And yet, this week brought us a new shock report: the Lopez-owned First Gen Corp. reported a net income of $66.5 million (P2.8 billion), or P301 million in just nine months. First Gen said that its unit, Energy Development Corp. (EDC) — the Napocor geothermal company privatized under the tenure of Gloria Arroyo-appointed president Paul Aquino who then joined the privatized EDC as CEO (so much for the ethics of the Aquinos) — generated the gargantuan increase in its profits. According to First Gen president Giles Puno, “…earnings growth was delivered by EDC coming mainly from the increased contribution of the plants that it acquired last year. We are fortunate that these developments are aided by the positive sentiment and growth in our economy today.”
So, a national patrimony such as EDC, which gave us very cheap electricity, is privatized so that prices can be jacked up just to profit one family’s firm. The profit swell for the four privatized power operations here brings the additional burden on the Filipino power consumers from Luzon to Mindanao to at least P28.766 billion; and these are just four of several dozens upon dozens of privatized power companies we have counted.
This added burden to consumers would not have been there if privatization had never been inflicted on us. This is P28.766 billion less money for Filipinos who would otherwise have spent it on other needs and consumables — from food to medical care, to education and entertainment, to clothes and transportation costs, to more visits to the malls and trips to provincial relations, or a trip to the beaches to spread a little more money to the rural areas.
Privatization of power is not just sucking us dry, it is sucking us dead. How do we fight back? Let’s organize into “Light Brigades” to promote the struggle, starting with the “Lights Out” campaign to continue disseminating information.
Still, after this constant focus on the matter of our debilitating power costs, a moment of comic relief did come along. It started when a wayward cellphone rang inside the session hall of the Senate, which triggered the harangue of Miriam Defensor Santiago on the “lightweights” in Malacañang, or around what Linggoy Alcuaz calls the “happy hour kitchen Cabinet.”
Santiago does have good reason to pick up her lance and charge at the lightweights, particularly Secretary Armin Luistro, who is nothing but a factotum of the Catholic hierarchy and naturally expected to execute the agenda of the Catholic Church in a government that is supposed to be separate from any religious bias. Luistro was a key element in the mobilization against the duly-elected government of President Estrada; clearly, this Luistro is not a trustworthy individual to function for a secular, democratic state.
The only problem with Miriam’s assault on the “lightweight” brigade of the Palace is that she can also be charged for the same thing. One can only imagine what Santiago faced at that moment, paraphrasing from Tennyson, “Cellphone rings to the left of her, cellphone rings to the right of her; volleyed and thundered, stormed up with shot and shell” and so she had to sally forth too. Most of the three hundred or so of our legislators today can also be included in this category, which explains why this country continues down the crazy path of deterioration.
Neither the legislature nor Malacañang has done anything to alleviate the dire plight of the nation’s residential and industrial power consumers, making millions upon millions of us suffer along with the national economy from the highest power costs in Asia, if not the world.
Fortunately, there are hopeful signs in Congress that some individual legislators are standing up to be on the truly courageous “Light Brigade” that brings to light the prevarications of state regulatory agencies. One of them, a guest in our last GNN program, Rep. Bernadette “BH” Herrera, is standing up to the oligarchs’ predatory manipulation of water and power rates. She is ably joined by the amiable congressman from Navotas-Malabon, Toby Tiangco, who will also guest with us next. Of course, there’s our own “Light Brigade” that meets every Saturday and farms out everyday to keep the struggle going. So let us all charge forth with the light that will obliterate the power pirates’ darkness!
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable, now Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Friday, November 19, 2010
Double standard privatization
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/19/2010
Given the many issues that are basic to the well-being of the Filipino people such as electricity, water, public transport and toll ways that are not being dealt with by most columnists of mainstream media, I have made it a point to focus on them through this space. But whenever I see issues covered extensively by media being obfuscated by writers who rear their discriminatory heads, then I have to step into the fray.
The Philippine Airlines (PAL) vs PAL Employees Association (Palea) strike threat is a case in point. One the chief proponents of the privatization of state assets, economic liberalization advocate Solita Monsod, takes what I see as a double standard stand on the PAL vs Palea impasse, as she uses it as another opportunity for lambasting a favorite whipping boy of the Makati Business Club, a noisy group that shares her economic views.
That the global and local airline industry is going through precarious times is not in doubt. Monsod concedes that “the global economic crisis was in full flow in 2008 and 2009, and travel was a natural victim (with)… a 7 percent decrease in worldwide demand.” She also admits the adverse impact of new restrictions on the Philippine aviation industry by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) after our country was downgraded due to deficiencies in our Air Transportation Office (ATO) and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).
What is not included, though, in that litany of problems besetting PAL is the flag carrier’s history of overstaffing before privatization, which previous management reorganizations constricted by government-led compromises could not optimally resolve. What PAL wouldn’t give to get the chance that other airlines such as Cebu Pacific had, which is to start from scratch — to start on the right foot.
One setback of PAL in the past three years came from losses on its hedge against aviation fuel price spikes in 2008. PAL reportedly incurred $150 to $300 million in losses when oil prices reversed and dove instead, as the global economic downturn took its toll.
Monsod and Palea keep attributing this loss only to management and says labor shouldn’t be punished for it. I don’t think PAL ever intended to take out that loss on anyone, but that hedge was a judgment call intended for the good of the company as a whole.
Fuel is obviously a fundamental cost in any airline operation. Securing oneself against fuel price spikes, which many expected at that time, was to PAL’s interest. A case can be made that fuel prices really could have gone right through the roof. If it had gone that way, all stakeholders in PAL — management, labor, and even government — would have reaped the benefit from the hedge.
Privatization was intended to pass management of the flag carrier from cumbersome state managers to private, professional managers. I have never been for privatization of state and public utility assets. I have fought it all the past decades; but the advocates of privatization should be consistent and leave private management’s prerogative alone so long as laws are strictly followed.
PAL’s spinoff of various non-core operations comes from a tenet of good business — focus. There is clearly nothing illegal in that spinoff, and the company is complying with its obligation to provide severance pay (increased to 1.25 month for every year of service), and offers new opportunities in the new spun-off companies to retrenched employees which would most likely lead to better future compensation as the companies grow with the synergy.
Those who expect the privatized company to perform like a social welfare enterprise could propose to start getting the state and government involved again. Do what the Japanese did to save their Japan Airlines (JAL). Their government pumped in 50 billion yen to turn it around, which was justified in JAL’s case as it is a government airline.
Detractors claim that the new spinoff companies are also invariably led by one relation or another of the PAL owners, but who best to invite new capital into this unattractive industry today than those who can assure new investors the good will with the core client?
PAL’s owners have actually unburdened government of a huge weight around its neck, and PAL’s privatization is the only privatization project where the public is ahead; unlike the privatization in power, water, toll ways, mass transit system and port handling. It’s a wonder why Monsod practically never critiques these other privatizations.
The recent bus transport strike in Metro Manila highlights another double standard: The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and the Department of Transportation and Communications’ view of buses as traffic jam generators, while being blind to the over a hundred thousand private cars exclusively chauffeuring students to and from school, clogging up Edsa and its tributaries.
Buses serve five times more passengers per square meter than private vehicles, having much greater positive economic and social value. Private vehicles are inefficient commuter movers; only more “sosyal.” School buses should be mandatory in Metro Manila, where a special school bus network with communication radios and trained conductors that would unclog Metro roads by over a hundred thousand cars should be established. When I proposed this to Cory Aquino’s MMDA chief Elfren Cruz in 1991, he said: “Magagalit ang mayayaman.” (The rich will get angry.)
Frankly, this crackdown on buses may have a hidden agenda — make the MRT’s new coaches (and resulting higher rates) under the multi-million public-private partnership or PPP projects more lucrative for PeNoy’s invited “investors.”
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable, now Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/19/2010
Given the many issues that are basic to the well-being of the Filipino people such as electricity, water, public transport and toll ways that are not being dealt with by most columnists of mainstream media, I have made it a point to focus on them through this space. But whenever I see issues covered extensively by media being obfuscated by writers who rear their discriminatory heads, then I have to step into the fray.
The Philippine Airlines (PAL) vs PAL Employees Association (Palea) strike threat is a case in point. One the chief proponents of the privatization of state assets, economic liberalization advocate Solita Monsod, takes what I see as a double standard stand on the PAL vs Palea impasse, as she uses it as another opportunity for lambasting a favorite whipping boy of the Makati Business Club, a noisy group that shares her economic views.
That the global and local airline industry is going through precarious times is not in doubt. Monsod concedes that “the global economic crisis was in full flow in 2008 and 2009, and travel was a natural victim (with)… a 7 percent decrease in worldwide demand.” She also admits the adverse impact of new restrictions on the Philippine aviation industry by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) after our country was downgraded due to deficiencies in our Air Transportation Office (ATO) and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).
What is not included, though, in that litany of problems besetting PAL is the flag carrier’s history of overstaffing before privatization, which previous management reorganizations constricted by government-led compromises could not optimally resolve. What PAL wouldn’t give to get the chance that other airlines such as Cebu Pacific had, which is to start from scratch — to start on the right foot.
One setback of PAL in the past three years came from losses on its hedge against aviation fuel price spikes in 2008. PAL reportedly incurred $150 to $300 million in losses when oil prices reversed and dove instead, as the global economic downturn took its toll.
Monsod and Palea keep attributing this loss only to management and says labor shouldn’t be punished for it. I don’t think PAL ever intended to take out that loss on anyone, but that hedge was a judgment call intended for the good of the company as a whole.
Fuel is obviously a fundamental cost in any airline operation. Securing oneself against fuel price spikes, which many expected at that time, was to PAL’s interest. A case can be made that fuel prices really could have gone right through the roof. If it had gone that way, all stakeholders in PAL — management, labor, and even government — would have reaped the benefit from the hedge.
Privatization was intended to pass management of the flag carrier from cumbersome state managers to private, professional managers. I have never been for privatization of state and public utility assets. I have fought it all the past decades; but the advocates of privatization should be consistent and leave private management’s prerogative alone so long as laws are strictly followed.
PAL’s spinoff of various non-core operations comes from a tenet of good business — focus. There is clearly nothing illegal in that spinoff, and the company is complying with its obligation to provide severance pay (increased to 1.25 month for every year of service), and offers new opportunities in the new spun-off companies to retrenched employees which would most likely lead to better future compensation as the companies grow with the synergy.
Those who expect the privatized company to perform like a social welfare enterprise could propose to start getting the state and government involved again. Do what the Japanese did to save their Japan Airlines (JAL). Their government pumped in 50 billion yen to turn it around, which was justified in JAL’s case as it is a government airline.
Detractors claim that the new spinoff companies are also invariably led by one relation or another of the PAL owners, but who best to invite new capital into this unattractive industry today than those who can assure new investors the good will with the core client?
PAL’s owners have actually unburdened government of a huge weight around its neck, and PAL’s privatization is the only privatization project where the public is ahead; unlike the privatization in power, water, toll ways, mass transit system and port handling. It’s a wonder why Monsod practically never critiques these other privatizations.
The recent bus transport strike in Metro Manila highlights another double standard: The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and the Department of Transportation and Communications’ view of buses as traffic jam generators, while being blind to the over a hundred thousand private cars exclusively chauffeuring students to and from school, clogging up Edsa and its tributaries.
Buses serve five times more passengers per square meter than private vehicles, having much greater positive economic and social value. Private vehicles are inefficient commuter movers; only more “sosyal.” School buses should be mandatory in Metro Manila, where a special school bus network with communication radios and trained conductors that would unclog Metro roads by over a hundred thousand cars should be established. When I proposed this to Cory Aquino’s MMDA chief Elfren Cruz in 1991, he said: “Magagalit ang mayayaman.” (The rich will get angry.)
Frankly, this crackdown on buses may have a hidden agenda — make the MRT’s new coaches (and resulting higher rates) under the multi-million public-private partnership or PPP projects more lucrative for PeNoy’s invited “investors.”
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on Global News Network, Destiny Cable, now Channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Monday, November 15, 2010
A growing movement
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/15/2010
Even as those photo ops between Clinton and PeNoy hit the newsstands, in aid of the massive PR spin on the US ’ support for its little puppet amid its dwindling influence in this part of the world, the conditions for creating an explosion of awareness on the true crisis in Filipinos’ lives are multiplying.
Most importantly, the middle class is now getting more and more energized in our fight against the blatant (and unprecedented) political and economic abuses in the privatized electricity, water, and infrastructure utilities of this nation.
One indication of this growing involvement is the flurry of Internet exchanges on power issues. An example is Edna’s (surname withheld) e-mail to Pete Ilagan of Nasecore (National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms, an anti-power plunder consumer group):
“Pete, you might want to check if ERC is actually adjusting the economic indices used in the calculation of the ARR of Meralco and other DUs under the PBR. These are the (a) Peso-US$ exchange rate, (b) Philippine CPI, and (c) US CPI. ERC is supposed to adjust them yearly.
“I am attaching a table that I made showing the forecast indices vs the actual. Note that for the Peso-US$ exchange rate, the forecasts are higher than the actual. For the US CPI, except for one year where actual was higher, the ERC forecasts were also higher than actual. If they’re not corrected, they will increase Meralco’s profit because these indices, especially the exchange rate and US CPI, are used to calculate the capex and depreciation costs, the major components of the rate base and ARR.”
If the indices used by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) are regularly higher than the actual, then it is to be expected that it will always grant its approval to higher rates for the power generation, transmission and distribution firms that petition without fail for rate increases.
Since the ERC is invariably either derelict or in collusion with those petitioners, the public will never see the light on these outrageous distortions. Citizens and consumer groups hardly have any funds, but are fueled by their indignation over this naked manipulation, abuse, and exploitation by the utility regulatory agencies in the power sector, aside from the MWSS, LWUA and the Toll Regulatory Commission in others.
Citizens themselves are funding the necessary expenses, such as lawyers’ appearances at the ERC and in the courts. One donor is a former city mayor in Metro Manila who does not want to be named.
The latest initiative is beginning to bring together a renewed focus for the different crusaders, such as EmPower, Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), and Kaakbay, which have been at it since the start of the decade. FDC and EmPower have signified agreement to revive their own “lights out” call (switching off lights at some appointed time of the week), which were highly successful in select communities that involved hundreds of thousands of families. Even as other issues have sidetracked their campaigns, they are more than ready to reconnect with the broader effort this time around.
In December, the FDC is spearheading a nationwide summit on this crusade to be held in Baguio, as I was told by Job Bordamonte of FDC during our discussion on my TV program. I’m very excited about this and this column aims to start disseminating the information. There have been ebbs and flows in the struggle but a crescendo is building again.
Still, I got an indication of the attitude of the masses to this problem of exorbitant electricity costs. One of my former media staff, Glecy, whom I was with when she was asked about her community’s take on this issue, said, “Wala naman kaming magagawa.” (We can’t do anything about it.)
This sense of helplessness and hopelessness is what the oligarchs and their media are banking on as they continue to instill this into the masses’ subconscious through progressive impoverishment, fascist suppression of past protests (joined in by the masa), media blackout of power news through entertainment distraction, plus ERC connivance to frustrate every legitimate effort to thwart the abuse by the power oligarchs.
The critical situation prevails from RP’s north to south, and this column has tried to reflect it all. As of this writing, news of four-hour blackouts in the Visayas.
I was informed that in the Negros islands and towns such as Sipalay, four-hour power outages have become prevalent. In Mindanao, our decade-long crusader there is under threat of assassination. Yes, he fears for his life there for the exposés he has made on the IPPs’ (independent power producers) many abuses; and for this reason he has been reluctant to take a high profile in media on the issue.
I have been telling his friends that his security can only be assured when he comes out fighting a total war — including becoming an anti-power plunder celebrity. I hope he takes my advice as we are ready to help him all the way. The good thing is that he has been linking with us in the Metro Manila networks. As I said, the movement is growing again — so the masa need not feel helpless anymore. Remember: “Lights Out Mondays,” 7 to 7:10 p.m.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on “Power Consumers’ Legislative Champions: Reps. Bernadette Herrera and Toby Tiangco,” on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/15/2010
Even as those photo ops between Clinton and PeNoy hit the newsstands, in aid of the massive PR spin on the US ’ support for its little puppet amid its dwindling influence in this part of the world, the conditions for creating an explosion of awareness on the true crisis in Filipinos’ lives are multiplying.
Most importantly, the middle class is now getting more and more energized in our fight against the blatant (and unprecedented) political and economic abuses in the privatized electricity, water, and infrastructure utilities of this nation.
One indication of this growing involvement is the flurry of Internet exchanges on power issues. An example is Edna’s (surname withheld) e-mail to Pete Ilagan of Nasecore (National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms, an anti-power plunder consumer group):
“Pete, you might want to check if ERC is actually adjusting the economic indices used in the calculation of the ARR of Meralco and other DUs under the PBR. These are the (a) Peso-US$ exchange rate, (b) Philippine CPI, and (c) US CPI. ERC is supposed to adjust them yearly.
“I am attaching a table that I made showing the forecast indices vs the actual. Note that for the Peso-US$ exchange rate, the forecasts are higher than the actual. For the US CPI, except for one year where actual was higher, the ERC forecasts were also higher than actual. If they’re not corrected, they will increase Meralco’s profit because these indices, especially the exchange rate and US CPI, are used to calculate the capex and depreciation costs, the major components of the rate base and ARR.”
If the indices used by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) are regularly higher than the actual, then it is to be expected that it will always grant its approval to higher rates for the power generation, transmission and distribution firms that petition without fail for rate increases.
Since the ERC is invariably either derelict or in collusion with those petitioners, the public will never see the light on these outrageous distortions. Citizens and consumer groups hardly have any funds, but are fueled by their indignation over this naked manipulation, abuse, and exploitation by the utility regulatory agencies in the power sector, aside from the MWSS, LWUA and the Toll Regulatory Commission in others.
Citizens themselves are funding the necessary expenses, such as lawyers’ appearances at the ERC and in the courts. One donor is a former city mayor in Metro Manila who does not want to be named.
The latest initiative is beginning to bring together a renewed focus for the different crusaders, such as EmPower, Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), and Kaakbay, which have been at it since the start of the decade. FDC and EmPower have signified agreement to revive their own “lights out” call (switching off lights at some appointed time of the week), which were highly successful in select communities that involved hundreds of thousands of families. Even as other issues have sidetracked their campaigns, they are more than ready to reconnect with the broader effort this time around.
In December, the FDC is spearheading a nationwide summit on this crusade to be held in Baguio, as I was told by Job Bordamonte of FDC during our discussion on my TV program. I’m very excited about this and this column aims to start disseminating the information. There have been ebbs and flows in the struggle but a crescendo is building again.
Still, I got an indication of the attitude of the masses to this problem of exorbitant electricity costs. One of my former media staff, Glecy, whom I was with when she was asked about her community’s take on this issue, said, “Wala naman kaming magagawa.” (We can’t do anything about it.)
This sense of helplessness and hopelessness is what the oligarchs and their media are banking on as they continue to instill this into the masses’ subconscious through progressive impoverishment, fascist suppression of past protests (joined in by the masa), media blackout of power news through entertainment distraction, plus ERC connivance to frustrate every legitimate effort to thwart the abuse by the power oligarchs.
The critical situation prevails from RP’s north to south, and this column has tried to reflect it all. As of this writing, news of four-hour blackouts in the Visayas.
I was informed that in the Negros islands and towns such as Sipalay, four-hour power outages have become prevalent. In Mindanao, our decade-long crusader there is under threat of assassination. Yes, he fears for his life there for the exposés he has made on the IPPs’ (independent power producers) many abuses; and for this reason he has been reluctant to take a high profile in media on the issue.
I have been telling his friends that his security can only be assured when he comes out fighting a total war — including becoming an anti-power plunder celebrity. I hope he takes my advice as we are ready to help him all the way. The good thing is that he has been linking with us in the Metro Manila networks. As I said, the movement is growing again — so the masa need not feel helpless anymore. Remember: “Lights Out Mondays,” 7 to 7:10 p.m.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on “Power Consumers’ Legislative Champions: Reps. Bernadette Herrera and Toby Tiangco,” on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
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