DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
9/20/2006
I stepped into college activism in the late 60’s when the world was exploding in global debate about the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and in the Philippines about the need for social change and justice. The “trapo” term had not yet been invented then but traditional politics was already the bane, Manglapus and the Christian Social Movement seemed to been an alternative. I was sucked into its orbit along with other who seemed idealistic, including the likes of Camilo Sabio and Bobby Brillante, two now associated with the worse of today’s trapos – Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
I find it hard to imagine how Camilo Sabio can twist the age-old and fundamental principle of accountability in a republican government into one of a defense of Gloria’s executive unaccountability and refusing to face inquiries about the conduct of his office. When did public officials acquire the right to refuse to face pubic scrutiny and deny the public the right to information over public affairs and activities as conducted by its public officials? What has happened to the Camilo Sabio who seemed so humble and principled throughout the decades that we thought of him as a fellow traveler in the “movement”.
As the controversy over his refusal to acknowledge his duty to face public inquiry about his office rages I was surprised to find out from other press reports about skeletons in his closet. It seems that some of his own relations, in laws in particular, have presented petitions to have his disbarred as a lawyer for questionable actions pertaining to family properties. Behind those benign smiling eyes and soft vocal tones it seems lies a murkier creature we never knew. These new discoveries aobut “Mil” Sabio indeed hurts my sanguine view of the CSM and other activist colleagues that I once considered “family”.
With Bobby Brillante I am less surprised. He got appointed to the Makati city government in the wave of other Edsa I carpetbaggers under the Cory Aquino “revolutionary” government’s mass ouster of elected government officials. Since then he has become obsessed with returning to power as Makati mayor. The dubious impression I have of him began with his peddling, right after Edsa I, of some of items here from his stint in the U.S. (seemingly from his collaboration as a “steak commando) such as luxury cars. “Is this going to be a responsible public official?” I wondered then.
What has happened to these people who were identified with Manglapus’ new political alternative then? They have become the very symbols of the corrupt image of political appointees and trapos they once agitated against. This is the rot in the system that has so infected the basket of what could have been good bananas and now rotting bananas, thanks to Gloria their rot has surfaced and we will no longer be fooled. But they are not the worse of the lot, there’s the epitome of the bad banana which once posed as the good banana, now sitting at the right hand of Gloria – Norberto Gonzales.
I conclude that Manglapus’ Christian Social Movement (CSM) provided a very weak basis for the training and development of its followers. Likewise, the Catholic church’s efforts at political action because the CSM was its lay political extension which was also supported by other efforts like the late Fr. Jose C. Blanco and Jesuit Archie (so-called because he was always envisioned by classmates and friends to be a future archbishop) Integan’s student organizing which ironically has produced ogres like Bert Gonzles as they aged in politics.
The weakness in the training of the CSM and its extensions, including the Young Christian Socialists of the Philippines (YCSP), I would trace to the bourgeois culture of the movement. The good “elite” life as observed in the lifestyle of the Manglapus, the traditional Catholic hierarchy and the social class they catered to seeped into the dreams and aspirations of its followers and supporters, especially its YCSP youth. I have written this reaction to this part of my past and the disillusionment to bury, once and for all, the myths engendered by Manglapus’ so-called alternative politics.
Manglapus’ and the Christian ideals expressed in the use of the term “social” in its ideological posture had never been real. “Sosyal” may be closer to the reality of this movement, and its followers eventually show their true colors in their easy susceptibility to the temptations of personal power and glory, of elitistism and social chauvinism. They have turned out not to be “social” creatures and leaders but personalistic and corrupted for power and its trappings. Goodbye to the idea that Manglapus inspired values change in Filipinos: Sabio, Brillante and Bert Gonzales are the best evidence of his failure.
We who are still searching for the true “social” Filipinos and leaders truly dedicated to social equality and democracy must continue our search and evolution. These genuinely “social” Filipinos and leaders will live for all and not just for the self - and root its vision in real social-democractic political economy. It is not difficult to understand or visualize, just look at the European social welfare states and particularly French society where popular welfare supercedes corporate profits. Cradle to grave care is afforded the people, and public officials must be ever ready to account before the people.
(Tune in to 1098AM, M-W-F 6-7pm, T-Th 3-4pm)
Monday, March 7, 2011
PIATCO fiasco
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
9/13/2006
The multi-billion peso question in the Piatco case is: why the Gloria Arroyo government is paying out such huge amount for a faulty structure and worse, for land that government itself owns. There is no tunnel linking the controversial “new” airport which has seen its ceiling collapse like an old building (even before it had ever been inaugurated), a tunnel that was supposed to facilitate and ease the transport of passengers and cargo from the other adjacent airports like the Centennial airport; as it is the cost of movement between the existing and the Piatco airport will result in enormous added cost.
I have been vehemently critical and opposed to the Piatco airport from the very beginning as I saw it to be an imposition of an expensive and unnecessary new facility. Common sense told me that another new airport beside one old airport, the NAIA, and a relatively new Centennial would already be too much redundancy. And I knew even before the details of the project were unveiled to the public ages ago that the very bad part of the whole Piatco proposition would be the additional burden on traveling Filipinos in terms of higher terminal fees, porterage and other charges.
Things turned out exactly as my common sense predicted, terminal fee for the Piatco airport doubled from the rates in the old airports, and other charges were also raised. Porterage and airport transport such as taxis and other for hire vehicles were monopolized by the new airport owners, which caused great stir and agitation among the airport service contractors already operating in the old airports. The Piatco’s argument at one time was that the new facilities required new investments which justifies the higher charges – but they never asked the public if this new facility was needed at all.
The NAIA airport has certainly become an eyesore and a pain to go through for check-in, immigration and customs processing especially when the aged air-conditioning conks out, but the spic-and-span Centennial airport constructed by the Philippine Airlines owners for its own international and domestic operational needs has been a great comfort to travelers for its pleasant and spacious architecture, unfailingly comfortable climate management, its business lounge and its overall efficiency. Adding the Piatco airport was a superfluity intended to be a “get rich quick” scheme for its proponents.
Three years ago an Englishman employed by the foreign partners of the Piatco came to see me and proposed for us to write in favor of the white elephant airport. I suppose the proposition carried with it a handsome fee. Before the Englishman said much more I declined the offer and explained why I can’t support the project, and gave all the reasons I have given above. One more thing I added that the Englishman apparently didn’t like was the information I got that the German counterpart for the project is actually money-laundering by some German political parties and leaders.
Are you surprised that my sources would insinuate graft and corruption in German politics? Why? Are European politicians exempt from the seamier side of politics? We only have to go back to the periodic corruption scandals that erupt in European politics such as the EU commission sudden revamp a few years ago on charges of corruption, or charges against German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and even now the lingering allegations against Chirac in connection with financial anomalies. They may have more finesse but their political parties also engage in creative fund raising.
Our source is a German and his Filipina wife who tipped us off on why the Piatco matter was hush-hush in Germany at that time it initially exploded as a public issue. The German politicians needed to launder this fund quick into a project that could rationalize it as an productive investment, but they went around Constitutional limitations on foreign ownership egged on by local businessmen who had not the wherewithal for such a huge project. It floundered through two Philippine administrations until this third one of Arroyo which has treated it in haphazard fashion.
Gloria handled the Piatco project in a haphazard way, using the Supreme Court, the media and the government, which raised suspicion of evasion tactics design to cover nefarious intentions. At the same time the Gloria government, being precariously weak over massive credibility problems with the public, was at the mercy of po0werful buffeting winds from the European community whose politicians support the German government’s demands on the project even though violations of the constitutions really merited expropriation of the entire project.
Instead of the foreign and local violators of the Philippine Constitution getting their illegal project expropriated it seems now that with Gloria’s payment of P 3-billion it is the government property on which the Piatco airport stands (lands owned respectively by the Philippine Air Force and the NAIA) that will be expropriated by the Germans and its local partners. It’s a total fiasco now as Gloria wraps up a decade of the ill-fated Piatco airport project her mentor Fidel Ramos started which the Estrada administration programmed to do right but was aborted posthaste, which Gloria is managing to crash.
It is an ignoble end to the Filipino’s hopes for rationalizing and modernizing its premier airports caused by a corrupt regime that is totally weakened by massive public loathing, Gloria cannot do anything right anymore.
Herman Tiu Laurel
9/13/2006
The multi-billion peso question in the Piatco case is: why the Gloria Arroyo government is paying out such huge amount for a faulty structure and worse, for land that government itself owns. There is no tunnel linking the controversial “new” airport which has seen its ceiling collapse like an old building (even before it had ever been inaugurated), a tunnel that was supposed to facilitate and ease the transport of passengers and cargo from the other adjacent airports like the Centennial airport; as it is the cost of movement between the existing and the Piatco airport will result in enormous added cost.
I have been vehemently critical and opposed to the Piatco airport from the very beginning as I saw it to be an imposition of an expensive and unnecessary new facility. Common sense told me that another new airport beside one old airport, the NAIA, and a relatively new Centennial would already be too much redundancy. And I knew even before the details of the project were unveiled to the public ages ago that the very bad part of the whole Piatco proposition would be the additional burden on traveling Filipinos in terms of higher terminal fees, porterage and other charges.
Things turned out exactly as my common sense predicted, terminal fee for the Piatco airport doubled from the rates in the old airports, and other charges were also raised. Porterage and airport transport such as taxis and other for hire vehicles were monopolized by the new airport owners, which caused great stir and agitation among the airport service contractors already operating in the old airports. The Piatco’s argument at one time was that the new facilities required new investments which justifies the higher charges – but they never asked the public if this new facility was needed at all.
The NAIA airport has certainly become an eyesore and a pain to go through for check-in, immigration and customs processing especially when the aged air-conditioning conks out, but the spic-and-span Centennial airport constructed by the Philippine Airlines owners for its own international and domestic operational needs has been a great comfort to travelers for its pleasant and spacious architecture, unfailingly comfortable climate management, its business lounge and its overall efficiency. Adding the Piatco airport was a superfluity intended to be a “get rich quick” scheme for its proponents.
Three years ago an Englishman employed by the foreign partners of the Piatco came to see me and proposed for us to write in favor of the white elephant airport. I suppose the proposition carried with it a handsome fee. Before the Englishman said much more I declined the offer and explained why I can’t support the project, and gave all the reasons I have given above. One more thing I added that the Englishman apparently didn’t like was the information I got that the German counterpart for the project is actually money-laundering by some German political parties and leaders.
Are you surprised that my sources would insinuate graft and corruption in German politics? Why? Are European politicians exempt from the seamier side of politics? We only have to go back to the periodic corruption scandals that erupt in European politics such as the EU commission sudden revamp a few years ago on charges of corruption, or charges against German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and even now the lingering allegations against Chirac in connection with financial anomalies. They may have more finesse but their political parties also engage in creative fund raising.
Our source is a German and his Filipina wife who tipped us off on why the Piatco matter was hush-hush in Germany at that time it initially exploded as a public issue. The German politicians needed to launder this fund quick into a project that could rationalize it as an productive investment, but they went around Constitutional limitations on foreign ownership egged on by local businessmen who had not the wherewithal for such a huge project. It floundered through two Philippine administrations until this third one of Arroyo which has treated it in haphazard fashion.
Gloria handled the Piatco project in a haphazard way, using the Supreme Court, the media and the government, which raised suspicion of evasion tactics design to cover nefarious intentions. At the same time the Gloria government, being precariously weak over massive credibility problems with the public, was at the mercy of po0werful buffeting winds from the European community whose politicians support the German government’s demands on the project even though violations of the constitutions really merited expropriation of the entire project.
Instead of the foreign and local violators of the Philippine Constitution getting their illegal project expropriated it seems now that with Gloria’s payment of P 3-billion it is the government property on which the Piatco airport stands (lands owned respectively by the Philippine Air Force and the NAIA) that will be expropriated by the Germans and its local partners. It’s a total fiasco now as Gloria wraps up a decade of the ill-fated Piatco airport project her mentor Fidel Ramos started which the Estrada administration programmed to do right but was aborted posthaste, which Gloria is managing to crash.
It is an ignoble end to the Filipino’s hopes for rationalizing and modernizing its premier airports caused by a corrupt regime that is totally weakened by massive public loathing, Gloria cannot do anything right anymore.
People and principle vs. money
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
8/30/2006
Money quashed the people’s aspiration for truth in the just buried 2006 impeachment. Villafuerte and Lagman were the notable anti-impeachment demagogues. No surprising: GMA appointed the former’s wife to the lucrative Monetary Board and sustains a dynasty with his governor-son allegedly with jueteng; the other lost his Quezon city congressional bid and clings to dear life for GMA’s blessings to continue in his provincial congressional seat today. It may be no accident that the two are both from Bicol where the Andaya (in English, “very fraudulent) highway’s moon craters winds.
Weeks before the impeachment burial rumor was that the members of the impeachment committee had P 10-M each from GMA. As for the plenary, the pork barrel is obviously always a consideration. Many switched, like Dudut Jaworski who said last year that FPJ was indeed cheated; is the cheat then no longer a cheat today? Jerome Paras said to his son that his father was not for sale, was the sign outside the door changed? There’s young Cong. Zubiri who eloquently closed the impeachment obituary saying the divisive issue should end in unity. Unity to sustain to lie?
Even duplicitous anti-impeachment solons can speak a truth or two. Villafuerte took a philological stab at with “dinky-zation” or a word sounding like that to be proposed as synonym to “traitor”. That pun was repeated over radio stations which shows that some anchors found it acceptable, and the public has been chuckling about it. That the public can discern liars even when donning sheep’s clothing; but much of the noise in the impeachment imbroglio was really the clanging of pots against kettles. The perceptive analyst should discern from the impeachment zarzuela the central issue:
The principal Philippine struggle today is of People and principle against money power. “Principle” or “word” is “expression”, it separates man from animals and plants: it is the human soul. When words are used as distortions humanity disappears, as in the case of the anti-impeachment solons misusing words for profit - they reduce themselves to sub-human, exchanging their humanity for money. This tragic infirmity is not limited to politicians; Philippine society is plagued by this infestation. Money is indeed the root of all evil, especially in a culture that accepts that “money makes the world go round.”
Some Filipino religious leaders exchange their souls for Gloria’s envelopes; the Philippine bulok-racy (corrupt bureaucrats), Big Business and financial elite sucks all the country’s money into their pockets that should actually be for the welfare of all in society. This is the money power problem. The Western world is plagued by this too; take this quote from famous American dissenter Ramsey Clark: We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.”
Plutocracy: rule of the rich. We’re ruled by the moneyed and not by the principled. How can we have governance abiding by any social contract that is formed by agreed principle and the democratic ideal if what rules is money of the moneyed? If the people rule themselves by way of the democratic “vox populi” we can not but be a principled nation, but the moneyed powers engage in “coup-ruption” as in 2001, paying of generals to depose an elected leader. Since then the country has gone down the precipice of plunder of the plutocrats and “bulok-crats”.
The Filipino Poor is Actually Rich”, retired Gen. Jokumeh writes: “But.....A UNDP report stated that “the Philippine poverty alleviation fund had never exceeded one (1%) per cent of the total budget, and, expenditures on basic social services had only been about 2% of GNP. One (1%) percent of P1.053 Trillion Pesos Y2006 budget (in the Congress deliberation pipeline) is P10.53 billion pesos, when spread out equally among 12M poor households would mean P885 for each household of five members, or, a poverty alleviation budget of P177 (US$3.34) for each poor Filipino for the year 2006.
Let’ take a closer look: A Filipino poor who smokes one P20-pack-cigarette-a-day, will have spent P7,300 in 365 days; will have paid 12% eVAT equivalent to P876 which the government will stand to lose if this Filipino stops smoking. In effect, he pays taxes almost 5 times the P177 allotted by government to lift him out of poverty. But the Filipino consumes not only cigarettes but other commodities subject to ‘sin’ taxes, so he actually pays more than P876 eVAT for which he gets a measly budget of P177 in return….” Only, plutocrats with bulok-crats are plundering him.
The plutocrats and bulok-crats now want the “people’s initiative” and would then enforce use of the rejected Abalos “counting machines”. Those taken by that spiel on voting computer reliability must take a cue from former NASA and Exxon computer programmer Clinto Eugene Curtis who testified before the US Judiciary that he was enlisted by Republicans to create a program to guarantee Bush’s election victory. Link that to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s suit last month against American voting machine makers who integrate “cheaters” into their machines.
Is there any other choice but to take a popular revolutionary, hopefully peaceful, path like many countries in Latin America are now doing to restore people and principle on the throne?
(Tune in to 1098AM, M-W-F 6-7pm; T-Th 3-4pm)
Herman Tiu Laurel
8/30/2006
Money quashed the people’s aspiration for truth in the just buried 2006 impeachment. Villafuerte and Lagman were the notable anti-impeachment demagogues. No surprising: GMA appointed the former’s wife to the lucrative Monetary Board and sustains a dynasty with his governor-son allegedly with jueteng; the other lost his Quezon city congressional bid and clings to dear life for GMA’s blessings to continue in his provincial congressional seat today. It may be no accident that the two are both from Bicol where the Andaya (in English, “very fraudulent) highway’s moon craters winds.
Weeks before the impeachment burial rumor was that the members of the impeachment committee had P 10-M each from GMA. As for the plenary, the pork barrel is obviously always a consideration. Many switched, like Dudut Jaworski who said last year that FPJ was indeed cheated; is the cheat then no longer a cheat today? Jerome Paras said to his son that his father was not for sale, was the sign outside the door changed? There’s young Cong. Zubiri who eloquently closed the impeachment obituary saying the divisive issue should end in unity. Unity to sustain to lie?
Even duplicitous anti-impeachment solons can speak a truth or two. Villafuerte took a philological stab at with “dinky-zation” or a word sounding like that to be proposed as synonym to “traitor”. That pun was repeated over radio stations which shows that some anchors found it acceptable, and the public has been chuckling about it. That the public can discern liars even when donning sheep’s clothing; but much of the noise in the impeachment imbroglio was really the clanging of pots against kettles. The perceptive analyst should discern from the impeachment zarzuela the central issue:
The principal Philippine struggle today is of People and principle against money power. “Principle” or “word” is “expression”, it separates man from animals and plants: it is the human soul. When words are used as distortions humanity disappears, as in the case of the anti-impeachment solons misusing words for profit - they reduce themselves to sub-human, exchanging their humanity for money. This tragic infirmity is not limited to politicians; Philippine society is plagued by this infestation. Money is indeed the root of all evil, especially in a culture that accepts that “money makes the world go round.”
Some Filipino religious leaders exchange their souls for Gloria’s envelopes; the Philippine bulok-racy (corrupt bureaucrats), Big Business and financial elite sucks all the country’s money into their pockets that should actually be for the welfare of all in society. This is the money power problem. The Western world is plagued by this too; take this quote from famous American dissenter Ramsey Clark: We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.”
Plutocracy: rule of the rich. We’re ruled by the moneyed and not by the principled. How can we have governance abiding by any social contract that is formed by agreed principle and the democratic ideal if what rules is money of the moneyed? If the people rule themselves by way of the democratic “vox populi” we can not but be a principled nation, but the moneyed powers engage in “coup-ruption” as in 2001, paying of generals to depose an elected leader. Since then the country has gone down the precipice of plunder of the plutocrats and “bulok-crats”.
The Filipino Poor is Actually Rich”, retired Gen. Jokumeh writes: “But.....A UNDP report stated that “the Philippine poverty alleviation fund had never exceeded one (1%) per cent of the total budget, and, expenditures on basic social services had only been about 2% of GNP. One (1%) percent of P1.053 Trillion Pesos Y2006 budget (in the Congress deliberation pipeline) is P10.53 billion pesos, when spread out equally among 12M poor households would mean P885 for each household of five members, or, a poverty alleviation budget of P177 (US$3.34) for each poor Filipino for the year 2006.
Let’ take a closer look: A Filipino poor who smokes one P20-pack-cigarette-a-day, will have spent P7,300 in 365 days; will have paid 12% eVAT equivalent to P876 which the government will stand to lose if this Filipino stops smoking. In effect, he pays taxes almost 5 times the P177 allotted by government to lift him out of poverty. But the Filipino consumes not only cigarettes but other commodities subject to ‘sin’ taxes, so he actually pays more than P876 eVAT for which he gets a measly budget of P177 in return….” Only, plutocrats with bulok-crats are plundering him.
The plutocrats and bulok-crats now want the “people’s initiative” and would then enforce use of the rejected Abalos “counting machines”. Those taken by that spiel on voting computer reliability must take a cue from former NASA and Exxon computer programmer Clinto Eugene Curtis who testified before the US Judiciary that he was enlisted by Republicans to create a program to guarantee Bush’s election victory. Link that to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s suit last month against American voting machine makers who integrate “cheaters” into their machines.
Is there any other choice but to take a popular revolutionary, hopefully peaceful, path like many countries in Latin America are now doing to restore people and principle on the throne?
(Tune in to 1098AM, M-W-F 6-7pm; T-Th 3-4pm)
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