Gunnar’s Faith

February 21, 1989

Gunnar’s Faith

Contrary to whatever impression my earlier pieces have given, I am not, within my own family, the true believer and defender of the faith. At best I am a born-again but non-Charismatic Catholic. Truth to tell, the real hardliner at home is a twelve-year old kid, Gunnar.

Gunnar is not his real name, of course. It is Victor Benedict, Victor because his grandfather on the paternal side carries that name, as did his maternal great-grandfather, now long-deceased. And Benedict because he was born on the feast of St. Benedict, the family patron.

Gunnar is half-Chinese, and goes to school at Xavier. His father describes himself as a Taoist-agnostic, whatever that means, while his mother is a baptized, though non-practising Catholic.

My sister and brother-in-law stopped going to Sunday mass and the sacraments long before Gunnar was born. They’ve had him baptized on their own and let him go to his first communion and confirmation with his classmates, but that is all. For the rest of his faith life, he is pretty much on his own.

Such as his family religious upbringing has been, being Catholic is a big thing with Gunnar. So big, in fact, that he has been having lively discussions with his father and not a few sleepless nights over the fundamentalists.

Now Gunnar and I don’t even discuss these things in great detail, this much I know: his tiff with the born-again's (some of his classmates and their parents are) stems from the purely personal and practical, rather than dogmatic grounds.

My nephew, you see, prefers his life straightforward and uncomplicated. He thinks two dishes on the table is one too many. If he likes a shirt, he will wear it to death. Most of his friends date back to first or second grade, and he has been going to the same barber with the same frequency for nearly as long.

As with his life, so it is with Gunnar’s faith. For him, being a Catholic is as much a given as being a boy and being half-Chinese, and he likes the sense of permanence it brings. He is into things that endure, and what’s lasted all of 2,000 years is good and true enough for him.

Gunnar thinks, and I completely agree with him, that all these public debates with fundamentalists will lead nowhere. We’re right and they’re wrong, so what is there to quarrel about? Let’s not bother with them and go our own way, he suggests.

Gunnar’s notion of going his own way is he’ll just continue serving mass in school regularly and saying his prayers on rising and retiring. Mine, I tell him, is as follows:

I will hear mass and go to communion daily, and take him and my nieces to church every Sunday.

We will resume praying the rosary together before the family altar (which has three images of the Blessed Virgin) at home every evening.

We will take turns praying before and after meals.

No meat will be served at home on Friday, within or outside Lent.

I will give each member of the household a Catholic bible, a rosary if he or she doesn’t have one yet, a medal each of the Blessed Mother, St. Benedict and our Guardian Angel.

We will bring flowers, light candles and pray at my parents’ tomb at least once a month.

The family will tithe to support the following causes: parish projects; the education of seminarians; a home for the aged; a community of monks in Malaybalay.

In short, if Gunnar and I have our way, our family will henceforth do everything that the born-again's say we shouldn’t. Because if we are right, and they are wrong, we must and will gladly pay the price in full for our religious convictions, no ifs and buts about it.

Having been sealed with the sign of faith at baptism, other options are no longer ours to take. Catholic at birth, like all forebears have been, we will be Catholic until the very end, and so, if we can help it, will all those who come after us.

And if that be intolerance, we will forever bless and thank the Lord and His Blessed Mother for it. May they guide us always on our pilgrimage through this valley of tears, on our way back to the Father.

Hold Fast to What is Good

February 7, 1989

Hold Fast to What is Good 

If you were lucky – if the acoustics and speaker system of your parish church are good, if the celebrant had good diction and wasn’t in a great rush, and if the length of it failed to lull you to sleep – you finally heard what the good bishops have to say on the fundamentalist scourge last Sunday.

Otherwise, dig up last Sunday’s edition of the papers. They had brought us the story at crack of dawn, with full text or extensive quotes therefrom as well as background and reactions from both sides.

All agree it was the biggest Church story to break since the hierarchy finally turned its back on Mr. Marcos in 1986. But its impact was blunted, and by no other than those it concerned the most – our pastors. As of the last mass of the day, they had not yet received their imprimatured copies of the text.

Whatever the story behind the story was, last Sunday’s reading of the pastoral from the pulpit was anti-climactic. At best, it came after all the blood from the message had been drained. At worst, it made our parish priests look like stooges. Which brings me to the point I deem most needful of stressing.

Hold fast to what is good, as such Church pronouncements go, is an outstanding one: elegant, sober and precise. As it should be, for the doctrinal teachings it reiterates are profound and fundamental, and the errors it repudiates grave and insidious. But is it enough?

I’m afraid that to see the born-again movement as being primarily a doctrinal issue is to miss the raison d’etre of its overwhelming success altogether. And to fight it on that ground is to doom any hope of a counterfoil ab initio.

For when all is said and done, fundamentalism is not about dogma or substance, as it is about personal charisma and form. More precisely, it is about communications skills and logistics, in which the born-agains are past masters and the Church itself, frankly, a bungling amateur, in this country at least.

Debate doctrine with the fundamentalists, and you fall into a snake pit. You may say all the right things, but they say the wrong things with more flourish and repeat them more often that they become, excuse the pun, bible truth.

In effect, this is the Thomasites story all over again. Picture it: the most wholesome Caucasians descending on some God-forsaken barangay in the boondocks to dispense honeyed words as well as free medicine, free sandwiches and soft drinks and yes, free bibles. When such gods come visiting, who can resist?

Are city mice less pervious to such charms? Just vary the approach a little and yoy get them equally hooked.

To employees, offer group dynamics seminars, with bible lessons thrown in for free, of course. To businessmen and professionals, how about a fellowship in a hotel ballroom with your own kind, where you talk about faith, yes, but also prosperity?

In these fora and on the TV and radio talk shows the fundamentalists have now pre-empted, the message is always upbeat, the communicators attractive, voluble, and eloquent, the atmosphere familiar, joyous and exuberant. If you don’t get what I mean, watch the 700 Club.

Their point, of course, is not theory but practice – how to acquire what one glossy booklet now making the rounds calls Power for Living. Success through faith: the born-again phenomenon has thrived because it has been able to drive home that fundamental equation better than anyone else.

And what has the Church offered the bewildered and the wavering as an alternative so far? Not much, to put it mildly.

Churches that are invariably filthy and overcrowded. Uninspired services. Meandering, haphazard homilies. Ancient curates grumpy to be bothered for confessions, baptisms, blessings or funerals, and younger ones equally averse to taking on such dull routines, busy as they are teaching the poor to curse their fate.

The nuns and seminarians? A strident, embittered lot whose notion of holy zeal is to rail on TV shows, man picket lines and march beneath red banners. Who take care of the classrooms? Lay catechists, part-timers for the most part, just slightly more enlightened than their charges.

So there’s the rub as I see it. The Church has no one to match Pat’s, Ronald’s, Ray’s and Nestor’s winning ways, no success stories in the league of Gary V. and Jolas (who needs graven idols when you have the real thing?) to show off, and definitely no free sandwiches, soft drinks or bibles to bait the masses with.

Hold on to what is good? The Church’s first job, it seems to me, is to to prove that we, not they, have the goodies. The battle is now joined. Abangan!

WHO’LL SAVE THE FILIPINOS FROM PRIVATIZATION???

October 23, 2015 BLOG

 
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WHO'LL SAVE THE FILIPINOS FROM PRIVATIZATION???

 

 

Privatize-failure/sabotage-bailout/buyback routine

 

It's a sad storyline the Philippine ruling class inflicts on the Filipino people, played out often and wreaking havoc on the lives of Filipinos and their economy--but the tragedies and lessons are quickly forgotten.

 

It's that recurrent story: Mainstream media trumpets government inefficiency and corruption while bestowing glowing praises on privatization and its promises.  But, after privatization to the oligarchs, the companiescommit wanton abuse followed by operational collapse.  Mainstream media, owned by the same oligarchs, cover up by obfuscation and corrupt oligarchy-controlled politicians sponsor measures to save these oligarch-masters' thick hides.

 

The 1997 privatization of water services under Maynilad Water Services, Inc. was one such story.  Set up by the Lopez family (of the infamous privatization-of-all-privatizations,Meralco) through holding company Benpres,it took control of the West Zone of Metro Manila's water services.  Three years later, under the dismal management of Rafael Alunan, and after failing to provide the services and improvements as promised, Mayniladsuffered currency losses due to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and went bankrupt.

 

Government later infused $31 million to assist the company and then took it back to have it re-bid.  When it was awarded to D.M. Consunjiand Manny Pangilinan (a.k.a. the dummy fronting for Indonesia's Salim Group), the Philippine government and taxpayers not only failed to recover the$31-million golden parachute, but on top of that also had to fork out another $31 million in interest payments for loans that the MWSS (Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System) shouldered,owing toMaynilad's unpaid concession fees.  The Lopezes, thus, walked away without any scratch while the Filipino people all became poorer by $62 million in an instant.

 

Now it's the MRT: $1.26-B (₱56-B) gov't buyback from fattened "privateers"

 

The past week the DoTC (Department of Transportation and Communications) announced that it would obtain a ₱56-billion loan for the buyback of the MRT-3 project. In 1997 the B-O-T (Build-Operate-Transfer) commuter train line running from Taft to North EDSA was launched.  Filipinos were given the impression that the private sector financed the whole thing costing $678 million.  The truth was that these private "investors" shelled out only $190 million while it was government that borrowed $488 million, which it had since fully paid.

 

When the project was completed, government through DoTC leased and paid rent for the infrastructure and rolling stock from the Metro Rail Transit Corp.(MTRC) of the Ayalas, Sobrepeñas, Agustines, Camposes, and a few others.  Thus, after 20 years, government and taxpayers paid the lucky company the following sums: ₱85 billion in rental payments;₱32 billion in state-guaranteed private sectorloans;₱20 billion for private sector taxes; and ₱10 billion for maintenance.  As a result, these original private "investors" have earned at least 10 times their "investment."

 

Under Gloria Arroyo, the MRT-3 infrastructure and rolling stock had begun to breakdown, but the worse was seen after the second year of the BS Aquino administration. By 2014, only 8 out of 48 carriages were in running condition while signaling equipment broke down on a daily basis at its worst point. New carriages were ordered from China; but even this the private investors tried to block.  Then, a politically sourced maintenance contractor made the breakdowns much worse, slowing down the running speed of the trains tremendously.

 

Thisman-made catastrophe in the MRT's operations was blamed on government's management; Mar Roxas and mainstream media tried to sic the provincial peoples against Metro Manila MRT riders for the false charge of "unfair subsidy" (this as commuters' fareshave left enough surplus profit for the MRT, despite government actually subsidizing the privateinvestors' guaranteed profits); and the crisis was touted as the compelling reason for government's"buyback"of the MRTC from the private investors.

 

How investment bankers, oligarchs, and corrupt politicians connive

 

It's really a triumvirate of greed and evil of Wall Street bankers, the oligarchy, and corrupt politicians that rules this land with the support of "civil society" and the neoliberal academic community that have called for "privatization, liberalization  and deregulation" that all came with the anti-State, Western-oriented, bourgeois eliteEdsa Uno revolt.

 

For all the imperfections of the 21-year Marcos regime, it had some of the basic qualities of many post-World War II Third World governments that were inspired by the 19^th and 20^th Century struggles of emerging nations: It aspired for emergence from the colonial era as the country led in initiatives and hosted a 1954 meeting in Baguio on the road towards the historic 1995 Non-Aligned Nations meet in Bandung, Indonesia.

 

While necessarily accommodating the demands of the United States (the dominant power of the post-World War II world), Ferdinand Marcos had tried to slowly wean the country away from that power and its economic domination. Like many Third World leaders, Marcos had to gradually strengthen the State, especially after the lesson of the early '70s U.S. Dollar and Oil Shock Crisis, which led government to establish many State economic institutions.

 

Marcos expanded the role of such government corporations and entitiesas the National Power Corp., MWSS, Philippine National Oil Corp. (PNOC), Bataan Shipyard and Engineering Co., National Steel Corp., and many more, which was clearly not to the advantage of the global economic power then, the U.S.  Moreover, the Central Bank and its Monetary Board was still dominated by government at that time.  But all this has been reversed as all these State entities have been privatized since Edsa Uno.

 

The main U.S. instrument to destabilize Marcos from 1983 on, using the U.S.-facilitated assassination of Ninoy Aquino, as the U.S. Dollar was (and still is essential) to the Philippine financial system was financial destabilization through capital flight. The U.S. banks in the Philippines easily triggered this, and this caused the crash of the Philippine Peso and the subsequent economic crisis, which in turn created massive disenchantment.

 

With the fall of Marcos, the Wall Street bankers with their Philippine subalterns went to work dismantling the economic foundation of a strong State, removing tariffs on 1,000 import goods that caused hundreds of billions of lost government revenues; the takeover of government functions (as seen through Ernesto Aboitiz' taking charge of National Power Corp.); the removal of the foundations of energy sovereignty through the mothballing of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant; and, under Ramos, the selling off of PNOC, Petron, ad nausea.

 

Wall Street investment bankers back local oligarchs and "finance" takeovers of government assets signed over by corrupt politicians from Cory Aquino to Ramos, Arroyo, and Aquino on tax-free, giveaway terms with sovereign guarantees for profits, loans, price, and rate increases.  All three of them have happily laughed all the way to their banks, again, with the Filipino people picking up all the bills.

 

Wall Street and oligarchy vultures pick MRT flesh

 

The MRT was owned by the MRTC consortium.  It was Fidel V. Ramos who signed thecontract guaranteeing the company's 15% profit on the basis of a ₱60-maximum fare from Taft to North EDSA, which, Joseph Estrada reduced to ₱20, to make the MRT financially viable with hordes of commuters filling the erstwhile empty carriages.  But then, he was ousted early on in his term.

 

It should be underscored that just four years into the MRT's operations, the original "investors" (except Ayala)had already securitized or monetized their future dividends with the MRT III Funding Corp (MRT3FC).  Thus, the dividends in the coming years directly go to the MRT3FC's financiers--who they are we don't know.

 

To illustrate the opaqueness of these financial vultures, here is an excerpt from a 2009 Philippine Starnews article by Zinnia delaPeña: "The asset-backed notes issue is a securitization of future dividends from Metro Rail Transit Corp. (MRTC) which flow through a series of holding companies and special purpose vehicles, to MRT III Funding Corp., the Issuer of the Notes."

 

Even though theSobrepeñas, Ramoses, Camposeset al.had already sold their future profits, they still retain ownership of MRTC shares, which Manny Pangilinan's MPIC (Metro Pacific Investment Corp.) bought and accumulated 48% ownership over.

 

At about the same time, the Gloria Arroyo governmentwas said to have fallen behind its Equity Rental Payments to the MRT3FC,allegedly due to currency problems and commuter subsidy (even as the DoTC then admitted that the financial crisis was due to financial obligations and not operational costs).

 

And so MRT3FC's bondholders filed for arbitration in Singapore and The Netherlands for $230 million in damages.Ayala, on the other hand, sold its share to Wall Street top gun Goldman Sachs, reportedly to use its clout to pressure Arroyo's thenFinance secretary, Gary Teves, ostensibly to reduce the financial obligations proposed to buyout MRT3FC bonds and 80% preferred shares of MRTC without voting rights.  Meanwhile, MRTC is still controlled by MPIC of Manny Pangilinan, from whom current DoTC Secretary Jun Abaya now wants to borrow ₱53 billionfor the MRT's buyout.

 

A few years ago, the DBP and Land Bank (both being GFIs or government financial institutions) were reported tohave fundedGary Teves' buyout plan, extending a $180-million loan (₱8.6 billion then) to an offshore company,Global Air Services (GAS),with $2 in capital and $400,000 debt obligations (and where Bobby Ongpin'ssecretary Josephine Manalo and his lawyer Rodolfo Ponferradawere company signatories).In April 2009, the GFIs bought GAS by offsetting the loan against the purchase price. So why did the GFIs need GAS to intermediate in the first place? Gary Teveswas reported to have later become a director of Ongpin'sAlphaland Corp.

 

So let's sum up this Triumvirate of Evil's take for its$190 million investment in 1995: (a) the financial transfer of $488 million paid for by the Philippine government and taxpayers to complete the financing for MRTC; (b) $2.5-billion return-on-investment via a 15% profit guarantee by government; (c) $780 million in "equity rental payments" paid for by the Philippine government; (d) $200 million for the first 10 years to private contractual management; (e) $200 million in maintenance contracts; and now (f)₱53 billion for the "buyback."  But here's the clincher: After the buyback and rehabilitation,the DoTC says it will privatize the MRT again.  What idiocy!

 

Such have been the disastrous consequences of privatization.  With more of it under the new name, PPP (Public-Private Partnership), what will be left for Filipinos?

 

WHO'LL SAVE FILIPINOS FROM PRIVATIZATION?  ONLY FILIPINOS THEMSELVES REVOLTING AGAINST THIS EVIL TRIUMVIRATE.

 

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