Bred-In-The-Bone “Epal” Style of Stumping Keeps Roxas Flailing out of the Water.

“Christmas in Lent: Roxas togive P4B for survivors” reads the Inquirer headline of an article by Marlon Ramos, a Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist. Something is egregiously wrong with this headline. It sounds as though Mar Roxas is giving away his own money out of his generosity. This is the same poor and inflammatory bred-in-the-bone “epal” style of stumping. It unwittingly or wittingly offends the taxpayers, who now more than ever feel pained by the brazen raid of public coffers, courtesy of PDAF and DAP.

And it does not stop there. Roxas, the disconnected politico that he is, waltzed with this anomaly as he handed over to the local officials of his home province, Capiz, 200 million in rehabilitation aid, saying: “Advance Happy Easter. May you spend your money wisely to help your [constituents].”  Really, this is how irresponsibly inept or helpless the government is in ensuring that taxpayers’ money, as this 200 million pesos, is spent as planned and approved?

He should have said anything to the effect that the Commission on Audit (COA) will be hot on their trail in seeing to it that those funds are spent as intended, otherwise the Ombudsman will be all over them, and will definitely file cases against those found responsible—clearly the thrust that the administration, at least, is projecting, so why not reinforce it.

While he later warned politicians against epal or credit-grabbing stunts, as embellishing projects with their names, he was up front doing it. That he further warned that Pnoy would be closely monitoring the use of funds, mattered less, because he overshadowed it with his shadowy remarks.

I don’t want to go as far as to say that this is intended or meant as coming from his gut, but his handlers have to manage these political miscues if they were to succeed in rebuilding his sullied political image.

Cybercrime Law Ruling: a Case of Philippines Behaving like China

We have been accusing China of violating international laws when it laid claim on a large part of the South China Sea. In fact, we have filed an arbitration proceeding before the arbitral tribunal of the International Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague pursuant to the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) to prosecute our cause. The Philippines claims the contested area as part of its 200-nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), among a country’s maritime entitlements, which under the UNCLOS are “rights that lawfully demand respect from State-Parties.”

At the Expanded Asean Maritime Forum (EAMF) in Kuala Lumpur in October last year, Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)-West Philippine Sea Center-Assistant Secretary Henry Bensurto Jr., said:

“To maintain order and stability in the South China Sea, we need predictability in the way we all behave with each other.  To be predictable means, we need to have certain agreed standards, rules and norms,”

“These standards, rules and norms in turn must be objective, impartial and non-discriminatory. International law is one objective standard.”

Ironically, the Philippines finds itself in the same place as China on the issue of Cybercrime Law. In April of 2007, Alexander Adonis, a broadcast journalist now based in General Santos and an anchorman for Socsargen Broadcasting Network, while working as commentator for Bombo Radyo-Davao City, was sentenced to four years and six months in prison in a libel case filed by then Davao representative--later House Speaker--Prospero Nograles.

The case stemmed from a report brought over the radio by Adonis, echoing newspaper reports, alleging that Norgrales was seen running naked in Manila Hotel after the husband of the lady he was having an affair with caught them in flagrante delicto in bed. While doing time, Adonis filed a Communication

before the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) entitled Adonis v. The Philippines, and recorded as Communication 1815/2008.

In the Communication, he questioned his imprisonment for libel under Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC) as constituting unlawful restriction of his constitutional right to Freedom of Speech and Expression, thus, a violation of Article 19 of United Nation Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (UNCCPR).

After deliberation, the Committee issued a view citing that Philippine criminal libel conflicts with the country’s obligations under Article 19 of UNCCPR, particularly paragraph three thereof. Continuing, it further stated that the Philippines is “also under an obligation to take steps to prevent similar violations occurring in the future, including by reviewing the relevant libel legislation.”

Clearly, we have state obligations under UNCCPR, which we ratified on October 23, 1986 just a year before we ratified, in a plebiscite, our very own Constitution. Our Constitution commands us to honor said obligations by virtue of its provisions, to name a couple:

“Article II, Section 2. xxx adopts the generally accepted principles of international law as part of the law of the land”;

Article VII, Section 21. No treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective unless concurred in by at least two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.”

With the UNHRC’s view, though not binding on State-Parties, we thought we would move towards decriminalizing libel. But lo and behold, we have taken the opposite direction. We have not only kept our criminal libel law, we have made it more potent under RA 10175 by punishing online libel with imprisonment of six years and one day to twelve years, compared to only six months and one day to four years and two months for ordinary libel under the Revised Penal Code.

The irony of it all is these are all unfolding under an administration whose leadership comes from a lineage of iconic Freedom fighters. 

Just two years after Pnoy took office under the platform of–picking up where his parents left off—good governance and democracy, his party-controlled Congress, the House of Representatives and Senate on June 4 and 5, respectively, passed Republic Act No. 10175, otherwise known as “Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.” On September 12, 2012, Pnoy signed it into law. Immediately thereafter, freedom advocacy groups and individuals petitioned the Court for a Temporary Restraining Order and/or Writ of Preliminary Prohibitory Injunction, which it promptly issued.

Two days ago, the Court, widely perceived as sympathetic to Pnoy administration, ruled to uphold the constitutionality--generally and save for some provisions, but particularly online libel--of RA 10175, or The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. As argued, notwithstanding the Court's decision, which does not become final until the lapse of period for MR without one being filed, this is in violation of State obligations under UNCCPR, and international law in general.

How can we effectively argue against China’s alleged disregard of international law, when we ourselves seem inclined to invoke it only when convenient and expedient?

For over two decades now, we have heralded, and thrived under, in between times, heroes of Democracy that has made our beloved Philippines its cradle and bastion. Under the youngest yet of supposed bloodline of freedom advocates, though, we are being pushed to rethink that proposition.

We expect an MR to the Court’s decision, and hope that at last look, it sees through the haze of issues in the case and rule in favour of our Constitutional rights.

Tacloban, Two Months After Typhoon Yolanda

I was on Vacation in Calbayog City, Samar the week of January 25, and on January 30^th I went to Tacloban City, hardest hit by Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan), if only to take a firsthand look at the development some two months after Yolanda made its fateful landfall that would later claim an estimated 6,000 to 10,00 lives (depending on your source of information). People are struggling to paint normalcy in what chaotic situation they have. A handful of business outfits have reopened to the public, including Robinson’s Place, which was among those heavily looted in the aftermath of the storm.

As I strolled around the city, I could imagine how horrendously powerful the storm was with buildings, or their parts, turning into masses of mangled metals, steel roofs blown off, massive water tanks tossed tens of meters away, and glass walls and windows shattered. I could sense the harrowing process that people go through in dealing with their new and sudden reality. For most, notwithstanding the news on incidents of looting, materialism has taken a backseat to plain survival. No one seemed interested in filing insurance claims even when they are covered. It seemed, commercial spirit has been overtaken by the primordial human virtues of compassion and benevolence.

I stared at the four Vessels (passenger ships) that have strayed into the city’s coastal communities, mostly of shanties, as Yolanda pummeled it with 315 kph of wind. Two months have opened the idea, to the mind of the locals, of making tenements out of these vessels, and some could already be seen making subdivisions in them for living quarters.

Of course, I made sure I did not miss to visit the place where the controversial bunkhouses sat. I am not an engineer, architect, or contractor, but I surely would not buy any of those at the price the government had put on them. I heard its construction has temporarily stopped following an investigation commenced by the office tasked to rebuild from Yolanda, headed by former Senator, now Czar, Panfilo Lacson.

As I wound up my short tour of the city, I could not help but feel sad for the people of Tacloban, and the rest of the places that have suffered from the typhoon, not because they have to deal with the consequence of the typhoon –they are no stranger to it, though Yolanda is nothing like any that came before it—but mainly because they have to contend with bureaucrats who did not seem to miss any opportunity to make a killing, even in the face of devastation brought by the worst typhoon that the country has seen, if not the world. In the face of overwhelming generosity that the country is receiving from the international community, it is appalling that our very own government—at least the agencies responsible—has failed to rise to the occasion to match the gallantry that foreign governments have shown us.

I hope that with the creation of the office—and with Lacson at its helm—tasked especially to oversee the rehabilitation and reconstruction of localities destroyed by Typhoon Yolanda, the people left wounded and scarred by the disaster will have a fair chance at rebuilding their lives. In the end, people vigilance will go a long way in helping the government ensure its efforts go to their intended beneficiaries.

 

 

Congress Floats the Idea of Granting the President Statutory Emergency Powers to Deal with the Impending Blackouts as Threatened by Meralco

This is the problem when you have a Congress of part-time lawmakers (could mean partly capable of performing one’s lawmaking functions), and full-time “self-interest.” The grant of such emergency powers, by law, as allowed in the Constitution, presupposes the existence of a sudden and extraordinary event that the state or its instrumentalities could not have prepared for, thus necessitating the exercise by the chief executive, again through Congressional grant, of such enormous powers. Such sudden and extraordinary events do not exist in the present situation.

Perennial Congressional Ineptitude.

The predicament we are in now –staggering power rates– is brought about by its (Congress) own perennial ineptitude, sore foresight, and wanton neglect. Now, it wants to administer a shortcut cure to its years of dereliction by granting the president emergency powers. Again, as I have pointed out in the past, the quality of Congressional occupants has terribly deteriorated.

This trouble started when it liberalized the power industry through Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA), where a power company could operate both distribution and generation business, as is the case in Meralco, and its power generation companies. This law has either inordinate design deliberately sold to beneficiary companies, or its authors simply had poor concept of anti-trust law. Clearly, with such setup allowed, price-fixing among interrelated players, otherwise disallowed, has become legal.

You can’t mistake the wood for the trees.

Malampaya scheduled its maintenance shutdown, as it always does, the other power generating companies (related with distributor Meralco and other power outfits trading on spot market [WESM]), which were supposed to take up the slack, coincided their own maintenance shutdown, forcing Meralco to buy at a higher price from WESM due to this schemed artificial supply situation. That is collusion.

The State has shot itself in the foot.

That is the very situation that led to the quandary the State finds itself in now, and the consuming public threatened with obscene power prices –only temporarily relieved by Supreme Court’s Temporary Restraining Order (TRO).

Yolanda has Got the Best of Me???

It’s been close to two months now since my last post (except for one from the office). Yolanda has immobilized and silenced this blog, but I have gone to the thick of efforts (and I am glad) to bring help to the places devastated by the strongest typhoon that has hit land in the country –also touted as the strongest weather disturbance ever recorded.

We, in the office, succeeded in persuading the management to forgo an otherwise lavish Christmas party –a much toned down event was replaced– and donate the amount allotted to it to relief goods for the victims. I joined my office colleagues in volunteering at the Villamor Air Base where my backbreaking experiences as a young boy in Calbayog came handy –we used to carry sacks of sands from shore to construction sites for like 75 centavos per “lata” (big tin container of assorted biscuits), and gather firewood from deep in the woods, among others. I carried some twenty sacks containing varied goods from stacks outside and into a gym, which served as warehouse, and from the gym to waiting military trucks -until I felt like I would need some help walking.

I have joined all sorts of fund drive to get something across to the needy.

Honestly, I felt like I needed some pain to relieve the guilt from just watching the hapless victims in such a desperate situation –while we go about our convenient lives. I could sense the indescribable anguish in their faces.

I could not thank God enough, and I continue to dread the thought of what could have happened if Yolanda did not, in the last minutes, change course and plowed through Calbayog City, which is literally just a stone’s throw away from the sea. Anyone who’s traveled by land from Luzon to Leyte would have passed by coastal Calbayog City, and know what I am saying. For most of the stretch of Maharlika Highway traversing the city, only its road separate the city and the sea.

Now, I think the people in coastal towns and cities have since completely reconsidered their view of that once prized “house by the sea” dream. It’s like now you have to see to it that from where you live, you have a clear pass through higher grounds, in case anything like this threatens your locality. This certainly will have implication on property insurance premiums and coverages.

Behind all the grim prospects in the face of this enormous tragedy, a silver lining lies. The government and organizations involved in the task of rebuilding Tacloban City and all the other affected places must make an  opportunity out of this unspeakable tragedy, and inspire the whole country if not the world. The opportunity is to build a city that complies with all the environmental demands of a safe and sustainable metropolis. The government has long complained that the reason it could not implement the measures that are even mandated by law, like mandatory sewerage, is because these houses and establishments are already in place, and for some logistical and practical considerations compliance is either prohibitively costly, or unwise.

Now we have clean slate status. From the ruins, raise a city that will obliterate the horrible memory of Yolanda and showcase the resilience of Waray and Leytenos.