Announced Impending MRT/LRT Fare Hike Ignites Furor Anew

The managements of Metro Rail and Light Rail Transit Systems have once again harped on a long-planned fare hike. It was no less the Department of Transportation (DOTC) Secretary who trumpeted the impending hike of Five Pesos (P5.00) within the year and another Five Pesos (P5.00) in 2014.

Expectedly, groups championing the plight of the approximately 350,000 daily commuters went as fast on counter-offense. Bayan Muna Partylist Representative Neri Colmenares, among others, has vowed to continue to oppose the imminent hike like it has done in the past, even threatening to block DOTC’s budget by raising the fare hike as an issue in the budget deliberations.

I, being one among the 350,000 who fairly regularly take the MRT –goodness EDSA traffic will make an already despicable MRT commute a luxurious option (but no way good enough, we just have far worse traffic than most other cities), say MRT and LRT managements are shameless and should be shamed if they pushed ahead with the mulled fare hike.

For sure, fare hike is inevitable, regardless of what many groups say that MRT and LRT, being a mass transport system, rightly deserved public subsidies. With subsidies, at the current level, at P55 per passenger, or about 400% of today’s full-stretch fare of P14, sooner than later, a fare hike is ineluctable. But not so fast, MRT and LRT managements, which have done nothing that looked like managing (quite bluntly) if they ever understood the word, need some bashing to take them to their senses.

Enterprises are allowed to make money when they deliver value to their customer base or clientele. It is the customers themselves who will support a fare hike in the mass transport systems’ case if the requisite value is first delivered.

Ever wondered why Google and Facebook are riding on such high-value stocks today? You got it, we have all heard about it: They delivered service to the delight of the customers for free, at no cost, for a time before they decided they had done enough and people were now willing to allow them to monetize on their built goodwill.

The same cannot be said of both companies, which far from providing free service, have never been efficient, and have never been the subject of delight of the commuting public. There is just no sense of consciousness or literacy on customer service as this mantra is known in the private sector service industry, where companies outdo one another for a share in the market. Very typical of a government-run agency.

Here’s how these systems have bungled every advantage that I could think of for an urban train system. The system should provide time savings, and its value is enormous, as many workers now are paid by the minute, thanks to technology that brought in the now ubiquitous biometrics.

In contrast, these systems, especially the MRT, of which I am more familiar, do not understand the implications. They operate the trains like others operate provincial buses: At the start station, say, North Avenue, they would park the train leaving its doors open until it fills up, defeating its travel time predictability feature.

As time is very important to everyone, especially married individuals with children to look after and a house to keep in order, you budget your time literally to the minute, so much that you would leave the house with just about enough time to get you to work on time or in time for your shift, as it is popularly referred to now. This clueless, out-of-touch management throws you out of your time handle most of the time.

That is just one, and if you’re an MRT/LRT commuter you would know that there are countless more of less-than-desirable aspects of their service: cramped stations (sometimes it makes me think that those recent death incidents weren’t suicides, but accidental); untrained personnel; outrageously poor maintenance (oftentimes you’d see the overhead hatch [right at the door] falling off); very scarce number of trains; busted elevators (even Ayala Station has not been spared. In fact, as of this writing the inside single-width elevator that would take passengers  up to the second level where two wider elevators await to them further up finally to the exits have been in disrepair for weeks now punishing the commuting public especially the elderly, pregnant, and children; and the list goes on.

Until they would have fixed these, they have no right (it’s an abomination) to demand for fare hike regardless of reasons. Satisfy first before you demand. Read Google and Facebook’s history and learn.

 

Succor in Law, Solace in Justice for Distressed OFW Victims of Sex Exploitation

The recent furor over the sex-for-flight and prostitution ring scandals exposed by Akbayan Partylist Representative Walden Bello in public accusing Welfare Officers of Philippine Consulate Offices abroad of soliciting sexual favors from distressed Filipino workers has gradually, nay reluctantly, goaded the victims to come out into the open.

These pitiful and tormented compatriots have all the reasons to be wary and apprehensive. For sure, before they were sexually abused they would have been threatened of all sorts of retribution if they squealed or filed a complaint. After all, what’s not to be afraid of? These sex predators are sick in the head.

A published call from DFA Secretary Albert Del Rosario on the victims “out there” to come forward and formally file charges to bring the culprits to justice, and correct this horrible episode in our Foreign Service chapter, has drawn one victim to implicate one Saudi-hosted Philippine Consulate official of waylaying her to his home instead of depositing her in the official welfare shelter of foreign service office. Dastardly!

Many are expected to follow suit, and finally decide to break their silence and demand justice. We encourage them.

By doing so, they not only seek closure to this dark and harrowing experience they endured and move on after, they also help lay a safer foundation for the hundreds of thousands that are still out there and the thousands more that are yet to join the ranks of OFW.

For certain the victims deciding to come out will need legal representation, and DFA or POEA may not accommodate all. It is in this spirit, and in an expression of my solidarity with their plight, that I offer my hours to them and I implore my companeros to do the same.

Let us give them our compassionate and free legal service if only to convey that they have us and many others on their side. They have nothing to be ashamed of, and the Filipino nation and its people are proud of their sacrifices, and it cannot and will not turn its back on them in their time of need.

TO OUR COMPATRIOTS WHO HAVE BEEN VICTIMIZED IN THIS DESPICABLY FILTHY SCHEMES, CALL, TEXT THE NUMBER OR EMAIL TO ADDRESS SHOWN ON THE SIDE BAR FOR LEGAL HELP.

TO MY COMPANEROS WHO WANT TO EXTEND THEIR FREE SERVICE AND WANT TO ENLIST THROUGH THIS SITE CALL THE SAME NUMBER AND I WILL PUT YOU IN THE POOL. I THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.

Published also on AttyReggieDuran

DFA Officials Ebroiled in Sex-for-Flight Scandal

Akbayan Partylist Representative Walden Bello accused at least three officials assigned to Labor Welfare Offices of Philippine Consulates in Jordan, Kuwait, and Syria of soliciting sexual favors in exchange for repatriation, and/or peddling these distressed Filipino women seeking shelter at the consulate office in prostitution with foreign clients.

How horrendous can a news get?

This is unimaginably evil. These women are runaways from abusive employers. They must have already endured untold sufferings and pains before mustering the strength and resolve to orchestrate an escape (in a strange land and uncharted territory) from their ravenous masters.

These hapless women must have praised the government to high heavens when they first reached the welfare office –if only they knew what awaited them. I can only imagine how they felt when they realized that their supposed saviors (welfare officers) were in fact, low-life predators who preyed on one’s helplessness.

These perpetrators are officers appointed (presumably vetted by the appointing office) precisely to give aid to these victimized Filipino women. That they knowingly victimized these women (compatriots at that) the second time is the height of depravity that deserves the strongest condemnation.

If these were proven true, these welfare officers are monsters, and are a big shame to our national identity.

They must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They deserve no compassion whatsoever.

These are the crimes that scream for death penalty’s application, and make you regret Congress ever abolished it.

No less than the President must make sure that these beasts are brought to justice, and the victims restored and repaired.

US$1.8B AFP Modernization Vs. China’s US$115B Defense Budget for 2013 Alone

The President’s pronouncement that we are allotting US$1.8B or P75B for the modernization of the AFP, for sure, neither concerns China nor impels it to rethink its foreign policies, especially on matters relating to territorial claims, with the Philippines. In fact, in March this year China has already announced that it was setting aside $115B for its defense spending for 2013 alone.

That highlights a disparity that gives the Chinese sophisticated additions to its already humungous military capability, and the Philippines, another attempt at nursing ageing would-have-been-decommissioned vessels out of infirmaries from either US or Japan to sail its way to the Philippine shores.

For certain, many segments of Filipino society, would have goofed on this, and the papers’ editorial cartoonists would have had a field day on the subject. But let us pause for a second, and contemplate at what value the news has for us, the Filipino.

I believe we should start digesting these developments with the heart and mind of our fallen heroes. They fought rifles and varied artilleries with bolos and machetes, outnumbered and all. All in the name of freedom.  All in the pride of the Filipino nation, the Filipino race.

On the one hand, China should never underestimate the resolve of the Filipino people. On the other hand, we should stop behaving like we have the US ready to send their beloved countrymen in harm’s way for us at the slightest of provocations, or even when push comes to shove.

It’s all about interest!

Make no mistake, the US has already made clear its neutral stance on the issue of territorial dispute with China. Sure, US wants to keep China in check – second largest economy with checkered human rights past and present, and of communist ideology.

However, with its (US) trade with latter at hundreds of billions of dollars, with the former at the deficit, coupled with the strange fact that China now stands as the largest lender to the US –gobbling American treasury notes of over a trillion dollars and counting– we are, sad to say (reality bites) just a convenient “democracy” rhetoric trumpet for the US, but their guns aren’t blazing to keep us in one piece.

We have to inch our way forward to credible military capability. We have to learn to fend for ourselves. No more Uncle Sam mentality.

Let’s teach ourselves and our children real, not feigned, patriotism –like what we have in school right now. Let us learn, and teach our children, real combat discipline. Reinstate Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) with emphasis on the need to prepare to defend our sovereignty, not against the NPAs, the MILFs, the ASGs, but credibly imminent, the Chinese.

Grow the military in number, arm them, and pay them decent living. Legislate death penalty for military corruption, as it is tantamount to treason.

I have two lovely daughters, and I know that I have to tell them to brace themselves for one day we might have to fight the Chinese, the Malaysians, or anyone who dare trample upon our dignity as a nation, and by ourselves.

Filipino-Chinese are Filipinos who use the term to identify their ethnic root. They are as Filipino as each one of us, until they say and act otherwise, just as any Filipino can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

We are Filipino in every sense of the word. We must stand together when Philippine sovereignty is being threatened.

 

 

The Sin Tax Reform Act of 2012: Will It Really Curb Sin Products Consumption, Or Was It Just Another Mirage To Solons Waltzing Their Way To Heftier Pork Barrels?

If you have not been having better things to do recently, you might have had the reluctance to while away time watching or reading the debates among pro and anti congressmen and senators on the Sin Tax Bill. Finally, it was passed with Pnoy signing the same into law, hence, RA 10351 or The Sin Tax Reform Act of 2012 takes effect on January 1, 2013.

Sin tax, though, is not new. We had the original sin tax bill enacted (RA9334) sometime in January 2005, which mandated varying increases in excise tax rates every two years until 2011.

I am a smoker and a drinker, but I am not addicted to either cig or booze. Even a while back when I was consuming two to three packs a day and quite an amount of beer/liquor every day, I would dare say I was never addicted. I had complete control of my consumption: When I wanted to stop for a period, I did the moment I made the decision. No withdrawal syndrome whatsoever.

Now I consume a lot less: less than a pack a day, except when I drink. It makes sense to think smoke is more enjoyable with alcohol, but I can’t make out any logical explanation to it.

Pardon the digression. Anyway, the law says it is aimed at fixing the inequities in tax structure, removing the price classification that allowed tobacco companies to pay taxes based on 1996 prices, simplifying its administration by shifting from multi-tiered to unitary tax system by 2017.

Whatever the reason, most people support it for one obvious reason. Frankly, I don’t need sophisticated scientific studies to tell me smoking and drinking harm health. Equally, I don’t need anyone to tell me against what fun I derive or even feign deriving from drinking and smoking. To me, drinking and smoking are social activities. The conversation that flows along them makes them addictive (desirable of repetition) not the vice itself.

But then again, I don’t need to lift a finger to convince anyone.

The bigger issue is whether the funds that this new sin tax law is expected to generate will go to the law’s intended purposes. That’s where the government’s reputation has, time and again, proved wanting.

Whatever happened to the study that revealed we were losing some 20-30% (as a percentage to national budget), or as Manny Villar said in 2010, some 250B a year, in taxes to corruption? If the government had concentrated its efforts on plugging the loophole, we may still need the new sin tax law, but it would not have met the fiery opposition it did from the public, since the latter would know where the taxes go.

That the government seemed to have looked the other way still evokes the sentiment on government’s aversion to, nay inability in, finding intelligent solutions to tax collection problems, and reinforces the public’s impression on its propensity to imposing new taxes as a way of coping.

However, this sin tax law could prove to be a double-edged sword. While our tax minds at the BIR and DOF have made all sorts of projection on collections, they fail to acknowledge that as taxes are raised significantly high, the temptation for evasion rises with it. In a high-tax regime, the incentive to evade taxes becomes more compelling to justify taking the risk.

What is in it for Congress?

For sure, this means heftier pork barrel funds (now already at 70m and 200m per congressman and senator, respectively), euphemistically or innocently called Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF), to congress occupants. Now, how does one reconcile the corrupt reality of the past to the promise this new law makes under this new administration?

I would say I have faith in the current administration. No doubt it enjoys the confidence of a large majority of Philippine society, and the international community as well. But it’s not to say that stories that allegedly belie the “Matuwid Na Daan” philosophy of the president are nuisance and don’t deserve scrutiny. Some seriously project credibility that, if not looked into, will eventually erode confidence in the president or its administration, and imperil his lofty programs, including the present sin tax law.

I feel for the president, but with over 300 politicians in Congress benefitting from the enactment in the convenient guise of “projects for the people,” it is very difficult to paint a rosy picture against a gloomy backdrop of same old faces wearing business as usual grins.

I have prepared myself for paying more for every stick I light come New Year. The president, too, will pay more when he lights a stick. I wish him not only good health, but steady conviction in making all in government walk his path of “Matuwid na Daan.”

 

What Drives Americans Into Shooting Rampage?

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the privilege of watching over my children in quite a time now, or just observe them since they’re a young adult and a teen too anxious to grow up who impress on me they don’t need me to watch over them: kids these days. Pearl and I have been battling over whether there’s value in living together when we do almost surely well separately. Accustomed, we don’t treat the issue as pressing now as we did in the beginning.

Kashmere being the 19-year old that she is preoccupies herself with studies, but mostly adoring her boyfriend, to be blunt. Anne, on the other hand, even as I see her dodging my suggestions against grownup girl stuff (you know what I’m saying: make up; lipstick, etc.), is childishly glued to koreanovelas. Both seem oblivious to what’s going on around them.

The news of Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre where 20 children no older than 5, and 6 adults senselessly lost their lives to a heavily armed Lunatic named Adam Lanza, somehow makes me thankful my children aren’t as news buff as many of their age. I can’t really tell the value of them knowing or not knowing the incident, although I am sure they’d be hard put to avoid it as it’s in almost every nook and cranny of news channel and space.

The horror of it directly and strikingly challenges a father’s idea of protecting his children.

I feel strongly for our America-based colleagues at work, who lost their loved ones in this menacing tragedy: Dean Pinto who lost his son, Jack; William Sherlach who lost his wife, Mary; Paul Minella who lost his niece, Grace; and I breathe hope and solace in R.J. Fressola’s wife, Liesl, who teaches at the school and is among those who survived.

The bigger problem is this is becoming terrifyingly routine to America: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, and now Connecticut. Schools drawing shooters of innocent adults and kids alike who, sadly, have to die because they are at the wrong place when something wrong ticked in one’s mind.

I know whatever is causing this blood thirst could be as validly mysterious as any science prior to breakthrough. But we know that males are mostly involved in these, and we also know that guns are instrumental in the mass deaths. Sadly, America is obstinately attached to their constitutional right to bear arms, and to the elation of the gun industry and lobbyists, who continue to make billions of dollars off the illusion that it’s inherently American to have the right to bear arms.

Unfortunately, it’s way past the issue of gun possession as it is now. An individual hoarding 7 firearms, including an assault weapon or a semi-automatic rifle designed to kill a large number of people in few squeezes of a trigger, isn’t constitutional entitlement to protection. It is militarized thinking, influenced by how America has been arming to the teeth its military and civilian forces.

Streets and communities of this great nation have become battlefields awash with household artilleries that convert instantly into massacre instruments in the hands of a deranged individual whose detection have increasingly become difficult.

In that sense, I enjoin everyone to be watchful on the direction of our own gun laws, lest we take the path our all-time benefactor had trodden and we find ourselves in the same murderous rage that beset an otherwise soberly proud America.

 

RA 9344, The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006; A Product of Congressional Overreaching Advocacy and Executive Hypocrisy

RA 9344 or Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006; A Product of Congressional Hypocrisy and the Executive Department’s Faked Advocacy

A reading of this law, which its proponents claim to be hailed around the world as progressive and a landmark piece of legislation, gives you a sense of the author’s (Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan) misplaced and fancied idealism. It fails to consider the government’s track record in implementing infrastructure aspects of legislation that are executive in nature. And the excuse is often fashioned as, and perennially attributed to, lack of funds.

In the case of this particular law, they go as shameless far as to claim lack of funds, lack of proper training and education of prosecutors and law enforcers on the intricacies of the law, etc. It is like reading a template with some tweaks here and there made to suit the peculiarities of a subject law.

Susmariosep, if this is so, then what’s the incentive or compulsion in making sure that laws succeed, when their failure has, by time, developed a “rubber stamp” justification.

No amount of excuses should exonerate any agency or department of government for its failure to implement the infrastructure of a law (which I will explain below), especially so that a law’s passage is, to a large extent, rationalized and persuaded by the safety nets these infrastructures provide.

Infrastructure of law is the aspect of legislation that makes the whole desirable and workable. Omit it and the entire complexion of the law changes substantially, so that legislators may not have been swayed in favor of its enactment had it not been in place.

Metaphorically, it is the pairing leg to a two-legged law, the other leg being the substance of the law. The latter is what the law is trying to achieve: in this case, to restore a child-offender to his former state or reform him, to becoming a productive member of society. The former, the mechanism to make sure that children are rescued and given the needed care, attention, and affection, to keep the human material in them, and prevent them from graduating into hardened and calloused criminals, which in turn, should take them out of the application or protection of RA 9344.

In other words, there is a staging period between one point where a street child is innocent and another where he would have become “hardened” by difficult experiences to a point of incorrigibility. It is in that stage that the government, through the JJWC, should act in carrying out the design of the law if it is to apply the leniency and protection thereof. Otherwise, a child offender (incorrigibly hardened) should be treated, under the law, just like any other offender.

We should not risk the safety of our children and the society, in general, by allowing these kids criminals back to the open in hope that they reform and forget the pleasures, sense of being, nay power, they inordinately savored during their criminal reign.

Anent RA 9344, it pertains to provisions, anchored on its declared state policy, to wit:

“(c) The State likewise recognizes the right of children to assistance, including proper care and nutrition, and special protection from all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty and exploitation, and other conditions prejudicial to their development.”

They are particularly enumerated under Chapter I Title III of the law: the roles of Family, The Educational System, The media, The establishment and strengthening of Local Councils for the Protection of Children, and further scattered over the four corners of the document embodying this legislation.

In effect, the persuasion power of this law is in the character of prevention of the Infrastructure provision, as gleaned from the cited policy of the state. If the state truly recognizes, as a policy, what the law had written in it, then this law can have its shot at success. If the state truly recognizes the right of children to assistance, care and nutrition, protection from all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty, and exploitation, then we should see much less of this eventuality-turned juvenile offenders, such that delinquency rates would have sensibly and realistically gone down to earn it the label of success.

Sadly, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC), has failed and continues to fail to execute its mandate.

This ineptitude, inaction, and irresponsibility have augured well for criminals who prey on the youth, exploiting their extentual criminal immunity, and making them foot soldiers in carrying out their nefarious activities.

I agree that these kids are were innocent, or at least that’s how they started. However, consider them erstwhile innocent to be more precise. Before they were rounded up by hooligans as recruits, they have been longtime occupants of the streets. Unwanted, uncared for, abused, and hungry, they are exactly the subject of the infrastructure provision of this law.

Had the government, through the JJWC, a fourteen-member council, representing seven prime departments of government, with extra 2 representative from NGOs, done its mandate under the law, these kids should have been taken out of the streets into state-sponsored caring institutions, as designed in the law, before they had been steeled and hardened by their ensuing difficult experiences.

Now, these once pitiful and harmless kids, by painful neglect of their plights, have become calloused and have turned into monsters that no longer fit the description of the intended subject of the law, as contemplated by legislators.

The bad guys all along are out there watching and waiting for the right time to do their easy pickings. Syndicates know that the best way to a hungry child’s heart is through the stomach. Feed them, and promise them more of things, which theretofore they could only dream of, and they’ll jostle mightily to get counted. Then they start stealing, stabbing, and shooting. WITH DISCERNMENT.

Now, the government in its attempt to defend this law, wants us to believe that, while admitting that this has not succeeded yet, they are ready to get their acts together to put all in place for this law to work.

What baloney! It’s like saying “sorry, we might have to endure more senseless deaths and varied crimes (authored by these menace called by euphemism ‘children in conflict with law,’ which is insulting to their victims) while we try to catch up. Yes you might have to continue dying, losing properties, dealing with threats, in the meantime. You are advised to take the necessary precautions.”

That’s how this sounds to those who lost loved ones’, limbs, property to, and/or traumatized by, these monsters.

Hell I’m not going to put up with this. They come to me or my kids, I’ll shoot them, and I will bill the government for allowing these criminals, hardened as they are, to prowl the streets and victimize us, hapless law-abiding citizens.

The world is upside down: the lawful constituents of society are now at the mercy of the lawless and anarchists.

Congress had better wake up and institute corrective legislative measures by ending this stupid law, and not falling, again, for empty promises that make people’s safety contingent to the government’s supposed efficiency, something it’s hardly known for.

Restorative justice, diversion and diversion programs, interventions, etc.: words that lace this law are nothing but lofty rhetoric. No wonder we’re tagged as a country of slogans and acronyms, and that’s all.

We say to the government: Until you’re ready, don’t put us before a barrel of a gun.

Don’t trial-and-error with people’s lives, lest you end up dealing with vigilante groups forced to take matters in their own hands to protect themselves, when they see the state leaves itself helpless to protect its own people.

Pnoy should rally his liberal congress occupants to arrest this before more lives are wasted if he wants to give meaning to his the battle cry of “Matuwid na Daan?”