Build me up, Buttercup

Sad news. Former first lady Victoria Quirino Delgado died last night in Amsterdam.

As for the news… You know, it’s sort of like the song:

Why do you build me up (build me up) Buttercup, baby
Just to let me down (let me down) and mess me around
And then worst of all (worst of all) you never call, baby
When you say you will (say you will) but I love you still
I need you (I need you) more than anyone, darlin’
You know that I have from the start
So build me up (build me up) Buttercup, don’t break my heart.

But seriously folks. RG gives the lowdown on the gang bang that turned into the sound of one palm slapping. Last night was supposed to be about amending the Rules of the House, so that a resolution would be spared the procedures that normally accompany deliberations on, and passage of, a law. The usual suspects for their part, have already passed their own encouraging resolutions.

The papers elaborate how the game plan’s mutated: the Speaker vows a new constitution in 15 days, with the House targeted to proclaim itself a unilateral constituent assembly on December 6; then a plebiscite to be held before February 12. The problem, as more than one paper reports today, is public opinion is still strongly divided and may be turning hostile to the idea. Well, with flimsy reasoning like this,

Considering the time constraints, ChaCha advocates led by over optimist Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. are considering postponing the 2007 polls by six months until Nov. 30, 2007. The reason for this, they say, is that the same ballot boxes for the scheduled 2007 polls will be the same boxes used for the plebiscite. The deferment will also enable computerized elections to be in place.

The problem here is that even assuming that the ChaCha debates can be finished before Dec. 22, will there be enough time to educate and inform the people of the things at stake in Charter Change? More importantly, granted again that the House can educate and conduct a massive information campaign on what amendments to the 1987 Charter will be made and what form of parliamentary government will be proposed to the people, will the people accept them?

Who can blame increasing skepticism?

Avelino Cruz Jr. says he never explicitly stated the President considered martial law, despite press reports. In Newsbreak, there’s a revealing Q&A.

Augusto de Viana summarizes the story of the Bonifacio Monument the cornerstone of which was laid in 1929 and the monument finished in 1933. Everything Supremo related can be found at Bonifacio Papers. I understand Glenn May recently presented a new paper comparing the leadership styles of Bonifacio and Aguinaldo: let’s hope it will be available on line soon.

American media is at odds with American officialdom as Iraq’s increasingly, and bluntly, reported as being in the grips of a civil war. See History Unfolding, the Belmont Club, and TPM Cafe for contrasting views on the situation.

Just how thoroughly, does China bear down on the internet access of its citizens? One China expert argues, not as much as we think.

In the punditocracy, my column for today is Revolt of the Middle, which you’ve encountered in this space in previous days. Juan Mercado reflects on the Senate -and senators- past and present.

The economy is disappointing? Well, John Mangun opines it’s like the President’s health -needs diet and exercise. Connie Veneracion slogs through portions of the free trade treaty with Japan.

In the blogosphere: best typhoon-related blog heading: Typhoon Durian looks like a real stinker. All the heavy-duty typhoon-related stuff, though, is at Typhoon2000.com of course. On a mailing list I subscribe to, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center was pointed out. Bunker Chronicles says the weather is an intimation of Divine displeasure with the political situation.

Torn & Frayed in Manila on how cut-and-dried legal cases end up not that way at all.

Another Hundred Years Hence on why cities like Naga matter: they’re an opportunity to learn from Metro Manila’s mistakes and do things right.

Check out Touched by An Angel  which has made it to the finalist’s list in the “people’s choice” category in the 9th Philippine Web Awards (for which I was asked to judge in some categories: see all the finalists).

I’m in need of a layout person who can layout manuscripts according to Lulu.com formats. Please email me if you’re interested or know someone.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, constitution, history, ideas, media, Middle East, military, philippines, politics, president, state of emergency, war, Washington DC

Arab News Newspaper: Opportunity to Change the Ship’s Direction Is Being Lost in Manila

Opportunity to Change the Ship’s Direction Is Being Lost in Manila Manuel L. Quezon III

Â

From time to time, I’m asked to present what’s called a “national situationer,” for groups interested in the political situation. The difficulty is avoiding excessive partisanship in order to paint a rosy picture for my own political views, or pander to the audience. They are a welcome exercise in objectivity. Yesterday I had to undertake the process for a gathering of NGOs.  The country’s political battle lines have remained remarkably consistent since last year. When a survey asked people what the best political option for the country should be, 59 percent said the president should go, but divided among five options, with each option roughly equal to any other. The 35 percent preferred the president to remain in office were only divided between two options, with those who said they’d rather that Mrs. Arroyo stay in office until 2010 outnumbering the other, two to one (24 percent and 11 percent respectively). Those who preferred an extreme solution, either a coup or foreign intervention, numbered only 6 percent. This month’s survey of public opinion concerning the president’s economic performance basically said something similar, and suggests the three broad divisions of the public at present. Twenty-six percent approved of the president’s economic performance. Forty-eight percent said they disapproved. And 25 percent said they were unsure. I’ve mentioned in my columns that this indicates the country is basically divided: The administration’s base of support is 1 out of 4 Filipinos and nothing will make them change their minds about supporting the president. An additional 1 in 4 Filipinos consistently express themselves as unsure on nearly all major political issues, and so long as they don’t make up their minds, or claim they’re undecided, they serve to keep the administration in power. This means a fluctuating half, to slightly half, of the population has a negative opinion of the administration, but translating their general opposition to a particular advocacy hasn’t taken place, and most likely, will not take place though it can have a cumulative effect soon enough. The Great Undecided are, indeed, not exactly the Silent Majority the government claims supports it, but the Crucial Minority without whom neither administration nor opposition can claim victory. Victory has eluded both sides since July 2005. The momentum against the president was broken by Fidel Ramos, whom civil society and its allies failed to consult. The president neutralized Ramos by December of last year, but the efforts of her allies — which includes the 11 percent supporting her only because they view it as enabling the birth of a parliamentary regime — to engineer a change in the system has failed thus far. Not that the efforts of the president’s opponents have prospered, either. People Power has been renounced by a middle class ravaged by overseas migration and depressed by two decades of extra constitutional regime change that only solidified warlord and upper class irresponsibility and lack of accountability — with a populist backlash getting more pronounced each time. The signs were there between January and May 2001. Joseph Estrada confused the 40 percent that elected him with an overwhelming national mandate, which it was not; and laziness and greed led him to fall without anyone so much as bothering to catch him. But what followed was more of the same, and even worse. No one is surprised when a gangster steals; but society hasn’t quite lost its capacity to be outraged by the cupidity of its self-proclaimed betters. Just as the stealing after 1986 and selective reforms such as land reform that took the lands of retired professionals while exempting large estates, so did the swarming into office of civil society result in civil society being discredited. Cory Aquino failed in land reform and the PCGG squandered its chances. Ramos had the Centennial Expo scam, the disappearance of AFP modernization funds; Estrada had the BW stock market manipulation and the midnight Cabinet. Edsa Tres’s immediate legacy was the CODE-NGO bond float and the Impsa deal. To the public they were all part of the same, more of the same, and only accomplished widening the circle of usual suspects to include the former movers, shakers, and heroes, of two people power revolutions. I mention these scams because they demonstrate how every formerly crucial sector for reform has been tainted by greed: Edsa I and II veterans, the military, civil society, the churches, academe, civic organizations and the media. They’ve all gambled, lost, and meanwhile, a hefty portion of our productive population has left, is planning to leave, and will leave. They’ve discovered, in the process, they can do it despite anyone objecting, and furthermore seen enough overseas to know what we’ve done wrong, could do better, though the critical mass that means they can demand for things to improve hasn’t been achieved, not least because the nearly universal Filipino means for changing things, elections, has been put beyond the reach of overseas Filipinos and even their families. The Palace is good at a few things. It firmly controls the top brass of the police, which was enough to protect it even when the military’s loyalties were unclear. It has firmed up its hold on crucial officers in the armed forces. It has figured out how to starve and fatten, as the case may be, politicians through denying and approving pork barrel and other funds. It hasn’t hesitated to make scapegoats of its critics or even the independent-minded. And it remains marginally more competent, ruthless, focused, and lavishly funded compared to any portion of the opposition. And it maintains what’s necessary to keep that 25 percent in the undecided from making up their minds: It has all the appearances of respectability, education, competence and even class, that its opponents lack. This factor has been consistently underestimated by those eager to harness the masses, while the masses have learned three painful lessons in the past six years: First, its adulation is not enough to keep those it elects in power; two, the middle and upper class, the church, and so forth, can always veto its choices and will ruthlessly do so, if required; third, dissent will be crushed, violently, and no one outside the corridors of power can do anything about it — or seriously wants to. However, the opposition authentically represents majority opinion in one broad sense: More are united in dislike for the government, than are united in support for it. The president is now faced with the prospects of having to pay the piper for the support provincial bigwigs, warlords, and the political class that fed from the presidential trough over the past year. She has been unable to deliver on Charter change. The attempts to engineer it have been so clumsy and heavy-handed, they have alienated part of her base and antagonized even the undecided. Furthermore, the failure to win completely means her allies are now feuding among themselves, backbiting and even openly campaigning to finish the other faction off. The 11 percent that supports her only because her troubles provide a means to establish a government system in which provincial bosses and not national ones, hold sway, ironically composes a majority of the president’s political allies. That 11 percent is over-represented in government by the Lakas-CMD. The president has her core of loyalists, the Kampi. And Kampi is sick of playing second fiddle to Lakas. When a mass defection of Pampanga mayors from Lakas to Kampi was announced last week, it was the opening salvo in what the president’s needed to do since last year: Kill Lakas, or weaken it so that whatever happens, she has enough Kampi representatives to keep her politically safe. Since every key national player has been compromised or weakened, the president’s core of provincial political support has kept her safe. But if it was enough to save her last year, it may not be enough to protect her in the coming one. Ironically, a national sense of dislike, even contempt, for the methods used by the president and her allies to stay in power, as well as for those against her, may end up inspiring people to express their feelings at the polls — and not just nationally, as is traditionally the case, but locally, which doesn’t often happen. An anybody-but-the-Palace candidate victory in the Senate, next year, isn’t surprising. What would be surprising is if the dislike translates to administration candidates losing in congressional races. Scuttlebutt says this might just happen. Hence the final push, so-called, for Charter change, and widespread expectations of heavy spending by the government in next year’s polls. You see, you could subdivide the pie another way: Both the president and the traditional opposition claim a constituency of 40 percent. But that leaves 20 percent who could swing to one side or another — and fragments of that 20 percent already have; but were the whole 20 percent to budge, one side would definitely lose. Government knows this more than anyone else; and the expertise of the government is in applying its muscle, the military, where cash and relentless propaganda fails. The national situation is that of people on a raft. Our economy is resilient and even independent enough to keep itself afloat, regardless of whether the political players squabble on it fall off or not. But no one, on either side, has shown the path to dry land. No one has an incentive to row harder, or endure hunger or thirst. Cannibalism has, instead, broken out between the officers and the crew, and among the company union and the rival union. The passengers are at a loss at what to do. The situation requires an idea that will inspire the political players to overcome their differences, and inspire a hostile and tired electorate to rise above itself, too. The president cannot do it, but until someone else can, better the captain you know to the dangers of being rudderless in the wide-open sea. My only fear is that a tremendous opportunity to change not only the captain, but the ship’s direction, is being lost. One thing is sure: The majority opinion is that the only solution is through elections. All other options have failed and won’t be attractive for a long time to come. So for all concerned, if 2007 doesn’t result in the tie being broken, the next opportunity will only come in 2010, unless a plebiscite takes place earlier. Â

Â

Arab News Newspaper: Opportunity to Change the Ship’s Direction Is Being Lost in Manila

Opportunity to Change the Ship’s Direction Is Being Lost in Manila Manuel L. Quezon III

Â

From time to time, I’m asked to present what’s called a “national situationer,” for groups interested in the political situation. The difficulty is avoiding excessive partisanship in order to paint a rosy picture for my own political views, or pander to the audience. They are a welcome exercise in objectivity. Yesterday I had to undertake the process for a gathering of NGOs. The country’s political battle lines have remained remarkably consistent since last year. When a survey asked people what the best political option for the country should be, 59 percent said the president should go, but divided among five options, with each option roughly equal to any other. The 35 percent preferred the president to remain in office were only divided between two options, with those who said they’d rather that Mrs. Arroyo stay in office until 2010 outnumbering the other, two to one (24 percent and 11 percent respectively). Those who preferred an extreme solution, either a coup or foreign intervention, numbered only 6 percent. This month’s survey of public opinion concerning the president’s economic performance basically said something similar, and suggests the three broad divisions of the public at present. Twenty-six percent approved of the president’s economic performance. Forty-eight percent said they disapproved. And 25 percent said they were unsure. I’ve mentioned in my columns that this indicates the country is basically divided: The administration’s base of support is 1 out of 4 Filipinos and nothing will make them change their minds about supporting the president. An additional 1 in 4 Filipinos consistently express themselves as unsure on nearly all major political issues, and so long as they don’t make up their minds, or claim they’re undecided, they serve to keep the administration in power. This means a fluctuating half, to slightly half, of the population has a negative opinion of the administration, but translating their general opposition to a particular advocacy hasn’t taken place, and most likely, will not take place though it can have a cumulative effect soon enough. The Great Undecided are, indeed, not exactly the Silent Majority the government claims supports it, but the Crucial Minority without whom neither administration nor opposition can claim victory. Victory has eluded both sides since July 2005. The momentum against the president was broken by Fidel Ramos, whom civil society and its allies failed to consult. The president neutralized Ramos by December of last year, but the efforts of her allies — which includes the 11 percent supporting her only because they view it as enabling the birth of a parliamentary regime — to engineer a change in the system has failed thus far. Not that the efforts of the president’s opponents have prospered, either. People Power has been renounced by a middle class ravaged by overseas migration and depressed by two decades of extra constitutional regime change that only solidified warlord and upper class irresponsibility and lack of accountability — with a populist backlash getting more pronounced each time. The signs were there between January and May 2001. Joseph Estrada confused the 40 percent that elected him with an overwhelming national mandate, which it was not; and laziness and greed led him to fall without anyone so much as bothering to catch him. But what followed was more of the same, and even worse. No one is surprised when a gangster steals; but society hasn’t quite lost its capacity to be outraged by the cupidity of its self-proclaimed betters. Just as the stealing after 1986 and selective reforms such as land reform that took the lands of retired professionals while exempting large estates, so did the swarming into office of civil society result in civil society being discredited. Cory Aquino failed in land reform and the PCGG squandered its chances. Ramos had the Centennial Expo scam, the disappearance of AFP modernization funds; Estrada had the BW stock market manipulation and the midnight Cabinet. Edsa Tres’s immediate legacy was the CODE-NGO bond float and the Impsa deal. To the public they were all part of the same, more of the same, and only accomplished widening the circle of usual suspects to include the former movers, shakers, and heroes, of two people power revolutions. I mention these scams because they demonstrate how every formerly crucial sector for reform has been tainted by greed: Edsa I and II veterans, the military, civil society, the churches, academe, civic organizations and the media. They’ve all gambled, lost, and meanwhile, a hefty portion of our productive population has left, is planning to leave, and will leave. They’ve discovered, in the process, they can do it despite anyone objecting, and furthermore seen enough overseas to know what we’ve done wrong, could do better, though the critical mass that means they can demand for things to improve hasn’t been achieved, not least because the nearly universal Filipino means for changing things, elections, has been put beyond the reach of overseas Filipinos and even their families. The Palace is good at a few things. It firmly controls the top brass of the police, which was enough to protect it even when the military’s loyalties were unclear. It has firmed up its hold on crucial officers in the armed forces. It has figured out how to starve and fatten, as the case may be, politicians through denying and approving pork barrel and other funds. It hasn’t hesitated to make scapegoats of its critics or even the independent-minded. And it remains marginally more competent, ruthless, focused, and lavishly funded compared to any portion of the opposition. And it maintains what’s necessary to keep that 25 percent in the undecided from making up their minds: It has all the appearances of respectability, education, competence and even class, that its opponents lack. This factor has been consistently underestimated by those eager to harness the masses, while the masses have learned three painful lessons in the past six years: First, its adulation is not enough to keep those it elects in power; two, the middle and upper class, the church, and so forth, can always veto its choices and will ruthlessly do so, if required; third, dissent will be crushed, violently, and no one outside the corridors of power can do anything about it — or seriously wants to. However, the opposition authentically represents majority opinion in one broad sense: More are united in dislike for the government, than are united in support for it. The president is now faced with the prospects of having to pay the piper for the support provincial bigwigs, warlords, and the political class that fed from the presidential trough over the past year. She has been unable to deliver on Charter change. The attempts to engineer it have been so clumsy and heavy-handed, they have alienated part of her base and antagonized even the undecided. Furthermore, the failure to win completely means her allies are now feuding among themselves, backbiting and even openly campaigning to finish the other faction off. The 11 percent that supports her only because her troubles provide a means to establish a government system in which provincial bosses and not national ones, hold sway, ironically composes a majority of the president’s political allies. That 11 percent is over-represented in government by the Lakas-CMD. The president has her core of loyalists, the Kampi. And Kampi is sick of playing second fiddle to Lakas. When a mass defection of Pampanga mayors from Lakas to Kampi was announced last week, it was the opening salvo in what the president’s needed to do since last year: Kill Lakas, or weaken it so that whatever happens, she has enough Kampi representatives to keep her politically safe. Since every key national player has been compromised or weakened, the president’s core of provincial political support has kept her safe. But if it was enough to save her last year, it may not be enough to protect her in the coming one. Ironically, a national sense of dislike, even contempt, for the methods used by the president and her allies to stay in power, as well as for those against her, may end up inspiring people to express their feelings at the polls — and not just nationally, as is traditionally the case, but locally, which doesn’t often happen. An anybody-but-the-Palace candidate victory in the Senate, next year, isn’t surprising. What would be surprising is if the dislike translates to administration candidates losing in congressional races. Scuttlebutt says this might just happen. Hence the final push, so-called, for Charter change, and widespread expectations of heavy spending by the government in next year’s polls. You see, you could subdivide the pie another way: Both the president and the traditional opposition claim a constituency of 40 percent. But that leaves 20 percent who could swing to one side or another — and fragments of that 20 percent already have; but were the whole 20 percent to budge, one side would definitely lose. Government knows this more than anyone else; and the expertise of the government is in applying its muscle, the military, where cash and relentless propaganda fails. The national situation is that of people on a raft. Our economy is resilient and even independent enough to keep itself afloat, regardless of whether the political players squabble on it fall off or not. But no one, on either side, has shown the path to dry land. No one has an incentive to row harder, or endure hunger or thirst. Cannibalism has, instead, broken out between the officers and the crew, and among the company union and the rival union. The passengers are at a loss at what to do. The situation requires an idea that will inspire the political players to overcome their differences, and inspire a hostile and tired electorate to rise above itself, too. The president cannot do it, but until someone else can, better the captain you know to the dangers of being rudderless in the wide-open sea. My only fear is that a tremendous opportunity to change not only the captain, but the ship’s direction, is being lost. One thing is sure: The majority opinion is that the only solution is through elections. All other options have failed and won’t be attractive for a long time to come. So for all concerned, if 2007 doesn’t result in the tie being broken, the next opportunity will only come in 2010, unless a plebiscite takes place earlier. Â

Â

Gang Bang

I have to apologize to the students of Far Eastern University, some of whom I was supposed to address last Monday. A series of snafus resulted in my being unable to make it.

Yesterday, I gave a presentation to a group of NGOs at the Ateneo de Manila and my Arab News column for this week, contains the text of the presentation I delivered:  Opportunity to Change the Ship’s Direction Is Being Lost in Manila. My PowerPoint is also here: codengo.ppt

However, just when you think you’re in a position to provide a valid snapshot of conditions, conditions change and rearrange themselves. A dizzying amount of information and speculation swirled around yesterday afternoon, as news spread that a third caucus was going to be held in the Palace last night. RG Cruz gives the lowdown on the administration’s big push:

monday night, hours after the sws released its findings, 70 congressmen came in their suv’s after the break of dark, and sort of agreed, to zero in on the main agenda in revising the charter—-and klet go of everything else which seems to have been keeping the revisions at bay.

the shift to a parliamentary form of government.

majority leeader prospero nograles, who i caught up with after the meeting, says this is the emerging consensus. it can be as short as a 2 page document. debates start tuesday next week. and marathon hearings, even on a saturday, are a defeinite possibility.

He also reports on the Speaker’s strategy to engage the Senate and the House minority. Rep. Teodoro Locsin, Jr. was interviewed on ANC and went ballistic, obviously piqued, first of all, the committee he’s chairman of in the House was sidelined in the process. He had typically tart words aimed at the “technical working group” tasked with refining the text of amendments to be proposed, and said that as a member of the Ledac (legislative-executive council), no such committee had ever been authorized.

Locsin thundered that while he believes (as, apparently, Miriam Defensor Santiago believes) the House can go ahead and propose amendments -and would win, if challenged before the Supreme Court- the problem was that what could have been a Constitutionally-acceptable process has been tainted by “sneakiness,” which he said is becoming “congenital.” He said the Constitution mandates that the terms of members of the House will all expire on June 30, 2007 and postponing elections to November of next year will result in a Constitutional crisis: besides which it’s plain “intellectual dishonesty” to say a postponement is required to shift to the parliamentary system.  “Members of the House are already elected in the manner that a parliamentary system would require,” he said. The real motivation, according to him, for the postponement is that many of his colleagues who are “tired” have children who wouldn’t be of the right age in May, though when pressed to name names, he declined. He was quite adamant that an otherwise perfectly valid proposal was again being discredited by the manner chosen to push it forward. Part of the administration strategy, Locsin said he’d been told, is to rely on the public being uninterested and “forgetting” a plebiscite’s scheduled to take place.

This morning, the papers reported what transpired last night: see Malaya’s Palace caucus OKs scrapping of May polls: Cha-cha train sets parliamentary elections in November and the Inquirer’s House rushes plan for constituent assembly:

The House is reportedly now drafting a resolution that will convene Congress, including the Senate, into a Con-ass that will vote as one.

Based on the Palace-House game plan, the Con-ass will be called shortly before the Asean summit in Cebu in the second week of December, when most lawmakers shall have flown out of Manila to attend official functions in the Queen City of the South…

…The technical working group that was formed in last week’s caucus between Ms Arroyo and her allies was expected to complete the draft document containing the proposed amendments yesterday or by today.

Administration congressmen plan to present the document to senators in order to gain the latter’s support for the convening of the Con-ass by next week…

…A Palace insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authority to speak on the matter, said the early convening of the Con-ass was meant to force the Senate to act on the issue and elevate it to the Supreme Court sooner than later.

The Palace-House combine is hopeful that the high court will be able to rule on the matter before Feb. 12 to allow for the holding of a plebiscite before the start of the campaign period.

The insider said the Palace-House combine had some aces up its sleeve — between four and six senators who would take part in the Con-ass and lend legitimacy to the exercise.

The senators are waiting up to the last minute because they want to make sure that the Palace-House combine had the numbers to pull off the exercise, the insider said.

The time for action is limited: the House has to pass a resolution proposing amendments by December 22; and a plebiscite has to be held and the results announced,  before February 12 (in case the administration loses, it can then put up its senate slate: a media colleague said the government senate’s slate being refined, and it will be surprisingly “young” in composition, hoping to provide a contrasting image to the same-old, same-old composition of the opposition slate. In other words, a slate targeted at courting the undecided.

Part of the scuttlebutt is that the Peso is being kept from hitting 45 to 1, so that such an “improvement” can coincide either with the House approval of proposed amendments, or the proclamation of the administration senate slate, but when I asked people familiar with our currency and how its handled, the ability of the government to control the exchange rate (they claim) isn’t that specific.

What is clear is that the President, who has, until now, rather cleverly fostered the impression she’s ambivalent about specific strategies used in attempting Charter Change, has decided to invest more of her political capital in the process. It’s significant that the caucuses have been held at the Palace, and that the cabinet’s acting in tandem with the House leadership. No more finessing when it comes to the separation of powers. The “big push” also takes advantage of the retirement of the Chief Justice on December 6, and the holiday season.

In other news, Avelino Cruz Jr. intimates that martial law was set to be proclaimed last January but the plan was scuttled by Washington; the actual interview will air on Ricky Carandang’s The Big Picture ANC show tomorrow night. Cruz seems to be using his remaining days in office to apply pressure on behalf of his pet reforms in the military, although the implications of his appointees resigning is, I think, overstated. He put them there, it’s about right that they quit as their boss is due to quit.

Unseemly is the decision of some Justices of the Supreme Court to refuse to submit to a public interview. In the old days, they would have had no choice but to submit to the Commission on Appointments. What is not at bar, so to speak, is their current competence or anything else as associate justices, but what they would do, and how they think, as a potential Chief Justice. This the public has every right to know. Those that refuse a public interview should cease being considered for the position. (On a Supreme Court-related note, see Newsbreak’s profile of Justice Carpio; Inq7.net posts information on the nominees for Chief Justice: see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5).

Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano seems poised to be screwed in the House.

the wire services report that the economy continues to grow, but at a slower pace; Business Mirror seems to see things as being pretty chipper. Take a look at Dr. Michael Alba’s continuing series on the economy.

Moderate enthusiasm from the MILF on the government’s latest proposals to settle territorial issues.

Carlos Conde reports on deteriorating Filipino skills in English (hat tip to Filipino Soul).

In the punditocracy, Manuel Buencamino runs through the AFP Chief of Staff’s rather incriminating statements on courts martial. The Inquirer editorial says the Justice Secretary’s on the verge of sabotaging the Cebu summit.

In the blogosphere,  a dry holiday season: water rationing in December infuriates The Bunker Chronicles.

Political points: Nagsusulat Lamang points to the miserably low percentage of students from the Ateneo de Manila who are registered to vote. The statistics, I’d wager, when it comes to other colleges and universities are equally grim.  Philippine Commentary thinks the President’s husband is going hammer-and-tongs against the media because a good offense is a good defense. Stepping on Poop says not enough political commentators weighed in on the Muslim lawmaker who went postal over being served pork. saludagabre gets miffed by a cantankerous American’s “CIAish tirades.” Philippine Politics 04 on how Manny Pacquiao’s Manila residency’s being engineered.

This made me laugh: baratillo@cubao pens a musical number.

caffeine sparks on Viktor Sumsky. Newsstand on the little school that could. Maureen Lycaon on Borneo treeshrews. Marichu Lambino goes the whole hog on disclosures (but rightly so, this is why you can view my CV).

Technorati Tags: Blogging, constitution, media, military, philippines, politics, president

The charge of the Palace brigade

Last week I attended a conference on the peace process, put together by the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. Obviously the media was highly critical in terms of the killings of journalists impeding the ability of media people to report actual conditions in the provinces. And there is no progress in terms of the peace process with the CPP-NPA-NDF although prospects with Muslim rebels seems a bit more promising. As I understood it, though, the biggest obstacle is the “ancestral domain” issue: the demand of some Muslim groups for compensation of some kind, for natural resources in parts of Mindanao now within Christian-settled areas. The biggest breakthrough, though, in broad strokes, is a willingness to discuss a setup for Muslim areas that is, for all intents and purposes, Commonwealth status for Muslim Mindanao.

Sec. Dureza, nonetheless, was optimistic about the peace process (as he has to be) and pretty forthcoming with information, both on and off the record. He seemed unaware, however, that the government’s “left hand” and “right hand” policy for achieving peace is highly ironic, to say the least. He expressed regret that the national budget wasn’t passed, and tried to lobby for acceptance of an allocation for 600 barangays that he says are no longer war zones: however such allocations were immediately suspected of being thinly-disguised pork barrel projects by government critics. His remarks were quite helpful in understanding both the potential and the limitations of the peace process. He explained how much of the work is done behind the scenes, and that announcements of formal meetings suggest the hard work’s been done -but that it’s also difficult to remain tied to timelines as the peace process is a fluid and dynamic one.

An interesting tidbit from another official I talked to on the sidelines is that the success rate for rebel returnee programs is a miserable 30%. That means efforts to reintegrate rebels to society and provide them with a livelihood fails 7 out of 10 times. The reasons, according to the official I talked to, are many: some rebels are impatient; others belong to groups that are too small and isolated to sustain a livelihood program. Where there’s success, it’s due to funding being on a scale big enough to make an impact, on a community large enough to make a go of things. The official did say, oddly enough, that the failure of livelihood programs wasn’t held against those attempting to set them up: but that doesn’t compensate for the depressing failure rate. The dilemma is really that increased funding would open up new charges of pork barrel spending.

Paulynn Paredes Sicam, veteran journalist, sits on the panel tasked with negotiations with the CPP-NPA-NDF and readily admitted that the talks are to put it mildly, in limbo. Unlike Durera who, as a member of the cabinet, has to be a loyal partisan, she speaks her own mind. On the sidelines, I asked her why she continued to be engaged in what seems to be an exercise in futility. She replied by saying someone has to try to keep reminding the powers-that-be that peace is a priority, and not surrender the field to the hard-liners. She observed that the past twenty years has seen the disappearance of a  “peace constituency” and that the urgent task at hand is to rebuild one. To this end, she appealed to the media to devote attention to peace developments, and to bear in mind that sensationalistic, or utterly cynical reportage can have a tremendously harmful effect on the prospects of peace, and be quite damaging to peace prospects in particular localities.  She also said tere are many inspiring stories that are never reported or superficially reported: cases where communities rise up, and basically tell both government and rebel troops to get the hell out and leave them in peace -and then, maintain that peace.

My reaction followed hers, and I limited myself to making a few observations (our topic was, how peace reporting and commentary can best be carried out by media, including new media). If what’s needed is a peace constituency, as Sicam said, then I suggested we begin with understanding how print, radio, TV and new medias are increasingly targeting niche audiences, and how media outfits now operating on a 24 hour news cycle and with cross-platform content use in mind, have even less time and resources for reporting stories that could use depth -such as the peace process.

Government has resources that, if properly used, could help dispel the traditional -and increasing- mistrust between media and government and government and the public and the public and media. It all boils down to government providing less propaganda and more useful information, even if the information is temporarily embarrassing or inconvenient. If everyone in the news and media food chain feeds off reporters, then government should do all it can to provide useful, concise and freely-available information to reporters first, and the public second, as more and more media consumers double-check the reports they read, hear or view.

For example, the peace process involves its own language, and I had to wonder if, in the rush to hold pro- and con- press conferences, the players and reporters were all using the same language. Are the terms being flung about all understood in the same way by everyone involved? And where would one go, to find out generally-accepted definitions? A glossary of peace process related terms is something government’s in a good position to provide, and that includes contending definitions by other parties, which would help explain why negotiations bog down. Another thing is that a visual language is just as important as precision in written and oral language: where are the useful maps, and charts, to show peace areas, conflict zones, proposed autonomous or other areas?

Government has a tough job to do, because whatever happens at the top, the process has to be kept going by the bureaucrats and others who’ve made a commitment to the process. Going back to the peace constituency idea, government has to abandon the 9 to 5 mentality and realize that even as it has to analyze and break down the many fragmented but not necessarily mutually-exclusive constituencies it has to court, it also has to be make information available in a sustained and credible manner. What coordination exists is for propaganda purposes and this mentality has to be changed.

Philippine Daily Inquirer publisher Isagani Yambot then gave an impassioned plea for reporters to be spared from harassment and intimidation in conflict-ridden areas, and spoke up for the profession, which he says has become a target.

Over the weekend, a splendid evening with Dr. Victor Somsky, a far-ranging discussion on the conference he attended and his observations as a returning visitor to the country. He hopes to secure some sort of support for his two-volume work, Fiesta Filipina: Reforms, Revolutions and Active Nonviolence in a Developing Society. (Moscow, Vostochnaya Literatura Publishers, 2003). It’s a chicken and egg situation. While he has a precis of sorts, it isn’t enough for anyone to be able to decide if the book should be published in the Philippines, or not; showing the actual two volume work, complete with some highly interesting maps (something I think our books on history constantly fail to use to full advantage). Talking to him, though, quickly reveals how thoroughly he’s delved into the question of reform versus revolution, and he has some challenging views that are quite engrossing.

Particularly interesting, for me, is that most historians who tackle Philippine history come from the the United States or the Philippines; there are only a few who bother to tackle the country’s past and who come from other parts of the world (though I understand there’s a growing number of Japanese scholars who tackle some Philippine-related matters). Somsky brings to the table a European orientation and the benefits of Russian scholarship, which is rigorous and makes use of developments in Marxist and other thought in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the very least, it’s an interesting challenge to the flavor of Marxist orthodoxy that emerged among many Philippine scholars in the 1960s and which continues to be the dominant way of interpreting things. A Russian scholar, of course, knows a thing or two about how revolutions actually take place, what the different forces involved are; and well, when you have a scholar who has studied Indonesia in depth, and then turned his attention to the Philippines, the comparisons and contrasts can be quite engrossing indeed.

One suggestion he made was that the standard view of the masses versus the elite could stand improvement by being more nuanced. He said a revolutionary situation, when it emerges, involves the interplay of contending forces, of which there are really, three: the radicals, who push on ahead, often without having fully planned out what they want to accomplish, because the situation is necessarily so dynamic and fluid; the middle, represented by the principalia (provincial political bosses, not all of whom were ilustrados, who were more urban and cosmopolitan in orientation and origin)  who are in the worst position, so to speak, because they are trapped precisely in between the others; and the counterrevolutionary forces, which, however, should not be confused with purely reactionary forces.

As I understood it, Somsky views Bonifacio as the archetype of the revolutionary element; Aguinaldo, of the middle; and the counterrevolutionaries are the ilustrados. What he finds remarkable is not that the radicals precipitated the revolution, or that the ilustrados fought it tooth and nail, but that it was the middle, represented by Aguinaldo, who prevailed for much of the revolutionary period. What defeated Aguinaldo was the United States, which Somsky described as a kind of enforcer of the ilustrados’ will. However, the ilustrados’ alliance with the United States resulted in their repudiation by popular opinion, and resulted in the provincial, political principalia becoming the dominant players in the development of the Philippines as a nation.

Somsky discussed how radical movements, in a sense, by force of shock and awe define the agenda, leaving all other contending groups to adopt -and adapt- the ideas and even rhetoric of the radicals, although the radical weakness is precisely that while they can harness the growing, explosive momentum of a revolutionary situation, they arent necessarily equipped either to fully articulate, or accomplish, where the revolution is headed or what its terminal point should be. Counterrevolutionaries, on the other hand, know what they don’t want -the chaos and anarchy of a revolution- but they lack the numbers to oppose the radicals. Everyone, then, is scrambling for allies and in the Philippine context, from 1896-98 the principalia allied itself with the radicals and the counterrevolutionary ilustrados were cornered. However, the limitations of the revolutionary leadership began to take its toll: those best equipped to define what should emerge were sidelined (Mabini) or rubbed out (Luna) even after Aguinaldo had his showdown, as inevitably happens in revolutions, with Bonifacio.

He argues that the ilustrados came to the conclusion that Aguinaldo was neither equipped, mentally or politically, to establish a viable state; that therefore, since the radicals had already articulated independence as the ideal, then independence had to be achieved as the counterrevolutionaries best preferred it, in an evolutionary and not revolutionary, manner. American involvement gave the counterrevolutionaries what they’d lacked, which was, as Somsky bluntly put it, “muscle.” But at the cost of their standing before the people. I didn’t mention it at the time, but this was precisely Mabini’s thesis when he looked back at the failure of the revolution.

By 1907 the ilustrados were discredited and the principalia, ascendant, where they’ve remained until the present. Somsky’s thinking (recall his papers on Rizal and reform vs. revolution I posted last week) fully discusses how radical notions continue to have echoes in the present day, but how the dominant theme has been a kind of tie between the two ideals, which has resulted in the country being stuck, never fully achieving either. How to break the logjam? My impression is that the inability to achieve a resolution lies in the much-vaunted masses not being given enough recognition for their basically conservative, and principalia-oriented instincts, which means both the radicals and ilustrados have been frustrated in their efforts to mobilize them. Time and again, the ones who mobilize the masses are neither radicals nor ilustrados, but the principalia. And during the rare periods when a kind of national solidarity is achieved, it’s been principally along the lines of peaceful, non-violent change.

Somsky says the Philippines has made a profound impression on the world twice: in 1935, with the establishment of the Commonwealth, and in 1986. The Commonwealth, he said, came as a profound shock to the Colonial Powers who devoted great energy and resources to making sure their colonial subjects didn’t hear of it. He pointed to an interview of Mahatma Gandhi by Carlos P. Romulo (which I’d never heard of) in which Gandhi said he would be delighted with a Tydings-McDuffie Act for India! What has served to make people under-appreciate what a significant development that was, was the transformation of the United States, after World War II, from the image it had acquired because of its Philippine policies, as a “benign hegemon,” as Somsky puts it -a transformation that had its most immediate and traumatic effect in the Philippines, which was unprepared to understand the sudden shift in American policy during the Truman administration.

1986, to his mind, inaugurated an era that is still ongoing -the People Power era, which is facing its own problems as what are often unique situations end up being forced into what he calls the manufacturing of a “technology for regime change.” But as Edsa Dos showed, it’s not a method that is applicable all the time, or which will always be successful.

I do hope his views get discussed more and that his books end up published here at home.

Today, the President’s medical check-up aside (and lurid speculation; how’s this for an ambiguous statement: Arroyo as healthy as economy), and the Secretary of Justice showing the government’s nervous about protests in Cebu City during the Asean Summit, and a former Imperial Japanese Navy medic admits he conducted vivisections on Filipino prisoners.

the news is that the Speaker is dangling regional representation to entice senatorial support, and that the President is going hell-for-leather to force constitutional amendments through: regardless of public opposition as shown by the surveys. She presides over a council of war today (note prominent seat at the table for the Legion). Plan A being dead, Plan B (a Constituent Assembly) or a new Plan C (a people’s initiative path, but this time proposing simply the abolition of the Senate) are on the table:

Meanwhile, Ulap Spokesman and Eastern Samar Gov. Ben Evardone said they were prepared to embark on a second round of signature drive if their second motion for reconsideration before the Supreme Court was rejected.

He said they had already informed Mrs. Arroyo of their plan to gather again 5.6 million signatures, but this time focusing only on the shift from a bicameral congress to a unicameral congress.

“We have already told the President about this. We said that if our second motion for reconsideration is denied, then we are left with no choice but to gather again signatures, but this time avoiding the pitfalls raised by the Supreme Court when they called our signature campaign a grand deception,” he said.

Evardone said they would no longer ask in their questionnaire if people were supporting the shift to a parliamentary form of government since the Supreme Court had said the issue was so complicated for laymen to understand given the short period of time that the signatures were collected.

“We will stick to the question of whether Filipinos still want the current bicameral or if they want a unicameral Congress. I think we will in fact surpass the number of signatures we have gathered for the first petition because this time, the issue is very clear given the constant gridlock between the Senate, the House and Malacañang,” he added.

The Palace missed out on its window for opportunity: had it pushed for simply a unicameral National Assembly instead of going whole hog, it would probably have fared better and been accepted by the public. But not now.

Which brings us to a tale of two surveys: Pulse Asia released it’s latest senate race rankings, and Social Weather Stations released its findings on Constitutional change.

The Sept. 24 to Oct. 2 Third Quarter 2006 Social Weather Survey has error margins of ±3% for national percentages and ±6% for regional percentages .

It says a majority (67%) of Filipinos would still vote “No” if a plebiscite to approve a proposed new constitution were held today, unchanged since the previous quarter,

A solid majority of 85% in Metro Manila will vote “No” in a plebiscite for a new constitution, similar to 83% recorded in the previous quarter. The “No” vote is 68% in the rest of Luzon, 65% in Mindanao and 56% in the Visayas.

Four out of five (80%) of class ABC, 70% of class E and 64% of class D will also vote “No” if a plebiscite to approve a proposed new constitution were held today.

Seven out of ten (69%) reject the idea of allowing President Arroyo to become head of government even after 2010, up from 44% recorded in March 2006.
Half (51%) oppose the idea of having only one chamber of Parliament elected in each district and from Party-list, up from 38% in March, implying that most Filipinos would rather continue having a Senate.

A majority (68%), compared to 50% in March, reject the idea of holding the next elections in 2010 and extending the terms of all officials. Opposition to the idea of letting the head of government be elected by legislators instead of directly by voters likewise increased from 56% in March to 65% in September.

Two out of five (43%), compared to 25% in March, oppose lessening restrictions on foreign participation in the economy.

The other survey is the topic of my column for today, They’re making a list.

The Pulse Asia survey results has some interesting things.

At present, 19 personalities – mostly from the political opposition – have a statistical chance of winning with the following being declared winners if the May 2007 elections were actually conducted today: (1) former Senator Legarda (52.9%); (2) Senator Panfilo M. Lacson (41.1%); (3) Senator Francis N. Pangilinan (36.6%); (4) Senator Manuel B. Villar, Jr. (31.4%); (5) Taguig-Pateros Representative Alan Peter S. Cayetano (30.5%); (6) former Senator Vicente C. Sotto III (30.3%); (7) Senator Ralph G. Recto (28.7%); (8) Ms. Korina Sanchez (27.0%); (9) Atty. Aquilino Pimentel III (24.8%); (10) former Senator Gregorio B. Honasan (24.1%); (11) San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito-Estrada (22.1%); and (12) Senator Edgardo J. Angara (20.3%).

Given the survey’s margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points, the following individuals also have a statistical chance of winning: (1) Tarlac Representative Benigno C. Aquino III (19.3%); (2) House Minority Floor Leader Francis G. Escudero (19.3%); (3) former Senator John Henry Osmeña (17.8%); (4) Muntinlupa Representative Rozzano Rufino B. Biazon (17.8%); (5) Ilocos Norte Representative Imee R. Marcos (17.6%); (6) Senator Joker P. Arroyo (17.0%); and (7) Senator Luisa P. Estrada (16.9%).

In the punditocracy, Amando Doronila reacts by saying what’s being ordered by the Palace is a suicide charge. Billy Esposo points out why the suicide charge is taking place. Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ says the way to bring back sanity to the Charter Change debate, is to pose a plebiscite question next May: does Juan de la Cruz want a Constitutional Convention, or not?

Bong Austero is shocked, shocked! By recent adverts.

Read an interesting white paper on the Thai coup.

The blogosphere buzzed in response to the passing of Max Soliven, most people like Ellygears registering shock at the news. Ruth recounts with an observant -and mordant- eye for detail, how students reacted at the school owned by Soliven’s wife.  QueenBee and eLLe knew his family, personally;  and he had his fair share of admirers, such as I am your THREAT and sunshine as well as cholo_the_man.

Comelec AKO pays an image-based tribute. Rodel Bañares and Toots Ople pay tribute, too. And catinthehat26 reproduces a snippet from an interview.

The Bunker Chronicles and Daily Musings and Purple Phoenix and An OFW in Hong Kong take a less adulatory look at Soliven’s passing.

History Unfolding observes that the era of large-scale industrial war has passed, and that Americans haven’t come to grips with the fact:

Vietnam was the last major industrial-age war (although the Soviets also gave something similar a go in Afghanistan), and the reaction against it has effectively ended that era, beginning in 1973 with the end of the draft in the United States. (No western nation still has conscription, although China and India do.) Personally I am inclined to regard this, on the whole, as a good thing. The wars of the 1861-1973 period were enormously destructive and their results were often equivocal and disappointing. The Civil War ended slavery, but not white supremacy; the First World War had no good long-term results and led to huge setbacks to European civilization; and even the Second World War spread Communism around much of the globe. The world’s peoples have much less to fear from war today (although Iraq is showing how destructive civil conflict can be), and that, it seems to me, is a good thing. But it means that we must acknowledge our limitations as well.

Tomorrow, on The Explainer on ANC, part 2 on the topic of automating elections. It’s really difficult trying to balance the orientation and even content of a show. There will be viewers like beabear who will like the choices made by the show, and other viewers like CAFFiend, who will detest it. Others, such as Philippine e-Legal Forum and comelec AKO find it provokes thinking further on a topic. All I can say is we’re trying our best and learning through trial and error. MakingAPoint! has a nice definition to bear in mind, though. Needless to say all observations -good, bad, constructive, dismissive- are appreciated.

Technorati Tags: books, constitution, history, ideas, journalism, media, military, people’s initiative, philippines, politics, president, Rizal, society, Washington DC

Mind-mushing goodness

I apparently represent an utterly wrong and doomed demographic. Some of my favorite shows didn’t even finish their inaugural seasons, in particular Heist (axed after only 4 episodes) and Threshold, which didn’t even finish it’s season. But mercifully, there are plenty of shows out there to keep this couch potato firmly budding at home:

1. The Office (US) is one of the most cruel, yet oddly enough, simultaneously kind comedy shows out there. For a time, my production assistant insisting I’m the spitting image of Rainn Wilson put me off the show, but I’ve learned to come to terms with resembling him (allegedly). Anyway,  great quotes at Wikiquote
2. Boston Legal has some of the most delightful repartee (see Wikiquote) and it’s probably my favorite TV show. There’s the Unofficial Fan Site. The fun of seeing a coldly calculating James Spader being best friends with William Shatner as a priapic old perv is enhanced by a kind of reunion of old TV favorites, from Candice Bergen to Rene Auberjonois.
3.  Prison Break. Nail-biting cliffhangers. The Fugitive on a grand scale.
4. Heroes (the Wikipedia entry’s pretty thorough) because no one can have enough of X-Men style stories.
5. Dr. Who. Self explanatory.
6. Torchwood. A spin-off from Dr. Who. Like X-Files but without your wanting to strangle Scully.
7. Spooks. The espionage series takes on 21st century sophistication.
8. Supernatural. Imagine pretty, narcissistic, bitchy Hardy Boys dueling ghouls and demons. Fun.
9. The State Within. A brief series but the latest in the British TV renaissance.
10. Close To Home. I don’t know why I enjoy this show so much, but there’s something I find calming in the story of a Heartland attorney.
11. Criminal Minds begins and ends with nifty quotes (quoted and compiled in Wikiquote) there’s Mandy Patinkin see the fan site, Criminal Minds Online. Because really, we’ll never be sick of wacky serial killer stories, will we?
12. Desperate Housewives. It’s campier by the year, but thank God this season is an improvement on the last.
13. Extras some fun quotes at Wikiquote. With The Office, one of the cruelest but most hilarious shows, ever. More bittersweet than The Office, though. The cameos are brilliant.
14. Ghost Whisperer. Formula fun. You know how every episode will begin and end. And it’s not really scary. But it’s startling enough to keep you wanting to come back for more of Jennifer Love Hewitt.
15. House I hear the medicine’s lousily written. But a cranky, snarly, snappy Hugh Lawrie is the perfect character to watch after a tough day’s work.
16. How I Met Your Mother. It’s going to be legendary!
17. My Name is Earl if you liked Raising Arizona, this is the White Trash version (here’s some quotes from Wikiquote).
18. Standoff: this is a show with the kind of chemistry among the lead characters that leaves you rooting for them (instead of wanting them plowed under by a runaway thresher).
19. Weeds has to be one of the wittiest and most ruthless dissections of suburbia out there.
20. CSI: New York. Because we’re all into one of the three flavors of CSI sooner or later. And I forgot NUMB3RS. It’s like watching a magic show every week.

In view of the above, nifty would be to have a TVMax.

In other weekend odds and ends: I love it when some survey firms send you money to entice you to answer questionnaires. Time Magazine recently sent one out on Toyota, and it came with a dollar bill! Which lead me to two things you can do with your fresh, crisp, free dollar bill: Enroll it in Where’s George? Loads of locations for the Philippines. Or, play OmegaBuck.

Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories are online, complete with the original illustrations! There’s a free audiobook version, too.

Carlos Celdran on how people ignore our mainstream culture and how the Philippine consulate in New York City’s been subdivided and seen better days.

Wierd Meat samples dog meat. theory.isthereason is fascinated by a service that sends you toast with your name (or a tag phrase of your choice) branded on it.

The Mother of All Wheelchairs.

Does the 1% rule apply to this blog?

Technorati Tags: TV

Reform from above?

The Russian Czar Alexander II said “It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for it to abolish itself from below”. The line came to mind as I’ve been reading a couple of papers sent me by a Russian scholar, Dr. Victor Sumsky. He’s here for the International Association of Historians of Asia conference. We hope to meet sometime after the conference concludes.

One of the papers he sent is on Rizal, titled “The Prophet of Two Revolutions,” which discusses his influence on two revolutions, those of 1896 and 1986.

But the paper that interested me the most is another one he sent, “Reform or Revolution? The Unresolved Philippine Dilemma.”

Since this blog will be inactive over the next couple of days (I’ll be attending a conference on the peace process), I hope you’ll download his two papers and take a look at them. Much meat to chew over.

Today, the papers weigh in with their versions of the Supreme Court’s decision: see what the Philippine Daily Inquirer (“The Oct. 25 decision did not rule on the adequacy of RA 6735, but the separate opinions of the justices revealed their stand on the issue”), and Malaya (Ignacio Bunye: Supreme Court decision “will not stop us, however, from our advocacy that we need fundamental reform in order to remove the remaining stumbling block towards our competitiveness.”), the Manila Times (Gabriel Claudio: Supreme Court’s decision “formally activates the constituent assembly mode for changing the Constitution.”), and the Manila Standard-Today (Gabriel Claudio: ““This is probably all that the administration allies in Congress were waiting for, to go all-out for a constituent assembly.”).

Legion rejoices over its defeat. One Voice suggests government moves on.

President’s allies engage in target practice on administration trial balloon.

Cayetano pulls the rug from under Arroyos’ feet.

Jaime Augusto Zobel’s prescription for economic growth.

Landmark case in America: “the soapbox is not liable for whatever the speaker has said.” Blog joy.

In the punditocracy, my Arab News column for this week is Arroyo Depending on the 39% of Undecided Voters to Remain Passive. This is an elaboration of my thoughts in an earlier column published prior to the most recent Pulse Asia survey. Note the Palace is irritated with the survey results.

The Inquirer editorial is all for a fixed term for the AFP chief of staff. Conrado de Quiros clearly states the difference between Honasan-led coup attempts, and last February’s effort at a military “withdrawal of support”:

Unlike the RAM coups of the past, the February “withdrawal of support” was not a messianic act, it was a pragmatic act. It was not an act of adventurism, it was an act of desperation. Its leaders did not mount it because they wanted to; they did so because they were forced to. Nobody else would or could do it, people power having gotten powerless, or too tired, to oust someone who stole the vote and the crown. The very people who mounted Edsa People Power II themselves were importuning them to do it.

Unlike the RAM coups of the past, the February “withdrawal of support” was not a coup in the traditional sense; it was an extension of people power. It did not rely on a few individuals to carry it out; it relied on the nation to do it. If it were a coup, it would have been the most popular coup in the world, in every sense of the word “popular.” Hell, it was so openly advertised they even tried to get Generals Generoso Senga and Hermogenes Esperon to join it. The real coup, in every sense of the word too, happened well before, wreaked by GMA with the help of Garci.

Incidentally, see reports on the military brass being angry an initial report exonerating accused officers was leaked, and how the chief of staff is out for blood.

Manuel Buencamino takes a look at the informal huddle between the Philippine and American presidents in Vietnam.

Jojo Robles says the anti-billboard backlash has proven to be B.S. Bong Austero is all agog over Philippine Idol, but wonders if the qualified will really win. Marichu Villanueva says taking creative license with the national anthem is illegal.

The anatomy of addictions, dissected in i-Report.

The blogosphere has Comelec AKO reacting to last night’s The Explainer.

Ellen Tordesillas is suing the President’s husband.

Confessions at 7:00 AM outs herself! She’s Marichu S. Lambino and will be blogging under her own name from now on!

Katataspulong blows the whistle on what he considers racketeering on the part of civil servants obsessed with racking up legal fees.

Mga Diskurso ni Doy reproduces an interesting strategy paper on the coming elections. An intriguing outline appears in Trel B, of a national situationer from July, discussed in the Center for Strategic Studies.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, constitution, media, military, One Voice, people’s initiative, philippines, politics, president, Reality TV, society

Trial balloon

It’s official (2:30 pm): the Supreme Court is expected due to formally announce at 2 pm 4 pm that it has denied, with finality, the motion for reconsideration for the so-called “people’s intiative.” My understanding, though, is that the Supreme Court also reversed its previous decision that the initiative and referendum law is insufficient.

Acting on the motions for reconsideration of the decision of October 25, 2006, the Court resolves by the same vote of 8-7 to deny with finality the said motion for reconsideration, as the basic issues raised therein have been duly passed upon by this court and no substantial arguments were presented to warrant the reversal of the questioned decision,” the three-page resolution said.

The division of the justices’ vote was the same as when they ruled on the original petition.

In a separate vote, 10 justices ruled… that Republic Act 6735 or Initiative Referendum Act is sufficient to amend the Constitution through a people’s initiative.

But the high court stood firm on its position that the signature campaign conducted by the Sigaw ng Bayan could not be passed off as a people’s initiative to institute constitutional reforms because of the questionable procedures that the group had used.

This means that the law is fully in force, and no one has any excuse not to undertake a proper people’s initiative in the future -within the parameters described by the court. For example, the public could propose two 4-year terms for the presidency, or run-off elections for the presidency; still, future debates might be,  could an initiative propose, a unicameral legislature? What is clear, though, is that initiative cannot propose the parliamentary system. But for the short term, the meaning of the decision is: the Legion can try again. Fair enough.

Looks like the Palace may be beating a strategic retreat after the Ebdane trial balloon inspired a critical reaction. Today’s trial balloon is the idea of a unity ticket for the senate (RG Cruz says Palace is giving up on Plans A and B and is thinking along campaign-related lines). What’s the purpose of the trial balloon? To determine if a presidential endorsement will be a political kiss of death or not. You have to tie in these trial balloons with other news. Such as this:  new survey comes out, which seems to validate my observations. If you notice, the President’s core supporters amount to about a quarter of the population.

Look at the survey figures. In broad strokes, it shows a country divided, and the administration’s strongest suit, its economic performance, seems viewed by the public along the partisan lines I pointed out: the president’s hard-core constituency, 25%, thinks she’s doing great; the hard-core opposition refuses to see her achievements, and they’re at 39% (more or less the Estrada constituency holding firm); a huge percentage, 36%, is undecided and is the segment that the opposition and administration are battling for, but which to my mind, is more inclined to support the status quo.

Time Magazine has Andrew Marshall commenting on the political killings in the Philippines:

In August, in response to international concern, Arroyo set up the six-member Melo Commission, led by a retired Supreme Court judge, to probe the killings. Some bereaved families doubt its independence and have refused to testify. This distrust is symptomatic of a profound loss of faith in Arroyo herself. She is an unpopular President, plagued by corruption scandals and slammed for her failure to improve living standards. Arroyo has condemned the killings, but she will not implicate the military—even as it implicates itself. Col. Eduardo del Rosario, head of a military antiterrorist unit called Task Force Davao, admitted to TIME earlier this year that “individual commanders” might be responsible for the killings.

Investigations into these deaths yield hardly any results. Of 114 political murders recorded since 2001 by a special police task force, arrests have been made in just three cases, with no reported convictions. The President’s apologists will be hard-pressed on this one, since they’ve enjoyed trumpeting Time’s other stories about the Philippines in the past.

The figure of 114 murders is interesting. Using it in the report implicitly rejects the figure of 700++ murdered put forward by some human rights groups and which is used as the authoritative figure by the National Democrats.

USA considers playing a larger role in Mindanao peace process.

T-bills auction scrapped. Palace says cheaper housing loans reflect something “astounding”.

Tomas Osmeña asks Palace to release his brother’s pork barrel, and says it’s a misconception to think Cebu is rich.

On an earlier Osmeña, the historical document of the day is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s last press conference was almost entirely about the Philippines. In my never-ending Roxas biography project, Osmeña’s greatest political misfortune was having someone knowledgeable and sympathetic to Philippine concerns drop dead, just as the crushing burden of the presidency was at its greatest. A certain momentum survived in the new Truman administration, but the relationship would never be the same.

In the punditocracy, Anding Roces (a former Secretary of Education) examines the origins of the decline of the educational system. Tony Abaya says the Palace’s real worries are over Joseph Estrada and Panfilo Lacson. Luis Teodoro wonders if it makes political sense for the President to keep cozying up to Dubya.

The Business Mirror editorial says a new “economic story line” is required. Dr. Michael Alba, head of the Economics Department of De La Salle University, begins a series: The Philippine Economy from the Perspective of Growth Economics (Part I). (During meetings for a book to be released by the AIM Policy Center in which we participated, I recall Dr. Alba making the interesting observation that 1983 marked a watershed year in Philippine history: the year, he says can be proven with data, that corruption became endemic in our society).

Naima Bouteldja argues the ban of Muslim headscarves in Europe didn’t originate with the public, but the politicians instead.

In the blogosphere, The Unlawyer ponders conflicting news of no DND appointments before January, 2007 and other news of an appointment by December.

A Hundred Years Hence thinks a new national capital is a bad idea, and prefers a more integrated and fresh look at Manila and Quezon City.

baratillo@cubao noticed how boxing trumped Mass and offers some thoughts on heroes and heroism (and how’s this for a Memento Mori! Gotta love the picture). The Warrior Lawyer weighs in on Honasan as Sarcasm Aside weighs in on Pacquiao.

Carlos Celdran meets Imeldific. Brilliant.

As a fan of Delicious Library and a Mac user, it’s interesting to me that a debate’s taking place over pretty applications. Rogue Amoeba (makers of an app. I really like, Audio Hijack Pro) wrote the essay contended over; see responses by Dustin MacDonald and MK&C on the fine balance between pretty, and actually useful, software.

Call Me Fishmeal offers up a reflection on the nature of fighting, by way of a failed pissing contest with Nicholas Negroponte.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, constitution, military, philippines, politics, president

Ebdane heads to Defense

Tomorrow on the The Explainer on ANC: vote counting machines.

The afterglow of the latest Pacquiao victory continues (Jojo Robles says: politicians, please leave him alone). Afegard’s Chronicle comments on the fight (and it’s being posted on YouTube),  betchay was thrilled by the President’s message, Orange Git lists the things non-watchers did. Some watchers, like Am I an Addict, or What?! got impatient with the commercial breaks. “would it be my fault if i could turn you on?” proclaims the shirt of the season: Pacquiao fashion (more from ExpectoRants). Although  babybonniehood says a defeat would have been economic disaster. More serious boxing-related links from Newsstand.

The President who is enjoying an afterglow of her own from her huddle with President Bush, has time for a stopover in Singapore to court investors and for other, sundry, purposes, including perhaps, talking to bankers.

Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane, Jr. will be the next Secretary of National Defense. Newsbreak broke the story just a few minutes ago, and its sources are superb. News that former PNP chief Lomibao will replace Ebdane in turn for the public works portfolio further suggests the President is more comfortable with the police than over-reliance on the military. This has been a trend ever since the police were called in to break up protests last year, and to serve as a foil to discontent within the military (where a purge is taking place after all).

Legions to hold rally at Supreme Court on Thursday. Dan Mariano suggests their rhetoric does a disservice to their arguments. Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ insists an appeal is doomed and tackles the next question: Congress as a constituent assembly:

The Constitution also says that Charter change proposals must be approved by a vote of Congress. How is the three-fourths vote to be computed? Should it be three-fourths of each house or three-fourths of the total membership of both houses? There is no clear textual answer to this question. But there is no point now in lamenting the ambiguity of the text. The ambiguity is there. The ambiguity comes from both the text and from the practice of past bicameral congresses. How should it be read?

One cannot say that joint voting is the rule or that separate voting is the rule. There are instances in the Constitution when the text specifies one way or the other. But there are also instances when the manner of voting is not specified. When the situation is such that no clear textual solution is found in the document, other aids for interpretation must be resorted to. One possible aid is historical—bicameral congresses of the past voted separately. But this is not very helpful because the text of past constitutions for bicameral congresses specified separate voting.

Another aid is the structure of Congress itself and the reason for that structure. This, I find, is more persuasive. The structure is bicameral. The main underlying reason for that structure is that every decision which can affect the welfare of the people and the nation must undergo two separate scrutinies and two separate decisions. Thus, the ordinary mode of passing laws is through separate voting. This is true even when what is involved might just be the name of a city or town.

Certainly an amendment or revision of the Constitution is of utmost importance and can have a profound effect on people and nation. If minor legislative matters are required to be subjected to a double process of decision, certainly with greater reason, Charter change—for as long as Congress remains bicameral—must go through a double scrutiny.

An interesting historical conference on Mexico-Philippines relations.

An interview with Thaksin’s defense lawyer.

In the punditocracy, my column for today is Block voting. There are many definitions for block, or bloc, voting. The one I used was the voter having the option of writing only the name of a party on his ballot, and all candidates from that party being credited with a vote.

Gail Ilagan says Philippine Military Academy alumni are good at dodging bullets. The news suggests Honasan will play stool pigeon while Trillanes continues to cast moist eyes on the Senate.

Bong Austero praises Raul Rodrigo’s biography of Eugenio Lopez, Jr.

The China Post editorial says South Korea’s economy is stagnating even as Japan’s recovers some dynamism.

In the blogosphere, History Unfolding tries to come to grips with what’s really going on in Iraq. Another Hundred Years Hence on what we can learn from Mumbai’s housing policy. Torn & Frayed on Honasan the bizarro politico living a putchist’s Groundhog Day existence.

Rasheed’s World appeals for help for a Filipina artist.

A wiki for your bookmarks: Botante Kami!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, constitution, explainer on anc, history, korea, media, people’s initiative, philippines, politics, president, Thailand

Wiki madness

I’ve been pondering (rather slowly) turning The Philippine Presidency Project into a Wiki (though not freely editable for the near term) and started a kind of public scratch pad with a Wiki on the 2007 Elections.

But now I’ve come across Campaigns Wikia so I’m tinkering with creating a Philippines page for the site (eventually, to be able to add the midterms to their election calendar).

Apparently one useful rule for Wikis is, if one exists covering your area of interest, instead of creating yet another wiki that might die, simply go and identify the most relevant wiki already online, and add to it. Here are some pretty nifty ones that I didn’t know about before:

JurisPedia which covers the law, and legal and political sciences. Adding an entry on “constructive resignation” would be useful here, no?

If you have a primary source, why not consider adding it to WikiSource? Some people have put the Absentee Voting Bill, as well as the statement of the Hyatt 10, the President’s February, 2006 State of Emergency Proclamation on it. There are also the documents on the surrender of Japan, for example.

An exciting one is Wikocracy, where people can post a law or even a constitution, and ask others to revise it. I recall discussing a similar exercise with some readers. Perhaps this wiki is the place to do it (an anti-terrorism law proposal, or revisions to the Philippine Constitution).

Were you part of history? Share your eyewitness accounts with the world. MemoryArchive is a wiki precisely for that purpose. See this account by a veteran describing his experiences in retaking  Corregidor in 1945.

Technorati Tags: philippines, politics

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