Last word on the subject

I’ve been feeling burned out lately and migraines are back with a vengeance. So, among other things, brief entry for today and no column, too. My cameo appearance came courtesy of the International Herald Tribune.

With regards to the discussion on English and Filipino, Philippine Commentary elaborates his points. The Bunker Chronicles says media should take a role in propagating English (and this is another debate altogether: to what extent should media be compelled to help in nation-building, and how much of what should be done by media, particularly in terms of content, should be determined by the free market?).

  In my opinion, blackshama’s blog has the last word on the subject. I think he points out the real issues at hand, and how the debate can move forward in a productive, and effective, manner.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, elections, Philippines Free Press, politics

Foreign media out of touch

Many readers, including Now What, Cat? have been pointing out this blog’s perpetually on the blink. The latest snafu involves more problems with the comment thingamajig. Technical Supremo Abe Olandres suggests readers subscribe through Feedburner, so you can get entries even if the blog itself isn’t available. So sorry for technical difficulties.

The foreign media has started to take notice of the coming elections, though today’s two examples show they’re relying too much on conventional wisdom and not doing enough spadework when it comes to developments on the ground. The Economist is particularly -and disappointingly- superficial, while the Gulf Times is slightly less so (related chart in GMANews.TV).

Amando Doronila, for example, says three things are emerging:

First, the Genuine Opposition has consolidated its position of likely winning at least eight of the Senate seats. Second, political dynasties appear to be losing their spell as electoral assets to influence outcomes at least on the national level. And third, movie stars and swashbuckling military rebels involved in coup attempts seem to be losing their appeal to voters.

In Inquirer Current, John Nery presents three hypotheses:

First: The elections remain one way to resolve President Arroyo’s crisis of legitimacy…

Second: The elections are the opposition’s to lose…

Third: The opposition will lose the elections, in all aggregates except the most high-profile one, the race for the Senate. This result is an indictment of the opposition…

What I want to point out, though, is that Doronila and Nery’s observations point to the need to question old assumptions, and set aside the old stereotypes about both our elections and the electorate, stereotypes and assumptions the Economist in particular is still blithely spouting. In terms of how media’s covering the elections, Khanterbury Tales posted an entry recently with her observations.

My own views, concerning the elections? See my Q&A with Davao Today.

Some interesting coverage of the local races includes an intricate analysis of Speaker Jose de Venecia’s campaign (and Pangasinan politics) by Patrick Patiño. Dole-outs by local candidates is the topic covered by Rasheed Abou-Alsamh. Concerning the party-list, Dan Mariano looks at some party-list strategies and the value of endorsements (Achieving Happiness says there’s a statistical anomaly involved in the Left ’s recent party-list survey results).

The Business Mirror editorial delves into the reasons behind the national treasurer’s resignation, and its implications:

All these simply indicate that the fiscal landscape remains very much at risk, more so with Mr. Cruz’s departure. It is good he agreed to stay on until June 1, but his successor—and the entire finance team for that matter—will have a tough hurdle ahead. They can’t even have the luxury of waiting after the elections, especially when one considers that fiscal problems may worsen after May 14, if fresh allegations of funds misuse and overspending surface.

The editorial helps put Omar Cruz’s recent suggestions new taxes may be required, in context.

Contrasting -or is it complimentary?- views of the military situation in Mindanao: Herbert Docena thinks the media is swallowing military propaganda and by so doing, is helping to push Mindanao towards conflict;  Marites Vitug, however, writes that the military may actually be more inclined to foster peace.

Marichu Villanueva asks if the National Power Corporation forgot that summertime means increased demand for electricity.

Overseas, Foreign Affairs says Al-Qaeda’s more dangerous than ever before; Vanity Fair on electric sports cars.

In the blogosphere, big mango and thirtysomething respond to my column on the English-Filipino debate.

For management, including public management, afficionados, another hundred years hence points to A Nagueño in the Blogosphere, who writes from a conference in Germany on New Public Management principles, which Willy Prilles says is based on the following principles:

…a lean state; separate decisionmaking, with politics deciding the strategic and the civil service taking care of the operative; lean management; a new service attitude; new models of control; decentralization; quality management; and product approach…

Prilles points to the UK having some local governments adopting NPM principles under Thatcher but abandoning them as of late; another hundred years hence, in response, points to a potentially complementary development called CitiStat:

So how could this help NPM? Citistat’s 4 tenets:

1. Accurate and Timely Intelligence
2. Effective Tactics and Strategies
3. Rapid Deployment of Resources
4. Relentless Follow-Up and Assessment

-could be the day-to-day application of NPM’s “Concepts,” namely:

* Lean State – reduced tasks performed by state
* Separation of Decision Making Levels – Separation of the strategic from the operative level: politics decides the what, administration the how
* Lean Management – Combination of management by objectives, flat hierarchy, project management, performance related payments, modern methods of leadership
* New Service Attitude – Customer orientation: satisfaction in the center of all considerations, behavioral changes
* New Model of Control – Steering by clear targets, measurement of results, transparency of resource allocation
* Decentralization – Task, responsibility, competence and budget in the hand of the project manager/ department manager
* Quality Management – Ensure high service quality through qualification, competition, transparency
* Product Approach – Describing all administrative service as “products” highlighting factors such as: features, cost, needed resources, and time to deliver

Where NPM provides the goals of how government should be run, Citistat provides a day-to-day measurement of delivering on the goals of that model.

Both point to local-level governments making effective use of these strategies, or principles; but the problem remains applying them on a large scale.

Now that the health emergency of the President’s husband seems to be over, RG Cruz and Jove Francisco share their thoughts and observations on the aftermath.

Bikoy.net appreciates seeing Rep. Escudero not using a police escort to go through traffic. Yugatech on Ratified.org, a new way to keep tabs on the top Philippine blogs (additional observations by The J Spot).

Technorati Tags: Blogging, elections, media, Middle East, military, philippines, politics, president, Senate, society, surveys, war, Washington DC

Book of the week

“Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World” (Nicholas Ostler)

Barangay Quezon, ,Jr.

Just discovered there’s a barangay named after my father: Bggy. Quezon, Jr. in Ormoc City, Leyte.

Language Wars (updated)

The other day I attended the second session of taping for GMA7’s “Isang tanong, isang sagot” senatorial forum, which will be broadcast this Sunday and the next (I represented the Philippine Daily Inquirer for the second session, the first session had Conrado de Quiros). It was interesting watching the different candidates react to the questions and their interaction (or lack of it) with one another. As the first shift was leaving, I ran into de Quiros and in our brief chat he expressed concern over what people are going to do if and when the massive cheating in the coming elections takes place, and people start to find out about it. Something worth thinking about.

During the taping, the scuttlebutt among media colleagues was that Senator Joker Arroyo didn’t show up, because he was in an emergency meeting because of upcoming survey results (the results came out a day or so later, for SWS and most recently, for Pulse Asia: Joker’s concern seems to hinge on the need for a candidate to be safely in the top 8, otherwise it’s a mad scramble to protect votes during the counting). From what I gathered, Joker’s survey results were such, that he was very much concerned over the possibility of being junked. It wasn’t clear to me, though, who would be doing the junking, although afterwards reading the views of colleagues such as , perhaps the danger is this: a loose cannon (from a Palace point of view) like Joker could be junked, to accommodate the election of a more malleable candidate like Gringo Honasan. As it is, the various camps are already in the thick of speculating -and accusing- each other of preparing to junk candidates.

One thing concerns me, as the campaign enters its final stages, and the Palace tries to frame the election favorably to itself. The decision by the Left to endorse a mixed list of senatorial candidates is, I think, a strategic mistake. So is Senator Lacson’s decision to endorse non-members of his slate, but his decision is less of a mistake than the Left’s: they are still oppositionists. The Left’s endorsement of a mixed bag of candidates blurs the line between the administration and the opposition -it makes it politics as normal, when there are issues that are abnormal and which thus require a more rigid line between those siding with the President, and against her. When you start blurring the issues, what your group stands for gets blurred in the minds of voters, too. You’re just another political player in a disreputable exercise. That may account more for Bayan Muna’s drop in the surveys, for example, than it’s merely not hogging the headlines.

In the punditocracy, My column for today is Misplaced emphasis on English. (For those who read the language, see the reaction of Sulat Kapangpangan to my column).

See the Pleading that will be filed before the Supreme Court tomorrow. Philippine Commentary pens a rebuttal.

Randy David’s views.

The views of Conrado de Quiros.

The views of Patricia Licuanan. See also the views of Juan Miguel Luz, formerly of the Department of Education, in ‘English First’ policy will hurt learning.

My views on the English-Filipino debate were put forward in a column I wrote in November last year, Practical Languages. I believe a distinction has to be made between the need to provide a solid, basic, education to the public, and the requirements of advanced learning in various academic disciplines (see also the chef at chez panda, for her thoughts on whether a food blog can help teach English).

As for other columnists: Federico Pascual writes about the candidacy of Fr. Panlilio for governor of Pampanga; Billy Esposo on the candidacy of Manny Pacquiao; Bel Cunanan on the candidacy of Speaker de Venecia. Regarding the political bounty offered by our glorious Secretary of Justice, the Inquirer editorial gives him a good thwack. Now Gonzalez has recanted -but it has to be asked, is he getting senile?

In the blogosphere, my entry in Inquirer Current yesterday was The Wily Filipino.

Uploaded my talk on diplomacy at San Sebastian College in 2005, to ourmedia: there’s part 1 and part 2. At long last.

Talking to Trillanes (fixed!)

Because the courts have finally relented and permitted the publication of interviews, I can post a discussion I had with Antonio Trillanes. In it, we discuss his views on why he decided to run for the Senate, his views on what senatorial work entails, his opinions on counterinsurgency, the peace process, reforms in the armed forces, and so forth. I’ve only edited out portions that, according to the guidelines of his lawyers, might be considered in the nature of sub judice commentary.

I tried uploading the mp3 to my server but it kept failing. Thanks to a Twitter message from baratillo@cubao, who pointed me in the direction of ourmedia, I’ve finally been able to upload the file.

Have a listen to the interview uploaded to ourmedia or the same interview uploaded to the Internet Archive.

Since mine is an amateur recording, you may wish to compare it to the professional podcast (in four parts, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4)put together by Inquirer.net.

Technorati Tags: elections, Senate

Expect higher taxes

The President has accepted the resignation of the National Treasurer, and the bond market plunged on fears (according to Bloomberg) that the government might change its budget deficit plans. Ricky Carandang, in a remarkable and fascinating blog entry yesterday, explains why those fears aren’t just a knee-jerk reaction to the resignation. He says, government’s slipping in its tax collection targets. One reason, he says, is the strengthening peso. Another reason is that there’s a kind of protest action taking place, among customs collectors. the result is that the gain of about 80 billion in income from the added VAT, may be offset by what the Department of Finance, in an internal memo, says is a possible shortfall of 110 billion:

What could this mean? That government finances could actually be worse off than they were before the passage of the VAT increase? If no action is taken to assure the markets, much of the money flowing into the stock market and into Philippine bonds could start flowing back out. Ratings agencies could reconsider those rosy credit rating outlooks. The few people who benefit from the narrow economic growth we see today could be fewer.

Carandang predicts that the easiest solution will be for government to once more raise taxes (and notes there’s mixed news on whether Omar Cruz resigned because of “policy differences” with other members of the President’s economic team). For now, the President can’t be prudent about public spending, because it’s an election year. Omar Cruz himself says he didn’t quit over policy differences, but his parting shot seems to validate Carandang’s entry:

Cruz warned the government that it needed to come up with new tax measures to ensure that it balances its budget next year, a much-vaunted goal that is under threat as tax collections fail to keep pace with increased spending.

Manila has a budget deficit goal of P63 billion this year, or 0.9 percent of gross domestic product, and Cruz said it was still “a reasonable target” because the government can use proceeds from asset sales to bridge the gap between expenditure and collections.

But he said such sales were unsustainable over the longer term.

“Until you come up with a new set of tax measures you will not generate revenue annuity.”

FinanceAsia says Cruz’s shoes will be hard to fill -and that a wait-and-see attitude is in the cards.

In other news… Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez has declared he’s offering a bounty to ward leaders that deliver a 12-0  senatorial shutout for the administration. His remarks have caused the usual ruckus, but this time, the resident loose cannon in the administration decided to unload on his partymates, too. At the same time, the President’s reduced the powers of the Bureau of Immigration and shifted them on to the Department of Justice. All “vital functions” of the immigration commissioner and the three-man board of commissioners have been transferred to the Secretary of Justice. This is an added vote of confidence, by the President, in Sec. Gonzalez. Good grief.

Look at this comparison of the Pulse and SWS senatorial surveys; compare the scores for the candidates, too, in bar graph format.

In the punditocracy, Arab News column for this week is Filipinos Are Cosmopolitan and Far Less Insular.
Manuel Buencamino comes up with some snappy lines, to show why Team Unity Team Arroyo (TUTA) shouldn’t be voted for. Ellen Tordesillas is convinced Gringo Honasan has sold out to the Palace and explains why. Ricardo Saludo begins to lay the predicate for the results the Palace predicts in terms of the coming elections:

Should 200 House seats go to the ruling coalition, that might be enough to block another impeachment bid. If it also controls the Senate, the continuity of national leadership till 2010 would lay a solid foundation for social stability, investor confidence, and economic advancement, and not return the country to disruptive protests and politicking.

The choice on May 14 is clear.

Actually, what’s clear are the priorities of the Palace: it fears impeachment above all things.

The Inquirer editorial says the Chief Justice is being combative out of necessity: most recently Chief Justice Puno’s raised the hackles of the Palace and the US Embassy.

Bong Austero writes on moveable holidays: the President’s declared May 1 a holiday, but no “sandwich day,” alas, covering April 30; meanwhile, she’s also proclaimed Election Day a holiday (will that be good or bad for voters?)

As Russia buried Boris Yeltsin, an op-ed piece by Nina L. Khrushcheva pointed out he was the first Russian leader chosen democratically, and who gave up power voluntarily to a constitutionally-ordained successor.

The blogosphere has History Unfolding predicting that the Maliki government of Iraq is poised to fall. Placeholder looks at the Jeffersonian and Madisonian models for economic development. In Inquirer Current, John Nery pays tribute to David Halberstam.

Technorati Tags: media, Middle East, philippines, politics, president, Senate, surveys, Washington DC

Priests forbidden to become congressmen

Fr. Ed Panlilio is making waves in Pampanga because of his campaign against jueteng and mulcting quarry income. However, if he were to be elected to the House, he would have to leave the priesthood (there is an unclear story that says he has already been suspended from his priestly duties, but whether it’s a kind of leave of absence, or an ecclesiastical penalty, is what’s unclear):


 Canon 285, Sec. 3: Clerics are forbidden to assume public offices which entail a participation in the exercise of civil power.

Robby Tantingco’s argued no one, not even the Pope, could stop Fr. Panlilio. Not so. See above. And Fr. Robert Drinan was elected to the US Congress five times and served there, until Pope John Paul II ordered him to leave office or leave the priesthood. In 1983, the Code of Canon Law (last revised in 1917) was promulgated by John Paul II and it contains the prohibition on political office above.

That is, of course, from the point of view of Church law. From the point of view of secular law, our laws are silent on the matter.

Technorati Tags: elections, philippines, politics

The Long View: Making political parties obsolete

THE LONG VIEW
Making political parties obsolete 

 

By Manuel L. Quezon III
Inquirer
First Posted 02:35am (Mla time) 04/23/2007

 

MANILA,Philippines – We repeatedly hear that the political and every other condition of our country would improve if only we had strong parties with devoted, loyal followers, united by common aspirations and a well-developed ideology. I have always been puzzled by such views.

We have had strong parties with dedicated followers filled to the brim with aspirations and ideas that united them. The pre-war Nacionalistas, the post-war and pre-marital law Nacionalistas and Liberals, the KBL of the New Society and the LDP, Lakas and Kampi since Edsa, they have demonstrated party politics at their most organized, efficient and effective. These parties, even when their leaders had changed parties, were able to keep loyal followers.

The real problem, of course, is that those who pine for strong parties, meaning, parties built on principle, not on personality, are dissatisfied with the principle that our political parties represent – the principle that, in politics, the pork barrel and other forms of patronage, such as jobs, are the end-all and be-all of party life. This yearning willfully ignores two realities about politics anywhere and everywhere: personalities cannot be separated from issues; and politics sooner or later can end up bogged down by the need to reward supporters and punish competitors.

We’re constantly told that those in politics are only after power and privilege for themselves and nothing else. This kind of self-defeating thinking ignores a basic attribute found in most, if not all, politicians, as well as in those who decide to embark on any kind of political involvement. That attribute is as basic to the human condition as ambition: it’s the joy of the fixer, the deal-maker and the broker. A foreign journalist once told me how he was delighted by a Filipino congressman’s explanation of his job: “I’m here,” the politico said, “to help people, and I love it! It makes me rich, it enables me to be loved, it keeps me important.”

The delight in wheeling and dealing, in getting people together so that person B’s problems can be solved if only person C gets in touch with person A, is something that’s felt, and sought, by people from all walks of life, be they investment bankers or social workers, or “barkers” who get people to ride on a certain jeep instead of the other, in the process getting a tip from the driver. The difference, of course, is that the banker makes millions, in the private sector, from being a fixer; the aid worker gets a psychic boost or a modest “thank-you” in the form of fruits or a chicken for helping the disadvantaged; and the politician obtains votes.

The problem, of course, is that aside from the aid worker and like-minded folk, most other people are out to make a living, and things get messy when a living is being made out of the public purse. Human nature is also such that people automatically assume everyone else – except themselves – is out to make a quick buck with as little work and dedication as possible, and this bias is strongest when it is directed on those after political power. (Why don’t they get a real job?) As if politics isn’t hard, tiring, sometimes thankless, work. Expensive, too, and potentially life-threatening.

The Romans tried to put forward Cincinnatus as an example of how to solve the “political trap” : politics as a career ends up corroding the morals and sound judgment of those who embark on it. Cincinnatus served only when he was needed, and would return to his farm as soon as he had done his part.

Our Constitution has this solution in mind by limiting presidents to a single term, and most other officials to a fixed number of terms. I often wonder if every official shouldn’t be limited to only one fixed term, after which he and his relatives who have been in elective office should be barred from holding public office again. Combined with providing healthy salaries and limits on campaign spending, this prohibition would allow more people to serve in government and prevent making politics a permanent career choice for individuals and their families. But then this might be an extreme and impractical proposal.

How do you channel the desire of people – many people – to enter public life, with the goal of helping others, but without using it as a means of helping themselves to the detriment of others? One way might be to encourage the political involvement of NGOs, and the eventual extinction of political parties. Put another way, the political party, with its obsession with “jobs for the boys,” the farming-out of contracts and dispensing the pork barrel; and with its penchant for ultimately gauging success or failure only by the number of officials it gets elected in each election, has to give way to something else.

That something else is what the NGOs are doing: working day in, day out on programs, with an advocacy that remains consistent because they have developed means for determining success and failure that aren’t dependent on whether people like them or are willing to vote for them. Their mechanisms for accountability in terms of leadership and the handling of program funds, as well as in building long-lasting relationships with those they represent and try to help, are better-developed in many ways than those in our current political system.

However, the credibility of NGOs, after they get access to those in power, sink, because they try to come to grips with officials who operate according to an entirely different set of values, and who use methods with very different goals and measures of success. I’ve often heard, this results in a kind of political schizophrenia which drives civil society and politicians alike either mad or cynical and corrupt. But that’s because the old political world won’t die, and the new political world is still too weak to realize it holds the key to the future.

Leaving for home

In the New York Times Magazine there’s A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves by Jason DeParle (registration required to read the artilce), which takes an exhaustive and in the end, rather inspiring look at Filipino OFW’s. There are the social costs of working abroad -and the social gains: surprisingly, some studies say children of OFW’s are better fed, even better adjusted, than the children of non-migrants; if there’s “brain drain,” there’s “brain gain”, OFW’s bringing home knowledge and connections; our bureaucracy is a model for other countries, though we often have nothing but bad things to say about it; it can build dependency, but also breed independence; if our culture has remained static over the centuries, it has breaking old habits and eliminating old limitations. Things have changed:

With about one Filipino worker in seven abroad at any given time, migration is to the Philippines what cars once were to Detroit: its civil religion. A million Overseas Filipino Workers — O.F.W.’s — left last year, enough to fill six 747s a day. Nearly half the country’s 10-to-12-year-olds say they have thought about whether to go. Television novellas plumb the migrants’ loneliness. Politicians court their votes. Real estate salesmen bury them in condominium brochures. Drive by the Central Bank during the holiday season, and you will find a high-rise graph of the year’s remittances strung up in Christmas lights.

Read the article and compare it to what you see around you, and the people you know.

My column for today is Making political parties obsolete. Another, related article was Randy David’s Sunday column on volunteerism. Sylvia Mayuga, on the other hand, focused on the things that don’t change.

Amando Doronila says the country is showing signs of being a failed state, because of political killings. And yet, as I point out in my Inquirer Current entry, the country has actually inched away from its 2005 Failed State Index rating of 56: last year, it was rated 68, a substantial improvement (i.e. we were ranked as less failed, but still within the orange “failing” category).

Justice Isagani Cruz says a legislative trick -the insertion of a rider in a law on an otherwise unrelated subject- may be the political salvation of Senator Lito Lapid.

Continued commentary on Julia Campbell from last Sunday’s Inquirer editorial and from Howie Severino.

In the blogosphere, Big Mango uses a medical strategy for problem-solving: if they use the triage system in emergency rooms, can there be a political triage?

Ruben Nepales of the Inquirer’s Nepales Report has highly enjoyable cultural notes on people of Filipino ancestry in Hollywood who deny their origins, and on the Filipino-American obsession with awards.

The Bunker Chronicles says DZMM’s embarking on televising its broadcasts is the worst kind of television -TV on the cheap.

Yugatech presents some very interesting figures on Internet penetration in the country:

Still, the internet usage growth rate from 2000 is 291%. If you extrapolate that, we could make an educated guess of 10.15 Million for 2007 or 11.6% penetration.

Photo caption of the day:

“The President visits Niño Muhlach.”

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