what i don’t get is college students using congressional plates and no one complains, the schools allow it, etc. i mean, this is where the authorities can step in.

The budgets for their office operating expenses, research staff and other expenses should not go to their pockets. That’s not their allowances to keep and spend.
And with the check and balance in the government accounting auditing systems, they could not disburse the budget without the necessary back-up documents. Thus ghost expenses, ghost employees are not supernatural in their offices.

The allowances that they can enjoy personally are government-issued vehicle with free gasoline allowance every month, a paid driver and bodyguard or tagadala ng attache case, tagabukas ng pinto at tagadala ng payong.

If these public servants can be honest to themselvs of admitting that these vehicles are never used by their wives in shopping or their children in going to parties, then they have the moral ascendancy to check on their corrupt peers in the government.

Corruption is not only receiving money in exchange of a favor but it is also misusing government properties.

Although I am interested in History myself not as in-depth as you are. It gives me some idea and maybe allot some of my spare time delving more into some “historical topics” you have put forward in the course of our interface.

I’ll hang out in this Article for now because there’s a “ghost” stalking me in the other Article. Maybe he’s the twin brother of Harry Potter.

your comment re salaries, etc. reminds me of something the late jose romero wrote. he’d been an assemblyman and was active in politics and later represented the sugar lobby. one criticism he had of his fellow politicians was that the system of congressional allowances didn’t exist before the war. it was invented after ww2 at the same time that the congress, which hadn’t held sessions during 41-45 (due to the occupation) voted themselves back wages for the years they technically held office but didn’t meet (although some sat in the national assembly of the 2nd republic and so, had salaries). romero said there was a very human reason: everyone, rich or poor, was wiped out by the war, people didn’t even have clothes, but he said it established a bad precedent that just worse and worse, and saved congressmen having to ask to raise their salaries, because they could just compensate themselves through allowances.

the amazing thing is despite hardly any resources, the national library has done its best to take care of them, just as nhi has done a pretty good job preserving his official gifts, which are on display in the quezon memorial.

there has been some looting of the papers, first, during liberation when american gi’s carted off some things and others got filched for whatever reason in the general confusion.

other items i beleive, were filched (allegedly) by researchers paid by people to remove incriminating/embarrassing documents.

others have crumbled due to age, silverfishes, cockroaches, termites, etc.

on the whole though, our underpaid, overworked, understaffed people at the national library and national archives never get the thanks they deserve.

one historian spent a lifetime organizing the quezon papers, then there was an earthquake, the boxes tumbled down, and the past 20 years have been spent trying to put them in some order again.

there are private collectors with caches of quezon papers, ranging from personal correspondence to official papers and other records, from time to time they surface at auctions (all i could afford was once, i bought one of my aunt’s report cards, another time, one page of medical records; someone wanted to sell me a letter from mlq to his wife, but in the end i managed to beg for a xerox copy).

my understanding is that the laurel and magsaysay and roxas papers (first kept in up then finally in the hands of the roxas foundation) are excellently preserved and organized. the quirino papers aren’t extensive but in the filipinas heritage library, i understand in the last years of his life, macapagal organized his papers.

periodically, government offices purge their records. we were recently given the complete file of the settlement of the estate of mlq, by the supreme court, and it’s how i found out he’d accomplished his last will and testament in bukidnon prior to the final flight into exile to australia. eventually, we’ll be depositing this file with whatever other papers we happen to have, with UST (mlq was an alumnus) so that historians can have a chance to look at mlq’s financial records.

and if you read only one book on the phil revo, read mabini’s slim volume on the phil revolution, the entire thing is on line, anyway.

more than rizal or anyone else, mabini had all the answers and identified all the problems. he’s the missing link between the revolution and the campaign for independence during the american era.

a brilliant idea is proposed, immediately shot down.

that’s why can-do leaders are needed.

that’s why a good president has to be both bull headed, yet open to people with good ideas.

I do see the wisdom in PROPER DOCUMENTATION and ARCHIVING not only for the sake of it but for purposes of Research, purposes of Reference, purposes of how things work (somewhat benchmarks for each Administration). And as you’ve said, this is non-existent even in the Palace. By any chance have you studied on how other Nations came up with systems of Documentation and Archiving. This is one interesting topic to delve into. What are the pros and cons. What were the impact of having good archives vis a vis having nothing. Ah, quite recently, I have seen in the News that Police Blotters just gather dust somewhere until they rot. Again, no proper archiving.

I guess these details are not as important for some people that the ones presently calling the shots in Malacanang. Either it’s not in their priorities or simply they don’t care to look at the benefits of your suggestions re: Presidential Papers, Memorabilia, Gifts, and other matter that might have importance for some but others would shrug it as “simply irrelevant.” I don’t think that a good documentation and archiving system won’t cost much (maybe the initial investment would) but there’s a lot of wastage in the Budget anyways.

You see, the Marcos papers are – as you said – “moldering away in boxes” and yet when a good suggestion comes, it is frowned upon. All the excuses are there, I suppose. To a certain degree, Presidential Papers in the hands of their families would be taked cared of better knowning how the Palace takes care of its own Documents. If I may ask, those Presidential Papers that your Grandfather donated to the State, where are they now? Are they still intact?

the telephone makes this easier: no paperwork or the paperwork is ex post facto and never tells the full story.

some presidents, like fvr and gma, positively glory in the paperwork, they love getting reports, spend time on them, read them, make marginal notations, and then everyone runs around to implement the marginal notes until the marginal notes contradict each other -at which points everyone runs to the president to referee the conflicting instructions, it’s one way the power game is played.

others are allergic to paper and just give verbal instructions, which may or may not even be specific. a nod, a shrug, a wave of the hand can communicate as much as an entire executive order.

i did propose some formal policy on not only presidential papers, but memorabilia, including gifts, but it got bogged down in who would keep the inventory, and what is classified as what, who gets to keep what and the basic reality that archiving and record keeping aren’t really priorities of most administrations, for budgetary and other reasons. so, it never got anywhere.

when i proposed that the marcos papers, moldering away in boxes in a government warehouse, be sent to the national library, the pcgg intervened and said they were evidence. so why not keep the documentary evidence but release the rest, i counterproposed. ah, but no thorough inventory had been made, no staff, budget…. so there you go. aqlso, keeping a former president’s papers in private hands enables a measure of control that for example, our family doesn’t have (my grandfather donated his papers to the government according to a will he signed as he was about to go into exile, so he didn’t know if he’d ever see his papers again, and for that i’ve always been proud, it was an act of someone unafraid of history, as historians have skewered him for things they’ve found in his papers, for example). but generally you will find the roxas, laurel, magsaysay foundations very welcoming of researchers, the quirino papers are in the filipinas heritage library, i understand the garcia papers are in up, the diosdado macapagal papers are due to go to ust, and gma intends her presidential papers to end up in the ateneo de manila, cory aquino has a pretty well set up library in tarlac, and fvr has his stuff in alabang.