Meralco past, present, and future

You can catch yesterday’s episode of The Explainer over at YouTube. Something went wrong with the equipment so we had to deviate from the usual format. The original script will eventually appear on The Explainer blog.

Inquirer.net’s caption for the photo at left: A new witness provides this picture of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo that he says was taken during a golf game at the Shenzhen Golf Club in Shenzhen, China on Nov. 2, 2006 followed by lunch with ZTE officials at the ZTE headquarters.

Old witness, now under oath: Lozada tells court Mike Defensor asked him to deny NBN scam . New witness, not yet under oath, but armed with a picture: New NBN-ZTE witness surfaces: Says Arroyo visited ZTE execs at headquarters. Same-same official response: Palace dares witness: So sue Arroyo in court.

Yesterday, I linked to two pre-martial law articles concerning Meralco that appeared in the Philippines Free Press (see Malacañang vs. Meralco and Political War and Martial Law? both circa 1971). This then brought up the question of the Marcos takeover of Meralco and the subsequent nullification of that takeover after the Edsa Revolution.

Senator Juan Ponce Enrile made fighting Meralco his campaign platform, and his latest broadside (see ‘Govt still owns Meralco’: Sen. Enrile says government can retake company) should be viewed in that context (as well as a residual loyalty to the propaganda justifying martial law and the conduct of the Marcos administration). It’s worth noting that Oscar Lopez published a full-page open letter addressed to the President in the papers today (see Lift taxes to lower power rates, Lopez tells Arroyo ). Previously, Lopez and Enrile exchanged open letters, although the Lopez one is no longer available on line.

Enrile’s assertion that the government can claim ownership of Meralco is distilled in an open letter dated October 4, 2002 and he provides links to supporting documents in an earlier open letter dated September 25, 2002. Of interest, as well, is a link to G.R. No. 95197. September 30, 1991, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the PCGG’s decision to lift its sequestration of Meralco shares, which I assume ratified the resumption of Lopez control over Meralco: and points to the ownership question having been determined in court.

What’s interesting is how, as Manuel Buencamino puts it, the government’s having a hard time mobilizing public support for what should be a cut-and-dried consumer interest case:

The Lopezes should have been an easy mark for a corrupt administration that is trying to look like it cares for the welfare of the masses. Unfortunately, the administration went into overkill. I guess Mrs. Arroyo didn’t think Winston Garcia could do it on his own, so she marshaled all her forces against the Lopezes. She even went to the extent of asking businessmen and the masses for help. Now, the Lopezes are underdogs.

Imagine that. One of the wealthiest, most powerful families in this class-warfare conscious society of ours has the sympathy of the public. Only the geniuses of Malacañang could have pulled off such a stunt.

Now, a public that has bitched but paid electric bills it never understood is learning that Manila Electric Co.’s (Meralco) portion of the bill is only for distribution of power. The bulk of the bill it pays goes to power generators like National Power Corp., transmission companies like you-know-whose, as well as value-added tax. So now, the public wants to know, why pick on Meralco when it’s the government that’s bleeding the public dry?

In Monday’s joint congressional committee hearing on the high cost of electricity, no one could give a straight answer to the question why electricity is so expensive and what can be done to bring down its cost.

Bong Austero bewails everyone’s inability to just get along and laments Congress getting into the act, and says a more problem-solving attitude behooves everyone concerned:

It doesn’t help, of course, that government has also been unclear about what its real agenda is—what it really wants and how, or up to what extent, it is willing to go to get what it wants on the issue around electricity rates. To complicate things further, people in government continue to sing in discordant voices. Is this really simply about lowering electricity rates, or is there more than meets the eye? Is a takeover of Meralco part of the plan? Is GSIS really acting on its own accord, or is the government behind the saber rattling? No one knows because no one is giving straight answers, which leads many people to suspect that it’s all a bluff.

It is also very tempting to picture Meralco as the proverbial big bad (greedy) wolf in this whole scheme of things. It is a profitable business enterprise, although, to be frank about it, not as profitable as it should be given its assets. It also happens to be one of the leaders in the industry in terms of compensation and benefits— Meralco is renowned for having the lowest employee turnover rates in the country as hardly anyone resigns from the power firm because of its long history as a good provider for its employees.

But is Meralco passing on charges to its consumers in violation of legal and ethical rules? This is a valid question that Meralco refuses to answer in a straightforward manner. Meralco is preventing GSIS, which, together with other government agencies, owns 33 percent of the firm from taking a look at its books.

The truth is that Meralco has a lot of explaining to do to its stakeholders. It is benefiting from the generally low credibility of this administration, but there is a limit to how much it can shield itself by conjuring legal gobbledygook. At the end of the day, Meralco is answerable to consumers as a public corporation that thrives on its image as a responsible corporate citizen. It must aspire to be honorable even if others are not; even if the government is not.

All this talk about a takeover is really smoke-and-mirrors. Anyone out there who thinks a takeover is a viable option must be extremely naïve. The Lopezes may be sick and tired of all the regulatory restrictions that come with managing a public utility company, but aside from the fact that Meralco is a crown jewel in the family business empire, it also happens to be a firm that is closely tied in to the family’s history and legacy. Meralco is not just a business venture for the Lopezes. And anyone who thinks that the government can successfully conduct a corporate raid at a time when people—particularly businessmen—are edgy is out of his mind. It’s not going to happen.

So let’s keep the discussion focused on what is real, doable and relevant: Keeping electricity rates down. It’s an issue that is valid and which requires effective responses—both short-term and long-term.

I haven’t seen the hearings although one colleague ventured the opinion that it was a relief to see the Senators being relatively sober and buckling down to work for a change -and how the handling by Rep. Mikey Arroyo of his committee was not exactly inspiring. My colleague said that Meralco was tripped up by the revelation that it passes on its own electricity costs (i.e., the power consumption of Meralco as a corporation) to consumers; but that the larger revelation was that at every step of the generation and transmission process, the government keeps stepping and levying taxes, which bloats consumers’ bills.

For additional information, The Business Mirror’s published 10 reasons why electricity bills are high, a primer prepared by the Freedom from Debt Coalition. Basically, companies that generate power and distribute it are in a cozy relationship, thanks to Ramos-era emergency legislation, but the result is this:

We pay for capacity we don’t use, and this is such a heavy burden on consumers that we economize on our use of electricity even further. However, the less we consume of electricity, the more we have to pay of unused capacity. This is a vicious cycle similar to a debt trap. Industries cannot survive such a setup. Poor consumers, even less so.

A vicious cycle indeed!

As At Midfield points out, what’s pissed off the public most, is having to pay for electricity they don’t consume.

In other news, the Inquirer editorial looks at the President and Esperon in Reward and punishment.

Overseas, in A Drastic Remedy Anne Applebaum lays out the case for international intervention in Burma. And in Dynasties gone nasty , Dan Kennedy (no relation to the subjects of his piece) looks at the parting of ways between the Kennedys and the Clintons.

Blogger-turned MP Jeff Ooi points to lobbying, Malaysian-style, in The Lobby Lobbyists.

Hans Kung, the noted theologian, asks whether lying should be considered an integral part of politics in The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Arianna Huffington engages in Probing a Political Paradox: Why the Discredited Right Still Sets the Agenda and Dominates the Debate.

In the blogopshere, James Fallows on Earthquake accounts from foreigners in Chengdu. See Slate’s Disaster in China for a roundup of how the online world came to grips with the news. RConversation appeals to bloggers to donate to earthquake relief and discusses her sources of online information on the China quake. And since 5.3 magnitude quake jolts Isabela , it’s time to review Philippines Earthquake Information.

fritzified.com looks at the proliferation of rice varieties in Thailand: aside from their advances in rice varieties, the manner in which Thai agriculture’s advanced by leaps and bounds points to the lack of innovation and imagination here at home, where coconut milk we buy locally comes from Thailand (which also edged us out in the case of products such as tamarinds, jackfruits, and a non-stinky variety of
Durian).

The Omen

One rule of thumb I have is never to assume that exposure in one medium will result in exposure in another. What you write in one area may never be read in another, which provides a wonderful (because necessary) justification for repeating yourself. Hence yesterday’s column, which essentially introduced the newspaper audience to something that’s been on this blog for some time.

Calling attention to the idea of the Mandate of Heaven was inspired by Time Magazine’s pointing to the ominous nature of the cyclone that struck Burma:

The people of Burma take omens seriously. For centuries, the paths of planets and vagaries of weather have been scrutinized by astrologers, who divine a relationship between celestial irregularities and earthly mayhem. So when Cyclone Nargis tore across the country on May 2 and 3 — killing tens of thousands of people and leaving hundreds of thousands more homeless — Burmese couldn’t help but note the curious timing: exactly a week later, on May 10, the country’s thuggish ruling junta was set to hold a constitutional referendum, a step toward what the military has called a “discipline-flourishing democracy.”

See Despite Disaster, Burma Has a Forced Vote.

As mentioned in the recent Inquirer editorial, Asean to the rescue, there’s this poignant passage from:

“The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma” (Thant Myint-U)

concerning Thibaw, the last King of Burma, and his decision to accept a British ultimatum:

The Burmese forces in the area were told to lay down their arms, but the lord of Myothit (the fort commander) refused to accept the authenticity of Kyauk-myaung’s message and insisted on a direct order from his king… Only when a telegraph in Burmese Morse code was received at Ava, signed by Thibaw himself, did Myothit agree to stand down. His men then melted away into the surrounding villages, leaving behind piles of Martini rifles. Myothit himself stayed and wept as he saw the steamships slowly make their way the ten miles to the royal city itself.

The Burmese remember that the entire evening, from around seven o’clock until dawn the next day, the sky was filled with thousands of shooting stars and meteors, falling in all directions, appearing and disappearing as people wondered what these clear omens could mean. These were actually the Andromedids in one of the great meteor storms of recent times, seen all over the world. Those learned in astrology prophesied that the country and the Buddhist religion would soon meet hard times.

So it was that a meteor heralded the Norman Conquest, and an earthquake shook Bataan on the night of its surrender to the Japanese. The cyclone could be viewed as an omen for Burma’s junta; and when news began to spread, yesterday, of the massive earthquake in China, I immediately thought of something that seems to have struck other people, too. See The Warrior Lawyer and see Richard Spencer in his Daily Telegraph blog, who points to the enduring power of superstition in China:

A friend points out that this may be a test of residual feudal superstition in China. The Tangshan earthquake in 1976 was said to be an omen of Mao’s death two months later. This would be a bad year for a repeat, though there are no indications this is anything like on that scale.

(nearly all account’s I’ve watched or read of Mao’s final months always includes that earthquake as a foreshadowing of the end of the Great Helmsman)

Spencer, who’s in Beijing, said he wasn’t surprised to feel the earthquake -until he released how far away the epicenter of the quake was. Apparently the quake could be felt as far away as Bangkok.

James Fallows notes how Chinese state media’s covered the disaster and thinks the absence of video hints at the government being unsure how to handle the story.

It will be interesting to see the consequences, economically, of the earthquake. China financial markets provides a snapshot of where things were, a day or two prior to the quake:

April’s CPI numbers were released earlier today and, as the pessimists among us expected, inflation came in at 8.5% year on year, quite a bit higher than most analysts’ predictions. March’s year-on-year inflation was 8.3%. Probably in response to the higher-than-expected numbers, late in the day the PBoC announced that minimum reserve requirements were going to be raised by 0.5%, to 16.5%.

Throughout the past two weeks we had been getting a lot of soothing noises about inflation and confident predictions from analysts and even from Governor Zhou of the PBoC that it would come in at 8% or just above – Bloomberg’s poll of 22 analysts predicted on average that year on year CPI inflation for April would be 8.2%. Even Credit Suisse’s Dong Tao, who has normally been very pessimistic – and very right – about inflation, predicted that April’s CPI number would come in at 8% year on year. It took a bitter, twisted guy like Stone & McCarthy’s Logan Wright, who refused to bask in the good feelings and insisted on counting the numbers up for himself, to throw in an 8.5% prediction. He was right, thereby reinforcing my claim a few days ago that for the past six months you would have always done best by betting on the most pessimistic prediction.

Month-on-month inflation rose by 0.1%. This means that inflation for the first four months of the year is running at an annualized 9.9%. At this rate we would need inflation for the next eight months of the year to be 2.4% on an annualized basis to bring us to the government’s 4.8% target for 2008. Clearly this is very unlikely, and even government officials have acknowledged that the official target is intended more for signaling purposes than as a real statement of government intentions.

Concerning the ongoing drama of Meralco, see this article from the Philippines Free Press, Malacañang vs. Meralco, January 30, 1971:

In Malacañang, Marcos pointed to Meralco’s high rates as one of the principal factors in the rise of prices.

Meralco, of course, did not take Malacañang’s charges lying down. Its board chairman, Emilio Abello, was ready with answers. At the same time, Malacañang strategists got some labor leaders and consumer groups to their side. Their obvious purpose was to show that it is the public itself, not just Malacañang, which is fighting Meralco. The major issue of Malacañang against Meralco is Meralco’s alleged high rates. It is now established, said Marcos, that Meralco’s annual income is P93 million. Which means that the light firm, controlled by the Lopezes, is earning more than it should, in the view of Malacañang. Therefore, it should not have increased its rates last year—the floating rate notwithstanding.

Even the rhetorical flourishes and official argumentation evokes the past: see Political War and Martial Law? January 23, 1971. Later of course, Marcos would kiss and make up -on the eve of plunging in the knife. See FM’s March 12, 1972 diary entry in The Philippine Diary Project.

Meanwhile, the cat’s out of the bag. See Meralco breakup eyed: GSIS chair bares plans to lower electric rates:

The GSIS president and general manager said in a phone interview Sunday that he would cut up the P75-billion power distribution company the same way the Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) franchise area was divided after it was privatized in 1997.

“We are very much interested, we think Meralco is a good investment,” Garcia said. “My plan is to take full control of Meralco and split it up into two or more sub-franchises. This worked very well in the MWSS privatization.”

Elpi Cuna, Meralco vice president for corporate communication, doubted the company’s 50-year franchise could be subdivided. “It’s a total package and the way it is worded, you have to go back to Congress to get permission,” said Cuna, speaking for Meralco, not for the Lopez family.

The other day, the Inquirer editorial pointed out that what’s going on is a patently political campaign against the Lopezes, who are an easy target because high prices haven’t endeared them to consumers.A pretty thorough report on why electric rates are the way they are, appeared in BusinessWorld, see Expensive Meralco power justified? (alas, a subscription is required; they ought to consider that the subscription-only model for news has failed).

Tongue In, Anew, takes a comprehensive look at the energy sector, and read, in particular, his conclusion, too long to quote here. Basically he points out that the entire energy policy of the government needs to be revisited, and that there are groups close to the President poised to benefit from dismantling Meralco as Garcia plans to do. A taste of what he dishes out in the entry:

The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) another product of EPIRA now headed by former Soriano protegé, Jose “Nono” Ibazeta, drew flak recently when it disqualified a consortium headed by mining magnate-brothers Buddy and Manny Zamora who pre-announced their bid of $6B for the whole of TransCo apparently after sensing that the Bid Committee is hell bent on demolishing all threats to the victory of Monte Oro Resources and Energy, known widely in the energy and mining business as the “Mafia Team” composed of FG’s golf and business buddies (and former Ibazeta partners whom we now know bought out Broadband Philippines from Joey De venecia III, among other ventures) Ricky Razon of ICTSI, Endika Aboitiz of the second biggest private energy operators under the flagship Aboitiz Energy Ventures, Andy Soriano III and other small fish collectively called the “Malacañang Mafia”.

The superior bid of $6B notwithstanding, PSALM awarded the prized trophy, TransCo to Monte Oro for a measly bid of $3.95B!

Prior to that PSALM experienced 3 failed biddings in two years. No one was bidding for Masinloc unless there was an assurance of a buyer of its power output. Napocor of course turned to Meralco, I presume, with special power rates just so the bid pushes through. That turned the tide and AES, a US-based corporation won the Masinloc plant for $930M, which I must say is too steep for an old coal plant that operates only at 25% of its capacity. Rule of thumb price for a similar plant is $1 Million per Megawatt. At 600MW, $930M is a jackpot. That’s not all, AES claims it needs to pour in additional $1B to rehabilitate the plant and double its present capacity. Unbelievable. Now where do they plan to get the money to pay their loans to IFC for that purpose? Correct, from generation charge. And since the power sector will not be deregulated anytime soon, it smells like a possible loan default would be inevitable. Hey, don’t tell me this loan is covered by another sovereign guarantee, please!

Blog@AWB Holdings also points to the entry above but asks whether Winston Garcia, indubitably gifted as a corporate raider, is pursuing the best interests of the GSIS.

Meanwhile, stuart-santiago subjects your monthly Meralco bill to a thorough dissection.

I have a hunch that we don’t hear enough about all sorts of ways to generate power, such as wind farms, solar panels, utilizing energy from tides, and biogas, because they skirt the way big money’s made in the energy sector, and so those with the means to invest in it, don’t (and neither is the government backing alternative sources of power in a big way). Read about Daniel Co in Tarlac, from Fortune’s Carbon finance comes of age:

Daniel Co and his family raise about 10,000 pigs on a farm called Uni-Rich Agro Industrial in the province of Tarlac in the Philippines. Until recently pig manure was shoveled into concrete ponds, where it decomposed, emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and a putrid smell. Daniel Co knew that he could install biogas technology to seal the ponds, trap the gas, and produce electricity, but he didn’t want to spend the $200,000 or so it would cost until he heard that pig farms could collect money from Europe for capturing methane: He would be paid not to pollute.

The Uni-Rich farm is a very small player in a very big global experiment that was set in motion when the Kyoto Protocol was ratified in 2005. Thirty-six industrial countries (but not the U.S.) have agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over time; they can do so, in part, by financing “clean development” projects in the developing world. This has led to a global scramble for cheap ways to reduce emissions, like Daniel Co’s biogas project; the invention of a new tradable commodity, called a Certified Emissions Reduction, or CER; the development of competing markets to buy and sell CERs; and the rise of an army of regulators to oversee the entire business.

Daniel Co got involved when he was approached by EcoSecurities, an Irish company that has developed more carbon-mitigation projects than any other firm. Its experts calculated that trapping his farm’s methane would generate 2,929 CERs a year. A CER is created when the equivalent of one ton of carbon dioxide is prevented from entering the atmosphere. (Because methane creates more global warming than carbon dioxide, trapping one ton of methane generates 21 CERs.) CERs are sometimes called carbon credits.

EcoSecurities offered to pay Uni-Rich $4 per credit, or $12,000 a year, every year, until Kyoto expires in 2012, and to handle all the paperwork at the UN, which registered the project late in 2006. Uni-Rich then installed the methane digesters.

Now, thanks to the magic of carbon finance, Daniel Co and his family treasure their pig waste. They use it to produce electricity, which has reduced their utility bills by about $48,000 a year. They collect their $12,000 a year in carbon revenues. EcoSecurities, in turn, will sell the credits for about $18 each, or $54,000 a year, to a big French bank called Caisse des Dépôts. Caisse des Dépôts can hold onto the CERs as an investment, betting that their value will rise, or sell them to a client, most probably a European power generator or industrial firm that needs credits to meet its regulatory obligations.

You’d think that environmentalists, often at loggerheads with hog breeders because of all the poop pigs produce, would be hailing this example; any reasonably progressive government would have given this swine breeder a medal and tried to replicate his achievements throughout the hog raising industry; hell, such pooptastic news should have sparked a proposal, crazy as it might sound, to attend to the -what is it, 5 million?- shortage of toilets for Metro Manila residents by building communal toilets where human waste can be turned into biogas. But I’ve been asking around for over a month now, and no one, it seems, even noticed the Fortune story.

Am I the only one who thinks the government has been strangely quiet, despite being confronted with the strong possibility that the Burma cyclone has swept aside assumptions that rice supplies will stabilize? A Canadian paper published a rather lurid article, All eyes on price of rice, which however does point to something the opposition, if it did its homework, could legitimately take the administration to task -neither calming people at home and spreading panic overseas.

Mon Casiple ties things together:

The question therefore arises. What for did the GMA administration drum up the rice “crisis”? The only logical answer I can find–apart from the political distraction–is that somebody or somebodies are making a killing in the rice market. The price of rice is shooting through the roof. Yet, the mystery tales from the farmers are that the middlemen are not buying in extraordinary quantities in these times of an alleged demand market. The inescapable conclusion is that the same somebody or somebodies already had the supply before it happened–probably through technical smuggling (NFA conduit) or direct smuggling. They are now reaping the superprofits.

These acts, particularly of government people, are simply treason.

The sudden interest by the administration in Meralco, on the other hand, provides an interesting insight into the problems of the transition from power of the GMA administration. The Lopezes are both an economic and a political giant with capability for major intervention in the presidential elections in 2010. They have the connections to all the presidentiables.

Throw in the current situation where none of the presidentiables have even intimated–despite prolonged negotiations–their openness to give the Arroyo people a practical immunity from suits once they are out of power. Add the debatable–and increasingly narrowing–charter change option. Time also ticks towards a political lameduck scenario. You have the ingredients for many desperate moves. The Meralco arm-twisting is one of them.

Apart from it, however, there is the real desire to get hold of Meralco itself–the same ambition that only Marcos was able to bring to reality during his heyday as a dictator. It is an economic jewel and in the EPIRA aftermath, the apex of ambition for GMA cronies in the industry (remember the Transco bid).

What ties together the rice “crisis” and the Meralco arm-twisting is the observable trend since the Garci tapes scandal emerged–to make considerable hay while the sun shines (or before it inevitably sets). This is supposedly the major reason for the Cabinet revamp, but that’s another story.

In other news, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon retires: but never fear, A post awaits Esperon and Arroyo pardons 9 Magdalo rebels as gift to Esperon; the MILF, Palace in word war over peace.

A big deal gets consummated: PNOC approves Petron sale to hedge fund firm, Roxas questions move. And LTFRB chief: P0.50 jeepney fare hike ‘reasonable’.

Conrado de Quiros and John Nery with contrasting views on the ongoing schism within Couples for Christ and the direction Gawad Kalinga should take.

The joys of gerrymandering: House panel OKs bill creating 2 districts for Camarines Norte. Systems 101: P15-M hi-tech House voting system fails test . Taxation 101: House okays tax relief bill:Exemptions raised for wage earners; stricter limits for professionals (obviously, the following is of interest to people like me):

The bill amends the Tax Code by increasing the personal tax exemption to P50,000 for all workers, whether single, married or a breadwinner. It is currently at P20,000 for single workers, P25,000 for a family head, and P32,000 for married individuals…

…Aside from the increased tax exemption, it also increased exemptions for up to four dependents, to P25,000 each from P8,000. However, the fourth child born after Dec. 31, 2010 and a third child born after Dec. 31, 2012 cannot be claimed as dependents…

…Also adopted in the tax measure was the Simplified Net Income Taxation Scheme, which would simplify the income tax for self-employed individuals but limits allowable deductions.

Under the SNITS, individuals engaged in trade, business and the practice of a profession, such as lawyers, doctors, dentists, certified public accountants, architects, artists and athletes, may deduct a standard 40% from gross income instead of the current 10%.

At only 10%, taxpayers would rather itemize their deductions via various business expenses that tax authorities found hard to check. For those who do not want the 40%, the itemized listing is stricter under the proposed bill…

While 80% of government revenues come from individual wage earners, only 20% is collected from self-employed individuals and professionals… “And while the effective tax rate of wage earners is 15.25%, for the self-employed and professionals it is measly 1.14%, because these self-employed individuals are usually over-deducting,” he said.

Under the approved measure only the following deductions will be allowed:

* reasonable allowances for salaries of officials and rank-and-file employees occupying administrative and selling positions;

* reasonable allowances for supplies, telecommunications, electricity, fuel, light and water;

* reasonable allowances for rentals;

* interest paid or accrued within a taxable year on loans contracted from accredited financial institutions; and

* taxes paid or incurred within the taxable year in connection with the taxpayer’s trade, business or profession.

Rhetoric 101: Teodoro Locsin Jr.’s response to Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, Proving we are idiots, well worth quoting in full:

When Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago called the House “idiots” in connection with the Spratlys/baseline issue, I trembled for my beloved chamber. Miriam knows an idiot when she sees one. After all, she has worked with the idiots close at hand, especially in the Senate, most of her political life. But now she was accusing us of being idiots. Did she have proof? Not yet.

But this chamber is about to furnish her with some. It seems we are taking seriously her jocular proposal to junk the House version on its third and purely formal reading, and substitute a joint commission to study the matter all over again; in the case of the Senate, for the first time. Only idiots will accept that idea. For two reasons:

Uno. She doesn’t even speak for the Senate since it hasn’t even started to craft a version, least of all adopt her own. So what is there to jointly study? Our completed version and the Senate’s nothing?

Dos. Nowhere and at no time has the abortion of a bill on third reading ever been superseded by a joint commission—or anything else for that matter—just to take it back to square one, before first reading. Except in one 17th matriarchal society in South Africa whose elders adopted a proposal to enlarge the territory of their kraal and the Queen ate them.

But this is now and this is here. There is no precedent in parliamentary practice anywhere and at anytime when a measure was aborted to make way for study period.

Besides, Miriam’s proposal is a redundancy. When and if she ever gets a version passed in the Senate, we can both meet at the bicameral conference committee as a joint commission, for as long as it takes to convince ourselves which version would be best for the country. Once we agreed, we wouldn’t have to go back to square one and reintroduce the common version in both chambers. We would merely take it back for our respective ratifications. That way we will have more time to re-study, in the case of the House, and to finally study, in the case of the Senate, an issue which would be high treason to mishandle.

I know Miriam was just baiting us. That is why I love her mischievous sense of humor. Let us not take the bait and prove we are her idiots after all. Thank you.

In his column, Joaquin Bernas, S.J. discusses the problems caused by our sloppily-written Constitution, particularly when it coems to figuring just how, exactly, Congress should go about deliberating on proposed constitutional amendments. He thinks the courts will have to weigh in. For those with stars in their eyes over Federalism, a timely reminder: Texas to look into requiring Amazon to collect sales tax.

And Malaysia Ponders How to Handle its Bloggers.

Cyberspace will determine 15 percent of 2010 poll results, says Gatmaitan

Conflicting news on rice: DA reports big summer rice harvests: Grain traders, farmers urge gov’t to buy local produce: Summer rice harvest now 5.9-M metric tons on one hand, and Farmers fail to benefit from record rice prices on the other. Meanwhile, overseas, the blog Darwiniana points to Americans being asked to consider the possibility of food riots over there.

Even as Polls in Maguindanao automated, the brittle peace ontinues to be a cause for concern.

In What’s behind the delay of the signing and the IMT pullout? , Mahdie Amella distills the MILF position concerning Philippine political priorities in Mindanao:

Deceitful attitude has become a government tradition in dealing with the revolutionary groups who are legitimately fighting for their rights to self-determination, thus war continuously happens that brings the government down.

The Philippine constitution has always been used by the government to delay the signing of a peace agreement. Recently, it organized a legal group that has been tasked to carefully study the constitutionality of every thing that will be entered into as an agreement with the MILF. Has the government made a critical study when it illegally annexed Mindanao to Philippine territory? The said legal group has apparently been made to derail the peace process so as to eschew the possibility of signing an agreement.

Using the constitution to hinder the attainment of peace is like saying that the people who are fighting for secession are right. There is no such “unconstitutional” thing. It depends on how people behind the constitution make something constitutional or unconstitutional as it is merely a man-made law.

Other countries that have already been able to address problems like what has been besetting us in the Philippines also have “constitutions”. Any government that sincerely enters into negotiation with the aim of bringing peace to the nation will not find this thing difficult. The constitution can be amended to accommodate any peace agreement but an agreement can not be shaped by the constitution, otherwise the other party is being deceived. It fights the government as it does not recognize its existing laws. How could it be a basis for any talking point or agreement?

Looking at these points, it is not the constitution that hampers us toward attaining peace but the people who can not sacrifice their personal interests in favor of national interests. These people (in Malacanang) who are very influential in terms of decision-making all have possessions in Mindanao. They fear to lose these should there be an honorable agreement signed with the MILF.

Now, what is the government’s purpose in entering into peace negotiation with the MILF? It is manifest that the negotiation is only a diplomatic tool in putting the MILF down. It has never been initiated to once and for all address the never ending Mindanao conflict.

Apparently, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has never thought of resolving the Mindanao strife. If she is for its resolution, she could have done it already as the solution for it is very straightforward – just return everything that was usurped so easily. It is not demanding. In fact, the MILF has already practically reduced its territorial claim into only the areas where the Bangsamoro are dominant.

On the other hand, in What is the guarantee? Who will guarantee? Roberto C. Layson, OMI says peace negotiators are prepared to kneel on the ground to keep the Malaysians involved in the peace process:

The problem is when you later ask both the government and the MILF who started the violations, no one would take responsibility. As usual, it ends up with no one taking accountability with the government and the MILF pointing finger to each other. It’s sometimes disheartening. That is why in our experience in rehabilitation, the most challenging and difficult part is not to rehabilitate the physical damage inflicted by war such as the construction of houses, roads, water facilities, day care centers or even school buildings. This is the easiest part of rehabilitation, we found out. The most difficult part really is how to restore the belief of people in the peace process and in peace in general.

But what can you expect between the two parties. It’s like a basketball game without a referee. That is why, the civil society organization in Mindanao lobbied so hard for the third party ceasefire monitors because the ceasefire mechanism then was not effective in controlling the situation on the ground. And as always the case, it’s the innocent civilians who suffer the brunt of war – the ordinary Lumads, Muslims and Christians.

The Inquirer editorial today looks at the Speaker of the House playing footsie with the Senate, and points out there remains Unfinished business. On a related note, Ricky Poca in The time is now points to the main priority of congressmen at present:

Cebu City Mayor Tommy Osmeña’s proposal to merge the Municipality of Cordova with Cebu City appears to have been rejected by all of the six congressional representatives of the Province of Cebu. Even if pursued in the House, it would be difficult to have the proposal approved, given the present sentiment of the six representatives and even Rep. Antonio Cuenco (Cebu City South District).

Moreover, the six representatives are busy with the plan to increase the legislative districts of Cebu, given the latest census that shows a considerable increase in the province’s population. Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, together with the provincial board, is serious about discussing with all the district representatives the plan to add more congressional districts in the province.

But the resolution filed in the Senate, calling for Charter change to institutionalize a federal system of government, may put on hold any plan of having more seats at the Batasan. Some representatives believe that Congress will prioritize the resolution authored by Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr., as the proposal has also reportedly gotten Malacañang’s nod. Some congressmen think it’s better to wait for the result of the move to shift to federal system because if it pushes through, it will practically affect the arrangement of the districts and provinces.

The plot thickens! Tony Abaya thinks Federalism will only provide an opening for a Putin-style move to stay in power, on the part of the President. And objects to the proposal being made on the basis -specious, he says- of its spurring economic growth. As he put it in a May 5 column,

My critique of his resolution rests on five principal grounds: a) it is a Trojan Horse to re-introduce a twice-defeated (in 2006-07) maneuver to shift to a parliamentary system, to enable President Arroyo to remain in power beyond 2010, as prime minister, similar to the maneuver of Vladimir Putin in Russia;

b) the resolution’s stated objective, “to spur economic growth,” is a no-brainer since, as I pointed out in my article, the Philippines’ failure to develop as fast as its neighbors in the past 50 years can be traced to poor, even stupid economic policies and strategies, not to its being a unitary state;

c) most of the successful countries in our part of the world – Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand – all achieved economic success as unitary states; only one – Malaysia – as a federal union; so there is nothing wrong with being a unitary state as long as the correct economic strategies and policies are pursued; on the other hand, a federal union with wrong economic strategies and policies would stagnate, e.g. autarkic and xenophobic Myanmar, under military rule since 1962.

d) archipelagic countries – Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines – are unitary states also for pragmatic reasons: being made up of islands, they are vulnerable to centrifugal forces that would encourage secession and disunity.

e) I challenged Sen. Pimentel to name even only one example of a country that shifted from unitary to federal – or from federal to unitary – and thus achieved prosperity as a result of that shift. He has not obliged.

See also Leonor Briones’ Financing Federalism. The only thing Measly Meanderings sees coming out of the whole thing is an infestation of officials.

In politics and business, Oscar Lopez, the current Lopez patriarch, is quoted as saying, ‘Buy us out if you want’: Suggests removal of VAT, royalties. According to The Mount Balatucan Monitor, the GSIS gambit sends the wrong message to business; though I’m not convinced, because other big businesses aren’t vulnerable the way Meralco is (either on the basis of existing share structures or of being subject to government regulation). the blogger and Patricio Mangubat in FilipinoVoices.com, though, share a skeptical attitude concerning the supposed benefits of a change in corporate management:

Garcia says its not the board they’re after–its management, dummy. Winston, we’re not kids and that stupid, okey? A management filled with government appointees is worst than the Lopezes. Replacing management is a de facto takeover.

Whatever the palace says, one thing is perfectly clear–these palace men are not creating noise out of nothing. They all say the same thing though–they’ll be doing this to force a lowering of electricity rates. All of them though, including Gloria, knows that a takeover will not immediately result to a lowering of electricity costs. Why? Because Meralco will lose considerable profitability.

Besides, government is the worst administrator of all time.

For Philippine Commentary, the problem of high electric rates boils down to what he calls two insane policies:

(1) Napocor has steadfastly refused to sign long term supply contracts for its dirty coal fired power plants, insisting instead on buying coal primarily on the spot market current at over $130 / ton; and

(2) P1.46 government royalty on domestic natural gas amounting to more than a third of the P4.10 per cubic meter paid by First Gas (a Lopez-owned independent power producer).

The Economist points to Goldman Sachs predicting oil at $200 a barrel by the end of the year. Sensing an opportunity (for its airline, among other things), Gokongweis offer P24.6B for gov’t stake in Petron Corp. In his column, John Mangun explains, in his view, Why P100 gasoline might be good:

When, two years ago, oil was $50 and Goldman forecast $100, the Philippines’ political leaders did nothing to prepare for $100. Now they have the opportunity to prepare for $200 a barrel.

Who wants to be the next president? Raise your hand. I have the guaranteed political strategy for making you the overwhelming landslide choice in 2010. Tell the people what you are doing today to handle a doubling of oil prices in two years. Because all the other contenders are going to tell the people what they will do after they take office and after gasoline doubles in price. It will be too late, then, to take action, just as it is now.

Here’s another thing to consider for your political campaign. If conditions continue unchanged, you may not be able to afford to give away that T-shirt and can of sardines to win a few extra votes. And your provincial political sortie might have to be on the back of a carabao instead of a Ford Expedition.

People worry about how much it costs for a tank of gas while Dubai, using our Filipino workers, is spending billions of dollars, some of it ours, to build artificial islands as playgrounds for the rich and famous.

However, no one is confident that solutions will be sought until the problem grows bigger. And that is why P100 gasoline might be good for the country. At P50, the pain is still bearable. When the situation deteriorates and the pain hurts badly enough, then the leaders might finally take some constructive action…

…There must be something in the air inside government offices and legislative halls around the world that causes political leaders to lose their common sense. Ideas and policies they would never apply in their own occupation—be it in commerce, education, medicine and media—are often the standard when they enter politics.

Virtually every government leader has, directly or indirectly, engaged in wealth creation in the private sector. They built something, taught others to build or found the capital and noncapital resources to create wealth. But when they join the government, they suddenly forget how to create national wealth…

…You want more and cheaper rice? Grow it. You need domestic oil so as not to be hostage to the Middle East oil sheiks? Dig it up.

No nation taxed, untaxed, subsidized, politicized or legislated itself to prosperity. They created wealth. Why is Vietnam now a net rice exporter? When I last visited it in 1990, this was the only national rice policy: “Everybody grow rice!” Every square meter of usable land in rice-friendly areas was planted. The monthly salary of the hotel night manager was $5.

We have huge mineral wealth. Do we dig it up? No. We may have enough oil for self-sufficiency. Do we exploit it? No.

Find a leader who applies the same wealth-creation techniques and policies in government that they do in the real world.

Mangun’s musings brings to mind an aricle in the Asia Sentinel, Asia Faces an Inflation Quandary:

Nowhere is the dilemma more acute than in Vietnam, which currently tops the consumer inflation league table at around 20 percent annually. In a seemingly belated response, the government dramatically tightened money supply growth, driving up interest rates and causing the country’s stock and real estate prices to crash. But the connection between consumer prices and money supply was tenuous. For sure, money had been far too loose for too long as Vietnam basked in international esteem and capital inflows. But the main inflation culprit was food, with prices up 35 percent thanks in large part to Vietnam’s open economy and role as a major food exporter – particularly of rice and fish.

Belated efforts to dampen domestic prices by limiting exports merely served to add to panic in importing countries like the Philippines which had failed to keep adequate stocks.

Now the pressure is on Vietnam to try another tack in its inflation fight – allow the dong, which has fallen against almost every currency except the US dollar, to appreciate significantly as it likely would given continued capital flows and strong commodity exports. But it isn’t that simple. The government and private sectors alike recognize that workers must be compensated for rising prices, so double-digit wage rises are in prospect. Combined with dong appreciation, that could undercut competitiveness just at the time when markets in the west are already weak and those in Asia are going off the boil.

…Elsewhere, in India, Indonesia and now the Philippines, subsidies, at least for the poorest, are a partial answer to the food price problem. But in India and the Philippines in particular they add to existing serious budget problems. India however does have a strong case for tighter monetary policy after a period of being carried away by India-rising euphoria and the impact of massive inflows of (mostly short term) capital which could yet cause balance-of-payments angst again.

On a related note, the interest of the China financial markets blog was piqued by a report on big banks engaging in hoarding -of money:

Large international banks, in other words, are responding to the current financial crisis by hoarding liquidity, as they have always done, at least since the invention of joint-stock banking, I think in the very early 18th century, and even before. We have been reminded very dramatically that banks are clearly vulnerable to liquidity runs. The collapse of my old employer Bear Stearns occurred largely, as far as I can see, because of a very old-fashioned bank run on an institution that was far from bankrupt, or would have been had it not experienced the bank run (i.e. until the forced fire-sale, its assets were worth significantly more than its liabilities). That, plus the experience of Northern Rock and a number of other close calls has made it imperative for banks that they have sufficient liquidity to meet any potential liquidity run, and for this reason they may simply be unwilling to lend to each other.

Returning to Mangun’s looking forward to the 2010 race, his views also brings to mind 2010 polls a 5-way race—forecast (hat tip: dantonremoto2010).

To my mind, Tony Gatmaitan is the first political professional to quantify the value of the Internet if we have presidential elections in 2010. He says the presidential derby at present has five main contenders who “well positioned to convert their vote-generating capabilities into the next elections” : Manuel de Castro, Jr.; Manuel Villar, Jr.; Manuel Roxas II; Loren Legarda; Joseph Ejercito Estrada.Then Gatmaitan identifies the three main arenas where the 2010 campaign would be fought out:

1) battle of the airwaves (50% of the contest);

2) ground level war (35% of the battle); and,

3) cyberspace, (15%).

Gatmaitan pointed out that prior to TV and radio political advertising being legalized, TV and radio influenced only 10% of the vote. But since the ad ban on radio and TV was lifted in 2004, the percentage has swelled (with an accompanying, and fast, collapse of the traditional political culture of mitings de avance, etc.) so that TV and radio will account for 50% of the vote come 2010:

“Prime time television is going to be inundated by political advertisements coming from all sides. There will be a shift from politicians to image makers. The latter will take the place of political operatives. The traditional areas controlled by politicians will now shrink,” he said.

Gatmaitan identifies the ground level war as centered on guarding votes on the precinct level. This used to account for 50% of the fight but Gatmaitan thinks it’s now been reduced to 35%. But it’s where the Palace has an ace up its sleeve:

The ground level war includes the national canvassing of all city, provincial and other electoral returns by Congress. And in this battle, the administration candidate has the inside track. “In a tight contest, they can ram through [Congress] anything,” he said.

It’s in the last zone of battle -cyberspace- that Gatmaitan (and the report) are vaguest:

While Internet penetration is still low in the Philippines, Gatmaitan said the influence of cellphones has increased to “63% of the population and still growing.” By 2010, it may reach 72%. “By 2010, voters will be read to accept imaginative SMS messages from candidates and political parties,” he said.

Which isn’t particularly enlightening at all. Gatmaitan is correct in pointing out the Internet includes cell phones in its ecology (think Chikka, and how you can get Yahoo messenger updates on your phone, Twitter from your phone and receive Twitts, post to Flickr from your phone, etc.) He seems dismissive of blogs, social networking sites, etc. And there is, too, the possibility that the Internet will have a spill-over effect, both when it comes to media and people evangelizing for their candidates.

To my mind, Francis Escudero was the most innovative and shrewd user of the Internet for his senatorial campaign, and also the first to take out online advertising. He used a combination of ads, appeals, and gimmicks such as one site of his that asked people to describe him, to solicit support.

A thought-provoking inquiry into where ICT is bringing (or could bring, rather) our democracy, is undertaken by Martin Perez in Critical Convergence, Part 2: Knowledge Politics. Of interest, considering his views, are these entries, part of the continuing coverage of the conference I attended in Sweden. The first, A game of snap, is someone’s reaction to the talk I gave. The second is self-explanatory: How ‘Facebook Girl’ turned up the heat in Egypt.

Overseas, Richard N. Haass says we have ushered in The Age of Nonpolarity:

At first glance, the world today may appear to be multipolar. The major powers — China, the European Union (EU), India, Japan, Russia, and the United States — contain just over half the world’s people and account for 75 percent of global GDP and 80 percent of global defense spending. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Today’s world differs in a fundamental way from one of classic multipolarity: there are many more power centers, and quite a few of these poles are not nation-states. Indeed, one of the cardinal features of the contemporary international system is that nation-states have lost their monopoly on power and in some domains their preeminence as well. States are being challenged from above, by regional and global organizations; from below, by militias; and from the side, by a variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations. Power is now found in many hands and in many places.

In addition to the six major world powers, there are numerous regional powers: Brazil and, arguably, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela in Latin America; Nigeria and South Africa in Africa; Egypt, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East; Pakistan in South Asia; Australia, Indonesia, and South Korea in East Asia and Oceania. A good many organizations would be on the list of power centers, including those that are global (the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the World Bank), those that are regional (the African Union, the Arab League, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the EU, the Organization of American States, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), and those that are functional (the International Energy Agency, OPEC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the World Health Organization). So, too, would states within nation-states, such as California and India’s Uttar Pradesh, and cities, such as New York, São Paulo, and Shanghai. Then there are the large global companies, including those that dominate the worlds of energy, finance, and manufacturing. Other entities deserving inclusion would be global media outlets (al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN), militias (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Mahdi Army, the Taliban), political parties, religious institutions and movements, terrorist organizations (al Qaeda), drug cartels, and NGOs of a more benign sort (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace). Today’s world is increasingly one of distributed, rather than concentrated, power.

As far as the United States is concerned, after briefly enjoying the status of being the only Superpower on earth after the fall of the USSR, Fareed Zakaria ponders The Future of American Power and asks if comparisons between the USA and the decline of the British Empire beginning with the Boer War, are as apt as many would like to think:

The United States’ recent military interventions in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq all have parallels in British military interventions decades ago. The basic strategic dilemma of being the only truly global player on the world stage is strikingly similar. But there are also fundamental differences between Britain then and the United States now. For Britain, as it tried to maintain its superpower status, the largest challenge was economic rather than political. For the United States, it is the other way around.

Through shrewd strategic choices and some sophisticated diplomacy, Britain was able to maintain and even extend its influence for decades. In the end, however, it could not alter the fact that its power position — its economic and technological dynamism — was fast eroding. Britain declined gracefully — but inexorably. The United States today faces a problem that is quite different. The U.S. economy (despite its current crisis) remains fundamentally vigorous when compared with others. American society is vibrant. It is the United States’ political system that is dysfunctional, unable to make the relatively simple reforms that would place the country on extremely solid footing for the future. Washington seems largely unaware of the new world rising around it — and shows few signs of being able to reorient U.S. policy for this new age.

And even as the Democratic nomination seems In Obama’s grasp, Vanity Fair takes a look at The Last Good Campaign (RFK, 1968!).

The Marocharim Experiment confesses to contributing to society’s decay.

“Pwede Na! The Complete Pinoy Guide to Retirement and Estate Planning” launch!

Pwede Na! The Complete Pinoy Guide to Retirement and Estate Planning , published by Platypus Publishing, is being launched today at 6 pm at Powerbooks, Greenbelt. Do join us.

Dismal diplomacy

Apparently today is the anniversary of the Metric System.

Scuttlebutt continues to be plentiful concerning the composition of the cabinet and other appointments (see Palace to tap poll lawyer as CHR chief: where does that leave Koko Pimentel’s case, I wonder?). Lito Atienza, who was said to be keen on assuming the Interior and Local Governments portfolio in pursuit of his grudge match against Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim, seems to be under the impression that Lim is not well (which is why Manila Vice-Mayor Isko Moreno has been the one issuing statements to the Press), and so is content with staying in his present DENR job. Michael Defensor, who was the other main candidate for Executive Secretary (the other one being the current DILG chief, Ronnie Puno) is therefore said to be slated to assume the Interior portfolio. Whether Puno will get Ermita’s job, and whether Ermita will get the plum position he really wants (head of PAGCOR) is still up in the air. Vicente Sotto III seems headed for PEDEA, and there seems to be no obstacle to Tessie Aquino Oreta’s assuming the Education portfolio. No word on whether Ralph Recto will dislodge Gary Teves, despite Vilma Santo’s suggesting that might be in the cards.

The President’s closed off one Cabinet option, which is an appointment as Presidential Chief of Staff. She recently abolished the position, once held by Rigoberto Tiglao and Michael Defensor. See Administrative Order 221 . With the abolition of the office, an administrative innovation ill-fatedly embarked on by the Estrada administration and slightly more successfully carried out under the present one, comes to an end. An interesting note is that the Chief of Staff position was copied from the American Presidency, and that position, an innovation of Dwight D. Eisenhower, I suspect owes to both his military experience and his exposure to the Philippine executive innovation of an executive secretary, which he saw at work during his stint in the American military advisor’s office prior to the war.

Speaking of the office of the Chief of Staff, I am sad to see that Nicasio Conti, one of Tiglao’s point men in that office, has left the PCGG, to which he’d been appointed after Tiglao was appointed ambassador to Greece. Conti’s a dedicated person, quite serious about the lifestyle checks that showed such promise.

What will happen to Hermogenes Esperon is still unclear, too. Two weeks ago, I ran into an acquaintance from the Department of National Defense, and departmental scuttlebutt seemed to be that Esperon would assume the Defense portfolio, which the old hands rather liked: they were unhappy with Teodoro being more interested in the National Disaster Coordinating Council, and its political mileage benefits, supposedly. What we do know is that the President’s recently reorganized the Department of National Defense: see Administrative Order 218.

Meanwhile, the glorious march of good governance continues, with this latest pronouncement: Palace: Hanjin P400M bribe-extort case closed. Perhaps, if the columns of Manuel Buencamino and Lito Banayo are any guide, it was simply too much of a lose-lose situation for the President to let things continue playing out in public.

The Warrior Lawyer looked at the Meralco brouhaha on May 5:

Arroyo has nothing to lose and everything to gain by attacking Meralco. As pointed out by Doronila, there’s no love lost between the Lopezes and Arroyo’s family. ABS-CBN has been vociferous in its attacks against her.

GMA intends to turn the tables on her critics, specially in the Senate, who are now distracted by this new maneuver. Unfriendly corporate entities have also been put on notice on what the government can do to court popular opinion. And this gut-issue is sure to resonate and gain adherents among the urban populace, the traditional core of the anti-government forces, and further deflate the opposition’s already faltering campaign against her.

She’s trying to pull a “Hugo Chavez”, only more subtle and elaborate. But will the public bite ? If she succeeds in a Meralco takedown, she just might be able to pull up her below basement-level approval ratings. For Arroyo, it’s certainly worth a try.

The battle royal continues to heat up. Congress probes Meralco: For antitrust law violation, say Arroyo allies. Both the Merlaco management and the GSIS camp have retained top gun law firms as both sides gear up for the proxy fight near the end of the month. Reuters reports Meralco row could backfire on power sector privatization.

This news item, Govt mulls discounts on residential Meralco bills, reminds me of two comments by a subscriber named “Mon Ram” in Pete Lacaba’s Plaridel e-mail list.

First, from a message sent at 6:30 AM today, concerning system losses charges to customers by Meralco:

The culprit is actually a law enacted by Congress in late 1994, RA 7832, which allows:

1. private utilities like Meralco to charge up to 9.5% of power losses to custormers

2. electric cooperatives like Albay Electric to charge up to 14% of power losses to customers.

Beyond those caps, the utilities absorb the losses.

Thus, in my bill I have to pay P99 for systems loss. That is about 9% of my total bill.

Add the average 10% EVAT to the 9% of systems loss and that comes up to 19′% of my bill.

Repeal both laws and we consumers can easily reduce our electric bill by 19%.

Earlier, on May 6, the same subscriber, pointed out consumers might want to consider installing special meters:

Seriously though, there is already a time-of-use (TOU) plan here offered by Meralco and other distribution utilities in the regions.

The catch is that you will pay for the specialty meter which costs around P10,000.There is also a one-time application fee of P2,700.

There is also another catch to it. Our present rate (I am in the 101-200 kwh category since our consumption is only 112 kwh) is about P9.10 per kwh.

If I shift to TOU plan, these will be my rates:

Peak hours- P6.30 per kwh (reduced by 1/3)

Off-peak – 3.00 per kwh (reduced by 2/3)

So we should avoid using electricity during these peak hours:

8 AM to 9 PM (practically the whole day)–Monday to Sat

6 PM to 8 PM (on Sundays)

In oder words: the ERC-approved TOU plan tells us: wag kang magplantsa, mag-aircon, mag-stove, mag-ilaw, mag-etc. sa mga oras na yan and you can reduce your electric bill by as much as 67%.;-)

Nevertheless, some customers may find the TOU plan practical and they can avail of it.

Yesterday’s Inquirer editorial, Dismal diplomacy, looked at the Arroyo administration’s diplomatic achievements (meager) and the ongoing unraveling of the Mindanao peace process, while today’s editorial, Breaking the impasse, appeals for the peace process to continue, but points out that Malaysia’s taken sides. A useful backgrounder’s in Part 1 and Part 2 of Steven Rood’s account of a conference on the Philippines that recently took place in Washington. From Part 2:

A common thread running through Martin’s conflict analysis was the problem of poor governance both as a contributing factor to conflict itself, and a constraining factor in overcoming the conflict. Of the three types of conflicts, his sentiment was that the NPA/NDF is the most serious form because it is nationwide; he also advocated negotiations without preconditions. When he spoke of the Moro conflict, he referenced the Facilitation Project’s final summary assessment and asserted that the MILF is ready to settle, but there are problems of historical prejudices, Filipino elites who are unready to settle, and Muslim politicians whose interests would also be adversely affected.

From the audience came questions about Sharia Law, to which Russell responded by describing the limited implementation of the Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines (PD 1083). Martin remarked that while people often say they want Sharia since they are Muslims, often they do not elaborate about the details of Sharia law. Another audience member quoted ARMM DTI Ishak Mastura, “the interfaith dialogue, peacebuilding, culture of peace, settling of rido, human security work that people are engaged in are only so much band-aids and placebo effect that do not address the root of the conflict in the South, which Catholic Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato once wrote in a paper is INJUSTICE.” Russell basically agreed that political will is needed to achieve this justice, but also that she believes that such peacebuilding work is valuable in its own right.

Another entry, In the Philippines: Conflict in Mindanao, in the same blog, focuses on success stories concerning peace building. Mon Casiple says the peace talks are winding down just as scheduled elections means people are getting wound up:

The outcome of the GOP-MILF peace talks largely depends on achieving agreement on the definition and scope of territory covered by the ancestral domain claimed by the MILF. Basically, it posits that, wherever the Moro are in majority, the territory shall be part of a new Moro autonomous region. Ancestral domain, to MILF, corresponds to a territorial arrangement where there is a Moro self-government. News reports speak of more than 1,000 barangays not only in the current ARMM but extending all the way to certain places in Luzon and non-Moro Mindanao.

The GOP has tried to grapple with the claim by offering a much broader ARMM arrangement within the framework of the Constitution, including a possible local state within a federal Philippine state as proposed in a constitutional reform proposal by various figures in the Philippine government. However, there are suspicions within the government that the MILF proposal–even when there are concession–basically lays the groundwork for a Moro independent state.

Kuala Lumpur had been hosting the GOP-MILF peace negotiations for sometime and it heads the 60-man IMT. Its decision to withdraw from the IMT–and possibly from the hosting of the negotiations–was publicly linked to its frustration over the stalled talks. However, a recent report alluded to an accusation by an unnamed government official saying that Malaysia wants to make hay while ostensibly hosting–by negotiating on the side for the Philippines to drop its Sabah claim. However true this accusation, the fact that it was made exposes the building tensions surrounding the Moro rebellion issue.

At the same time, the upcoming ARMM elections complicates matters as various political forces maneuver to seize opportunities they offer. The ruling Ampatuan clan is trying to maintain its hold on power. The MNLF-Sema wing will reportedly field Muslimin Sema to contest the governorship. Misuari himself is reportedly eyeing a rerun for the post. MILF is also reportedly organizing to support a candidate.

My column, The quest for an honest broker , is related to this topic. My column refers to Psst, Malaysia’s Got a New Rice Bowl and The GRP-MILF Peace Talks: Quo Vadis? by Rizal Buendia. See also MILF: Malaysians ‘irreplaceable’ as peace mediators in Newsbreak. Blogger At Midfield also considers the connection of the Malaysia threat of pulling out of the peace process to the Philippines’ Sabah Claim:

While Malaysia has effectively retained full control over Sabah, it is also on record that as recent as 2003 it has been paying “cession” fees to the Sultanate, based on notices transmitted by the Malaysian embassy in Manila. It is also asserted that under international law that the term ‘perpetuity’ is reckoned legally as lasting a period of 99 years. If this is so, then simple arithmetic would indicate that the lease has, in fact, expired. (At least one account on the Internet indicates the lease is 130 years past due.)

The website of the Sultanate of Sulu and Sabah asserts that at the very least, with Malaysia supposedly earning up to 100 billion dollars per year from the exploitation of the area’s rich natural resources (this figure is unverified), the sultanate would, by its own estimates, be entitled to a share of some 10 billion dollars, a huge amount the the sultanate says could go to uplifting the lives of the people of Sulu.

Some additional readings are linked to in Inquirer Current. You may also want to refer to this part of my August 17, 2007 entry, Thoughts on Mindanao: At the time, there was growing concern that fighting might resume there, but one official downplayed the possibility:

1. Late last year I had the chance to talk to Sec. Dureza, head of the peace process. Eventually, we discussed Mindanao and he seemed quite optimistic about the prospects of peace talks. What I found most interesting is that the government takes very seriously indeed, proposals to grant Commonwealth status (with its own Organic Act or a constitution) to Muslim Mindanao. From what I recall, Dureza said there were two major obstacles: first, the Constitution makes no provisions for anything more than its present provisions for regional autonomy; second, there is the desire of Muslim leaders to expand the territory that would comprise Muslim Mindanao beyond the present ARMM. On the other hand, he felt the ancestral domain issue (which would mean compensation for Muslims for territory and resources now settled by Christians) was not far off from being settled amicably.

2. …I had a very interesting talk with a former official who has an intimate knowledge of both the peace process and the Department of National Defense. Here are some observations made by the official:

a. Conflict in Mindanao is “self-containing,” a curious term which I understand works along these lines: the military undertakes an offensive; the leadership of whatever Muslim group the military is targeting melts away, seeking safe havens in Palawan and Sabah; Muslim families in the affected areas immediately send their families to evacuation centers; the evacuation centers are overwhelmed; the UN begins to speak of a “humanitarian crisis”; foreign media arrives, to cover the humanitarian crisis; foreign and public scrutiny become so intense, military offensives must cease; peace, for the time being, is restored. It is a tired, old, predictable, and tragic, script but one that serves to prevent violence from spiraling out of hand…

c. The MILF, according to the official, retains formidable formations on the ground. Therefore, they have the capacity to make a mess of things in their areas, which discourages aggressive AFP operations. The official gave an example involving the last time fighting broke out between the MILF and the AFP. The MILF embarked on systematically blowing up and tearing down electric poles over a large swathe of territory: so while the fighting could be sorted out, and peace restored relatively quickly, the damage to infrastructure -and thus, the damage to the local economy- took months to repair.

d. The MILF, the official said, also has something the Abu Sayyaf lacks: it can engage in reprisals if conflict escalates. If an offensive were launched against the MILF, the immediate result would be bombings in Davao, the Visayas or the ferries, and Metro Manila: the MILF has the network and the means. The Abu Sayyaf, on the other hand, has been heavily hit (but not knocked out) and so cannot retaliate. While there may be individual fighters or groups of fighters, who may be MILF, MNLF, or Abu Sayyaf, or all three, depending on the circumstances, in general, there are two issues and it isn’t helpful to blur the two: handling the MILF with kid gloves (the OIC and neighboring countries are also involved, after all) can’t be imperiled by going after the Abu Sayyaf, and vice versa.

e. There is the question of military procurement. An offensive justifies emergency appropriations and sooner or later it has to be asked whether the emergency release of funds benefitted the troops or not. Say a mortar round, fresh from the factory and thus at its prime, costs 30,000 pesos. That will be its listed price. But the same mortar round, close to its expiration date, can be found on the open market for, say, 1,500 pesos (put up for sale by foreign militaries updating their inventory). Therefore, in an emergency situation, a clever arms purchaser for the AFP can source mortar rounds for a fraction of their listed price. The official explained that the military being what it is, you can be sure that every single mortar round purchased during an emergency procurement will be used up, even if the military has nothing left to shell except the forests. A conscientious military command would only purchase fresh mortar rounds and not send about-to-expire rounds to the troops; but that is presuming the command is conscientious; an unscrupulous military command, on the other hand, would be poised to make a fortune from buying cheap ammunition…

What has not been discussed in the press, but which is being bandied about behind the scenes, are fears that political benefits could be reaped from a resumption of hostilities in Mindanao. It would allow the administration to focus attention on the fighting instead of other issues; an escalation in the level of violence could justify emergency powers; whether the government would simply let things drift towards hostilities, or actively foment trouble, is also hotly debated.

Regarding rice, Yen Macabenta says that there’s no debating the existence of food crisis, now:

How do we, here in the Philippines, face up the problem?

We begin by acknowledging that we are now living in a new era of higher food prices. Given this, we must commit to making a supreme effort to produce more of rice and other food we consume. There’s nothing we can do about our lack of indigenous crude oil, because nature did not bless us with it, but we are clearly capable of producing most of our food needs. What are needed mainly are focus, political will and the resources for greater production. With the economy exhibiting continued dynamism, we can spur the rapid growth of our agriculture. The higher prices for food will themselves be a factor for greater investments in the sector.

The critical lesson we must take from the food crisis—as well as the energy crunch—is that we are at risk by being overly dependent on the global market. And nowhere are the risks greater than in the food crisis, because the challenge is elemental. It affects the most vulnerable among us—the millions of our poor. It can be the difference between life and death.

It’s a good thing that the government and the private sector are meeting the challenge soberly and thoughtfully. Good ideas are being put on the table. The government is doing its part to stabilize the situation. And even the opposition has realized that this is not a time for wisecracks and showboating.

The reason the situation’s suddenly turned grim, after everyone was expecting things to ease up, is, aspoints out, due of course the disaster in Burma. The Unlawyer connects the news on Burma with concerns here at home, with inflation. An entry in China financial markets bears reading in this regard. Starting off with a look at the droopy stock market and what the blogger says have been unsuccessful interventions by the Chinese government to shore up the market, he then mulls over inflation figures and then goes on to look at food:

Headline food prices do seem to be moderating in China, so we will see a deceleration in CPI price rises, but I am not sure this is for all the right reasons, and I wonder if food price increases can continue to be restrained. As a long-time trader and observer of developing countries I always get a little nervous when government officials keep repeating that they don’t have a problem in some specific area, so I guess I am getting a little nervous about yet another announcement, this time from the NDRC, that they have “ample grain to keep food prices stable”, as the prominent headline in today’s China Daily put it.

We are starting to get these assurances nearly every two or three days now. “Our grain supply and demand is basically stable, our reserves are full, and we can ensure supply and stable grain prices,” the NDRC said in its statement. The same article pointed out that customs and commerce authorities are cracking down on illegal grain exports by traders hoping to profit from surging international prices. It points out that whereas price of rice in Thailand has soared from $300 a ton to $1000 a ton in six weeks (wow! can this possibly be true?), the price of rice in China is still frozen at $300 a ton.

Not surprisingly this seems to have led to wide-spread rice smuggling. Another article in the same issue of China Daily also makes this point: “But there are concerns about how long the nation can hold its rice price at about one-fourth of that in overseas markets, given recent reports of illegal rice exports in the past months.” Not only do we have a problem of local “businessmen” smuggling oil out of the country to take advantage of the heavily subsidized prices in China, but the smuggling problem now seems to be spreading to grains too.

I suppose this was only to be expected. With such long and complex borders, and with an endemic corruption problem, it was inevitable that the huge disparities between the subsidized prices of certain commodities in China and their equivalents in neighboring countries would lead to “arbitrage,” as the more polite among us might put it. I have no idea of how extensive this smuggling is, but given the fact that the authorities are publicly admitting the problem (and twice in a single issue of the China Daily), I would guess that it is a big problem. The monetarist in me would also point out that smuggling rice out of China will have a similar monetary impact as bringing foreign currency into China, so this is not just a problem for the Ministry of Finance, who has to raise taxes to pay for the subsidy going to smugglers, but also for the PBoC.

Familiar problems!

The Siam Sentinel points to an AP story that suggests the disaster will weaken the ruling junta’s hold on power, which is a good thing, in the long run, for the Burmese; but the devastation in that country upsets all the calculations -and expectations- concerning harvests for the rest of the year. Gregory MacNamee in The Encyclopedia Britannica blog, zeroes in on Burma, the situation there -and how referring to that country as Burma or Myanmar telegraphs one’s sympathies.

Overseas, Israel’s been busy commemorating sixty years of independence. See Israel at 60: History in maps at the BBC. The blog minority focus points out 41% of the world’s Jews now live in that country. And Mitchell Bard points out one of Israel’s achievements is that it’s a thriving democracy:

Israel is far from perfect, and is often condemned for its flaws, even though it should come as no surprise that it has not solved the social ills that the much older Western democracies still confront. Israel, nevertheless, upholds the values Americans take for granted – freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, tolerance of gays, equality for women and free and open elections – values absent in the rest of the Middle East. In fact, even as the Palestinians condemn the policies of Israel, when asked which country they admire most, it is Israel that comes out on top. And when anyone suggests that Israeli Arabs should live in a future Palestinian state, they protest and declare that the “hell of Israel is preferable to the paradise of Palestine.”

Moving on to undemocratic parts of the world, oppositionist blog Singapore Election Watch tackles a statement by the Singaporean PM reacting, it seems, to proposals to curb the entry of foreign workers. Daniel Politi in Slate asks if it’s The Beginning of the End? for the Clinton campaign.

Rice moldering in schoolhouses

In the news: RP April inflation at 8.3 percent yr/yr; highest since 2005. John Mangun advises, Get out of the PSE now.

Leonor Briones says there’s the danger that rice stockpiled in public schools may be devoured by rats before the rice can be given to schoolchildren. Her column reminded me of something I didn’t quite understand, at the time I’d heard it. Dinky Soliman said she was against using public schools to distribute rice relief to the poor, telling me of stories involving kids being mugged as they staggered home, and cases where families sold the rice instead of feeding it to their kids, but it seemed to me as good a means for distributing relief as any. But Briones explains the problem with the program:

I talked to a number of municipal mayors when I made a presentation on the Millennium Development Goals last Wednesday. I asked them about the picture of happy children and their kilo of rice. My simple question: How was the rice distributed to the children in April when classes closed as early as March?

A mayor from a Visayan town smiled and admitted that there was something wrong with the timing of the delivery of rice. When the rice finally reached the poor municipalities, the children were already gone for summer vacation.

A mayor from Mindanao complained that the DepEd program was not coordinated with the mayors. He agreed that the rice arrived too late for the children. “So where is the rice intended for them?” I asked. “They are stored inside the classrooms while waiting for the children to return in June,” he answered. “The rats!” I exclaimed in alarm, “The rats will eat the children’s rice!”

Someone in the group drawled, “Which specie of rats? The four-legged variety with tails or the two-legged kind without tails”?

Rice intended for children have an inexplicable way of arriving only after the kids have gone for summer vacation. This has been going on for a number of years. It happened this year, as recounted by the mayors. It also happened last year and the year before.

Amando Doronila speaks of a Mekong rice conspiracy .

Someone who used to be involved in the Roco campaign once told me that perhaps the most effective post-Edsa reform, was the imposition of term limits. By restricting politicians to a fixed number of terms, the Constitution made possible the transfer of office from elders to younger leaders, who, by virtue of the fact that they’re younger, have a higher chance of instituting innovations in governance. A Newsbreak article, Most governors still from political clans, but with varied trainings reminded me of this observation:

A good number of governors, however, no longer fit the stereotype of politicians’ children filling in their parents’ shoes even before they could practice in the field they studied in college. Forty-five out of 58 (77.58 percent) had practiced as businessmen, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and professors before their foray into politics…

Twenty-four of 58 governors (41.37 percent) were businessmen or businesswomen before they assumed elective positions. Ten of the 58 governors in the survey (17.24 percent) were working as lawyers, while five (or 8.62 percent) were doctors or health professionals.

A big majority of the governors (70.68 percent) have a bachelor’s degree. Governors with master’s degree accounted for 17.24 percent, while those with doctorate degrees (PhDs and MDs) accounted for 8.62 percent.

More than one-third of them (36.20 percent) studied business-related courses—business administration, management, commerce, economics, and accountancy—while 32.74 percent were able to obtain a law degree.

The dynastic nature of politics hasn’t changed, but as I’ve pointed out time and again, this isn’t surprising considering the dynastic nature of Asian politics in general (e.g. Japan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and an emerging dynastic trend in China) and Philippine society in particular (families of lawyers, doctors, etc.). The organization of society according to clan kinship survives, in its purest form (arguably) in Muslim Mindanao (see the description of the book, Rido: Clan Feuding and Conflict Management in Mindanao).

An interesting point to consider is to what extent resentment against the dominance of political families is widespread, or not: is it resentment against non-performing families in particular localities, or a more comprehensive objection to family-based politics? Is it a question of modernity clashing with traditional society, that is, a purely meritocratic mentality fed up with hierarchical notions of society, or simply a new kind of pseudoaristocratic coalition clashing with the existing powers-that-be (same urge to control, just a desire for a new brand)?

James Fallows, in his blog, points to a contest in which readers were asked to identify “the stupidest policy ever.” The winner?

Hundreds of entries later, the results are clear. An absolute majority of contestants spoke in favor of … mandates and subsidies for ethanol use as the stupidest manifestation of bipartisan public policy in the last 50 years.

Speaking of biofuels, on April 8, VeraFiles published Ethical lapses mark passage of biofuels law, which has led to an angry response by Sec. Gary Teves, and a snippy reply by VeraFiles.

Incidentally, this week’s episode of The Explainer was uploaded by some kind soul to YouTube. You can watch it in five parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. Hat tip to Geeky Rockstar.

In the blogosphere, discussion on blogging and the media continues.

This is a debate between people who slaved away to obtain a degree in a field of specialization, and people who are engaged in the same kind of activity but on a part-time basis and without formal training. Formerly, journalists had to contend with the literati, who sniffed that journalism isn’t literature at all; and you have academic historians peering down their noses at people who write “popular history,” etc. Now bloggers have taken the opposite tack: challenging the experts and calling into question the relevance of their credentials. See Marck Ronald Rimorin’s The Us-Against-Them Mentality in the Blogging vs. MSM Debate, and J’s Thoughts on blogging v. traditional journalism. Cocoy weighs in with Zeitgeist: Why Blogging v. Traditional Journalism is More than That.

I had a discussion with The Jester-in-Exile concerning my view that bloggers are Pamphleteers in electronic guise, while he views the blogosphere as a Speaker’s Corner. We began this discussion a year ago but at the last iBlog resumed it, and I countered that for now, the Pamphleteer model makes more sense because a blogger can blog without allowing comments, and thus, doesn’t have to welcome debate. Which doesn’t mean some sort of conversation isn’t taking place -ever writer conducts a dialogue with the reader. And while people may generally agree freewheeling comments are a bonus, they are not a fundamental requirement. Perhaps, if video blogging replaces written blogs, then the Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner model will be triumphant. Then again, as Robert McHenry pointed out last year in the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog, the more things change, the more they stay the same:

Try this: for “orator” read instead “politician,” and for “ingenious critics” substitute “newspaper columnists” or, if your prefer, “bloggers.”

Few contemporary public figures would dare address an audience quite so bluntly, warning them, in essence, that they are too easily led by pundits and office-seekers who are only eager to parade their cleverness before their fellow citizens. So just how archaic is this speech?

This particular English-language version is by the great Oxford scholar Benjamin Jowett, translating from the Greek of Thucydides. The speaker is Cleon, an Athenian politician of the “I’m just a plain man, I don’t make fancy speeches, I just tell the truth” variety that we are still quite familiar with.

Another article, also in the Encyclopedia Britannica blog, is When Appearances Rule: The Perils of Periclean Democracy, by Joseph Lane:

However, the bigger context of Plutarch’s Pericles is useful to understanding this development. In the opening of the biography, Plutarch claims that there is a real difference between poets and sculptors who make something “beautiful in appearance” and statesmen who actually “benefit others by their actions.”

Over the course of the narrative, that seemingly firm distinction is stealthily but steadily erased as Plutarch reveals that Pericles’ reputation as one of the greatest statesmen of antiquity is itself little more than a carefully cultivated appearance created by the protagonist’s collaboration with a series of political “artists” who help him craft the facade of great successes. The Acropolis building project (for which Pericles is still celebrated) proves to be little more than a grandiose jobs program. It was designed to secure Pericles the votes that he needed to maintain a constant hold on the highest elective offices. During this reign of more than two decades of political dominance, Pericles “rules” by constantly inflaming and manipulating the population’s aspirations to be “great” and “beautiful” while leading Athens steadily towards bankruptcy and a war she cannot win. Our celebration of him, Plutarch suggests, is little more than evidence that we are easily fooled by the “appearances of beautiful things.”

From Thucydides to Pericles via Plutarch, and by extension their heirs the Propagandists of our own birthing as a nation: the ancient model of the Pamphleteer -who does with the written word what the Orator does with the spoken word- points, in a sense, to the continuing importance of rhetoric. The glitter of words can, indeed, be fool’s gold -but it is, sometimes, the only treasure the past can bequeath the present.

An interesting examination of how the rhetoric hasn’t wilted, but bloomed, thanks to technology, is undertaken by Mary Stuckey in How Technology and Online News Saved Political Rhetoric.

Anyway, just as not every blog welcomes or even accepts comments, one has to ask whether any real consensus exists on blogging as a conversation. People have been having conversations with the written word and with authors even if the writers have predeceased the reader.

And it has to be asked to what extent online publishing has been revolutionary.

The invention of the printing press made possible the widespread, accurate, reproduction of texts. Its manifestation is the neighborhood public library instead of royal and monastic collections, and yes, the challenging of authority, particularly religious authority.

The Internet made possible the instantaneous distribution of information across time zones and borders. It has no manifestation because of its virtual nature.

The permanence, then, of knowledge has been lost; as has the durability of information.

Entire books have vanished because card catalogs were dispensed with but any error in the encoding of data into computer systems means a misclassified book is an inaccessible book -a book that might as well have been destroyed, and will remain a lost book until rules once again allow readers to freely browse library stacks, a rare privilege these days.

The question then, is what is the implication when hieroglpyhs can still be read, cuneiform can still be decoded, but yesterday’s op-ed piece in the Philippine Star is so difficult to track down as to be lost forever; anything from Inq7.net says is basically gone, links do not persist, whatever appeared on line in Today Newspaper has disappeared without a trace -save, perhaps, a dead link in some comment thread.

A broken hard disk can lose as much written knowledge as was lost when fires and plunder destroyed the Great Library at Alexandria over a period of centuries. The person caught up in the Zeitgeist will not care to consult the original texts, though they’re preserved in the libraries, because if not available instanenously and in soft copy, it’s not worth retrieving -meaning, human civilization prior to the 1990s has never been more at risk since the Dark Ages following the collapse of the Roman Empire or the Cultural Revolution in China.

A proposal lacking a consensus

My column for today is A proposal lacking a consensus. I’m going to dissect Senator Pimentel’s Federalism proposals on Inquirer Current once I get a complete copy of the Senate’s resolution, but my initial thoughts are that the proposal’s a messy one. My column today provides some initial thoughts along this line. See, also, my column Gerrymandering from August 5, 2007.

The Inquirer editorial yesterday, The Garcia gambit , looks at . See Newbsreak’s Gov’t, Lopezes in battle for control of Meralco.

This is a mental image we really don’t need: Cabinet revamp striptease as Amando Doronila puts it. Actually, the time for a massive overhaul of the cabinet, as one former official told me, was in the wake of the May 2007 elections. Cabinet members like Ermita, Gonzales and Gonzalez, should have been axed with the dismal showing of Team Unity in the Senate.

Richard Spencer, blogging for The Telegraph from Beijing, says Here is China’s master plan concerning Tibet. A kind of small opening’s been offered for an accomodation with the Dalai Lama.

In Malaysia, even as Malaysian police raid blogger over murder article there’s Malaysia and its Blogolution, with this digest of the issues confronting Malaysian society:

There are numerous reasons to explain this dramatic decline in support for the ruling BN. Firstly, like many parts of the world, Malaysia has been rocked by rising prices, especially for food, over the last year. The ringgit in the pocket has not been able to retain its value, and even in a country which likes to portray itself as a modern industrial nation, the many Malaysians who have not benefited from its rapid development have been hurt by the rising prices.

Then there is corruption. Malaysians feel particularly despondent about what they see as the broken promises of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi after his landslide 2004 election win, when he was re-elected promising to address corruption. Unlike other countries, what has been so upsetting to people is not the corrupt cop on the street corner but the seeming collusion within political and business circles that have seen lucrative contracts awarded to a small set of favored contractors in a closed tender process.

Furthermore, Malaysia’s judiciary was also rocked with the release of a secret tape-recording in early 2008, purportedly between a former Chief Justice and a politically well-connected lawyer in which the two were discussing the appointment of judges. This seeming interference in the judiciary, long-suspected but always denied, touched a raw nerve amongst the public.

Finally, there seems to have been an unraveling of the race politics that has for so long dominated Malaysian politics. After the riots of 1969 and the New Economic Policy (NEP) introduced in 1971 designed to boost the economic standing of the Malays in Malaysia, in late 2007 many in the Indian community took to the streets to protest their inferior economic position and the benefits heaped on the Malays through the NEP and follow-up programs. Meanwhile, the Chinese have continued to resent the ongoing pursuit of economic rebalancing which has supported the Malays in a way not commensurate with their contribution towards business development in Malaysia.

Because of this,

Inspired by the space created by the Internet for individuals to express themselves, the 2008 elections saw political control of news and information wrested away from the government for the first time, creating the conditions for a new political activism amongst ordinary Malaysian citizens to take root. Even the prime minister conceded “We thought that the newspapers, the print media, the television were more important, but young people were looking at text messages and blogs. We didn’t think it was important. It was a serious misjudgment” (New Straits Times, March 26, 2008).

Malaysian blogger SlowCatchUpKuan is amused by the wrangling of Malaysian deputies in parliament, at least ever since parliamentary proceedings started being broadcast live; and points out that Badawi’s old mentor and now nemesis, Mahathir, has weighed in by planting his flag in the blogosphere:

My Singapore News notes that Mahathir, who used to enjoy the advantages of having an iron grip on Malaysian media, and has established a presence in cyberspace out of necessity.

Hard-T explains where Mahathir’s online nom-de-plume came from and what it means (and that Mahathir’s daughter has been blogging for some years now):

C.H.E. Det, was Dr Mahathir’s pseudonym for his articles submitted to the Sunday Times between 1946-1950, which mainly touched on Malay economic and political predicaments then.

Simply Puteri writes,

I think now that he is no longer in the government he realizes that anything he has to say, carries as much weight as any other ordinary citizen. I may not always agree with what he has to say in his blog but he has as much right as any other blogger to voice his opinions.

There are signs already that the government is paying a lot more attention to the alternative media and bloggers. Other government higher ups, like the chief minister of Malacca and former MB of Selangor, are also jumping on the blogging bandwagon.

The results of the last elections have proven beyond a doubt the power that can be harnessed from cyberspace. If the present government wants to remain competitive in the information war, it has to get involved and pay attention to what is going on with the mood of the rakyat via the internet.

Malaysian blogger-parliamentarian Jeff Ooi (in his blog, Screenshots) visits Vietnam and points out that even as Malaysian worry that Vietnam will overtake them economically. Contrast what Ooi notes here:

What’s more, business registration processes had been expedited even in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai — investment licenses can now be issued within six days!

There must be some magic in Vietnam that helped pump-prime the country’s economy. So I decided to give it a closer look and landed on Ho Chi Minh City on Vietnam’s Liberation/Reunification Day (April 30 evening), and witnessed the celebration of Workers’ Day (May 1).

Doubtlessly, HCM City plays an important role in the country’s socio-economic development, accounting for 22% of GDP, one-third of the State’s budget and 40% of the country’s export turnover.

Yesterday, teamed with a group of Malaysian investors, I toured the Saigon Hi-Tech Park (SHTP) and Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP), and the Phu My Hung area in Saigon South.

The SHTP is where the new Intel mega-site is being developed, with US$1 billion investment for the company’s digital ASEAN (d-ASEAN) programme. Key tenants now are Jabil from USA and Allied Group from Singapore. It will need another five years or so to mature but most of the outsource services have virtually set up camps in Saigon to capitalise on Intel’s supply chain. Capturing Intel into Ho Chi Minh is a coup for Vietnam, and a severe threat to Penang as a base for the Electrical and Electronics industry.

The VSIP, near Song Be area, is about 14 years old, set up in March 1994 during the time when Vo Van Kiet and Goh Chok Tong were both Prime Ministers of the respective countries. It now houses full occupancy of tenants with manufacturing as a strong base. I could see earthwork for Phase II being carried out. It has the signature of Singapore-conceived facilities, clean, systematic and natural vegetation-friendly.

Phu My Hung is basically a Taiwanese investment when Kuomintang ran the economy before Chen Shui-Bian came around. Having endured the Asian Financial Crisis, the far-sightedness of the Taiwanese investors had finally paid off, and Phu My Hung, a former swampy area that needed massive earth-fills, is the jewel of the crown for Saigon South. Land prices now fetch US$4,500 per square-metre! Hip names in retail sector are now located here, including the sleek HQ for Unilever.

With what vaes9 wrote some weeks back in Intel Cavite Closing Down, for Real?

Searching around the blogosphere, an Intel employee recounts in his LiveJournal blog that the “official” statement for the planned closure is:

“[Intel Philippines needs to] find another building so that structural abnormalities in CV1 [Cavite Plant 1] can be remedied else Intel will cease all future Manufacturing operations in the Philippines…”

If this is true, and I think it is (Numonyx officially became a company last March 31, 2008 making the timing extremely uncanny), it is a sad day for the Philippines as an investment site. Intel started its operations in the Philippines in 1974, a mere six years after Intel itself was founded, and after 34 years Intel will likely cease operations here having moved to places like Vietnam and China, which are apparently more manufacturing-friendly.

Back to Jeff Ooi, this is interesting (once again, from his entry, Vietnam is hungry):

Despite the glittering outlook, some of the old hands among Malaysian expatriates I met up with expressed their concern that Vietnam’s economy may be headed for a bubble burst by August. That’s the date when the financial sector’s monetary credit squeeze policy comes into full effect and speculators in the real estate industry may be the first to burn their fingers, and domino effect see in.

According to media reports, State-owned corporations, which had invested 37% (US$8 billion) of their capital into real estate, banking and the stock market, are now trying hard to maintain solvency.

At last month’s meeting with officials from the national government, Viet Nam News said representatives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told State-owned corporations and groups need to focus on their major businesses, and warned that the local financial market is being hurt by small banks.

It is said that State-owned corporations active in the coal, electricity and petroleum industries have made huge profits in telecommunications, finance and banking, but are facing sharp reductions in their own productivity. This could have major repercussions for the national economy and security.

Blogger Gulf Stream Blues looks at that horrifying story of an Austrian father who imprisoned his daughter, and the question Austrians have been forced to confront: how did the man get away with it for so long?

The punditocracy provokes the blogosphere: veteran journalist Luis Teodoro, as quoted in Journalists urged to blog, set examples online and gets shrieked at by Philippine Commentary (seconded by stuart-santiago) and Journal of the Jester-in-Exile. A sober analysis is provided by The Warrior Lawyer in FilipinoVoices.com. As does Abe Margallo, also in FilipinoVoices.com.

Jeff Jarvis, the New and Old Media observer, points out a couple of interesting things. First (see More writers than readers), a Pew study showed that as of 2004, in the USA, 53 million Americans published online while only 50 million bought daily papers: the writers, Jarvis pointed out, quite possibly now outnumber actual readers. Second, in Newspapers: a minus-sum game, he argues that newspapers won’t regain the advertising revenues they’ve lost; and they stand to lose even more revenue as online advertising gets even more specialized, because the microniche marketing that works online is unsuited to the way newspapers work.

On the other hand, Jeremiah Owyang asks (and answers his own question), Who do people trust? (It ain’t bloggers): he points to research that suggests people trust people they know, but that bloggers shouldn’t think that as a category of writers, they enjoy a particularly high level of trust.

There is also, as I told the Jester-in-Exile, a generation-derived element at work here, and this is true even among journalists. The Blue Pencil Chronicles well, chronicles a typically intense debate going on between professors in the UP School of Journalism, for example.

Let me weigh in. Personally (in answer to Philippine Commentary’s question), I am more comfortable with the classification “Opinion Writer,” because that’s really all I’ve ever done; a journalist to my mind, is someone with experience in reporting the news, like John Nery. A columnist really has to make a minimal adjustment to blogging, whether in terms of so-called ethics and without the overarching need for whatever “objectivity” is. A journalist with background as a reporter or full-time editor, on the other hand, who’s used to subsuming his or her personal identity to the report he or she is tasked to write, will probably have a difficult time adjusting.

This is a debate then close to my heart, because I’m basically self-taught and am brazen enough to write on subjects (and be in a profession) for which I lack the academic credentials (and therefore have my own biases: history is more an art, a branch of literature, than a “social science” though it benefits from the handling of facts according to widely-accepted standards).

An analogy I suggested to Jester-in-Exile was the Protestant Reformation, a revolt against the dogmas and established hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

The dividing line is, to my mind, institutional affiliation, and that includes professional affiliation. The difference between a profession and an avocation, though both subscribe to the view that what they are doing is more than work, it’s a calling, a vocation. Another analogy? It is the clash between medical doctors and healers; of subscribing to the Hippocratic Oath as a licensed professional, and subscribing to the norms of that oath but as someone outside the fraternity of medical professionals.

This is a distinction that, to my mind, will disappear -or become obsolete- when we have professional, full-time, bloggers who only cover and comment on, current events (particularly politics) and derive a livelihood from it. In the Philippine context, blogging on political and current events as an exclusive, full-time occupation is still on the horizon, though it’s become possible when it comes to other topics.

Help me complete the Official Calendar of the Republic

One of my on-again, off-again projects is The Official Calendar of the Republic, in which I’m trying to gather all the various national, provincial, and municipal holidays, past and present, in one place, along with the statutes that provide(d) for them. I’d appreciate any help from readers.

1. Holidays by legislative fiat, whether national, provincial, or municipal. Please provide the details (e.g. Republic Act ____, passed on [date])

2. Holidays and commemorations by executive issuance (event, duration, number of the executive issuance, usually a Presidential Proclamation or Executive Order, the President who issued it and the date). This applies to past (and thus lapsed) commemorations.

3. Holidays and commemorations by provincial statute.

Please add a comment below, if you know of any.

Every reader of this blog helps me out, because visitors are tracked by PajamasMedia, etc. But there are some readers who very generously decide to give me something directly. A reader once gave me a lifetime membership to LibraryThing. Another reader always gives me a book or two every New Year, most lately some books by John Lukacs.

Since this year I turn 38, and hope springs eternal, here’s my birthday and Christmas wishlist for 2008.

1. A CueCat Barcode Scanner.

2. A Flickr Pro Account.

3. A TimeFlyer registration code.

(Thank you to Adam Behringer, developer of Bee Doc’s Timeline, for the complimentary copy of the program!!!)

4. Anything at all from My Amazon.com Wishlist. In particular, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580, Opposing Suharto: Compromise, Resistance, And Regime Change In Indonesia, A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country, Britain and Indian Nationalism: The Imprint of Amibiguity 1929-1942, American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia: US Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism 1920-1949, or The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Volume 2, The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

The Federalist appeal

Did you know that May is Anti-Graft and Corruption Awareness Month? Information is a good tool for ferreting out graft and corruption, and a Freedom of Information Act will be a step in the right direction. As Uniffors puts it, with the proposed bill being sponsored on the floor of the House, Cockroaches placed on notice.

My Arab News column for the week’s Cooperation in the Wake of Rice Panic. (and recently, it was Canada’s turn: Food-buying panic hits Canadian stores). The column refers to the chart above, distributed in a recent newsletter of Nouriel Roubini. As it is, Rice prices may fall by 50% by yearend–economists. But for now, it’s belt-tightening all around, as The Unlawyer, who is visiting Singapore, noticed.

My entry yesterday focused on the effect on prices of the government’s rice purchases; today’s news has OPEC-style rice cartel up. Interesting information also in Why rice prices surging to record highs. (export curbs; building up national rice stocks; falling world inventories; speculation; changes in land use; and growing population being the main causes).

Incidentally, three articles by Cielito Habito I haven’t linked to, yet: Is there a rice shortage? and (Mis)targeting the poor and Food, fuel and finance . The middle column is particularly relevant because of the question of mapping the poor:

During the Ramos administration, targeting was done by focusing government assistance on the 20 poorest provinces, defined as the provinces with the highest percentage incidences of poverty. It was soon realized, however, that only 11 percent of all poor Filipinos were in those provinces, many of which were smaller ones. Thus, even if all the poor in those provinces were lifted out of poverty, it would make a small dent on national poverty levels. The targeting scheme was thus refined to focus on the 5th and 6th class municipalities, on the premise that the poor can be found in the poor municipalities. We know, of course, that not all people in such municipalities are poor, and even 1st class municipalities have many poor dwellers.

The Estrada administration took a different approach: government sought to focus assistance to the 100 poorest families in each province and city, with the local governments tasked to identify them. With little data on which to base the selection, it took two years for the LGUs to finally come up with their lists; by then, a new administration had taken over.

The Arroyo administration took yet another approach to targeting, as exemplified in its Food-for-School and Tindahan Natin Programs (FSP and TNP respectively). Government has devised a Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information Mapping System (FIVIMS) that identifies very, very vulnerable (VVV), very vulnerable (VV) and vulnerable (V) LGUs. All 17 towns and cities in Metro Manila are included as target areas regardless of vulnerability level, for clearly political reasons. For FSP, all VVV municipalities are also automatically included, along with the poorest municipalities in VV and V provinces. For TNP, locations of stores were based on a rapid poverty mapping done by DSWD, focused on prevalence of malnutrition and lack of rice supply.

Unfortunately, our track record at targeting the poor has been downright dismal. Studies by Dr. Rosario Manasan and by Dr. Celia Reyes of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) have measured leakage rates (percentage of non-poor beneficiaries) and undercoverage rates (percentage of the poor who do not benefit) of the above targeting mechanisms. Results show that more than half of the recipients of the targeted assistance are actually non-poor, with leakage rates of 62 percent for FSP and 66 percent for TNP. Undercoverage of FSP was estimated at 80 percent, i.e. only one-fifth of total target beneficiaries are assisted by the program.

Interestingly, Metro Manila accounts for the bulk (71 percent) of the leakages in FSP. Similarly, the leakage rate for TNP declines from 66 to 59 percent if Metro Manila stores are not counted. Substantial leakages in targeted assistance is the price government has been paying for buying political support from the more visible and more vocal constituencies in Metro Manila through their indiscriminate inclusion in targeted assistance programs.

Vulnerability, incidentally, seemed a very good criteria, it’s a concept that’s been adopted by the International Red Cross, for example: Red Cross efforts are supposed to focus on vulnerable populations and individuals, not just in times of disaster, but in general.

The failure of the various government programs to target the poor, however, boggles the mind, in that it shows how trying to take a scientific approach can easily be subverted by human behavior -or “gaming the system” as it’s been called.

The Mount Balutacan Monitor points to a report that the provincial government in Misamis Oriental is in shock because a massive shipyard project has croaked.

My column for today is Senate swindled?

The thing is, I’ve only encountered the Pimentel resolution in bits and pieces online. It’s not on the Senate site. It’s not in the news sites. So a thorough review of what the bill contains is impossible.

For background see Federalism gets majority backing in Senate and 16 senators now back Pimentel’s shift to federalism. Background in Newsbreak’s In a surprise move, senators give qualified yes to charter debate. which also gives a digest of the Senate’s proposed changes to the Constitution:

The resolution will require the revision of 14 of the existing 18 Articles of the Constitution and the addition of two new articles. It seeks to adopt a federal presidential bicameral form of government.

Specifically, it calls for the creation of 11 federal states out of the existing political subdivisions of the country and one federal administration region.

It seeks the transfer of the legislative department to the proposed Federal State of Central Visayas, the judicial department to the Federal State of Northern Luzon while maintaining the executive department in the proposed Federal Administrative Region of Metro Manila…

…Other major proposals: the election of senators based on states; the election of senators representing overseas voters; the election of the president and the vice-president as a team; the abolition of the Judicial and Bar Council which screens nominees to the judiciary etc.

Blog @ AWBHoldings.com asks who is afraid of Federalism, and engages in counting potential votes (and potential opportunities for double-crosses in the voting), and he points to the whole subject of constitutional amendments being viewed as a Trojan horse.

Who else is critical of Federalism? Senator Arroyo is against it, and his argument is one shared by quite a few people, too: Federalism to create ‘11 little fiefdoms, 11 little kings’.

For the thinking behind Pimentel’s proposal, blogger reytrillana reproduces a recent speech in which Pimentel explains why he supports Federalism. Blogger A Simple Life supports a serious examination of Federalism but thinks the current proposal provides for too many states:

One thing of concern though, is that 11 states plus one administrative region I think, is just a bit too many. Seven (7) states and an administrative region would be better, i.e., feasible and sustainable:

1. Northern Luzon (Ilocos, CAR, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon)

2. Southern Luzon (CALABARZON, Mindoro, Marinduque, Bicol)

3. Western Visayas (Western Visayas, Romblon, Palawan)

4. Eastern Visayas (Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas)

5. Northern Mindanao (Western Mindanao, Northern Mindanao, CARAGA)

6. Southern Mindanao (Davao Region, SOCCSKSARGEN)

7. Bangsamoro (ARMM)

8. Federal Administrative Region (NCR)

One stumbling block is the rhetorical attraction (rhetorical, because not precisely factual, as Torn and Frayed has argued; one thing a Federal system does not abolish is a national capital; and one thing Federalism does not remove, is the need for, or authority, of a national government) of being freed of “Imperial Manila” while getting the nagging feeling, on the other hand, that this might be a license not for regional growth, but regional chaos.

That Federalism will only balkanize the country is is indeed a cause for worry; see Francis Fukuyama (China’s powerful weakness: Beijing’s reach isn’t big enough to stop local governments from abusing the rights of ordinary citizens) writing in the Los Angeles Times, on how even strong, unitary states are concerned over the periphery ending up lawless regions.

On a related note, Ian Baruma, in The Last of the Tibetans, takes a look at Tibet and wonders if the Tibetans aren’t going to end up like the American Indians:

The Chinese have much to answer for, but the fate of Tibet is not just a matter of semi-colonial oppression. It is often forgotten that many Tibetans, especially educated people in the larger towns, were so keen to modernize their society in the mid-twentieth century that they saw the Chinese Communists as allies against rule by holy monks and serf-owning landlords. In the early 1950’s, the young Dalai Lama himself was impressed by Chinese reforms and wrote poems praising Chairman Mao.

Alas, instead of reforming Tibetan society and culture, the Chinese Communists ended up wrecking it. Religion was crushed in the name of official Marxist atheism. Monasteries and temples were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (often with the help of Tibetan Red Guards). Nomads were forced to live in ugly concrete settlements. Tibetan arts were frozen into folkloric emblems of an officially promoted “minority culture.” And the Dalai Lama and his entourage were forced to flee to India.

None of this was peculiar to Tibet. The wrecking of tradition and forced cultural regimentation took place everywhere in China. In some respects, the Tibetans were treated less ruthlessly than the majority of Chinese. Nor was the challenge to Tibetan uniqueness typical of the Communists. General Chiang Kai-shek declared in 1946 that the Tibetans were Chinese, and he certainly would not have granted them independence if his Nationalists had won the civil war.

If Tibetan Buddhism was severely damaged, Chinese Communism has barely survived the ravages of the twentieth century, either. But capitalist development has been even more devastating to Tibetan tradition. Like many modern imperialist powers, China claims legitimacy for its policies by pointing to their material benefits. After decades of destruction and neglect, Tibet has benefited from enormous amounts of Chinese money and energy to modernize the country. The Tibetans cannot complain that they have been left behind in China’s transformation from a Third World wreck to a marvel of supercharged urban development.

But the price in Tibet has been higher than elsewhere. Regional identity, cultural diversity, and traditional arts and customs have been buried under concrete, steel, and glass all over China. And all Chinese are gasping in the same polluted air. But at least the Han Chinese can feel pride in the revival of their national fortunes. They can bask in the resurgence of Chinese power and material wealth. The Tibetans, by contrast, can share this feeling only to the extent that they become fully Chinese. If not, they can only lament the loss of their own identity.

The Chinese have exported their version of modern development to Tibet not only in terms of architecture and infrastructure, but also people – wave after wave of them: businessmen from Sichuan, prostitutes from Hunan, technocrats from Beijing, party officials from Shanghai, and shopkeepers from Yunnan. The majority of Lhasa’s population today is no longer Tibetan. Most people in rural areas are Tibetan, but their way of life is not likely to survive Chinese modernization any more than the Apaches’ way of life survived in the United States.

Since Chinese is the language of instruction at Tibetan schools and universities, anyone who wishes to be more than a poor peasant, beggar, or seller of trinkets must conform to Chinese norms, that is, become Chinese. Even Tibetan intellectuals who want to study their own classical literature must do so in Chinese translation. Meanwhile, Chinese and other foreign tourists dress up in traditional Tibetan dress to have their souvenir pictures taken in front of the Dalai Lama’s old palace.

Baruma’s article, while focusing on Tibet, basically lists the grievances and concerns that have convinced some people to advocate Federalism.

In Federalism Today, which dates back to 2002, Ronald Watts tackled the question: why the Federal appeal?

To what can this increased interest in federalism be attributed? One major factor has been the recognition that an increasingly global economy has unleashed centrifugal economic political forces weakening the traditional nation-state and strengthening both international and local pressures. As a result national governments are faced increasingly with the desires of their populaces to be both global consumers and local self-governing citizens at the same time. Thus, the nation state is at the same time proving both too small and too large to serve the desires of its citizens.

These developments have contributed to the current interest in federalism, not as an ideology, but in terms of practical questions about how to organize the sharing and distribution of political powers in a way that will enable the common needs of people to be achieved while accommodating the diversity of their circumstances and preferences.

The lessons proposed are interesting, too:

Experience since 1945 has taught us three major lessons. First, federal political systems do provide a practical way of combining, through representative institutions, the benefits of unity and diversity, but they are no panacea for all of humanity’s political ills. Second, the degree to which a federal political system can be effective will depend upon the extent to which there is acceptance of the need to respect constitutional norms and structures and upon an emphasis on the spirit of tolerance and compromise. Third, effectiveness also depends upon whether the particular form or variant of federal system that is adopted or evolved gives adequate expression to the demands and requirements of the particular society in question.

It seems to me many interested in Federalism like it because Federalism is a Solution to Resolve Ethnic Conflict, as Ellis Katz suggests. On the other hand, there’s Federalism as a means to more equitably distribute national resources. See the abstract of Fiscal Federalism and National Unity.

In particular, Spain seems to be a model for approaching Federalism from the point of view of finance, see Fiscal federalism and regional integration: lessons from Spain and the more complex Public Spending and Fiscal Federalism in Spain. Period 1984-1998. Spanish concerns over Federalism are reported by Giles Tremlett in a 2005 article. Spain is an interesting example because of the difficulties the Spaniards faced after the demise of Generalissimo Franco: how do you turn a feudal society into a functioning, modern democracy? See Federalism and the State of the Autonomies in Spain:

After 39 years of dictatorship (1936-1975), the death of General Franco offered Spain an immense opportunity to rebuild its institutions and create a system of government where the diversity of cultures was not an impediment to the reintroduction of democracy. It is with the Constitution of 1978 that this country ended the ancient discussion about the form of State that would better ensure governance and opened the path to the creation of the State of the Autonomies.

Incidentally, if anyone can help me get a copy of Democracy and Federalism in Spain (see this abstract, too). as well as Mexican Federalism Revisited, and Federalism and Caudillismo in the Mexican Revolution: The Genesis of the Oaxaca Sovereignty Movement (1915-20), I’d highly appreciate it.

Mon Casiple simply thinks the Senate proposal is a gambit to derail a Palace initiative -and that the gambit’s worked.

Meanwhile, my column also looks at the President’s plans to overhaul her cabinet; RG Cruz says the President’s become rather flirtatious about the whole thing. Mad Miriam weighs in, too: New Cabinet to be 2010 admin senatorial slate–Sen Santiago. The scuttlebutt for some time now has focused those waiting in the wings for appointments – includingRalph Recto, Tessie Aquino-Oreta (said to have already completed her Department of Education lineup of appointments) and Vicente Sotto III.

In the blogosphere, on an overseas political note, BuzzMachine looks at Democrats engaged in a schism in a top American political blog. In Malaysia, as you know Jeff Ooi is the first Malaysian blogger (Screenshots) to become an MP. He takes a frustrated -but highly humorous- look at parliamentary procedure in Speaker (Sabah): ‘No supplementary questions during Q&A today’.

And on a cultural note, see Why I Gave Up Blogs To Read More Books by Coconut Headsets.

And listmania! An ongoing list-making process has missingpoints weighs in with his votes for The Top 100 Public Intellectuals , but has a bone to pick with whoever put Al Gore on the list:

Meanwhile, Al Gore needs to be off the list. He is a politician and a popularizer of a cause but it isn’t his ideas being discussed. Being a public intellectual means having thoughts that are original enough to influence lesser people’s thoughts. If agreeing with experts and promoting their ideas is public intellectualism, half the people with blogs can qualify.

Indeed, there is The dilemma of defining a Public Intellectual as blogger gov4sale dissects the question,

The best example comes from Alan Lightman in his article “The role of public intellectuals”

Lightman bring the example of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his essay “The American Scholar” in this essay Emerson describes the meaning and the function of the intellectual.

In this essay Emerson describes the intellectual as “preserves great idea of the past communicates them and creates new ideas. The intellectual does all of these things not out of obligation to his society, but out of obligation to himself.”

The idea of the intellectual that is described by Emerson feels more of a noble idea, but a very true one, what Emerson describe as an intellectual is by far the most tangible idea ever.

To add to the above notion but with a more political character Edward Said describes “the intellectual’s mission in life is to advance human freedom and knowledge, this often means standing outside of society and its institutions and actively disturbing the status quo.”

With these two ideas combine together we draw a very distinct picture of what a public intellectual is, although some may disagree with this idea.

Lightman also bring a hierarchy of levels of public intellectuals

-level one: speaking and writing for the public exclusively about his/her discipline, example Brian Green’s book The Elegant Universe.

-level two: speaking and writing about his/her discipline and how it relates to the social, cultural, and political world around it, example James Watson’s the Double Helix.

-Level three: by invitation only. The intellectual has become elevated to a symbol, a person that stands for something far larger than the discipline from which he or she originated. According to Lightman these intellectuals is asked to write and speak about a large range of public issues. Example Einstein was asked to give public addresses on religion, education, ethics and world politics.

The Daily Telegraph unveils The 50 most influential US political pundits. The Debatable Land starts a survey on American Presidents: who are the most over-rated and the most under-rated? (On a personal note, can anyone help me turn this, into something more like this, without breaking the bank?)

We like lists because we instinctively want to classify everything see how Time Magazine did so in this year’s The World’s Most Influential People. But after that, we want to rank things. With regards to the Time 100, Joel Stein threw caution to the winds to try to cobble together a formula: then someone said he should refine it, which he did.

For The Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2008, a thorough effort to define criteria’s been undertaken by Can Talk Tech but what is a solid criteria for him may differ from the way other people approach the same task.

Let me weigh in with my list. Let me begin with a caveat: there are quite a few blogs I’ve added to my reading list over the past year, but they’re not new enough (cut-off is a blog birthday after July 1, 2007) to qualify for the list. These blogs are in no particular order. They represent my biases as to what I consider significant and these choices aren’t necessarily endorsements of these blogs, their advocacies, etc. Though for many of these blogs, I do heartily sympathize with them, which is why I follow them -but not all.

Update, July 30, 2010. I have changed some of my nominations, my final list is as follows:

1. Writer’s Block which is a fine example of intellectual efforts by a writer online.

2. The Mount Balatucan Monitor one of the regional blogs that makes inter-regional cross-pollination possible.

3.Since scaRRed_cat seems no longer updated, and though a good example of a veteran journalist trying to adapt to sharing articles online, I’ve decided to nominate fritzified.com instead. A wholesome combination of lifestyle, food, gadgetry, even fashion, but written from an intelligent point of view and not just flashy superficiality.

4. Mon Casiple’s Weblog on Philippine Politics. The finest example of an old school pundit settling in on the interweb.

5. I’d previously nominated Brian Gorrell’s The Not So Talented Mr. Montano? If Malou Fernandez was the Affair of the Diamond Necklace (complete with a mystery: she flew coach), then the birth of this blog was the Bastille moment of the Philippine blogosphere. His recent decision to start outing people, though, is reprehensible. His other motives and postings can be debated but his outing people, well, I don’t know. For that reason, I nominate At Midfield, instead. Ging Gagelonia is a journalist who broke new ground through his reportage and commentary in the blogosphere on the Sulpicio lines sinking.

6. New Philippine Revolution, an intriguing blog and one that I think has a covert following among the politically-inclined. Also, an example of how anonymous blogging can be effective.

7. Vera Files. Had a discussion on Twitter if this counts as a blog or not, but Juned Sonido opined it does. If so, it marks the emergence of what could comprise the Big Three in independent journalism online.

8. Ateneans ACT, which became a forum for advocacy and debate among the alumni of one school, and which served as a model for advocacy and inter-generational debate, lost its steam. While this site marks the evolution and, to my mind, coming of age of the political advocacy blog, I have decided to nominate stuart-santiago instead. Seems to me male bloggers still dominate and hers is a voice of rationality and questioning that bears following.

9. Team RP, particularly because it’s on Multiply and there seems to be a lingering bias of sorts I can’t quite pin down, but it seems to be there, against Multiply/Friendster etc. blogs. This blog is significant because it’s wedded to an advocacy site, and it’s an advocacy led by, and targeted at, the youth, which conventional wisdom tagged as apathetic -but who proved the pundits wrong after NBN-ZTE broke. The kids were just waiting for an issue that really engrossed them.

10. I’m not sure if FilipinoVoices.com counts, because it’s composed of veteran bloggers and commenters, but, well, it’s new and is making ripples, if not waves.

You may be interested to read the choices of Filipinayzd, atheista (campaigning, actually, for Visit Sagada), Viloria.net, SELaplana, My First One Million Pesos, and Mapiles.com, Tingog.com and Shari.

Elsewhere in blogolandia, The Journal of the Jester-in-Exile takes a look at the hostility and patronizing attitude he believes afflicts many journalists; a relevant reading’s John Nery’s Barbarians at the gates? And see The Race: Newspapers have a bright future as print-digital hybrids after all — but they’d better hurry, in the Columbia Journalism Review (thanks to Hector Bryant Macayle for the link). The Marocharim Experiment has a thought-provoking entry on media-blogger issues.

Hiraya: Endless Journey takes a meta-look at blogging.

Adel Tamano takes up blogging at The Opposite of Apathy.

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