Sixty-six years before Bush

Franklin D. Roosevelt pays tribute to Filipinos, November 15, 1942:

The little dolphin that could

The Wall Street Journal (which, editorially, has previously been supportive of the President) greets the President’s arrival in New York with a raspberry: see the op-ed piece, Powering Down the Philippine Economy:

Tomorrow in New York, Ms. Arroyo will woo well-heeled potential investors at a $5,000-a-table luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria, where she is expected to give an upbeat presentation on Philippine infrastructure financing and ongoing privatization efforts.

Ms. Arroyo’s boasts ring hollow, however, given her country’s inhospitable climate for foreign investment… Even worse, Ms. Arroyo and her political allies back in Manila don’t seem to care that they are sending signals that would cause any potential investor to cringe.

Take the most recent bungle: the liberalization of the notoriously inefficient Philippine energy sector. In 2001, a newly sworn-in President Arroyo signed legislation calling for at least 70% of the government-owned National Power Corporation, known as Napocor — long one of the country’s worst symbols of inefficiency and corruption — to be privatized. Even though Ms. Arroyo’s administration has dragged its feet in following through with the reforms, the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 is working, albeit slowly.

Today, slightly more than 40% of Napocor is privately owned… By year’s end, the reform act’s goal of privatizing at least 70% of Napocor could be realized.

But will Manila allow that to happen? Last December, the Arroyo administration announced that it wanted to amend the reform act by Christmas, to ensure that the government would retain control of at least 50% of Napocor. Hardly for the first time, the government in Manila was reminding foreign investors that the economic goal posts could be moved in the late innings. In the House of Representatives, the antireform legislation’s chief sponsor is the chairman of the energy committee, Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo, the president’s son.

When the heads of the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce protested the roll-back of Napocor’s privatization in a May 27 letter to Ms. Arroyo, the president’s allies in the senate exploded in nationalistic outrage…

“My goodness, get out of this country if you can’t live with us,” Sen. Juan Ponce-Enrile told Mr. D’Aboville, who has lived in the Philippines for 31 years and is married to a Filipina. Added another presidential ally, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, “You may not continue. You do not determine what you can say or not say. I determine.”

Unembarrassed by such a display of legislative intemperance, Ms. Arroyo has brought Sen. Santiago with her to New York, where the president is lobbying the United Nations to give her a seat on the International Court of Justice. Asked by reporters right after the hearing if the senators’ June 6 bullying of the foreign businessman had been inappropriate, presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said he didn’t think so. A few days later, Ms. Arroyo — possibly having been informed that several European ambassadors were prepared to file a formal diplomatic protest — came out with a statement thanking foreign investors for being part of her country’s “success.”

Ms. Arroyo has argued that government control of power plants is a more efficient way of keeping electricity prices down than private competitors who will compete in the marketplace — surely a strange argument from a woman who has a doctorate in economics. Making matters worse, her administration is engaged in a separate but equally embarrassing power struggle for control of the board of directors of the Philippines’ largest private electricity distributor, the Manila Electric Co. The company is controlled by the powerful Lopez family, one of the Philippines’ most enduring oligarchies. In addition, the Philippine government holds a 30% stake and is represented on the board.

To be sure, there is a case that could be made that Meralco, which controls some 70% of electricity on the big island of Luzon, is a monopoly that should be subjected to the pressures of real market competition. But the political intensity of the Arroyo administration’s personal attacks on the Lopez family suggests — especially to watching foreigners — that an agenda is at work that goes beyond economics. Specifically, the fight between Ms. Arroyo’s family and the Lopez business empire seems to personify the latest example of feuding family clans that have long been a major source of the Philippines’s economic and political fragility. In the early 1960s, when Ms. Arroyo’s father, Diosdado Macapagal, was president, he also tried to wrest control of Meralco from the Lopez family.

Ms. Arroyo needs to understand that when Manila promises to open up major sectors of the economy to reforms that would foster real competition, those promises should not be broken.

Over at Inquirer Current, I pointed out the ratio of Filipino to American congressmen was 5:1. The Inquirer editorial for today points something out I’d observed in my column yesterday:

Is it wrong to criticize the President for not returning to the country immediately?

To answer the question, we must first respond to the image engineering campaign already underway that seeks to paint the President as taking the extra step, as going out of her way, to oversee recovery and rehabilitation efforts in the Philippines. Malacañang has highlighted the fact that she has been conducting videoconferences with the Cabinet and the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC). On June 24, the meeting was held at 3 in the morning; the following day, it was held at 1:30 a.m.

Allow us to point out the obvious, which seems to have been buried under the publicity avalanche: While it was very early in the morning here in the Philippines, it was the middle of the day in Washington, D.C. In other words, it was the Cabinet and NDCC officials who went out of their way, to meet the President’s schedule.

We have long noted the President’s extraordinary grasp of detail, and even her many political enemies acknowledge her prodigious capacity for work (in marked contrast to her predecessor), but it seems a cruel joke to force her officials to attend meetings in the wee hours, just so she can be seen to call the shots.

Her main ally in Congress, House Speaker Prospero Nograles, argues that Vice President Noli de Castro was “more than capable” to serve as “caretaker president” (gratuitously adding that this was “precisely why we have him as our vice president”). But this able-caretaker argument runs directly counter to the President’s idea of government-by-video-conference. If Vice President De Castro is in charge, why doesn’t Ms Arroyo allow him to take charge? Her intervention by “modern communication technology” undermines the vice presidency, at the exact time her allies in the administration coalition seek to build up De Castro’s reputation.

More tellingly, her use of “modern communication technology” undermines her own case for sticking to the original schedule. If there is a pressing need for the President to actively coordinate the work of the Cabinet and the NDCC at this time of shock and grief, what is she still doing in the United States?

Latest figures put death toll from Typhoon ‘Frank’ at 622 with 2.4 million people displaced in 14 regions. And as if things couldn’t get worse, they did: ‘Princess’ dives, retrieval stopped due to chemical shipment. And Sulpicio’s yard yields 7,000 sacks of ‘smuggled’ sugar.

Passenger shipping industry drowns while budget airlines fly high points out, though, that if it had happened in previous years, the casualty list from the capsizing of the Princess of the Stars might have been much higher:

The ill-fated Sulpicio Line ship plying the primary Manila-Cebu route had a capacity of 1,992 passengers, excluding crew members. But when it encountered rough waters during a typhoon and capsized in June 21, it was only carrying over 700 passengers and more than a hundred crew members.

It means the massive 23,824-ton ship was going ahead with an expected business-as-usual day with just about 40 percent load.

Compare that with another ship also owned by Sulpicio Line, the M/V Dona Paz, which sank in 1987 after colliding with a small oil tanker. Its weight was just 2,215-ton, a fraction of M/V Princess of the Stars’.

M/V Dona Paz had a capacity of only 1,518 passengers, but after the tragedy it was found to be carrying more than twice what it was allowed. Investigations following its sinking showed that it was overloaded and up to 4,375 people onboard died. It has gone down in history as the worst maritime disaster during peacetime.

The M/V Dona Paz tragedy, however, occurred during the Christmas holidays, a peak season in the travel industry. M/V Princess of the Stars, on the other hand, was traveling during a traditionally low season…

…Depending on the season and timing of purchase, a round trip plane fare between Manila and Cebu could go as low as P3,000. In the past, round trip boat fares on the same route hovered between P4,000 to P8,000. But even at reduced rates of up to a little over P2,000, the small difference with the cost of flying have enticed some to convert.

The airlines could afford to offer these low fares after they adopted a sophisticated pricing strategy that guided budget carriers in allocating more discounted seats during the lean months of June to October to improve their load factor, or the measure of how full the aircraft is. Thus, even on lean months, Cebu Pacific’s load factor can go as high as 80 percent.

Flying budget airlines is not only more affordable now, it is also more convenient. A Manila-Cebu boat ride, for example, takes almost a day. A plane ride, on the other hand, takes just over an hour…

…According to the Philippine Ports Authority data, in 2005, overall recorded passengers taking sea-based transport grew by only 2.55 percent. It has been downhill since.

In 2006, total sea craft passengers dropped by 8.27 percent. That’s only 42.56 million passengers for the entire year. Data for 2007 is expected to show that passenger counts plunged deeper.

The business decisions of market leader and publicly listed Aboitiz Transport Services in 2007 provided indications on where this industry is headed. The dramatic reduction in their passenger loads cut their revenues up to 30 percent in 2007.

To adapt, they have converted several of their passenger-cargo lines, under the Superferry brand, to accommodate more cargo than passengers.

This means shipping companies such as Aboitiz Transport and Sulpicio lines have joined another competitor—the government-backed roll-on-roll-off (RORO) operations, which resulted in lower operating costs not only for cargo operators but also as another substitute for passengers who still could not afford flying.

Roro is less expensive for those involved in the cargo business because of its multi-port approach. For example, a Roro boat that leaves the Batangas port can pass by various smaller islands, such as Mindoro and a few more islands, which are not traditionally serviced by other big boats because business there used to be not as brisk as, say the likes of Cebu, Iloilo, Davao and Cagayan de Oro, where there are more commercial activities.

Roro, which was launched in 2003, has since led to changes in areas and islands that used to be left behind in terms of economic development. According to Henry Basilio, a transportation export from the University of Asia and the Pacific, cargo traffic for Roro vessels in 2003 was only at 30,000 metric tons. He said this has since increased exponentially to 240,000 metric tons recently.

And the usual gruesome panic: DOH allays fears of fish poisoning. At least here’s some slightly less depressing marine-related news: people have been entranced by the heroic but tragic story of the dolphin that tried to save a fisherman: but both died. See the reactions of Pine for Pine, and view from the sugar island.

The United States gave $100,000 and sent a carrier task force (helicopters from the USS Ronald Reagan are delivering food, water, and generators to Panay; US Navy divers have been helping with efforts at the wreck of the Princess of the Stars); the People’s Republic of China gave $100,000 also, South Korea donated $300,000.

A major fundraising effort’s begun overseas with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent appealing for $8 million for typhoon aid to the Philippines

all these things that i’ve done lists the different ways (direct deposits to bank accounts, credit card and online donations, even donations through SMS) people can make donations to the Philippine National Red Cross.

Individual bloggers have taken to propagating information for those who want to make donations for specific locations. Touched by An Angel has joined an effort to help the children of San Fernando, Sibuyan Island (see Sibuyan mayor cries: We are victims, too). Clothing, books, toys, and food gathered for the kids will be sent through the Red Cross.

Phoenix Portal recounts how a group of animators got together and helped out in relief efforts in Iloilo, with the help of SM Foundation.

Much more needs to be done.

Kalibo residents going hungry, still waiting for relief:

Because of limited supply, the prices of all commodities have gone up. A ganta (2.4 kilos) of commercial rice, which sold at P65 to P70 before the typhoon, now sells at P120 to P150. Fortunately, the National Food Authority loaned the municipal government several sacks of rice. Rebaldo said these have been distributed to the poorest residents of the different barangays. But the supply will not last very long.

“These are all on loan. We don’t have money in the municipal government,” Rebaldo said.

The flashflood also killed most of the livestock of the town. “In one barangay, 200 cows drowned,” the mayor said. Many pigs, chicken and carabaos also died during the typhoon, he said. Water reached a low of 8 feet to a high of 12 feet in the entire town. The waters are gone now but mud is up to one foot high. Kalibo is the catch basin of Aklan. (Aklan means river in English.)

The individual stories are what matter, now, and here they are: Ella’s Virtual Nook has photos of the damage done to New Washington, Aklan, including the wrecking of the blogger’s own home.

In Romblon, JPMonje.net gives a thorough account:

Typhoon Frank’s gusty winds and heavy rains where experienced in Tablas island in Romblon Saturday morning. I thought the storm lashed out through the night until I found out that it hasn’t passed by the island yet. The electricity in our shop in Odiongan, Romblon suffered low voltage problems which started last Friday night. It was difficult to acquire some updates in the Internet about Frank’s projected route since power outage is intermittent. Add to that the mobile carrier signal there drops out every time. In a nearby store, I bought some eggs for our breakfast. Mrs. Norie who man the store informed me that there had been a sea mishap happened near Sibuyan Island. Later that morning, I recieved conflicting reports that all the passengers aboard the ship died. Some said there were a handful of survivors. A tidal wave was reported also in Alcantara, Romblon which I assumed it was a storm surge that hit the area.

My companion and I decided we should close the shop for that day. Since the typhoon signal in Romblon had been raised from 2 to 3, it is better that we call it a day-off to us and for our two secretaries. Since it was pouring that time, we decided to bathe ourselves in the rain and traverse the road leading to the famous “Baywalk” in barangay Tabing-Dagat. I managed to fight the freezing temperatures while gusty winds and rain hit me. It took us 15 minutes to reach the area. Upon seeing the area, debris were scattered everywhere. Stalls and cottages were destroyed and big brown waves came rushing into the shore. This could take days to clean up when the storm’s gone. The government spent more than a million pesos to rehabilitate the baywalk area. Good thing the new light posts like that in the Roxas Boulevard in Manila survived the vicous winds. We roamed the area and went back to the shop 30 minutes later.

Around noon, the power went back and I tuned in to the radio for news about the vessel tragedy. It was confirmed, the vessel “Princess of the Stars” of Sulpicio Lines capsized near Sibuyan Island. I was a horrific tragedy and I felt bad learning that there are few passengers survived. Sibuyan Island’s surrounding waters had been always rough even without a storm based from my experiences travelling there before. With that in mind, I could not imagine how big the waves were at that time of the storm. It was unbelievable that the largest ship in the Philippines could capsize like that.

The storm arrived in Romblon around 5:30 pm and brought strong winds and pouring rain that night. I took my digital camera and recorded a video of the storm inside the shop before dark. I hope I could upload it and post it in my blog. The next morning, only a handful of GI sheets, uprooted trees and trash clutter the streets.

In Roxas City, news reaching chemical rhapsody isn’t good,

Right now, my mother has to travel to Roxas City in search of a photo processing shop so she could have the pictures developed, as well as coordinate with DepEd Capiz. She’s been working closely with concerned agencies and they’re putting together a situational report for an upcoming meeting with the President.

My in-laws, however, said the electricity in Roxas City is still too feeble and could only power lights — not enough output yet to power an establishment. I hope the more-established shops there have their own generators. Otherwise my mother would have to go for Iloilo.

…as confirmed by Bloggy Blog: A College Student in Capiz:

Some parts of roxas city, capiz have no power supply because of the damaged hits by typhoon frank last saturday. According to Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council(PDCC) in the Province of Capiz, the number of Barangay affected by the typhoon frank are 47 brgy in roxas city, 5 were died, 5 were also injured, and 6 persons are still missing. Not only roxas city was affected in this typhoon frank but the other places also in western visayas were affected.

In Iloilo, Barangay OFW reprints an email from a nun, Sister Fidelisa Portillo, who recounts the situation at Aklan and then,

But as far as storms go, this is nothing. The wind was not that strong. Iloilo has experienced typhoons far, far worse than this. Which is why it was an utter shock for me when I turned on the radio at 1 pm nga grabe na gali ang situation in the city and Pavia. By 3-4 pm, a lot of calls were coming in asking to be rescued. We were caught flat-footed and we were really not prepared for this. It was each to his own.

Even the radio reporters felt bad. There really was no way to get to those who needed to be rescued. Just listening made you also feel bad. Each town knew they’re on their own. Roads were under water, bridges had collapsed. The city was able to borrow 10 jet skis, some rubber boats and two pump boats. 7 pm pa lang, naguba na ang pump boats.

The family of Mayor Treñas was rescued out of their house at past 10:30 pm. Big boys are not supposed to cry, but several mayors were crying, their voices breaking! Out of helplessness at the overwhelming cries for help nga wala man sila mahimo.

Vivian called the Disaster Coordinating Center to help her sister in Alta Tierra but she was told that there’s nothing more they can do at the moment.

The sugar central in San Enrique had 10 feet high of water, tunaw ang sugar. The NFA warehouse, flooded ang sacks of rice nga bag-o lang na deliver. For the first time ever, would you believe, the road from SM City up to the Marina had waist-high water? A lot of people, among them, one of George’s med reps spent the night at SM City. It became an evacuation site of sorts sang mga surrounding baranggays.

SM opened their food court area and the canopy and stairs to accommodate people. And they had to close the malls yesterday and today. School will resume on Wednesday. Now, there’s cleaning up. Nagakaubos pala diri. The mud can’t be rid of by just hosing it down. Sobra 1 foot ang thickness sang mud.

Worse, some areas will take 4 to 5 days for power to be back. Ang area Jaro up wala pa water coz the water pipes from Maasin are broken. Wala ni rich or poor subong sa areas affected. All of them are buried in muck.

By way of village idiot savant, the testimony and pictures of Bored Blather: mud, mud, everywhere.

And Bits and Pieces of Roxie provides snippets from typhoon-related stories:

*Gigi and her daughter were trying to save their television, when they saw a snake slither through the water. Plok! Down goes the tv under water, and up they run to the second level of their house.

*Nora spent three days on top their roof. She lived near Jaro CPU area. Saw her yesterday, puffy eyed and dead tired. She was able to save three backpacks of belongings and the rest were stuffed in two plastic bags.

From someone, Nostalgia, on an unidentified island:

Typhoon “Frank” hits our island at around 3 p.m., at first it was just signal number 1, but eventually turned into number 3.Apprehensions flood my mind as the storm brought down heavy downpours and very strong winds. We were covering the windows with heavy blankets just to fend off splashes of water and laid out on the floor rags and old clothes to absorb the rainwater that has finally seeped in.At around 7 p.m. the wind grew stronger and trashings and poundings grew louder and louder. Our house being the tallest in the neighborhood almost had all the beatings of the storm. It lasted until the wee hours of the morning, the longest that I’ve witnessed so far. By the morning, the intensity of the damage spread before our eyes. Whew!

And from a foreign tourist, in Adventures in Asia 2008, tracing their journey from Camiguin to Manila to Taiwan:

The night before we were due to leave for the mainland all the ferries had been cancelled and the part of the beach that wasn’t already under water was constantly beaten by frothing waves. Amazingly, the wind had eased by morning and we felt lucky that we wouldn’t be missing any of our upcoming flights. At the airport, on our way from Cagayan to Manila, I made the mistake of thinking that we had a good chance of experiencing our first on-time departure with Cebu Pacific Air. 7 hours later, freezing from the powerful A/C and braindead from watching the same five horrible commercials on loop in the departure hall (literally a big room with nothing but chairs and said crappy TV) the loudspeaker announced that all passengers should go through security and get ready to board. As if we hadn’t already been ready and waiting for half the day!

The Manila that we landed in was completely different from the sunny place we had left about a month earlier. Palmtrees looked like they would snap in half from the gale force winds and it was difficult to find shelter from the downpour. During the cab ride to our hostel we were in the midst of scenes I’ve only seen on the news before – people wading in knee-deep water surrounded by cars that should have been rowed rather than driven down the street. The disappointment of our flight to Taiwan having been moved forward by a day so as to avoid Frank, who was supposed to have been wreaking havoc in Taipei around the time we were due to land, was tempered by our discovery of Manila’s shopping malls. We were luckier than many people in that the main damage caused by Frank was to our bank accounts!

And it’s inevitable paranormal concerns have been raised, see sweet n sour and the more elaborate theory of Ang Umalohokan on “The Romblon Triangle”:

A lot of folklore surrounds the story behind the Romblon Triangle, from mermaids to cursed seas. Even galleon crews plying the Sibuyan Sea as they follow the Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade route are enchanted by the waters of the area. Everytime a galleon enters the waters, special prayers and offerings are performed to appease the spirits haunting the area.

But one well-known legend behind the countless of maritime disasters in Romblon was the legend of a certain Lolo Amang. Lolo Amang is said to be the Flying Dutchman of Romblon, a local version of the famous Cape of Good Hope ghost ship. Lolo Amang is said to frequent the waters of the province aboard a huge golden boat at night. His boat is so beautiful and shiny that seafarers can see it even a mile away. Once lured by the light of his golden boat, eyewitness claim to see a huge party aboard the ship with fair-skinned women, music and food. One eyewitness of the M/V Don Juan tragedy reported seeing Lolo Amang’s ship before it collided with M/V Tacloban. The captain tried to avoid the ghost ship but ended up colliding with the ill-fated cargo vessel.

Lolo Amang is so well known in Romblon that some of his believers even collected taxes from unsuspecting residents. My great-grandfather who was the police chief of Banton Island in Romblon reportedly investigated this scheme and found out that some albularios or quack doctors are taking advantage of the Lolo Amang myth. When interviewed, these herbalists claim that Lolo Amang resides in a secret lair in a certain Barangay Cayatong in Looc or Ferrol town in Tablas Island. Up to this day, such place in Tablas is still shrouded in mystery, with reports of mysterious ships being sighted and late night parties in the middle of coconut groves were heard of.

In the end, there is not concrete evidence to prove the Lolo Amang myth. It could’ve been invited by the crews of the sunken vessels themselves to escape liabilities. It could also be a deliberate hoax to instill panic and fear among the islanders of the archipelago. It is only a matter of circumstances that made the waters of Romblon famous in the history of maritime disasters.

We keep hearing that the sinking of the Dona Paz was the “worst peacetime maritime disaster in history.” So what was the worst wartime maritime disaster? The sinking of the “Strength Through Joy” ocean liner Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945.

Also, here’s another thing to worry about: RP faces corn shortage: Official blames high prices of fertilizers for crisis.

In a consultative meeting Thursday on the commercialization of organic and microbial fertilizers, Dennis Araullo, the head of GMA (Ginintuang Masaganang Ani) Corn Program, said the high prices of inorganic fertilizers are forcing many farmers not to plant corn, or cut their planting of the crop by half. Corn in the Philippines is largely grown for animal feeds.

If the national production of corn does not meet the 7.9-million metric ton target for this year, the country may have to import the grain. This option poses problems, since corn is in short supply worldwide because it is a major biofuel crop…

…The Department of Agriculture has declared a no-corn importation policy for this year, even if about 120,000 metric tons of corn were imported in 2008.

Araullo said a corn shortage will badly hit the domestic livestock and poultry industry, possibly forcing the closure of many firms in that industry.

If that is not enough, people who eat white corn in place of rice will also be affected, and might switch back to eating rice. Based on estimates of local food experts, up to 15 million Filipinos are eating white corn instead of white rice.

Filed away for future reference department: Beyond brain drain: Human capital increasingly votes with its feet in The Economist. Link to Tourism stakeholders: No other way but to train people to replace those who go abroad and New hires in Metro Manila firms replaced those workers who exited from The Business Mirror.

Headaches for America’s allies: In South Korea, US Compromise on Beef Fails to Dent Korean Protest; in India, Nuclear Heat in India. In Japan, note Sino-Japanese oil exploration deal in Breathing Room for Japan’s Fukuda.

When all you can do is text

At Midfield says new information on Ces Drilon’s kidnapping is coming to light, which points to her having been used as bait by the armed forces; and that furthermore, the kidnapping could have provided public-relations benefits for the government as the President prepared to panhandle her American counterpart for anti-terrorism aid. Aid that has not been forthcoming, despite previous American commitments:

Against this backdrop, with the public interest having shifted to the tragic sinking of the inter-island ferry Princess of the Stars, this possible untold story in the abduction of Ces Oreña-Drilon may actually be more than tangent to the continuing Philippine component of the United States’ war on terror and the ‘negative result’ of the intensified hunt for Dulmatin and ASG militants the previous two weeks.

This is because the second tranche of up to $4M in anti-terrorist funding support committed by the outgoing Bush administration has remained unreleased, with American authorities reported to be quietly “auditing how, and why, the earlier first $4M installment had been used by the Philippine police to purchase computer facilities.”

In fact no such ‘anticipated announcement’ of the additional anti-terrorist fund came despite President Bush having congratulated his Filipino counterpart “on her strong stand on counterterrorism — more than strong stand — effective stand on counter-terrorism.”

(Filipina Soul links to video of the President’s cameo at the Oval Office, and translates the message that will become her public service commercial until November; Talented Earthquake Productions has something to say concerning Shrub’s body language; Fil-Am journalist Benjamin Pimentel comments on Bush’s baffling salute to Filipino Americans )

Gotta love this quip by Keith Olbermann, as quoted by UC Hastings Pilipino American Law Society:

“yesterday’s media availability with the President of the Philippines Gloria Arroyo, a leader who’s country has recently suffered devastation caused by a typhoon, and now its been hit by something more like a buffoon.”

Incidentally, Dubya was supposed to meet GMA for two hours but the meeting ended up less than an hour, per the ABS-CBN clip.

Incidentally, environmentalists are in for a genetically-modified treat, courtesy of Arthur Yap. See my entry for today in Inquirer Current.

A grim problem is hogging the headlines. Even as Sulpicio probed on 2 angles, the problem, now, is what to do with the corpses.

A couple of days ago, At Midfield had blogged about it:

But instead of hopeful news, the mayor of San Fernando was appealing on national radio late yesterday afternoon for body bags and lime so they could tend to the dead.

To underline her own despair and anger, the lady mayor described how they’ve been been forced to sprinkle white cement on the recovered cadavers just to stem the decomposition while waiting for help. She also complained: not a single call had come, she said, from Sulpicio Lines, to coordinate and help.

Today, it’s ‘Don’t bury dead until we identify them’. Yet when bodies were being recovered from the vicinity of the sinking of the Titanic, what was done was to photograph the corpses; once identified, the provisionally-interred remains could be unearthed and reburied once more. That was in 1912. It is 2008, in the Philippines, and officialdom has to publicly debate what to do. Everyone, it seems, is frantic: Patience wearing thin, as relatives get emotional.

I think everyone shares smoke’s sentiments that Sulpicio Lines should get it, right now, but the only way to get it seems to be in the courts, since I can only assume that a company boycott (once the ships stop being confined to port) would fail. notes of marichu lambino says both major networks erred in their reports; The Warrior Lawyer says, however, that Sulpicio Lines has deeper pockets than all its passengers put together and can play for time:

However, it’s difficult to prove criminal negligence on the part of the officials of a large common carrier like Sulpicio Lines. It can claim to have exerted extraordinary diligence in running its business. It can hire the best lawyers and fight it out in the courts, even if it takes decades, as it did in the litigation arising from the Dona Paz disaster.

Already the company seems to be shifting the blame to the ship captain, who is still missing, when it said that it was his call whether to push through with the ill-fated voyage or cancel the trip.

Furthermore, the undeniable fact is the company has deeper pockets than any of its passengers. As noted by the Supreme Court, the bulk of its passengers are poor. The latest victims of this outrage will face an uphill battle in their quest for justice.

Meanwhile, the rebuilding has barely started in places like Iloilo. Steven Rood in the In Asia blog did a roundup of the typhoon’s devastation as chronicled in SMS messages:

First, on Friday, messages came from Mindanao – a friend explained how his school was chest deep in water, ruining everything that couldn’t be moved quickly to the second floor. Bus service was suspended to the capital of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Rice and corn lands in southern Mindanao were inundated. Fishermen were charging 20 pesos (about $0.50, a sizable sum of money for those earning minimum wage) per head to ferry people through the floods.

Then, on Saturday, the drama began in the central Philippines. Writer Gail Ilagan entitled her account “Helpless in Davao,” since she was in that southern Mindanao city while her aged parents were trapped by rising water in Iloilo. “At 3:00, Mom texted to say they broke through the roof to escape the flood. I tried to keep her spirits up by texting her hope, encouragement, and practical survival tips.”

By Sunday, the typhoon had continued north to Manila. A friend in central Luzon texted about her house being flooded – but, for our Asia Foundation office in Manila, a run of our emergency “text tree” seemed to show that all of our office staff members were safe. By Sunday afternoon, the typhoon had moved far enough north that I was able to text my family from Taipei that I was indeed coming home instead of being stranded at a conference.

There is talk of how this communication technology heralds the “death of distance,” but in fact, that seems illusory. Gail Ilagan’s brother-in-law in Iloilo, while trying to rescue her parents, had to tie himself to an electric post for 5 hours to save himself from the buffeting of surging waters – no text messages from him. More prosaically, since there were widespread brownouts, cell phone batteries began to run down and communications died.

The most ominous dearth of information was about the sinking of the ferry, “Princess of the Stars.” The whole world now knows that it set sail before it was clear how bad the storm would be at its destination, and failed to reach safety (perhaps due to engine failure). At first, all we in the Philippines knew was that an upturned ferry had been spotted by local residents. Gradually, Philippine divers and boats, assisted by U.S. navy personnel and equipment, revealed the awful scope of the tragedy.

In his entry, Rood points out that despite the carping, somehow, things more or less function in the Philippines. The problem is, and it’s not really reflected in he said, she said, news items like this: Iloilo leaders rage over NDCC’s slow response: Biron: Gov’t agency is a ‘disaster in itself’, or this one, Air Force flies planeload of relief goods to Iloilo, in which an apparently lone C-130 has been shuttling back and forth from Metro Manila to Iloilo- is that the scale of the typhoons devastation was simply, unprecedented:

After such incidents, and indeed after widespread devastation by a typhoon, there are calls for inquiries and attempts to lay blame. Indeed, President Arroyo, in a televised meeting of the National Disaster Coordinating Committee (NDCC) that she was chairing via videolink from the United States, began to take the Coast Guard to task for allowing the ferry to set sail.

Still, it must be said that the Philippines has a system that functions in these situations – from the NDCC, to the Corporate Network for Disaster Response, to media organizations that cooperate with the government in relief and rehabilitation. With some 20 typhoons hitting the Philippines each year, such a system is continually tested. What was unusual about Typhoon Frank/Fengshen was the sheer geographic scale of the effects – from the southern Philippines all the way to northern Luzon. Even if disaster management systems were perfect, it would be overwhelmed.

Individuals respond well – as did Gail Ilagan’s parents who were eventually able to return to the ground floor of their house. In fact, individual talent and perseverance is a hallmark of Filipinos – which can sometimes lead to micro-managing by leaders rather than reliance on systems. Several years ago, during another typhoon, a Cabinet Secretary stepped out of an embassy reception to communicate with a senator about the availability of rubber boats for evacuating a particular flooded location.

My column for today is Relief by remote control looks at the argument that the President was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t; but to my mind, if she was going to insist on the need to push through with her trip to America, she could then have fully delegated things to her subordinates. But she did not.

Which means she loses out every which way: the public won’t give her any credit, the experts in disaster management will grumble, and this exacts a genuine toll on people’s energies and abilities, from having to troop to the Palace at 1am (in truth, the preparations begin at 9 pm for something like a 1 am presidential broadcast event) to attend a meeting, much of which was spent rehashing what had been done during work hours.

Most of all, her insisting she can run things by remote control from abroad, which means she believes her going abroad is more important than staying at home, flies in the face of her previous policies. Is she a populist or not? Is her populism from the heart, or a charade? Consider The Economist on Why Grandpa Wen has to care points out Wen Jiabao did all the things Arroyo’s defenders say are irrelevant and unnecessary -if she’d never tried to be a populist in the first place, maybe.

Returning to the theme explored by Steve Rood, in addition to SMS, emails, too, kept people up to date on the discouraging situation in Iloilo and elsewhere. The McVie Show, Season Seven publishes the sad unfolding of the confirmation of a friend’s death while mountainclimbing; and the interweb’s full of people recounting sad snippets of news. For example, missionaries such as anascomissions.org ,

Received another email from Nate, Calvary missionary in Iloilo. He said the waters in the city are starting to recede but now areas affected by the flood are covered in mud. Also food is scarce. The families we work with say they do not have any food at all. Supplies at the stores and markets are very low and price gouging has begun. There is some government food relief available so right now the staff is looking at how our street children and their families might qualify for some of that relief.

tenForty writes of how good intentions can be trumped by logistics:

We hastily made arrangements to get some funds through to our brethren on Monday, but when I informed Ranie, our contact in Iloilo City, she SMSed that “…water still high, no bank, no electricity, no (drinking) water, the whole city is floating.” She also mentioned that the windows of her apartment had blown away, and the church was being used as a refugee centre…

And then she also mentioned that they had run out of food.

Today, the situation is a little better, but still grim, and the bank finally opened. 90% of the homes and churches we support are gone, the people homeless.

Wrote coffee talks,

I was stranded at our office for the whole duration. I saw people sleeping in the mall… Texting like crazy… and crying… but some… were just in disbelief… Nobody expected things to escalate into unimaginable proportions… I heard dries all over the place… People were trying to sleep despite the fact that they were uneasy about the situation at hand… I guess, this just goes to show that once you accept stuff as they are, you begin to calm down…

During the wee hours of the morning, we went up to the cooling tower of SM Iloilo, just above our office… and we took a look at the situation at hand… It was heartbreaking, no contest… the view was just plain dark and grimy water… People were literally ON the TREES flashing lights and waiting to be rescued… Some homes that were there were now missing… and the flood, kept on coming…

It’s a Word Dance tells several stories, including her own:

I will tell you more by telling by friends’ stories.

Pamela is from Pavia. Pavia was greatly affected by the typhoon. Their house was covered by water and there was no dry things inside it. Worst, her 8 month old nephew got lost. Lost in site when the water came rushing inside there house. She was depressed. The whole family was.

Eli is from Kalibo. He can’t calm down due to pressure that his family hadn’t contacted him yet. We were staying in his house here in Iloilo hoping to help out each other. But the moment, his relatives contacted him, he broke down and cry. His house was rushed by flood. All their properties including car and appliances were damaged. His dad was sick when the typhoon came in. He was worried about them but glad they were okay. Still, he was worried how to bring everything they had back.

Julie is also from Kalibo. She was the last one to be contacted by her family. It ends up when she called her mom and ask about the situation. They were all okay but there house was submerge in water including their car. Material things was okay to lose but the work you put into it was crashing.

Moshe is my boyfriend. He is from Pototan. I never knew something was bothering him because he was acting he was okay. He still have time to laugh with me. His reason was to avoid me from being worried. Their house was sliced in half. No appliances were saved. Thankfully, his mom and younger sister vacated the place before is crashed. But the house they stayed in, the house of his Tita Sol was also submerged in water. Luckily again, they have a second floor. Bubbles, his rottweiller drowned.

Me and my sister had an interesting story. We are here together in our boarding house in Iloilo while my mom and dad is in Pototan. My tita’s house there collapsed and my lola’s house was flooded. They evacuated in Mina Church for the night. I was slightly worried for them because I know they can take good care of each other but what worried me most id m younger brother, who is in Roxas City and with our helper. I haven’t receive a news from him.

exploreIloilo.com links to photos and videos of the flood. A side-story is that viewers are irate over the focus of media coverage primarily being on the capsized Princess of the Stars. Appeals have been made on this blog and elsewhere, for equal time to be devoted to places like Iloilo -and if Iloilo residents are upset, residents of Aklan, in turn, are upset that only Iloilo is in the news.

Concerning Aklan, see American Living, Filipina Thinking (found through The Accidents of My Life) who managed to stitch together a report on her native province in Aklan and Typhoon Frank, including this timeline of events:

Friday, June 22, evening – People are preparing for the food festival in honor of San Juan Bautista. Radio said it was Signal No1. It started to rain hard, so people just went home.

Saturday, June 23

2am – Heavy rains. Strong winds. Now it was Signal #3. Undang once again.

5am-6am – Ceiling and rooftops blown away. Aklan River was rising.

9am-10am – Kalibo proper is starting to be flooded, waist deep. Strong currents and non-stop raining. People hold on to bamboos for floatation. To move from one place to another, people jump from rooftops to rooftops. Houses in lower C Laserna are gone.

3pm-4pm – Wind stopped. Water is at 7-8 feet, Kalibo Shopping Center now submerged. The entire Kalibo town was quiet, other than the sound of the falling rain.

7pm-8pm – In the dead of the night, with no lights nor electricity, people are screaming ‘tabang’. Children wailing, women crying. Some people, who owned 2-floor houses, refused to accept their neighbors for the fear that the added weight may collapse the house.

Sunday, June 24

Sunrise– People got out of their shelters to see water and mud, tricycles upside down, boulders everywhere, dead pigs. It was like a scene from a B-rated zombie movie. First thing people looked for: DRINKING WATER.

6am – People start to walk to the market for food. They walked in 2-feet mud. People lined up to buy bread (plastic still covered with mud), canned goods, medicine. Prices skyrocketed: rice that was PhP80 is now PhP150 (good for one day for a family of 6), candles 3 pcs for PhP100, tricycle trip PhP 1000 to-fro Kalibo Airport.

Everyone was in quiet shock, saying a low ‘kamusta’, and moved on to go to where their family & shelter was.

Everyone salvaged what was left. They tried to dry, using water from the rain, their clothing and beddings. Furnitures (tables, chairs) are damaged but usable. Magsig-magsig anay kuno, ah

The Provincial Hospital is damaged too, and the new PhP 45 Million CT Scan equipment is all lost. Where do the sick go? Stay at home and hope infection (feet are scraped and punctured due to walking on mud) doesn’t spread. That is why the corpse are now lying and embalmed at the town plaza, for we don’t have a hospital.

From aileenation (reposted from another blog, but no link to the original), another look at conditions, as of Sunday:

These are some of the updated news from Kalibo, Aklan:

The memorial hospital naabot ng baha at putikan hanggang second floor.

Early morning ng Sunday 10 feet strong current flooded the entire town, reached the second floor/level of big houses….okay lang kung lahat ng mga tao dun ay merong second floor ang mga bahay. they dont have anything to eat there, walang mapagbilhan ng pagkain, even drinking water wala na din…tubig ulan ang iniinom nila.

Currently, hanggang tuhod and putik sa buong town ng kalibo, madaming barangays ang nawala na sa mapa ng kalibo, even yung bliss community wala na…bubong na lang ng bhay ang nakikita. Just now, 115 dead bodies ang nasa plaza ng Kalibo…they don’t know the number of people died and missing.

Egg prices to rise as typhoon hits ‘egg basket’ adding to inflation.

CBCP urged to formally object to Enrile as envoy to Vatican. On what grounds? There is no Concordat between the Vatican and the Philippines that grants the insular hierarchy a say on who gets appointed ambassador; and it seems the Secretariat of State has accepted the Philippine appointment. This is as cut-and-dried as a case of the separation of Church and State gets. Cristina Ponce-Enrile ought to go to Rome.

President Hee Hee and President Ha Ha

Much levity courtesy of the Summit of the (Lame) Ducks in Washington.

Got this by way of Age of Brillig who pointed to Bush To Filipino President: “I Am Reminded Of The Great Talent Of The — Of Our Philippine-Americans When I Eat Dinner At The White House” in the Huffington Post, and which pointed in turn to Bush jokes about the White House chef in the Los Angeles Times’ Countdown to Crawford blog. What caught my interest was not the famously barely comprehensible American President’s folksy attempt at being gracious (Filipinos are, after all, very proud of Cristeta Comerford, and the White House has a long tradition of Filipino stewards serving there), but rather, this exchange near the tail end of the Oval Office photo-op. See President Bush Meets with President Arroyo of the Philippines:

PRESIDENT ARROYO: Thank you.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thanks for coming.

PRESIDENT ARROYO: Thank you, thank you. Mr. President, with your permission, I’d like to address our countrymen in my own native language. (Speaks in Tagalog.)

PRESIDENT BUSH: I couldn’t have said it better myself. (Laughter.)

PRESIDENT ARROYO: Thank you.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you, all.

Snippets found the President’s delivering a statement in Filipino from the Oval Office curious, but I don’t see why. The President took the opportunity to film a message to her people from the most famous stage set in the world. That message was the justification of the trip, Exhibit A in proving the trip was worth it. (What I do find curious -because the President and her handlers have been very conscious of the subconscious effects of colors on the public- is why the President’s been appearing in cheery and bright colors when she herself and American officials have tried to soberly pay tribute to the victims of the recent typhoon.)

Interestingly enough, though, as of the time I’m writing this, the Palace’s propagandists haven’t posted anything on the Oval Office meeting. So we don’t know what she said.

What I find very interesting -see Matthew Good as an example, or Inky Horizons or Wonkette- is that many Americans offended by their President’s remarks, thought our President was visiting Dubya to rattle a tin cup and ask for typhoon relief. To the minds of these Americans, it makes perfect sense that at a time of tragedy, our President was panhandling their President. But that was not the purpose of our President’s trip, see her list of things to do.

Anyway, the President, having secured her photo-op with the Great White Father, can proudly say “mission accomplished” and have NBN endlessly replay her cameo appearance in the Oval Office: she’s in Good Odor and can brag about obtaining Dubya’s Seal of Good Housekeeping.

According to RG Cruz, the subsequent improvement in the President’s mood can be seen by all and sundry, as a Public Works and Highway Undersecretary discovered:

Aquino: I am representing secretary ebdane who visited Iloilo. Out of nine bridges that were damaged, we have restored two bridges

GMA: Are u talking here of guimbal and sta. barabara

Aquino: No ma’am, these are in Iloilo ma’am

GMA: Yes they are both in Iloilo (laughs out loud)

If u were not such a good undersecretary on the ground I will spank you (laughs more)

Aquino: These are the towns of sigma dau cuatero road in capiz

GMA: That’s not Iloilo that’s capiz

Aquino: Yes ma’am all in panay island

The President continues her torrent of instructions: Arroyo orders flooding of NFA rice in typhoon-hit areas. This as Farm, schools damage: P7B.

In his column, Manuel Buencamino points out, in an open letter to the President,

And then, as an added treat, according to your press secretary’s web site, “Some 600 Filipino-Americans witnessed the President’s conduct of a video conference with the National Disaster Coordinating Council where President Arroyo showed that despite her being out of the Philippines to foster diplomatic relations with its most important ally, she remains focused and on top of the situation back home.”

Your president at work?

A total of 198,545 Ilonggos are in 58 evacuation centers in Iloilo City; 353,000 were displaced in the rest of the province; 33,000 families suffered the same fate in Eastern Visayas; and over 700 are dead in a ferry accident. And you’re in Fresno, California, posing for pictures.

In Washington the only meeting you cannot pass off to a Cabinet member is your tête-à-tête with lame-duck George. That’s nothing but a photo op. What lasting commitment can you get from him, who will be gone by January?

It would be nice to personally thank Bush and the US Senate for the Veterans Bill, but there’s a calamity back home. They will understand.

You don’t have to go to the Pentagon. Gilbert Teodoro can meet with his counterpart to discuss defense reform even though it’s a waste of time because he will be talking to a lame-duck secretary.

There is no meeting in Washington that you cannot cancel.

As for New York, do you really have to personally wine and dine those UN permanent representatives to get their vote for Miriam Santiago? What do you think the people of Iloilo will appreciate more: Your presence in their province or you campaigning in New York for their province-mate?

You have been compared to Marcos countless times. It’s unfair to the late dictator and his family. Marunong makiramay ang mga Marcos in times of calamity.

Imelda Marcos and her children, even at the height of a typhoon, would always be at the scene of a disaster giving aid and comfort to the victims. You always arrive late.

I remember when Milenyo hit the country, the first photo to appear in the papers was you, in your cute little rainwear, inspecting the fallen trees in Malacañang while hundreds of thousands of victims in the Bicol region and Southern Luzon were waiting for some relief. And you wonder why you are the most disliked president this country ever had?

I have seen Imelda shed tears as she embraced victims of calamities. Her tears were real. I have seen you in similar situations; you look uncomfortable, and your discomfort is real.

(more, in a similar vein, from Fil-Ams Perry Diaz and Greg Macabenta who, for some reason, thinks Fresno was on the President’s itinerary to help her avoid, and not see, Fil-Ams! OTOH, knicnax defends the President)

So what, indeed, did the President have to attend to, that her subordinates couldn’t have undertaken in her absence?

Billy Esposo sent an email containing his conspiracy theory, which I find difficult to subscribe to in full:

A state of the art nuclear powered aircraft carrier task force is not needed for Typhoon Frank victims. The US has never been this compassionate. This is all about China and GMA’s shift to China – the real US agenda for the meeting with GMA. A lot things can happen with this development. We cannot discount these possibilities – a US-backed coup, civil war or an MILF war with the US backing the MILF which is just about the last burden the GMA regime can afford to take on.

Esposo seems to believe that America’s interests lie in separating Mindanao from the Philippines, although personally I think his suspicions are a Cold War hangover, the kind that sees the CIA lurking behind every bush. American interests more likely lies in using Mindanao as a kind of sideshow laboratory to learn jungle-fighting but not much else; certainly the Philippines isn’t worth the time and resources required to redraw the region’s map.

But I do think it’s quite possible the President made obtaining Uncle Sam’s blessings for martial law one of the main objectives of her trip -the Americans had vetoed martial law in 2005-06, after all- and if you’re going to go into conspiracy theories, Tony Abaya’s column makes more sense to me:

But my sense is that the real purpose of the visit is the meetings with Bush, Obama and McCain. And she is meeting with these three to protect her flanks. Everything else is mere fluff.

The coordinator of this visit – San Francisco consul general (not Ambassador, as media describe him) Marciano Paynor, Jr. – says he did not see anything wrong with PGMA meeting McCain and Obama ahead of the presidential elections. He said that this was something done by every head of state or government…

Really? In the past 60 days, President Bush was visited by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. I do not recall either of them meeting with McCain or Obama or Hillary Clinton.

President Arroyo has been trying to meet with Bush for years. In the APEC Summits in Hanoi and Sydney, her press people talked about 20-minute one-on-ones with George W, which were either cancelled by the Americans or reduced to a seven-minute “pull-over” photo-op, meaning, I presume, that he was pulled over on his way to or from the men’s room.

In February 2006, on the 20th anniversary of Edsa I People Power “Revolution”, it was suddenly announced that she was leaving for Washington to address the American Press Club (APC), but then, just as suddenly, her trip was cancelled…

My interpretation of this little mystery was: Malacanang’s PR retainer in Washington DC was able to wangle the speech invitation from the APC, a poorer cousin of the prestigious National Press Club With this speech invitation, the White House was asked for a meeting with Bush, since GMA was going to be in Washington anyway.. When the White House said no, the speech date with APC was cancelled.

President Arroyo is not the favorite “ally” of the Americans that she may think she is, after she withdrew the 51 Filipino policemen from the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq in 2004, and after she signed an agreement with Beijing for the joint exploration for oil in the Spratlys, also in 2004. In 2005, Vice-President Dick Cheney is said to have started moves to remove her from power, starting with the Hello Garci tapes, which, according to my information, were made possible by the US National Security Agency or NSA.

The Americans could not have grown fonder of her after the aborted, corruption-ridden ZTE broadband contract in 2007, which would have given the Chinese total and instant knowledge of all decisions of the Philippine government, including sensitive ones such as on the positioning of US troops and intel assets in Mindanao, Sulu, and Basilan. How could she have been so naïve as to be unaware of the consequences of her actions?

President Arroyo obviously wants to personally explain to Bush (and his successor) why she did what she has done. And perhaps sound them out on a possible declaration of martial law if and when it becomes necessary in 2009 or 2010, given the deteriorating global situation. Or a possible asylum in San Francisco, just in case.

The reason America would be a preferable haven to, say, Spain or Portugal (her previously-rumored potential exile haunts) is that her human rights record will result in her being hounded in the European Union the way Pinochet was, arrested in England upon orders of a Spanish court. And her other possible place of exile, China, may not be so hospitable considering the NBN-ZTE brouhaha.

blackshama’s blog says the Vice-President’s coming off looking positively presidential as he presides over disaster management meetings:

Political pundits here on the Mango Isle (hey! They are found from the lowliest barangay of the smallest provinces to the elite kapihans of Manila) say that Queen Gloria’s refusal (even when Frank has caused a national disaster rather than a regional one like previous typhoons) to cut short her glorious junket to the US of A will cost her much. According to the pundits the one who wins the pogi points is no other than the Veep Noli.

Some have remarked that Noli de Castro once dismissed as a talking news puppet, looked soooooo presidential in leading the national disaster response committee, even more presidential than the Queen herself…

So methinks the biggest political beneficiary here is the Veep. We ask the logical question. Did Malacanang intend this? or is Malacanang the victim of the law of unintended consequences?

Palace sez: Arroyo sets Tuesday visit to Iloilo to assess storm damage: President to hold Cabinet meeting there. She’s the Boss.

While I don’t think that once something’s online, it’s there for ever (lots of articles I once had online have vanished), in the wake of any major event, personal stories published in the blogosphere bring the scale and scope of the typhoon to life.

blackshama’s blog recounts arriving at the scene in the wake of the typhoon:

The road from the new international airport is littered with the remains of washed out houses and vehicles some of which were completely filled in with mud. Not a few of the cars were brand new. Evacuees line the road and many have begun the clean-up. One resident told me that the water just rose within five minutes leaving them caught unawares. The only good thing is that this happened during the day and if it did happen in the night,the death toll would have been horrible, says the cab driver who took me around.

Iloilo is defined by two rivers and a geography the gives the city its name. Residents say that they have never experienced an “Ormoc style” deluge in their lives till Saturday. This is attested by a centenarian who lived to see this day.

PromdiLiving.com recounts Iloilo stories:

A friend’s house was flooded up to the roof. A boss’ car was swept by floodwater. I heard a story about a Mayor who cried while watching helplessly a family on top of their roof as they were swept by the current. Poor and rich families were not spared. Typhoons do not discriminate on status. It destroys anything and everything on its path. I am fortunate my family was spared.

On to the ill-fated Princess of the Stars (the nomenclature of which blogged about by Pine for Pine), PCIJ points to its past reports, Sulpicio Lines and maritime safety: An often woeful, tragic tale:

But the occurrence of major tragedies such as the recent sinking of the Princess of the Stars has only served to underscore what problems remain to this day, some of which were identified in the PCIJ story — ageing and badly maintained ships, the absence of minimal safety navigational aids like lighthouses, and lack of competent seafarers, many of whom are lured to work in more well-paying shipping companies abroad.

Back in the early 1990s, a Japanese study already pointed out that at least 700 lighthouses were needed to illuminate the country’s major waterways. At the time of the PCIJ report, existing lighthouses were only half that number. At present, the number has reportedly increased but to no fewer than 500, many in very poor conditions.

The spotlight fell as well on the Coast Guard, whose authority to ensure sea safety continues to be hampered by poor funding and badly trained — and some charge, corrupt — personnel. The Coast Guard now gets almost P2 billion from the national budget, five times the allocation it used to receive when it was still under the armed forces. Back then, a commodore estimated that at least P1 billion is needed to make the Coast Guard an effective regulatory agency. Today, that amount is not even enough as more than P1.3 billion go to cover the cost of personal services, mainly salaries and allowances.

What the PCIJ also found out then was the weak and fragmented authority of the Coast Guard when it came to enforcing safety standards as its decision in the controversy surrounding the Filipina Princess was set aside by the Department of National Defense. Ordering a second review, the DND argued that the Coast Guard’s decision to ban the ship from traveling was “unjustly” issued and without due process. Sulpicio had asserted the safety of its ship, whose navigational record in the last eight months that time included suffering at least six breakdowns at mid-sea, one lasting 20 hours.

If you go through the Maritime Industry Authority website, you’ll find that its mandate is very broad, indeed, while that of the Philippine Coast Guard is more specific, but also very broad and may actually conflict with Marina’s.

They do have a Memorandum of Agreement, PCG_MARINA_MOA_3.pdf but in its editorial, Sulpicio’s ally, the Inquirer also points out the enormity of the problem, in that Marina has a broad mandate and the Coast Guard, responsibilities that have either been delegated by Marina or which have been left hanging.

Austin Dwi Lawyer takes up the cudgels for the Coast Guard but says it’s been compromised by its dealings with Sulpicio Lines:

And add to the equation, the poverty of PCG for which reason, Sulpicio sonofabitches fucking shits gave alms to their weary palms.

Someone said, the PCG is so poor that even their diesel is always up for sale. When the President and the higher ups say: “Hoy, habulin ninyo ang Abo Suyya!” “Mga totoy, hulihin ang mga pirata!” “Oy, ano, intersepin niyo ang mga illegal fishing boats!” “Daliiii!” “Ano ba!?!&%$#” “Kilos na!!!”

The PCG will allegedly only very demurely quip:

“Ay Maaam, Siiir, ay surreee po, wala tayo krudu!!!)

So, Sulpicio knowing, and feeling compassion, gave alms to the Coast Guard. And Coast Guard supposedly feeling the crunch, accepted the beggar’s relief cash. Possibly some relief goods too.

Sulpicio probably knew there was a disaster-in-waiting. They gave out relief cash and goods in advance.

As far as figuring out responsibilty for the tragedy and doing something about it, is concerned, the first step requires untangling the relationship between Marina and the Coast Guard and other agencies, including their mutual mother agency, the DOTC. There’s an alphabet soup of agencies with overlapping functions, and any government effort will be in the nature of a patch-work solution (and thus, only as good as the next, and inevitable, tragedy) unless the current process left to unfold to reveal its deficiencies, then the entire system is reviewed.

The problem is that everything is so interconnected, the official neglect so pervasive, that tackling one problem only leads to others cropping up and everyone ends up despairing over anything actually getting done.

Meanwhile, as both the editorial and At Midfield pointed out, Sulpicio Lines has already calculated its maximum payout from the tragedy -each passenger’s insured to the tune of 200,000 pesos- and surely, the cost of such a payout versus adequate maintenance, etc. for its fleet, was calculated time and again by the shipping line.

Piling on the bureaucracy to address the shortcomings of the existing bureaucracy, is, of course, the solution bureaucrats adore. And so, DOTC drafts executive order creating National Transport Safety Board (NTSB).

But it’s the human cost that keeps being hammered home: two days ago, My beautiful life…… blogged about a missing cousin:

I was hoping that my Mom’s first cousin and Cebu Port Captain for Sulpicio Lines would be able to provide us with information but it seems like Uncle Bondjing had limited info as well. And I’m sure he’s got his hands full right now coordinating and managing things. Jay is his nephew as well.

I really worried about Jay. I spoke to my Aunt this morning and apparently she was able to talk to Jay briefly when the ship was already aground. Auntie Juvy received a text message from Jay asking for prayers due to their very dangerous condition. Auntie Juvy called his cellphone to confirm it was indeed Jay.

Auntie apparently passed the phone to Jay’s son who then told him to be brave and not to be scared because he still wants his tatay to bring his toys back in Cebu. And the phone went dead.

More recently, Tingog.com blogs that he’s lost a cousin:

I just found out a few hours ago that my cousin Bebot was on The MV Princess of The Stars. Bebot used to help drive me around on some occasions when I was still in school. He’s a good guy that everyone is fond of. He has a daughter that just graduated nursing. He’s a good father, having had to sacrifice going overseas, as a seaman, in order to make a living. And now, because of the assholes at Sulpicio, The Coast Guard, and hell even PAGASA, the perfect storm has taken my cousin. A father, a husband, a cousin, a damn good guy.

The Mount Balatucan Monitor and Ricky Carandang (who has an acquaintance whose brother is missing) both take issue Sulpicio Line’s handling of the concerns of relatives of the missing or confirmed lost. Carandang is particularly scathing:

During the press conference held by the company, the vice president Sally Buaron, who answered reporter’s questions kept referring to the loss of the ship and seemed more concerned about that than the hundreds of people who in all probablility are dead.

I remember when one reporter was pressing her for more information about the fate of the vessel and the survivors, she said something like “If you are very concerned, so are we. That was our boat and it was expensive.”

Another reporter asked her if the company had quantified the cost of damage and she said something like “I don’t want to think about it. Sasama lang ang loob ko.”

Pedestrian Observer even points to a comment that brings up the possibility of looting taking place in the capsized ship. Manilenyo in Davao has some interesting observations and suggestions:

Maybe they should increase the number of check-ups/maintenance of their vessels. It was soooo ironic that the ship was reported to have had problems with its engine during that day. There were no reports of inadequate life saving equipment, so i guess its true that the vessel really passed the safety standards.

The Captain knows best, its his ship and for sure he has vast experience sailing even in worst conditions such as that one. Maybe, this is just a hunch, maybe the captain knew that if he asked the people to abandon ship early, they will be crushed by the big waves. Maybe the captain thought that staying in the ship will be better and he was hopping that the tides would push them near the shore. But then again, the captain should know the area. I think the part were they capsized has a rocky sea bed which punctured the vessel.

The passengers should know best. Their lives are at stake here. This are those times where constant communication and information updates should be present. If they knew that there was a typhoon, they should cancel the trip. I hope that Shipping lines could include this in their policies that any customer can re-book their trip in consideration of their welfare whenever there is a typhoon. And when 30% of the passengers re-books, then the shipping line can cancel the trip. That’s just a suggestion. I think its better to cancel the trip than face the consequences of a sunken ship and loosing lives right? Maybe airlines can adopt this also.

I asked around from people who often use and travel by water/sea and they said that big ships like the MV Princess can withstand a signal number 1 and 2 typhoon. I asked 2 of my uncles who works as seamen, they said they often experience typhoons along their way. What made this case different is that the ship had problems. It was not able to “go with the flow” and battle the waves. It was like a sitting duck.

By way of the Washington Monthly, you can You can check out the Map of the (American) Political Blogosphere. For less America-centric mapping, see Frog in a Well (China), which links in turn to TouchGraph and Websites as Graphs.

Ways to help

The saving grace of this country is that in times of trouble, people don’t have to be asked to help. They spontaneously do so.

The three most important issues here are:

1. the speed at which the aid can reach the victims;

2. the assurance that the aid really gets to them;

3. that the items sent to the victims are what they really need.

Aside from the Philippine National Red Cross, and the International Red Cross, the government has announced some embassies will accept donations. Catholic relief agencies (like CARITAS Manila) can also receive donations and since many Filipinos abroad maintain close ties to their parishes, you may want to inquire with your parish office if a collection can be taken up for Philippine relief and coursed through international Catholic humanitarian channels (this applies to most other religious associations/churches, too).

You might also want to consider coursing your aid and assistance through the Corporate Network for Disaster Response (CNDR), which has issued a call for an urgent response to help the families suffering from Tropical Storm Frank’s fury. They have appealed to “the kind hearts of our members and partners to help in the emergency response operations”. You can reach them at 0928-3893629 (Floreen Simon) and 0917-9183122 (Joy Abot) or you can email them at <floreen.simon@cndr.org.ph>, <joy.abot@cndr.org.ph> and <secretariat@cndr.org.ph>. You may also deposit cash donations to CNDR’s BDO Savings Account No. 004640030358 (Account Name: Corporate Network for Disaster Response).

You may also want to consider donating in kind. CNDR has the following drop-off points. Petron Corporation/Foundation is opening all its service stations. Ayala Foundation has opened a drop-off point in Glorietta 4 and will soon open more drop-off points in all Ayala Malls. ABS-CBN will also accept donations at Sagip Kapamilya’s warehouse in #11 Examiner Street in Quezon City. Manila Water will also receive donations. All goods that will be gathered in this campaign will be sorted and repacked at the Manila Water and ABS-CBN Foundation warehouse and will then be turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Suggested good donations based on identified needs of the victims include canned goods, water containers (jugs), and monggo beans. for donations from companies and their employees, CNDR will coordinate the pick-up of goods for delivery from donor companies with the help of transportation services offered by Coca-Cola and Manila Water.

CNDR says “A relief operation will also be conducted once sufficient cash donations are available. The service area will depend on an initial assessment of DSWD and a thorough damages, needs, and capacities assessment (DNCA) by CNDR.”

Also, “Currently, CNDR is coordinating the transport of Manila Water’s commitment of sending a portable water treatment plant and Zuellig Foundation’ disaster kits to Iloilo in coordination with DSWD. This will greatly address the need for potable water in the province. Zuellig Foundation will also provide at least 130 disaster kits more to affected families in Zamboanga”. According to CNDR, “This partnership with DSWD has earned us regular access to transportation facilities which will enable us to deliver the goods to the families in need of assistance”.

You may also be interested in finding out what individual companies have done, either to team up with them, or in order to plan similar efforts on the part of your company, neighborhood association, or civic group or school:

ABS-CBN and Lopez Group Foundation: served at least 5,273 individuals including 982 families and 800 kids in a series of soup kitchen. Areas served: Desamparados, Jaro, Iloilo City; Alabel and General Santos; Cotabato; Mandurriao, Iloilo City; Bacolod City; and Delpan and Binondo in Manila

Petron: Committed 1M for relief operations in partnership with DSWD. Started relief operations in Iloilo and Roxas. Provided jet fuel for choppers for rescue operations.

Quezon Power: Assessing the impact of TS Frank in Quezon Province. Will support CNDR’s relief operations.

Smart: Committed to support local chapters of Philippine National Red Cross in General Santos and Iloilo. Set-up Libreng Tawag Centers in Manila, Cebu and Lucena for communication access of families and relatives of the victims of the sunken MV Princess of the Stars.

PBSP: Sent out a call for response. Will assess needs of priority areas in Bicol, Samar, Step-Up areas in Metro Manila, and Mindanao.

Pilipinas Shell: Mobilizing donations in support of CNDR operations.

BPI Foundation: Pledged P50,000 in support of CNDR operations.

Here is CNDR’s report on the damage wrought by the typhoon:

Updates on Severe Tropical Storm Frank

CNDR, 23 June 2008 as of 12 noon

As Tropical Storm Frank slowly trudged the country, it left on its path death and destruction. Authorities have estimated that millions worth of property, crops, and infrastructure have been damaged. The amount of damage is expected to rise, and with it, the death toll as reports come in from various parts of the country some of which have been isolated by power outage, floods, and landslides.

As of 6pm Sunday, the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) lists at least 82 dead in Regions VI, VIII, XI, XII, and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Some 82,571 families or 386,902 persons were affected by TS Frank. Of the number, at least 10,648 families or 51,100 persons are currently in evacuation centers. The NDCC also placed agricultural damage at P888 million in Leyte alone and another P52 million worth of damage to school buildings. This came from various reports as the NDCC is in the process of consolidating the effects of TS Frank.

“The weather and flooding does not enable us yet to transport relief goods and rescue equipment,” NDCC’s Dr. Anthony Golez said. “We will fly to Iloilo using C-130 planes,” he said. The NDCC said majority of Iloilo and Samar provinces were still experiencing power outages. In Leyte, 80 percent of electricity supply has been restored. The provinces of Aklan, Antique, Leyte, Capiz, and Romblon, meanwhile, remained powerless. The NDCC said officials would have to wait for floodwaters in the provinces to recede before restoring the power lines.

VISAYAS

On Saturday, the typhoon devastated the province of Iloilo as many residents spent the night on rooftops and desperately cried for help. Frank’s heavy rains and strong winds battered communities, sweeping houses and toppling trees and electric posts, including transmission lines of the power plant in Dingle town. Many roads were impassable because of fallen trees and landslides.

Almost all of Iloilo’s 42 towns and this city, including those that had not previously experienced flooding, were under water. Rescue and relief agencies scrambled to reach the typhoon victims and provide assistance. Officials said it was the worst flooding experienced in Western Visayas, with the number of fatalities rising to 81. Fifty-two people died in Iloilo province, 15 in Antique, six in Iloilo City, and four each in the provinces of Capiz and Negros Occidental. At least 136 others are still missing including 78 in Iloilo and 55 in Antique. The figures are expected to rise as reports come in trickles from towns and villages, many of which are still isolated by floodwaters.

The City Schools Division of the Department of Education Sunday declared the suspension of classes for at least three days because the schools were being used as evacuation centers. Many students were also among the victims.

In neighboring Capiz, more than 2,000 houses were destroyed in the provincial capital.

Although the government has target rescue and relief operations in Iloilo and neighboring provinces, heavy flooding have further isolated these areas.

In Aklan, at least 10 residents were killed and hundreds missing when floods from the Aklan River wiped out entire communities as TS Frank lashed the region over the weekend. Jess Marquez, executive assistant to Aklan Gov. Carlito Marquez, said that except for intermittent cell phone service, the province is cut off from the outside world. He further said that floods reached as high as chest level and many communities near the Aklan River were wiped out. Marquez cited information indicating their power generators, including those that power the province’s hospitals, are submerged in mud and water.

In Sibuyan Island, the MV Princess of the Stars, carrying 626 passengers and 121 crew on board, capsized during the typhoon. The ferry was en route to Cebu from Manila at around 12:30pm on Saturday. Twenty-eight passengers were reported alive but more than 800 remain missing.

MINDANAO

The local government on Saturday declared Vitali district and other areas in Zamboanga City hit by flashfloods as under state of calamity. The City Disaster Coordinating Council (CDCC) chaired by Mayor Celso Lobregat has mobilized all local government resources to assist the more than 1,000 families displaced by the flashfloods spawned by typhoon Frank since Friday.

In Southern Maguindanao province, at least 14 people drowned in flash floods Saturday including 10 persons that were swept away from riverside homes. Five others remain missing.

In Cotabato City, a man and his 10-year-old grandson were killed when a landslide buried their hillside shanty.

In Sarangani, at least 1,641 families are affected from the municipalities of Alabel (661), Kiamba (514), Maasin (288), and Maitum (288). At least 337 houses are destroyed and two bridges in key transport routes are washed out completely. Initial estimate of amount of damages is at P34 million.

METRO MANILA

In Metro Manila many residents had been caught unprepared as the storm, which rampaged in the Visayas and Bicol, made an unexpected — and deadly — shift and battered Metro Manila. Major streets were flooded and numerous traffic lights were out.

The typhoon also downed power lines and caused massive blackouts in franchise areas of Meralco, including parts of Metro Manila and the provinces of Rizal, Cavite, Batangas, Laguna, and Quezon. About 46 percent of the electricity service was disrupted according to Meralco.

As day broke, transportation was paralyzed, many billboards were felled, and nearly all domestic and international flights were cancelled. Thousands of passengers were stranded. It was not until evening when international flights were allowed to leave.

Sources:

ABS-CBN News Online

Inquirer.net

Manila Bulletin

GMANews.TV

Sunstar

Reports from local contacts as relayed by CNDR members

Junket of Doom

Even as the President departed, the Inquirer editorial had already called her trip a Most useless junket. Her trip, will be followed up, incidentally, by another trip to the States, scheduled in September, practically on the eve of the American presidential elections.

My column for today is Bitter fruits of disaster. The growing number of middle class Filipinos who’ve avoiding watching local news and reading the papers had their equanimity disturbed by yet another home-grown tragedy going global. See the Agence France Presse story, Hundreds feared dead after Philippine ferry sinks. The latest is More survivors in Philippine ferry sinking:

Twenty-eight passengers from a capsized passenger ferry were reported alive in the central Philippines on Monday but more than 800 remain missing after the ship sank during a typhoon.

The survivors made it to a small coastal village after drifting at sea for more than 24 hours in a rubber boat, radio dzBB reported. Two others originally on board the life raft drowned in large swells.

The discovery raises the number of survivors to 32. Four people were confirmed dead on Sunday.

First, a correction to my column: at 11 pm last night, long after the deadline for my article, Dick Gordon told me personally he hadn’t left for the States, because he saw the disaster coming. Good for him and the Red Cross. Scriptorium points out an entry in la ciudadista that identifies where to give donations, in cash or kind, for typhoon relief, and adds,

…the [DSWD] has designated Petron gas stations for receiving non-perishable goods. Basic needs come first: used clothes, canned goods, rice, bottled water, instant noodles, sleeping mats/banig, cash donations. Let us all please help the victims as much as we can.

You can donate to the Red Cross online, click the Donate Now link on its website.

The President is being taken to task for going to America even as devastation had already been wrought by the typhoon in Mindanao and it was plowing through the Visayas. The criticism has gotten more intense as the death toll mounts. ‘Frank’ aftermath no reason for Arroyo to cut US trip – Palace goes the official response, and the President has taken to teleconferencing as a way to prove she’s doing something.

In my column, I pointed out that PAGASA’s being off the mark in its predictions has pissed off a lot of people. And at first, this was the main bone of contention concerning the typhoon. See Faulty Weather Pronouncements of PAGASA, which I mentioned in my column. The Inquirer’s front page today shows PAGASA’s path prediction for the typhoon (in yellow-orange), and the actual path it took (in red):

See Milking The Cash Cow to see how the PAGASA website wasn’t functioning particularly well when people needed information the most. This was also pointed out by The Dusk Chronicles who also remarked on how people weren’t really prepared for the storm hitting Metro Manila (hat tip: Global Voices). One thing I did hear a lot from people, though, yesterday (as people end up doing what they usually do, which is trading notes on disasters) is that many found maybagyo.com very useful. See its updates page.

Other entries I found useful concerned the devastation in Iloilo (Eastern Visayas loses close to P900M in crops, infra), see The Trojan Bore who pointed to view from the sugar island:

People are desperately seeking help and are stuck in the rooftops, INEPT GOVERNMENT NO.1 will send help INSTANTLY RIGHT? NO, HELP WILL ARRIVE TOMORROW OUR OFFICIALS NEED THEIR BEAUTY SLEEP. Supplies and rescue boats (THAT ARE REALLY NEEDED RIGHT NOW BY RESCUE TEAMS) will arrive tomorrow in Iloilo at 6:00 am via C-130. Congratulations, your ineptitude is world-class.

What will they rescue tomorrow? I don’t know. Maybe it is to give the press a chance to cover their heroics. Reports say there is a danger of hypothermia hitting the flood victims and that is why time is of the essence. I’m hearing the flood in some areas is subsiding. Hopefully it is true. The rescue efforts are being made difficult by the darkness and lack of EQUIPMENT. As I type, flood victims stuck in the rooftops are asking for help through SMS to be rescued.

Local officials know they’re getting hammered by public opinion. I heard Vice-Governor Rolex Suplico on the radio yesterday afternoon sounding frustrated over the delayed arrival of a C-130 transport plane from Cebu; obviously even if the provincial government had emergency stockpiles of equipment and food, the scale of the flooding and damage wrought by the typhoon would have overwhelmed local resources.

A harrowing account from the scene comes from Confessions of the Mind and Heart:

Saturday, June 21 I woke up early and had my dad drive me to Ventus to finish some work. We came across the Jaro river where we usually get the sign if flood will occur. So far it was in its normal level and dad said he will just call in case…

It was not after 1 hour when dad called that the siren is all over the place which warned the people in Tabuc Suba Jaro to prepare for the flood. I’m on a hurry to go home so I asked the assistance of nong Ruel to give me a ride home and minutes later mom texted me not to go home anymore. When we passed by Jaro, the van can no longer penetrate the water.

I decided to meet Jet at Robinsons Mall. The water is all over the place and I started to panic. He was there waiting for me. I can’t help myself not to cry. I’m worried about my family back home. My brother’s in Capiz and ufortunatley he can’t go home coz it’s signal number 3 in that place. I stayed with Jet the whole night hoping that tomorrow I can go home.

I’m getting more worried when I can’t contact them already. jet and I went back to Ventus Sunday morning hoping I could get a chance to contact them since the whole city is black out, Ventus is just the only place who has reserved electricity.

Still I can’t contact them. The landline’s just ringing. I had the thought that the water reached the telephone line. So I decided to go to Jaro and check out the situation. We reached Jaro, I was with my cousin and Jet. We walked from Jaro bridge down Bankers Village. Seeing the whole place was a disaster. The Brgy Hall was full of refugees lining up to get some food from a truck with donations. Jetskies and motorboats were parked in the sideways, cars were also parked on the side og the bridge and sidewalks. We passed by Iloilo Supermart and it was all damaged. the water entered the store and the glass door broke. I can’t imagine how an elevated place was reached by water. We came near Quintin Salas and saw some cars been thrown away in the vacant lot.. I saw our car parked in outside the building beside the village and it’s drowned. I saw mud inside and it’s oil spilled out.

We entered Bankers and the current of the water is so strong I just can’t lift my feet. Jet and my cousin were pulling me to my feet. We reached home at last. I saw the mansions with crached fences, and muddy furnitures. All light posts and telephone lines are dead and were actually down. And my house, it’s all chocoloate covered mud!!! I saw my helpers shoveling the mud out of our gate. Dad approached us teary eyed saying that “Guba gid ya balay ta, wala gid ko nag expektar na amu ni matabo” (It’s all damaged. I didn’t expect this to happen).

See iloilo flood 2008 photos at trigo26’s Flickr account.

Matters can only have been compounded by the perpetually ad hoc nature of emergency response measures, and how nothing really functions unless the big bosses are around the lean on their subordinates. It’s only been a few weeks since the national government came in for strong criticism over its sluggish handling of the typhoon damage to Pangasinan. And yet it was only yesterday that NDCC convenes in wake of ‘Frank’.

This basic reality of what passes for government management in our country, helps explain why whatever the President does, there really is no substitute for her being here, and for her subordinates being here, either. You’d think that our officials, who’ve borrowed so many pages from the Republican playbook, would have learned the lessons taught by Bush’s plummeting in the ratings because of his response to Hurricane Katrina.

Closer to home (see pictures in TheBachelorGirl), another point I raised was courtesy of the age of brillig:

According to the 10:30 p.m. bulletin from PAGASA, Typhoon Fengshen (i.e., Frank) had altered course and is now projected to pass over Metro Manila at around 5:00 a.m., or 5 hours from the time I write this. Its not good that this bulletin came out after many Metro Manila residents have gone to bed, especially since the storm is expected to hit while most of Metro Manila is sleeping.

Urban poor areas in Manila hardest hit by floods presents a political Catch-22 for local governments, too: humanitarian considerations, and the responsibilities of leadership, requires mayors and governors to dissuade residents from rebuilding in areas notoriously flood-prone (I have read many press accounts from the past, in which local and national leaders intervened, by force if necessary, to prevent residents from rebuilding in areas proven to be disaster-prone, but that was then); but to do so now would mean alienating manageable votes. So nothing will be done, which only means the casualties will pile up the next time, but perhaps not before the next elections.

I took this photo some time ago, precisely for a blog entry I intended to write, on the crumbling infrastructure of the metropolis. This rant in The Personal Blog of David Gonzales reminded me of the point I wanted to raise, concerning electrical lines. You only have to look at the scary state of the electrical lines, particularly in older neighborhoods or congested urban areas, to understand why there can be such a thing as systems losses, but more importantly, how every day that ends represents a kind of miracle.

In the wake of the typhoon, fires broke out because of voltage fluctuations but the exploding transformers and downed poles and lines simply demonstrates that whatever infrastructure we have is basically kept functioning by means of patchwork and sheer luck.

Returning to the (rather frantic) efforts of the President to appear to be doing something, there’s the already-famous tongue-lashing (portions of which were published by RG Cruz) the President gave the head of the Coast Guard as news broke of the sinking of the Suplicio Lines vessel. The limits of technology were demonstrated when it took some time for the President and the Coast Guard commander to get on the same page, and eventually, the media were led out of the room to spare the officials further embarrassment.

In another blog entry, RG Cruz recounts how officials were subsequently summoned to the Palace at 1 a.m. so that the President could teleconference with them and exhibit her officials to Filipinos in the USA. Along the way, he publishes the transcript of another tongue-lashing, this time, of a Sulpicio Lines official, and again, at the hands of the President:

[VP de Castro]: mr go, how about the condition of the ship, how old is the ship[?]

[Mr. Go]: the ship was 24-year-old passenger ship, it passed all the maritime requirements it has all the certificate, updated certificate [...]

[VP de Castro]: what are you doing now to help the passengers[?]

[Mr. Go]: our company has committed to compensate to the victims and bring them to their home town, whatever expenses our company will take care of, all expenses [...]

[The President]: im just looking at the guidelines (gap) policy general … if any vessel is scheduled to depart and the operator of the vessel should study carefully the typhoon movement to ensure that the vessel will not be within the area directly affected by the typhoon signals 1, 2, 3 and 4 within the danger sector until they reach their destination. so hindi totoo yung sinasabi mong walang prohibition, nadito yun sa guidelines ninyo[...]

and then furthermore number 3, no vessel shall sail except to take shelter if public storm signal warning is hoisted in the point of origin, the route, and the point of destination, so it’s not true whatyou said yesterday that there are no absolute prohibitions, there are.

Cruz says Go said compensation will be given, since passengers are insured, anyway, to the tune of 200,000 pesos per person. So perhaps if you were to add up the costs of following safety regulations, and balance those costs out with the costs of a one-time cash pay-out in the case of a disaster, the company still comes out ahead.

The President demonstrated her particular gifts -for detail, and for putting subordinates on the spot- both in terms of the Coast Guard and with the Sulpicio Lines official.

She has also unleashed a torrent of directives:

The directives were: (1) Congress to certify a bill that would consider rice hoarding and profiteering as economic sabotage with disaster as aggravating circumstance; (2) state of calamity should include imposing maximum rice price and giving decent return for farmers/traders, plus wholesale of hoarded rice;

(3) announce government aid for ferry disaster victims or families; (4) pending review of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) protocols so that no vessel sails if it would pass possible typhoon path; (5) assign an NDCC official at Sulpicio Lines to get and release information on victims;

(6) embassies in the US, Europe and Middle East should open disaster relief donation accounts plus NDCC account website or text number; (7) National Telecommunications Co. (NTC) and Philippine Information Agency (PIA) should help ensure NDCC site to be able to work amid high traffic.

However, what will register with the public is that she’s abroad.

The sinking shocked the nation. Tingog.com, who has been a passenger on Sulpicio and other steamship lines, says the ship should never have sailed in the first place:

This is a wide ranging generalization, but I have experienced it first hand to know, that there are many many times, where both coast guard inspectors and the ship captain, have turned a blind eye to procedure.

In many instances, it is the coziness of those in the passenger ship industry, as well as those who provide oversight to this industry, that has made such tragedies possible.

I’ve been a passenger not only to Sulpicio Lines, but to many other companies as well. There are a lot of blame to go around here, for Sulpicio Lines, they definitely should always heed the warning signals, even if a direct hit on their travel path is not expected. To the coast guard, to the inspectors, to the government, who must ensure that these boats leave dock inspected, with proper amount of passengers, and by also erring on the side of caution as they should always monitor any chance of a slight weather complication.

One thing is clear, the ship should never have departed, and that is, I’m afraid to say, the fault of the coast guard, and whoever made that decision must pay, either held administratively liable, criminally liable, or both. As for now, I’m not really sure if the criminal aspect of it is a worthy pursuit, but in all actuality this was negligence which could have cost our nation hundreds of innocent lives.

At Midfield asks how Sulpicio Lines manages to even stay in business:

Yes, this is the same company that owned the MV Dona Paz whose sinking in December 1987 is considered the world’s worst ferry disaster and the worst peace-time maritime disaster in history with the official death count at 1,565. Survivors claim the overloaded ferry carried up to 4,000. In October 24, 1988, the sinking of still another of Sulpicio Lines ferry, the MV Doña Marilyn reportedly killed over 600 people… The now customary apology, incredible as it is, has come from Sulpicio Lines with the hollow promise to help the victims. No comfort. We know that to this day the damage claims of the earlier victims in the Dona Paz and MV Marilyn tragedies are locked in court. One wonders how and why a shipping company like this continues to operate given its woeful record of sinking ships, and stealng the lives of it hapless passengers. They are left only to light candles and wail. In other countries people would have long expressed outrage by putting such firms to the torch.

Indeed if left only to the tender mercies of market forces, disasters alone might not be enough to kill off negligent steamship companies: what killed off the White Star Line wasn’t the sinking of the Titanic, it was the Great Depression, which forced its merger with main rival, Cunard. But then again Sulpicio Lines has probably set a world record as the most ill-fated steamship company in history. (update) Reading Alternation101’s link to a Reuters article, Sulpicio Lines seems to have given the White Star Line a run for its money in the Unfortunate Trio of Sister Ships Department. White Star had Titanic, Olympic, and Britannic, and Sulpicio had two Donas: Paz and Marilyn, and their other sister ship, the Princess of the Orient!

Daily Musings has a bone to pick with ABS-CBN for showing video of corpses (what about the Inquirer photo of a corpse, displayed Pieta-style, on its front page?) .

A sprinkling of bloggers’ reactions to the typhoon, from Punzi’s Corner and Coffee with Amee being disgruntled over the President’s absence, to the interesting tandem of Touched by an Angel and The Warrior Lawyer giving a (literally) Mom and Pop view of the storm.

Today is my father’s 82nd birth anniversary, and as a token of remembrance let me put forward two of his essays: Our undemocratic mentality from January 11, 1967 and The meaning of equality from January 25, 1967.

Since Iraq, a hard place to be

In theory, a strict no ransom policy makes sense. However, it becomes untenable if the authorities lose the moral ascendancy to insist upon such a policy. That moral ascendancy is dependent upon the authorities:

1. Having a no-exceptions track record with regards to hostage-tacking;

2. Having a credible (though not necessarily perfect) record of rescuing hostages, which puts forward the strong possibility that the authorities have the skills and political will necessary to effect a rescue;

3. Having an acceptable batting average as far as the apprehension, trial, and conviction, of hostage-takers or, barring that, are credible in the cases in which hostage-takers end up liquidated by the authorities.

And all of the above requires, in turn, that the authorities have a certain amount of goodwill and legitimacy as far as the public is concerned, in case things go wrong and the hostages end up killed by the hostage-takers or the rescuers. Contrast the way Japan handled its citizens being held hostage in Iraq with the way our government handled the abduction of de la Cruz.

In the absence of these, the authorities are at a disadvantage in urging the families of hostages not to succumb to the desire to secure the liberty of their loved ones by all means necessary, including the payment of ransom.

Since the government caved in, in the case of Angelo de la Cruz in Iraq, scuttling its closeness to Washington in the process, the government abandoned item 1; it has a mixed record as far as items 2 and 3 are concerned, because its own shortcomings have been magnified by the harsh but understandable lack of enthusiasm on the part of its former close allies, to go that extra mile for a fickle Philippine government.

As its been unfolding, the story seems to be that the kidnapping of Ces Drilon and party was a case of officials running a kidnapping syndicate instead of primarily being another Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom event. The situation’s made murky by the way some of the people involved seem to change affiliations at the drop of the hat and how the credentials and even motives of those identified with the rescue are being challenged.

A lengthy text message in circulation is a case in point, and I put it forward not as an endorsement of any probative value it may have, but as an indication of what’s being talked about (and speculated upon):

I was at a luncheon mtg w Ed Espiritu. He is an unimpeachable source re Ces Drilon kidnap. He is family, brother of mom of ces. He can’t believe d gall of Loren daw. She got into d picture only after family of Ces paid 5M. That’s when first cameraman was released. They had to pay some more for d release of the Ces and Jimmy. Ces felt she had no choice but to go along w Loren’s script. Loren even directed plane to taxi more to change position so they would be facing camera when dey disembark & she told Ces that she has to emerge from plane first and dat Ces should follow only after 10 mins. And now Loren and Ed Angara want Ces to seek an audience w GMA. Ces knows she’s being used but at d time of her release she felt she had no choice. By d way d family also thinks dat d mayor being held now is guilty. He & Loren were also d ones who negotiated w kidnappers of Arlene de la Cruz w same MO.

(update, Saturday: see Of Political Poison Texts and Criminal Aliases for details on this SMS message, the aspersions of which Edgardo Espiritu publicly denies; though Patricio Mangubat thinks Legarda’s not quite off the hook)

What we do know is headlined as follows: Dinampo: Guide betrayed us, as well as TV reporter’s family paid P5M but mayor kept P3M–officials and Puno: Proof indicates Isnaji masterminded kidnapping. Note the assertions of the government, what the text message going around says, and this report in MindaNews: Dinampo: no basis to charge Mayor Isnaji for kidnapping; says Biyaw “should be debriefed, too”. Curiouser and curiouser.

This is still very far from the allegations that Legarda was in cahoots with local officials: and I don’t suppose the government would put the squeeze on those officials if it would imperil Legarda.

But it is interesting that the latest official revelations zero in on the culpability of local officials, when the government started beating the war drums for a military offensive.

My own suspicions was that the kidnapping involved officialdom in one way or another, most especially considering the Hawks in the present administration who would be pleased for tensions to escalate in the South.

The manner in which the government, normally eager to downplay bad news until it can be properly managed, jumped the gun and neutralized the media embargo on the kidnapping, made me wonder if it wasn’t a trap sprung on Drilon to put the fear of the Abu on any journalist inclined to sniff around Moro areas. When it began to leak out that some sort of official participation in the kidnapping was a possibility serious enough to consider (and serious enough to scuttle the warmongering outcome some might have desired), I got even more nervous, and seriously contemplated the possibility that a solution held in reserve might be, to simply liquidate the hostages and blame it on the hostage-takers or as part of “collateral damage,” which would spook journalists even more. But then again, being an army brat, the decent part of the armed forces wouldn’t have knowingly permitted Drilon to be killed.

But then my assumption that there’s a War Party in the government, and my further assumption that the AFP, as an institution, doesn’t think that that way, and if we assume, further, that there remains a reservoir of professionalism within the armed forces, then they were probably aware of this -see Threats from Abu Sayyaf wane: CTC report – ahead of the public. Which means even those tasked with mounting an offensive would have been hard-pressed to pursue a Ghost Army.

This may explain these two interesting responses from two services that would be at the forefront of any offensive: see Marine chief uneasy with AFP’s all-out-war vs bandits and No need to boost air power in Mindanao, says PAF.

In the first place, our officers know that if the mission is to identify, and neutralize, bandit groups, that calls for different tactics than would be required for a traditional land, sea, and air offensive over something larger like a pseudo army of rebels. The martial traditions of the region’s inhabitants would dictate even those unaffiliated with the bandits to mobilize against the government out of an instinctive religious and tribal solidarity. This would only increase the logistical and other problems of the military.

notes of marichu c. lambino also points to another kind of infighting that may be taking place, tied to a long-standing debate (and confusion) on the Ramos-era (I believe) policy that the Philippine National Police should be in charge of counter-insurgency and the skepticism of the armed forces over the practicality of such a division of labor:

What has escaped unnoticed up to now was: this was the debut, on the national stage, of the Philippine National Police as busters of the Abu Sayyaf and jungle bandits (if those were the real perpetrators). Of course, they haven’t busted the kidnapping band but the leads gathered are a good start. If memory serves right, for more than a decade and up until the kidnapping of Fr. Giancarlo Bossi, it was the Marines (and other AFP units) under those brigadier generals, that’ve tried to catch the Abu Sayyaf, rescue hostages and engage the kidnappers and bandits, at great, great cost: in terms of fatalities, beheadings, indiscriminate bombings, wars, military operations, refugees, resources, money hundreds of millions, escaped bandits laughing, aggravation, wasted time, etc. We suffered the AFP military generals for decades.

(Saturday update: see Uniffors on why the PNP hasn’t fully taken over counter-insurgency operations)

But there are good reasons to believe that a faction within the administration thinks letting loose the dogs of war would be convenient and satisfying, politically. Which is why I don’t think it would be wrong to consider that the recent revelations concerning who actually abducted Drilon, ought to be viewed from the perspective of competing factions within the administration. One thing that never changes in government (any government) is that there will always be turf wars and factional divisions within any administration.

Consider the possibility of the following taking place behind the scenes.

One faction would love to use the incident to drum up support for military action; another, would prefer not to rock the boat at this time, as it will have repercussions not just domestically, but regionally: a Malaysian government on the verge of losing power, will not put time or energy into helping keep the MILF in check, for example, and Indonesia has its own problems and the USA is in the closing months of a lame duck administration. Just consider the financial drain combined military operations represents, and who on earth could finance it. Our government? But it’s busy fending off the effects of the oil and rice price increases.

The President, like any president, derives a great deal of her political effectiveness from playing off one faction against the other, and seeing which turf to protect and which to permit others to encroach upon. This applies to domestic politics as it does to international relations.

The President could, conceivably, be gearing up to go to Washington to try to mend fences by offering to launch an offensive in Mindanao, so long as Uncle Sam foots the bill: Republicans eager to open up a new front to keep the War on Terror on center stage might consider it. If the President could then be assured of a credit line from Washington to finance operations in Mindanao, then the Hawks could get what they want. But if not, she cannot afford to fritter away resources pursuing an offensive that would then make her already tenuous budgetary situation even worse. Australia (see Aust pledges support for offensive against Abu Sayyaf) for example, could serve as a conduit for covert American financing or even chip in, but until the President can iron things out in Washington, it would be better to de-escalate things, for now, at least.

There is also a cultural dimension here independent of ideology, which is, the culture of banditry in the hinterlands (a geographical thing, wherever there are mountain ranges to shelter bandit groups), and a more specific one among some Moro societies, that harks back to the centuries of slave-raiding expeditions by Moro pirates. As the Inquirer editorial (which basically said that Abu link may be better described as “Abu Sayyaf, Teen Edition”) pointed out today,

Flashback to last week: When the news of the Drilon kidnapping spread, it was reported that many young people in parts of Sulu were lining up to join the Abu Sayyaf. The common reason: They wanted to share in the bounty of the expected ransom.

As it stands, the questions arising from the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping -the apprehension of of the mayor-intermediary and his son and their being whisked off to Manila, as reported by Ding G. Gagelonia (his coverage of the whole thing deserves an award)- raised by observers like The Write Stuff, the suspicions expressed by Patricio Mangubat, the criticisms made by Nick in FilipinoVoices.com, and even the conspiracy theories summed up by whatsikat.com, are all coming to a confusing head. This is not being helped by media throwing caution to the winds the moment the hostage taking drama seemed about to end. As khanterbury tales puts it, it’s a media feast now, much breathless reportage but little along the lines of figuring out if government’s lying (or not, and why, in either case), though she does point to this commentary in the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.

The Moro view is put forward by Julkipwi Wadi, of the UP Institute of Islamic Studies, and written shortly before the release of the hostages. It raises several issues (which I’ve placed in bold) to consider:

It’s sad

by JULKIPLI WADI, UP institute of Islamic Studies

The kidnapping of Ces Drilon and other crew of ABS-CBN including Prof. Octavio Dinampo of Mindanao State University-Sulu underscores the worsening uncertainty Muslim Mindanao particularly the Sulu Province has become these past few years. Despite government’s pontification to bring peace and development into the area while brandishing America’s aid and military assistance notwithstanding the U.S. military presence in the Sulu Archipelago, all these prove inadequate if not useless to eradicate social disenchantment and restlessness of the people as shown in the continuing presence of armed resistance including the persistence of radical group like Abu Sayyaf how unconventional they may have become.

With the kidnapping of Ces et al, it is clear what the government has simply addressed these past years were simply the surface and other peripheral issues of the Mindanao conflict – not core, the root cause of the problem, which is primarily the desire of the people to have their freedom, peace and justice. It proves once more that economic assistance including physical development poured into the area including availability of cellular phones to anyone, while they help some people including the entrenchment of political dynasties in Moro areas, can also be utilized by radical groups like the ASG to facilitate their mobility and movement including their communication in negotiating the fate of their kidnapped victims like Ces and her companions. By employing divide-and-rule tactics among Moro movements, the government has reaped what it sowed: it is severely constrained now whom to reach out in Sulu to serve as its partner of peace and development in the face of amoeba-like mushrooming of various radical groups in the area. Hence, the kidnapping of Ces and company raises the question whether it shows the continuing tenacity and resilience of the Abu Sayyaf or whether there is a policy blunder by the government or strategic failure in terms of tactics and intelligence by the Armed Forces of the Philippines in addressing the Mindanao conflict recently. Such uncertainty should have been properly understood by Philippine media.

Ironically, Ces Drilon should have been the last person to be victimized by alleged new group of Abu Sayyaf. As a friend, she has interviewed me of this subject several times in the past making her, in my view, one of the most informed and culturally sensitive TV journalists of the ABS-CBN as far as the Mindanao conflict including the Abu Sayyaf issue is concerned. While she might have the right judgment in trying to interview some people in the Abu Sayyaf in Maimbung in Sulu, despite the presence of local guide, having such judgment and guide how proper and reliable they may have been are not enough. They can hardly be relied upon since it is uncertainty that dominates the whole political and cultural make up the Sulu Province and other areas have become today. Even a native like me who was born and raised in Indanan does not just tread to unfamiliar territory of Sulu without proper coordination. The worsening uncertainty has long shocked me. Sulu today has never been like our days in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Sadly however, the media has been short in understanding the Mindanao issue including the failure to treat objectively the unconventional politics, events and movements in southern Philippines . Their treatment of Muslim issue is generally devoid of proper context and cultural sensitivity. Regrettably, some media have fallen prey into one-sided rhetoric of the government and foreign interest. It’s sad news but true. It is time for the media to check themselves. –julkipli wadi

Squeezing the turnip

Today is the birth anniversary of Jose Rizal. See Filipiniana Blogosphere’s tribute.

On to the present.

The President’s challenge: form a latter-day KBL. See Arroyo rallies allies behind her successor. As pols are always a suspicious lot, surely some will be mulling over whether this is a strategy to identify and then neutralize those with aspirations for the presidency (or conversely, to have them start lining up to reassure Madam she’ll be safe).

Speaking of allies… Ex-senator Mercado named RP envoy to China. How’s that for a blast from the past! Too bad Jun Urbano didn’t get the job.

Speaking of allies… my column for today is Salceda in drag. It makes reference to two previous (2007) columns, Paying the piper and Unable to pass the buck.

My column took a cue from two blog entries. One from stuart-santiago, and the other in blog@AWBHoldings.com who compares our situation to the story of the Emperor has no Clothes -except the kid who speaks the truth is sent to a re-education camp:

Sure, everyone knows our problems, and some people take pleasure in pointing out these problems. Some people take pleasure in pointing out that these people can only point out problems and never propose solutions. There is nothing wrong in pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, and there’s no solution to the problem of the emperor’s delusion that he is wearing the best clothes in the empire. Well, there is, but it is most unpalatable to those people who take pleasure in calling the child a fool. Their solution would be to play along.

And that’s my beef.

It has become our pastime to point out the problems; it has become our pastime to point out that it has become our pastime to point out the problems without offering solutions; it has become our pastime to point out that it has become our pastime to point out the problems without offering solutions and yet offer solutions that really do not address the problems. Yes, it is tiring to read that past sentence, because it is a tiring cycle…

…For example, most people are looking forward to 2010, and are planning ahead assuming that there will be elections in 2010, totally discounting the possibility that the current problem could derail the 2010 elections.

And forward planning assumes that the TRUE problem is known. The problem is that we can be so blind to the problem. So we think that a child who claims that the emperor is naked is the problem, not the emperor. So we deal with the education system, since it is producing people who see the emperor as naked. The solution stares us in the face, but we refuse to see.

The best way to move forward is to look at short-and long-term problems, and address them accordingly. Look at the real problems, and deal with them.

PS: The solution to the problem of the naked emperor is simple. Depose him, since he’s insane. But that would lead to instability, so the people would play along.

Thought-provoking or simply interesting articles on leadership, past and present, both in the West and closer to home.

Blogger Scriptorium suggests Rethinking Pinochet (and Franco) because of the troubling contrast between countries that went through fascist dictatorships, such as Chile and Spain, and how they’ve become not only economically progressive but also, healthy democracies, and the wastelands produced by Communist regimes in Europe:

A government that seeks to effect radical change, either forward to a progressive utopia (e.g., Communism) or backward to a lost golden age (e.g., Nazism), will be driven to use comprehensive coercion against all sectors that oppose the change. Where the change is sought by a small, Bolshevik-type cadre, the process will entail a struggle between the pro-change minority and a majority composed of groups that either oppose the proposed change or desire different changes. The minority must endeavor to force these social groups to toe the line, thereby creating a society that is more or less totall;y controlled by a single social faction. Hence totalitarianism.

On the other hand, a government that seeks to stop change, or to have limited or gradual change, will only need to use limited coercion. For unless most of society is united in desiring change justified by a widespread social myth (e.g., in 1789 France), the various social groups with their several objectives would easily reach equilibrium with a non- or limited-change government that, because it seeks no all-or-nothing agenda, can compromise with most sectors. So this government will generally let the sectors alone, reserving its ire for those with irreconcilable agendas. Hence authoritarianism.

It’s obvious, then, why the latter would more easily transition to democracy, whose very essence lies in subsidiarity, the idea that individuals and groups should be allowed to make their own choices. Subsidiarity would directly conflict with the radical-totalitarian program, for it would allow groups to opt out of the State-mandated change; and it’s inconsistent with the total social control demanded by radicalism. However, gradual-authoritarian governments would tend to preserve the relative autonomy of social groups, the continuance of which is often a part of the vague conservative/moderate stance of rightist dictators. And it is these groups that tend to lead the fight for democratic structures.

Moreover, it is usually during the gradual-authoritarian phase and because of it that groups become acclimatized to democratic power politics, because they are forced to temper other objects or their means to achieve the authoritarian equilibrium; and this enforced willingness to compromise is the vital requisite of democracy.

(The ongoing, posthumous rehabilitation of Ferdinand Marcos is a case in point, with no corresponding rehabilitation of the National Democrats taking place; indeed, even as Marcos’ once tarnished reputation is quietly being re-shined, the government of the day has effectively used anti-Communism as a justification for many of its actions).

The exception to Communism spreading misery and not much else, the People’s Republic of China, may be less due to actual Socialism but older, more durable, traditions in that country. This review of a BBC TV show, The Biggest Chinese Restaurant In The World, puts it best:

5,000 covers in all, located in a kind of Imperial Disneyland situated in the Hunanese town of Changsha. There were 300 cooks, wok burners like blast furnaces and a small army of waiters and waitresses, all identified by their separate regimental uniforms and drilled by Mrs Qin with martial songs. “Solidarity equals strength, strength is iron, strength is steel,” they sang, somewhat listlessly, while Mrs Qin enthusiastically led from the front, zealously promulgating her own version of socialism with Chinese characteristics. In a lovely image, you saw her counting the proceeds of another capacity night at the West Lake, the portraits of Mao on the banknotes flicking through her fingers at dazzling speed. Mrs Qin, naturally, was a member of good standing in the local Communist Party, along with most of Hunan’s other self-made millionaires. Eat your hearts out, Halliburton and Blackwater: when it comes to the profitable manipulation of government power, the Communist Party of China is the biggest cartel in the world, and Storyville’s fascinating film gave you a glimpse of just what it can be capable of when it gets going.

As for the Great Helmsman himself, zenpundit takes a look at his reputation for being an innovator in military doctrine and says he was most effective as a propagandist:

Mao, whose actual positive leadership contribution to Communist victory in the civil war was primarily political and strategic rather than operational and tactical ( his military command decisions were often the cause of disaster, retreat and defeat for Communist armies) had a perfect genius – I think that word would be an accurate description here – for operating at the mental and moral levels of warfare. Partly this was skillful playing of a weak hand on Mao’s part; the Communists were not a match on the battlefield for the better Nationalist divisions until the last year or so of the long civil war but Mao regularly outclassed Chiang Kai-shek in propaganda and diplomacy – turning military defeats at Chiang’s hands into moral victories and portraying Communist inaction in the face of Japanese invasion as revolutionary heroism. Yenan might have be a weird, totalitarian, nightmare fiefdom but Mao made certain that foreign journalists, emissaries and intelligence liasons reported fairy tales to the rest of the world.

Back in the West, there’s Hillary Clinton’s 5 mistakes, a sobering look at the former first lady whose presidential plans have been foiled:

Hubris was the campaign’s fatal flaw, from which the others, both strategic and tactical, derived.

And there’s The Comeback Id, an engrossing look at how Bill Clinton’s had to cope with being out of power.

Moving closer to home, the Economist takes a look at Yudhoyono’s courage and cowardice. Noteworthy here is how the Americans seem enthralled by the President of Indonesia, to whom they admiringly refer to as “SBY.” They speak of him the sort of glowing terms a previous generation of Americans must have used when talking about Magsaysay. I experienced this in a conference in Washington and it made me think how far away the Philippines has receded from the consciousness of Americans interested in our region.

But if Americans are enthralled by SBY, Filipino politicos are enthralled by Malaysia.

The history of modern Malaysia to my mind shows what would have happened to the Philippines had World War II not intervened: a Communist insurgency crushed, and two generations of one-party rule (conversely, I’ve always believed the Philippines, which had a head start, shows where Malaysia is headed once its population explodes). Certainly the instincts of Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s political classes are the same as ours, and that instinct is for a cozy one-party arrangement where factions can compete but not upset the boat. The urge among many in the political class, to neutralize the monster known as a national public opinion, and reduce things to a more manageable, local, problem for individual kingpins, helps explain why the Malaysian system is so attractive to them (parliamentarism combined with federalism: it represents a hankering, for those old enough to remember, for the political security of the prewar Nacionalista Party and for those younger, for the coziness of the New Society and the KBL).

Which is why the unraveling of UNMO’s grip on power in Malaysia must be galling and horrifying for these people. As Malaysia’s Badawi Faces More Pressure, you can see many of the “let’s emulate our neighbors” argument going down the drain:

Badawi has offered to step aside “in good time” to allow his deputy, Najib Tun Razak, to take over. But the chances of the perennial challenger Tenku Razaleigh Hamzah may well have been strengthened by the current turmoil and concerns about Najib’s viability in the wake of a series of scandals. Nonetheless, the SAPP statement is regarded as an ultimatum before the party potentially defects to the People’s Alliance, or Pakatan Rakyat, the coalition led by onetime Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

In recent weeks, the SAPP’s criticism of the Barisan has become louder and more frequent. Before, given the Barisan’s previous power, such a move would likely have led to expulsion from the coalition. But since March 8 national elections in which the Barisan lost its two-thirds majority in the parliament for the first time in the country’s history, disgruntled and previously sidelined politicians are discovering their potential marketability both to the Barisan and the opposition.

To wrest federal power from the Barisan, Pakatan needs another 30 lawmakers. Now, it has 80 against Barisan’s 142. With SAPP’s two joining its fray, the number required is down to 28. In Sabah, Barisan holds 24 out of the 25 federal seats. Over the past few months, speculation has been rife that lawmakers from this state would be among the first to defect. But Tengku Razaleigh, the 70-year-old perpetual prime minister-wannabe, told reporters that the state would back him in his challenge to be prime minister.

Moreover in recent weeks, Pakatan has suggested that even those in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) — the largest ethnic party, which leads the Barisan — and the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), the second largest ethnic party in the coalition, might be induced to cross party lines. Both parties have vehemently denied the possibility.

Certainly, Badawi has been assiduous in attempting to shore up his Sabahan base. He visited the state earlier this month to distribute more goodies including abolishment of the Sabah Federal Development Department, which oversees federal funds allocated for development. To control illegal immigration from Indonesia an the Philippines, a decades-old irritation for both Sabah and Sarawak, he has established a high-powered Cabinet committee under Deputy Prime Minister Najib.

But the assault on the Barisan has been relentless. On Wednesday the Election Court nullified the victory of a state lawmaker in the state of Perlis, possibly encouraging more to dispute election results. Opposition parties have perennially charged that the electoral process is fraudulent, often pointing to the dead who are still on the Election Commission’s registry of voters and accusing the Barisan of buying votes with cash.

This all seems like Malaysia’s version of our 1953, the year Magsaysay came to power. (Incidentally, see Mahathir’s blog.)

This story, How Much is That Steel Mill in the Window? , looks at prestige-driven big business acquisitions:

The paper finds that “Everything else remaining the same, the premium associated with national pride bids is almost twice that of the premium associated with non-national pride bids.” Using the authors’ conclusion one could put the cost of national pride to Tata shareholders at at least US$3 billion and that to Hindalco ones at around $1 billion.

The paper however notes that there may be offsetting gains. Governments may appreciate the nationalistic spirit and grant the acquirer favors such as tax advantages, or contract preferences. In many cases, in developing countries there are also links between bidders and politicians. There are also gains in goodwill among national audiences, and lower capital costs in international markets if larger size leads to better foreign recognition. There may be gains in acquisition of technology which would otherwise be unavailable. National prestige is thought to have its own rewards.

The paper does not however address the issue of the macroeconomic consequences of expensive acquisitions. As noted in an earlier article (Asiansentinel February 7,, 2007) India is a capital-short nation with a steel output one ninth that of China. Should it have paid over-the-odds for a company based in low-growth Europe when India’s own record of investment both in manufacturing and steel-using infrastructure was so weak? The record of 100-year-old Tata which was expanding by costly acquisition was a contrast to Korea’s Posco, which was less than half its age and had become the world’s number three producer and a technology leader, without having to make huge and costly bids. Indian media seem to have totally missed this apt comparison.

And it makes me wonder how the foreign expansion of Filipino big business overseas compares, in terms of prudence. San Miguel, established in Hong Kong since the 1940s, has expanded into China while its expansion in Australia follows the lead of the personal investments of Eduardo Cojuangco. Lucio Tan, John Gokongwei have expanded into China and I understand Henry Sy has been looking at setting up malls in India.

Incidentally, conspiracy theorists who are convinced Uncle Sam wants to set up bases in Mindanao, will find Fortress Guam Gets More Crowded grist for their convictions. But one thing’s sure: Filipinos will be lining up to fill the jobs the planned expansion of military facilities in that island will provide.

And then

Money for nothing and your checks for free

Over a decade ago, as I toured Vietville in Palawan (I was involved in the campaign to prevent the eviction of the Vietnamese refugees there), one of the nuns involved in running the place pointed out how the neat sawali houses of the residents had been built by the refugee-residents themselves. Various groups had only supplied plans and materials. “It means more when the people themselves build their homes, it inspires them to value their community and maintain it,” she said. Little did I know that I was seeing a prototype for the Gawad Kalinga of today.

The old saying goes, better to teach someone how to fish rather than hand them a fish; but then again this doesn’t mean that if someone is starving, you should then enroll them in a livelihood course. Feed them first. This means, though, that long-term plans have to be put in place, to prevent a culture of dependence from emerging. The increase in food and oil prices makes short-term relief an urgent matter to attend to; but long-term planning needs to take place, and we all depend on government to do that planning.

The Inquirer editorial today, Money for nothing, looks at the short-term priorities not just of our government, but regional governments, too. Interesting readings can be found here: Waterlogged Jakarta; Malaysia Faces a Succession Crisis (even as Malaysia may sell limited amount of subsidized fuel from next year) ; Truck drivers rally in Seoul over fuel costs; and US floods hit food prices (a little ray of light, at least for some, is Investors pour funds into Asian real estate).

The rise in food and oil prices has led to a debate that revolves around a lose-lose situation for governments: if they maintain subsidies, their bottom line suffers; if they abolish or decrease subsidies, the hold on power of governments may be imperiled. Something has to give, and it seems its the subsidies that are giving way, first. But not enough altogether, some think.

Take Dominic Lawson who says that while politically popular, oil subsidies actually benefit the wealthy the most:

Ban Ki-moon was not, needless to say, acting solely as an emissary for the United States: He was representing the teeming billions in nations as diverse as China, India and Malaysia. Yet if you look at this seizure in the oil market from the point of view of demand, rather than supply, then these same countries have also contributed directly to the problem they have asked Ban to sort out for them.

All have for years had a policy of subsidizing the price paid by their consumers and industry for oil products — and on a vast scale. According to the head of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, such subsidies are currently running at a rate of about $100 billion a year. In other words, these countries’ biggest energy consumers are being shielded from the effects of high oil prices, and therefore are not adjusting their consumption downward — quite the reverse, in fact. So we are seeing the subsidization of the richest in the Third World at the expense of all. This is not unusual: Indeed, it is absolutely standard in the upside-down world of market intervention. It is exactly the same as the global food market, in which subsidies ostensibly designed for the benefit of everyone are in fact disproportionately directed at the richest, paid for by national exchequers which supposedly represent the interests of nations as a whole.

So it’s not just that these poorer countries are building up their national debt to subsidize the use of oil; their economies will ultimately lose out in competitiveness to those in the West, where prices are liberalized. It won’t seem so at the moment to heavy users of fuel in the developed world, naturally: but in the long term, if oil prices stay at these levels, the countries which change the way they use energy will suffer less pain.

But even if you argue that the emerging conventional wisdom, is that government have to at the very least reexamine their subsidies and make them more focused, then at the very least, if our government’s embarked on a whole slew of subsidies, one has to ask if these are the right subsidies and for the right reasons -and with both short-term relief and long-term recovery in mind. In his column, Amando Doronila enumerates the subsidies:

Over the past three months, the Philippines, one of the developing countries threatened by political and social instability, has embarked on a program of subsidies that include: a P2-billion power subsidy program that offers a one-off P500 cash dole to four million families using less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity monthly to help cushion the impact of high electricity rates; a plan to offer a P2-per-liter discount on fuel purchases by public utility vehicle drivers in order to forestall a fresh round of fare increases; and a P300 per child subsidy for each family in addition to the P500 subsidy. These cash handouts come on top of the million-peso subsidy for cheap rice imported and stockpiled by the National Food Authority to enable it to sell rice at P18.25 a kilo, against the current price of P40 a kilo in the free market. A fertilizer subsidy is part of a P43.5-billion program aimed at dramatically increasing rice production in the short term.

These subsidies are to be taken from the 12-percent value-added tax, which the government claims is a bounty from one of its key fiscal reforms. The public coffers are claimed to be full because of this revenue.

Are our officials saying, as Doronila seems to suggest, that as far as government’s concerned, it can profit from misery, as was the case in April? Tony Lopez, in his column, argues that the President’s subsidies policy is on the right track:

Mrs. Arroyo, an economist, has deemed it better to give the cash direct to the poor. That way, the rich will continue paying taxes while the poor receive cash benefits.

The President is right. Direct the cash to the poor (who number 26 million). There may be questions as to how the poor will spend the money—pay for their electricity bill, buy more rice, buy clothes and slippers for their primary school kids, reload their cellphones, splurge on Jollibee at Mall of Asia, bet on the lotto or jueteng. To me, it doesn’t matter. The poor know best how to spend extra money. If you have never been poor, you don’t know just how far P500 will go.

Of course, some of the doleouts will be stolen. Graft, say 20 percent, I think, will be manageable. That’s small in terms of opportunity cost. Rice has tripled in price, a 200 percent increase in three months this year or 800 percent in one year. I think those in charge of the doleouts will minimize their greed and pocket just 10 percent.

(Over at Inquirer Current, you’ll find a link to a paper on the lessons learned from past food subsidies programs: the paper helps outline how to evaluate the pros and cons of a subsidy program and figure out how future programs can be improved.)

Lopez discusses Joey Salceda’s out-of-the-box solution:

The Noah’s Ark is a supplemental budget of P315.6 billion over three years (2008 to 2010). The amount could be P441 billion if you include subsidy for the National Food Authority’s rice procurement program (rice bought high and sold low to the poor).

The P315.6 billion includes in three-year totals, P84.6 billion in conditional cash transfers for the poor at the rate of P28.2 billion per year; P58 billion in agricultural production; P36 billion in scholarships; P24 billion in fuel subsidy for public transport.

At present, Salceda notes, most of Arroyo’s interim pro-poor programs have been funded by the VAT collection which could run out.

But will it be a case of trying to squeeze blood from a turnip? Lopez doesn’t say why Salceda thinks the VAT collection would run out, but my non-economist’s mind suggests to me that the reason’s simple: the VAT’s derived from consumption; when times are tough, consumption decreases, and when that happens, so does the VAT. No, you cannot squeeze blood from a turnip.

As it spends and spends, and scuttles some current sources of income (see Arroyo signs tax exemption law for minimum wage earners): according to Tax relief package favors middle class, says Monsod , Solita Monsod seems to be irritated that the tax relief’s being touted as actually helpful to the poor, when what it is is actually middle class relief) it needs to boost collections: Gov’t sets eyes on improving tax collection efficiency. Just as it rattles its saber to discourage profiteering: DTI to charge traders who go beyond 10% of suggested retail pric

To be sure, there are signs of government starting to think in terms of riding things out, medium-term (P4-B subsidies for poor included in budget – DBM), But there’s still some wiggle room. In a recent column, JB Baylon says he found out,

The 2008 budget has a bigger “allocation” for what is called “special purpose funds” than for the 34 line agencies of the national government: P562 billion for the former as compared to P503 billion for the latter…

…Using the 2004 budget, 1 percent went to the Judiciary, another 1 percent went to the Constitutional Commissions (COA, for example); 3 percent went to the Legislature inclusive of the much-maligned “pork barrel”; 27 percent went to debt servicing, and 68 percent went to the Executive department!

So now we know where the pork is.

From whom did he find these things out? You can start poking around this site: The Philippine Center for National Budget Legislation. This should prove to be an invaluable resource as the work begins for proposing and deliberating on, the 2009 General Appropriations Act (due to be submitted by the President in July when Congress reconvenes).

On the political front, Arroyo oversees Lakas-Kampi merger but Villafuerte, others not attending merger meeting of Lakas-Kampi.

And finally… Even as AlterNation101 suspected that it was all a public-relations stunt of the network, and Patricio Mangubat suspected that it’s all a public-relations stunt of the Philippine National Police chief, by 7 p.m. yesterday, ABS-CBN was already polishing its statement to mark the release of Ces Drilon and party from captivity, a moment RG Cruz happily recounts in his blog. Philippine Commentary reported he’d heard that the liberation of the captives was at hand, but mused,

I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this information (which will in any case be proven true or false in a few hours). If true, I would rejoice with the family, friends and associates of Ms. Drilon and company. But if it is also true that a ransom has been paid (as many will surely suspect) I would mourn for the next victims. It would also mean that despite perfervid declarations by both ABSCBN News management and the government authorities of a “no-ransom” policy, it will now be open season on other journalists and potential victims, with kidnappers and law enforcement fully in cahoots. I hope that whatever “story” will be given to explain events is not only credible, but true.

It’s important, I think, to point out it’s not just Ces Drilon who’s regained her freedom, there’s also this news: Lanao Bandits Free Hostages. I’m so very happy for Ces, and her fellow captives. But the story behind her abduction and who was really behind it, has only begun to unfold.

As smoke puts it, once the love-fest ends, it will be time for tough questions. As far as one of her assumptions goes, though, Philippine Politics 04 points out the policy of media embargoes has long been in place -and with official support.

A heinous situation

Dan Mariano writes on Bullying the business community. Even Philippine Commentary had to take exception to Rightist Poster Boy Enrile on this one. Previously, Tony Abaya said Senator Juan Ponce Enrile’s posturing in the Senate was due to his having an axe to grind with foreign businessmen over their complaints concerning smuggling in Port Irene.

The businessmen incurred the Enrile-Santiago tandem’s ire, because they dared remind the President of her previous policy of coddling them. But foreign businessmen are here only to profit, they don’t really decide the fates of regimes, because whoever is in power they will do business with. The problem, now, for the President, is that her past trump card -The Economy- is proving increasingly a weak one, because of the global situation. The President, for her part, knows as well as any Roman imperial official did in their time, that at all costs, the plebes must be provided bread and circuses. Or else.

The Business Mirror has two parallel reports: locally, Dispute over subsidies widens and regionally, Subsidies worsen food crisis .That this is a question the entire region’s wrestling with is explored Anwar’s False Promise on Fuel Prices . This report, Korea in Crisis, also provides a sobering tale (will it drive more South Koreans to come to the Philippines?).

Two views on these subsidies and policies, one from an official, the other from a citizen.

From Congressman Ruffy Biazon, on the one-time cash gift of the President to electricity consumers:Anyone who has ever spent time in the grassroots will tell you what will happen when you give dole outs in the field, especially if it involves money. Imagine dropping a piece of candy in the middle of an anthill.

From the outset, the government’s distribution plan was obviously a logistical nightmare. While indeed, government will eventually be able to had over the subsidy to the people, the cost of doing so will only highlight the inefficiency of their system and the incompetence of those who thought of it.

In order for the distribution plan to be implemented, government would have to mobilize manpower to do the distribution, secure the distributors and the money, maintain order in the distribution centers, and other measures needed to undertake such an activity. All these translate to expenditures just to carry out the plan.

Never mind if there was no other way to go about it. But as it turns out, there is another way. Common sense will tell you that the easiest way would be to turn over the subsidy to Meralco and have them deduct the amount from the next bill of the consumers. Simple as that. In the age of computerized banking and finance, it will only take minimum effort and a lot of savings to the government instead of what they are doing now.

But it turns out that the government officials handling this are not entirely ignorant to such an idea. In the provinces, where the other 2 million of the 4 million target beneficiaries are located, the government intends to implement the subsidy through the electric cooperatives, so that the subsidies will just be credited to the accounts of the consumers. No distribution centers, no lining up…

…I’m dumbfounded. While they are considering this scheme for the distribution of the subsidies in the provinces, where they will have to deal with dozens of electric cooperatives and private distribution units which service the estimated 2 million electricity consumers in the provinces, they did not think about doing the same with Meralco, the lone distributor of electricity to the estimated 2 million consumers in Metro Manila.

From , a citizen, blog@AWBHoldings.com on joining his mother to buy NFA rice:

When I lined up at the end of the queue, there were about 30 people before me. My mom was two persons before me, and she asked me to move behind her. But there were two persons between me and my mother, so I refused. The two women then told me to go ahead, since they were standing in for others anyway. Fine with me.

After 10 minutes, we saw several people load a tricycle, five persons each carrying five kilos of rice. Another 10 minutes, the same thing happened. My mom was surprised that “mga dayo” (those who came from much farther place) got ahead of us, who lives just across the street from where NFA rice was being sold.

We were lucky enough for the seller to sell maximum of five kilos per person; last Monday, it the limit was only two kilos.

Then we noticed that people ahead of us who got their rice were carrying their load using the same green plastic bag. We were told that the seller required every buyer to get their plastic bags from them for one peso per bag – no exemptions, even if you have a plastic bag with you. Not only it meant more non-biodegrable material to bring home, it also meant that the seller is making a profit out of those bags.

And a kilo of NFA rice costs twenty five pesos; the eighteen-peso is not available. Mom has been buying NFA rice for several weeks now, and she hasn’t bought the cheapest variety ever since.

The Mount Balatucan Monitor puts it very well:

With limited expense on power and fuel, expect government service to deteriorate. How can a government agency effectively deliver the best public service if its official expense is curtailed? Should the public endure sweatshop conditions in government offices because airconditioners are not functioning. Or field work will be hampered because government personnel cannot use their vehicle to serve far flung areas. To reflect it deeper, more money in millions are lost to corruption and other official shenanigans in the government than its actual official expense. They cut public expense but this government does not monitor or check the public money that were lost due to chronic corruption.

As economist Filomeno Sta. Ana III puts it in Populism and being Anti-Business:

The current populist rhetoric and actions are similar to those taken by Mrs. Arroyo before the 2004 elections. Recall that she reduced the Napocor tariffs and set about a spending binge for her to look handsome and secure partisan support before the elections. Which leads some to ask: Is Mrs. Arroyo setting her sights on the 2010 elections?



One adverse consequence of unsound populist measures is the aggravation of the fiscal situation. Thus, after the 2004 elections, the Philippines suffered a fiscal crisis. Government had to cut spending on health, education and infrastructure and impose higher taxes such as increasing the rate of the value-added tax from 10 percent to 12 percent. 



The fiscal problem continues to haunt us. Tax effort remains low, and some taxes—those on sin products—are not adjusted to inflation. The brand of populism that Mrs. Arroyo promotes is exacerbating the problem.

Recall what I’d reported here years ago, in The President’s “sweet spot,” in 2005, which is what a Bear Sterns analyst said of the VAT: it was the source for patronage. The long and short of it, Sta. Ana argues, is that,

Arroyo’s populism is thus a disguise for her being anti-business. That this has gone berserk is likewise manifested in how her allies—the three stooges in the Senate, as my colleague Manuel Buencamino calls them—have insulted and bullied the foreign chambers of commerce.



Yes, she has her set of business cronies, but that doesn’t make her pro-business. To be pro-business is to apply the rules fairly to all businessmen, regardless of their political sentiments.



Worse, unlike Hugo Chavez who is seen as anti-business but pro-poor, Mrs. Arroyo is both anti-business and anti-poor.

Unemployment, poverty and inequality have become the trademark of her economic performance despite the growth. Even the subsidies that she is ostensibly offering to the poor are anti-poor. The subsidies do not reach those who deserve most the subsidy. Rice for the poor is scarce in Mindanao where there is a large concentration of poor, while it is abundant in Metro Manila, which has the least number of absolute poor. A power subsidy for small electricity users totaling two billion pesos will not benefit the poor either because in the first place the absolute poor have no access to electricity.



But why should we care for a leadership that is pro-business? Because being pro-business, if properly done, encourages investments and employment and is therefore good for the workers, for the unemployed, and for the poor.



While I’m often ambivalent about him, the grey eminence of the Ramos era, Jose Almonte, recently issued one of his epistles on the need to keep up the momentum for reform (as reproduced in Danton Remoto’s blog):

“Islands of Good Governance” should also seek constantly to spread their influence to neighboring provinces, cities, towns—most easily through economic complementation, economic clustering and administrative example.

So in contrast to the go-for-broke (literally) governance of the present regime, here’s splendid news: 2 governors, mayor share best practices in governance. A reform constituency coming together. According to the report, the three agree on:

[E]nsuring greater transparency and accountability in government dealings, curbing the pervasive illegal numbers game “jueteng” and illegal logging, and fighting for more local autonomy in the maintenance of law and order.

And with less than two years to go before the 2010 national elections, the three officials are now pushing for computerized elections and voters’ education.

Of their reform agenda, the third, is particularly interesting in the light of recent events. The bloated Philippine National Police bureaucracy has proven itself increasingly incapable of clamping down on crime (or extracting accountability from its own people: see Promotion of Lozada ‘kidnapper’ scored).

And crimes are getting increasingly vicious.

I first spotted the news last Tuesday afternoon on TV. Here’s the Inquirer report: Grisly end for 5 QC household members.

NGO circles received (and passed on) an email from the Association of Foundations (AF) asking for prayers for Oman Jiao and his family, and tersely detailing the murders:

At around noontime today, June 10, the house of Oman’s parents in Talayan Village, Quezon City, was robbed. Police suspect it to be the Akyat-Bahay Gang. Oman’s parents, three househelps, and Oman’s daughter, 3-year old Nina (who passed by her grandparent’s house after attending the first day of prep-school), were hogtied, and the house was torched down. Only Oman’s father survived the ordeal and is currently being treated in a hospital.

The gruesome news registered briefly (and hit “too close to home,” for some like village idiot savant), but didn’t gain the traction of say, the RCBC bank heist. Not least because the abduction of Ces Drilon swept all other news aside. The frustration of some local officials is that if they had more control over the local police, they could fight crime more effectively. A national police force is, after all, a recent innovation, dating back only to the martial law years; and as one frustrated citizen recently put it to me, “aside from ideologically-motivated crimes, if you look at all other crimes, sooner or later it brings you to the doorstep of the PNP.” Perhaps we ought to consider that the PNP (successor of the Constabulary) should once more be relegated to crimes that cross provincial boundaries, having SWAT teams, etc.

Although, as my column for today, The Rule of Glo (which took its cue from these articles: What was he thinking?!? in Uniffors, and Planting evidence remark only a joke – PDEA chief )points out, there are other problems, too.

Vergel Santos, veteran newsman and something of a walking conscience for the profession, writes up his objections to the media embargo on the story. Taking a cue from the Duke of Wellington’s famous reply to a blackmailer, Santos titles his piece Publish and be damned:

They may have all been convinced in their hearts that they were doing the right thing, but still they should be able to square it with the basic principle that governs their profession, the very reason indeed for which it exists – the people’s right to know. And if they insist on this case as a moral exception, they will be expected to judge by the same standard every comparable case that comes along.

But what exactly is that standard? So far as I can discern, it’s a variable and ineffable one, set by what feels right in one’s heart at the moment. Journalists are indeed given wide latitudes, but they still have to validate their judgments and actions against certain express rules and principles.

Obviously, a rule covering the entire profession doesn’t exist. As I see it, the problem is that when it comes to kidnappings, embargoes have been put in place more often than the public thinks, and even more often than the media (itself subject to the great shortcoming that afflicts most Philippine institutions, of having a feeble, at best, institutional memory) is aware. The best any individual outfit can do, is point out, off-the-record, that they have obliged victims’ families in this regard in the past; but neither the public or media as a collective knows this or can quantify how often, and so determine if Drilon enjoyed special treatment or not.

Here is a question that has been bothering me for some days now, ever since Driver claims military agent, not Abus seized Drilon team. And ever since Village Idiot Savant bought up The unthinkable.

If things start edging towards convincing proof that what actually took place was the abduction of Drilon by pet bandits of the AFP, then the horrifying conclusion of the whole thing will be her liquidation -as collateral damage in a botched rescue attempt by the military or the PNP. I hope my nervousness over At Midfield’s Howitzer Blasts, Tuesday “Deadline” Raise Tensions In Sulu Abduction Area are unfounded.

In the meantime, noteworthy entries on the abduction can be found in Tingog.com, and The Write Stuff and in Pedestrian Observer. Also, see earlier commentary in khanterbury tales, in AlterNation101, from Manilenyo In Davao and in notes of marichu c. lambino and Tongue In, Anew. In his blog, RG Cruz pens an eloquent, personal, tribute to her. Another one, by Muslim journalist Samira Gutoc, provides an insight into why Drilon was so often in Mindanao:

Throughout her career, I grew to respect her for her sense of commitment in good reportage. But this respect was heightened with how I saw her commitment in the coverage of under-reported stories as the peacetalks and ARMM development . Ces had covered the ARMM elections and the two peace talks spanning three decades – the government (GRP)-MNLF in the 1980s and the current GRP-MILF peace talks .

Yesterday’s Inquirer editorial, Lame-duck Congress, took the current, 14th Congress to task, and today’s Inquirer editorial, Unparliamentary?, focused on a fight within the Left in the House. What is interesting is the insight the intra-Left squabble provides, on the kind of tactical approach that would support landlord-driven opposition to the current agrarian reform program, in order to (consistently, mind you) push forward a party’s alternative proposal for collectivizing lands. As Mon Casiple suggests,

Of course, as in any contentious legislation of a divided body as the Philippine Congress, there will be compromises. However, on balance, if a measure will improve the present situation, then there is a basis for supporting such a measure.

It is in this light that the position taken by those who advocate the so-called “Genuine Agrarian Reform Program” or GARP effectively weakens the interests of the Filipino peasantry. By advocating an extremely radical proposal of giving the peasants “free land”, they seemingly represent their highest interests. However, they well know that this will not get anywhere near a majority support in a landlord-influenced Congress.

What are they then after? The only political logic is a posturing for a “revolutionary” solution to the agrarian reform issue–which is represented by the CPP agrarian revolution proposal. The problem, of course, is that the battleground here is the parliamentary arena, specifically the Philippine Congress, not the “democratic coalition government” or even the “National Democratic Front” led by the CPP. By this position, the GARP advocates try to persuade people of the necessity for their “revolutionary” solution–only attainable, by their own admission, through a protracted “people’s war.”

There is an effective collusion between the landlords and GARP advocates in blocking the extension of CARP, although they come from different motivations. The former wants to hold on to the land; the latter wants to sharpen class contradictions. The former wants to maintain an archaic, feudal and regressive social system which has consigned millions of our peasants to poverty; the latter wants to foist an unrealistic, if seductive, vision in service of a failed strategy.

Tangentially related to the above is a thought-provoking reading from F. Sionil Jose in Rizal, Ninoy and revolution:

Ninoy believed in revolution; he expounded on it before a small group he knew very well but we didn’t know to what extent he had worked to advance it. I saw glimpses of it only after he died. During all those years that he was in prison, he continued reading — but his reading now included books on philosophy and religion. And when he was released on furlough, on my second visit to the Aquino house in Times Street in Quezon City, he took me to one of the rooms where we could be alone. The house was crawling with soldiers in civilian clothes, among them the late Willie Jurado who, Ninoy said, was Marcos’ personal agent.

He assured that the room was not bugged and he said that he still believed in revolution but that we couldn’t afford a million Filipinos killed as was the case with Vietnam.

There must be a way, he said, by which violence could be minimized. A million Filipinos — that is too much. Perhaps just a few hundred will do.

I told him that once violence was unleashed there was no way it could be controlled — I was repeating the old argument that Pepe Diokno used.

Therein lies the problem with regards to social and political change: radical solutions require radical methods, and every instance of radical methods in pursuit of radical change requires unleashing more misery than previously existed under the existing, but unjust, social order.

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