Oblivious to change

Last week I had a chance to address an international gathering of people affiliated with Liberal parties, on the subject of Asian Values versus Liberal Democracy. My thesis was simple: at the heart of the contention by proponents of “Asian Values” as some sort of superior alternative to Western-style Liberal Democracy, is an appreciation -from long practice by senior-citizen politicians- of the motive power of the anti-colonial struggle. It is no coincidence that Lee Kwan Yew is the primary ideological exponent of “Asian Values” and for the purpose of defending the political heritage shared by the nations that emerged from Western colonialism in our part of the world: the one-party state in which political dynasts coexist cosily with big business. But, I told my audience, former colonies have been independent for close to three generations now (in the case of the first to emerge from colonial status, namely the Philippines and India), and for the rest, at least two (or in Brunei’s case, a full generation). The end of the Cold War also marked the end of our part of the world as one of the battlegrounds of the Cold War, and so, the even the era of neocolonialism can be considered to have passed. The motive power of resisting democracy as part of nationalist reawakening, is fading; and with the passing of the generations who can still recall life before independence, to my mind, so will pass the idea that Liberal Democratic values are an alien concept.

But my talk got me thinking further on how we frame our problems in a manner that dates back to the days prior to independence, with the challenges of getting a newly-independent nation on its feet in mind. One such question is that of Muslim Mindanao, which tends to be framed by neoconservatives in a manner reminiscent of the confrontation between Japanese and European Fascism and the Western democracies; it is no coincidence that if Radical Islam pines for the restoration of the Caliphate that came to an end with the secular Republic of Turkey and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, then Rome on the other hand is fighting a two-front war against secularism and Islamic influence in Europe, and that American neoconservatives and Bin Laden both view their struggle for power from the perspective of the Crusades.

In our own case, the question of Muslim Mindanao continues to be perceived from the point of view of our peaceful struggle for independence: that Muslim Mindanao is in danger of being lost. That the solution must be to contain the Muslims, and if possible, to prevent a power vacuum in Mindanao as a whole, and that can only happen by filling it with Christians. the problem, of course, is that Mindanao’s already filled with Christians; while Muslim Filipinos are now reproducing so vigorously, that their populations have taken to finding living space elsewhere in the archipelago.

Yet most of us, I’d suggest, still think that Muslim Mindanao is one discrete place, and one which can be cordoned off, if only the national government could muster the political will and military might; that we take it for granted that there is an immemorial territory that defines who Muslim Filipinos are, is a mentality to which many of our older exponents of Federalism also subscribe, and what they and the non-traditional Muslim Filipino leaders who’ve emerged since the 1960s have in common, is the belief that the Philippine nation-state must be refashioned as a means to achieve what they believe will be a historical vindication for their sub-nations: with some proposing outright nationhood and secession.

To be sure perhaps as recently as a decade or two ago, this notion remained sound, in that they could speak as advocates of populations who dwelled in defined territories and who shared a common culture defined by a common language; today, I believe it’s increasingly untenable. I’ve mentioned before that the old obediences are being eroded not only by migration and immigration abroad, but migration at home; dynasties must constantly shrink their territories, to hold them, as new residents arrive, devoid of the traditional notions of obedience these dynasts could once upon a time.

Take a look at this Wikipedia map, which divides the country along lingguistic lines. And then bear in mind some observations made to me by former U.P. President Francisco Nemenzo, a Cebuano, when I ran into him in Cebu’s airport some months back.

He said that a kind of mapping project has been taking place, and formerly lingguistically-pure areas have started to change, often quite quickly and usually, remarkably.

The examples I recall are that areas surrounding Iloilo have turned Cebuano-speaking while areas of Mindanao formerly Cebuano-dominated are now turning Ilonggo-speaking; if I recall correctly he even said the growing lingguistic population in Mindanao were the Ilonggos and no longer the Cebuanos; as for Cebu itself, he said, fully ten percent of its population was Muslim, a trend that began with refugees during the Marcos-era Moro Wars, and that the Muslims in Cebu were mainly Tausug. There are growing pockets of Muslim Filipino residents not only in Metro Manila, but up North and even in the Visayas; when I took the fast ferry from San Carlos City in Negros Occidental to Toledo City in Cebu, the ferry service was Muslim-owned.

Add to this snippets I’ve picked up from people as I’ve pursued the topic Nemenzo brought up. In Quezon Province, for example, there are growing pockets of Bicolano speakers; Aurora province, on the other hand, is increasingly marked by an Ilocano presence; the Ilocos itself, in some parts, seems quite depopulated, and a decade ago I experienced an Ilocos Sur tourism official telling off a group of kids from whom we asked directions, because they talked to us in Filipino (from Cebuano educators I hear that Cebu City, at least, now has its first generation of youths who prefer to converse with each other in Filipino). There are, of course, entire areas well known for their populations being composed mainly of immigrants: Imperial Manila has been a Visayan city, for all intents and purposes, for two generations (Why then, I asked Nemenzo, haven’t more Visayan words entered the Tagalog spoken in Manila? His response was interesting: the effect of the Visayans has been not on vocabulary, but on grammar: the simplification of Tagalog, as spoken in Manila, and therefore, used in the media, is a manifestation of Visayans stripping Tagalog of its grammatical encrustations from the time Tagalog itself evolved from Cebuano in the distant past!).

This suggests to me that what we have come to take for granted, has been gradually disappearing for some time and is actually accelerating at present; and among other things, this means that viewing Muslim Mindanao as either a place to be contained, or something that can be lost (or, as I’ve considered in the past, something to consider detaching from the republic) is certainly impossible now if it was ever possible at all in the past.

I told the gathered Liberals (though it’s not too clear to me what the youth represents belonging to variously-named parties have in common, politically) -from the United States, Germany, Belgium, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, and of course the Philippines- that the false dichotomy between Asian Values and Liberal Democracy was a problem with a demographic solution: addressing the youth leaders from the two wings of the presently-divided Liberal Party in the Philippines in particular, I urged them to be confident that their decision to maintain solidarity among party mates from their generation, even as their elders squabbled, would be vindicated. But only, I said, when the party elders died and they, by sheer attrition, took over.

The same applies, I think, to many of the seemingly intractable problems we face nationally, with a political scene dominated by increasingly geriatric big shots who long ago abandoned their idealism and who have lost their capacity to be imaginative. It takes some time to understand it, but on the whole, there are signs that when the dinosaurs go, we will find a more highly evolved generation of Filipinos taking their place: one that might be more adept at balancing idealism with pragmatism, in problem solving, in cooperation, in sustained effort and so forth. Whether they are conscious of it, or only instinctively yet dimly aware of it, the elders now ruling the roost in mainstream politics and in the various rebel organization, are fighting the battle everyone eventually loses: against their own mortality. What was fresh, even radical, or even tried, tested, and true for their generation, whether you are Fidel V. Ramos, Juan Ponce Enrile, Joker Arroyo, Jose Ma. Sison, Nur Misuari, Joseph Estrada or even President Arroyo, was forged in the crucible of a Philippines that is dissolving. And so, they are furiously trying to write an appropriately grand epitaph for themselves.

Consider the relevance, however, of achieving a Muslim Federal State, at a time when a remarkable expansion of Muslims into other parts of the Philippines is taking place: or of demanding near-divorce from the Republic for Ilocandia or Cebu, when their own populations have changed drastically: demarcations that ignore changes in demographics, such as the movement of Ilocanos into areas once considered -and dominated by- Tagalog people. As it is, one of the big problems that exists in expanding the current territory of the ARMM, is that while once claimed by the old Sultanate of Sulu, among others, the areas being demanded as an integral homeland for Filipino Muslims takes neither traditional divisions within the Muslim community (Tausug versus Maranao, etc., etc.) into account, or how they ceased being dominated by Muslims long ago; or how, even, in these border areas, claims of Christian settler supremacy is often by means of hair-thin margin.

SONAmbulism

Here are my thoughts on the President’s Eighth State of the Nation Address (pictures and video here), as I conveyed them on Korina Sanchez’s show and briefly on Channel News Asia (Singapore).

A State of the National Address, in particular, has two main audiences in mind. Those sitting in the Session Hall of the House of Representatives, that is, officialdom; and those watching or listening on TV or the radio (or lately, on the Internet) -the citizenry. The President can be more subtle when it comes to sending messages to fellow members of the political class; she has to be more explicit when it comes to the impressionable public or politically naive allies such as the Catholic hierarchy (to whom she pledged the adoption of “natural” family planning as her government’s definition of birth control).

First, however, some thoughts on what we should bear in mind. This is the penultimate, or next to the last, State of the Nation Address the President will be making, under her current term of office. It is also the last she will be making as an effective president. By sheer force of tradition and reality, if presidential elections are held under the current rules in May, 2010, this means next year’s State of the Nation Address must be her swan song. This is her last chance to really push the country in the direction she wants; it is the last such occasion where Congress and the local officials need her, in a sense, more than she needs them.

By next July, the presidential campaign would have been well under way; her ruling coalition, quite conceivably, would be up for grabs as officialdom obsessed over which candidate to affiliate with and support. Her cabinet would be, by then, composed of tired, old holdovers deprived of prospects in the next dispensation, as the more politically-adept and ambitious would have started resigning by then, to run for higher office, enter a comfortable (and relatively case-free) retirement secure in the knowledge that their successors would bear the brunt of the inevitable lawsuits that accompany every change in dispensation. She would be a lame duck, though far from powerless.

The stark political choice facing her would be to dangle the prospect of her figuring out a way to keep the coalition fat, content, and in power, or throw in the towel now, and thereby fan the embers of ambition already glowing in the hearts of several prospective presidential candidates: to adopt a fatalistic attitude is neither like her nor politically wise; to at the very least hint that she has the means to reward and punish members of her coalition, and that they may have a prize worth brazening it out with her, is, I’d argue, not only clever, but necessary.

Her defense of her policies on VAT, which came as no surprise, carried with it this statement which I think distills the message she’s trying to convey to her coalition:

Take VAT away and you and I abdicate our responsibility as leaders and pull the rug from under our present and future progress, which may be compromised by the global crisis.

This was her warning to a coalition that, if you noticed the volume of their applause during the entire VAT-related portion of her speech, was quite publicly torn between manifesting its bootlicking for the President and not being too enthusiastic about a President prepared to be unpopular, but who can do so while they all have to bear the crushing memory of Ralph Recto’s going down in flames during the last election because of being tagged as the chief legislative architect of the VAT.

She warned them, essentially, that no money, no honey -and buttressed her point by listing, in detail, the multitude of programs she and her coalition must undertake, not only to help the poor, but court their votes. I believe that politically, the observation of that Bear Stearns analyst back in 2005 remains valid: eVAT provides the funding for patronage in our government, and the President pointedly reminder her coalition on which side their fiscal bread is buttered. Filipinos may instinctively realize the government isn’t to blame for the rise in the price of oil, they may be so naturally docile that in truth, rioting in the streets is a remote possibility; but she knows as well as they, that as the nation’s stewards they will get the blame for the belt-tightening everyone has to undertake at present.

Retaining VAT, then offers up the best possible combination: in certain respects, it is the appropriate response at the appropriate time, providing a windfall necessary for funding relief to the poor; at the same time, it maintains an appearance of government sobriety and even political will, in being unpopular domestically but impressive to the bankers and financiers whose blessings have helped obtain favorable credit (and rates) for the government; and relief becomes a convenient cover for patronage.

And perhaps as an exercise in demonstrating how unpopularity can still result in popular applause, there was this, most-noticed and sole genuine crowd-pleaser in her speech:

Texting is a way of life. I asked the telecoms to cut the cost of messages between networks. They responded. It is now down to 50 centavos.

Which was as much a shot across the bow at big business, as it was a sop to gain propaganda points from the public. As of this writing, talk is already going around that this is a “limited time only” thing, perhaps along the same lines as the President having used moral suasion to demand that the oil companies roll back oil prices in the weeks leading to her speech. And while the oil companies grudgingly complied -but stated, with ill-disguised bad humor, that this might be one of the last times the President could do that to them- and while the telecoms companies will have to react to the President planting the idea of cheaper SMS messages in the public’s mind, this is of no consequence to her. The propaganda points have been made, she can worry about businessmen later.

This was the passage that I felt was overlooked by most but which was pregnant with meaning:

The sad irony of Mindanao as food basket is that it has some of the highest hunger in our nation. It has large fields of high productivity, yet also six of our ten poorest provinces.

The prime reason is the endless Mindanao conflict. A comprehensive peace has eluded us for half a century. But last night, differences on the tough issue of ancestral domain were resolved. Yes, there are political dynamics among the people of Mindanao. Let us sort them out with the utmost sobriety, patience and restraint. I ask Congress to act on the legislative and political reforms that will lead to a just and lasting peace during our term of office.

Why do I say this statement’s pregnant with meaning?

Ricky Carandang on July 21 laid out the stage for what actually unfolded today:

Recent efforts by the Regime to resurrect the long dormant peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front have led to pronoucments by lead negotiators Rodolfo Garcia and Hermogenes Esperon that revisions to the constitution would be required in order to give more legal and fiscal autonomy to the expanded region of Muslim Mindanao. They point to a resolution to shift to a federal form of government proposed by, of all people, Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr.

This means that aside from Arroyo and her politicans, there will be a significant number of people in Mindanao who will find it in their interest to support charter change this time around. The regime can also pre-empt potential opposition from the international community by arguing that that the revisions would enhance stability in Mindanao and make it less susceptible to terrorism. In which case extending Arroyo’s term would be a small price to pay. I’m told that this the line taken during Arroyo’s recent working visit to the US. Its almost like blackmail. If you want stability in Mindanao, you must allow us to stay in power beyond 2010.

Even as it puts the wheels into motion, the Regime can therefore argue that amending the Constitution will not be self serving, it will be a big step towards a lasting peace in Mindanao. Besides, it will argue, it was actually the opposition, through Senator Pimentel, that proposed the idea, not us!

Mindanao is the President’s achilles heel. Recently I was able to have a talk with a former official (see my blog entries, Thoughts on Mindanao and Dismal Diplomacy), among others, who confirmed my view that the increase in rice prices in Mindanao reflected war jitters -or as the former official preferred to explain it, an added premium on all business activity in Mindanao to reflect uncertainty and risk. From what I’ve been able to gather, the dilemma facing the President, as far as Mindanao concerned is simple: the government only has enough money to attend to programs for the poor, or to fight a war in Mindanao, but not both. The last thing it needs are for tensions to rise there, further complicating the situation.

And that situation has been bad and deteriorating for some time, as the President has had to coddle her Moro allies from the traditional and warlord clans, who hold government positions, while parlaying with the MILF. But what should have enabled her to negotiate from a position of strength, has proven less than outstanding in recent months. If you survey the papers, NPA offensives have increased not only in the Visayas (which may be due less to an actual increase in the ranks of the NPA, but low morale and poor leadership in the AFP) , but also in Mindanao, where there is talk of a growing MILF-NPA tactical alliance. This has given the MILF, if I understand it correctly, added clout, while the President’s dilemma is that the forthcoming ARMM elections -widely expected to go the way of her allies, by hook or by crook- would deprive the MILF of a chance to not just sit at the bargaining table, but formalize its control over some areas. The MILF’s ultimate strength, of course, is its perceived ability to cause real mayhem if things deteriorate to the point of open hostilities.

Put another way, she owes her allies a victory in the ARMM elections but she will be hard-put to convince the MILF and other rebel groups she’s serious about bringing them into the Republic’s fold if all they can look forward to is being on the outside looking in on her allies ruling the official roost in Moro areas. Not to mention the demand of the MILF for the President to find a way to expand the territory covered by the ARMM, without making the MILF a party to a plebiscite, which might prove embarrassing if it results in a loss for the proposed expanded ARMM (it seems many of the areas proposed for addition to an enlarged ARMM are borderline majority Muslim, at best, and in the case of quite a number of towns, borderline Christian-dominated).

The President, a political pragmatist, wasn’t inclined to postpone the ARMM elections previously but recently, there’s been a noticeable shift, after things got a bit warm with Malaysia’s showing its displeasure with our official foot-dragging on the peace process (said the former official: the real Malaysian concern is that the fluid situation in Mindanao is leading to the kind of power vacuum governments abhor; Malaysia doesn’t want a further radicalization in Mindanao which has already caused problems because radicals who find refuge in Mindanao then smuggle arms to Malaysia’s own radicals).

As Carandang suggests, perhaps because it offers up the prospects of finally accomplishing Charter Change at a time when the Palace can count on an obliging Supreme Court to smooth away all constitutional obstacles to either Charter Change as a whole, or the expansion of the ARMM’s territory. During Korina’s show, I had the chance to ask Sec. Jesus Dureza some questions (I have interacted with him in the past, in his capacity as Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, in which he laid out, in bold strokes, the government’s willingness to basically offer Commonwealth status for Muslim Mindanao).

I asked him (Dureza) about the President’s statement, and specifically, what the agreement arrived at last night was aboutA good courtier, he said I was being fanciful but then he hemmed and hawed, saying he wasn’t a party to the negotiations in Kuala Lumpur, but that what seemed to be on the table was not expanding the current ARMM but rather, creating an additional (for lack of a better word) ARMM II. While he pooh-poohed the possibility of Charter Change in general terms, he declined to give additional details as to how whatever has been agreed upon, will be carried out, broadly hinting that it merely had to do with scheduling a plebiscite to approve the ARMM II, which required a law. If the coming days reveals that the MILF has suddenly returned to the bargaining table and gone as far as withdrawing their objections to a referendum, there was obviously a quid pro quo.

Could it involve something as easily fixed as postponing the ARMM polls (sending those interested in it as a laboratory for electoral automation into hysterics, and probably irritating the President’s warlord and traditional Moro allies, too, specially if they will then have to share power with MILF nominees)? Maybe; but the possibility of going whole hog by using it as a cover for broader constitutional change -by declaring it “political reform”- seems to me quite probable. The dividends are too tantalizingly delicious to pass up. Allies -from the USA to Malaysia- will be reassured; business might perk up; popularity might be reclaimed if Federalism proves politically attractive; the MILF and other groups will be pacified; and the ruling coalition and the President get a new lease on power.

This is why the President didn’t dwell, unlike last year, on her leaving office and instead, issued a warning to potential succesors. This is why the speech she delivered focused on pandering to the groups who’d check-mated her Charter Change and other ambitions in the past, from the bishops to businessmen: delivering, instead, a speech, which if you dissect it, is a gigantic public works/pork barrel roster.

Blog@AWBHoldings takes a cue from Queen Elizabeth I and puts forward a satirical version in the manner of a Speech from The Throne; A Filipina Mom Blogger offers up a parent’s reaction; over at Filipino Voices, there is a call for less market intervention and a whole lotta hope. And finally, here is how the Palace wants you to interpret the President’s speech.

Concise pre-SONA commentary

Planes, trains, and automobiles

I think my first train-related entry was back in 2005, in Debating solutions to squatting, I pointed to this entry by Torn and frayed in Manila on how our country possesses “one of the most ramshackle railways in the world.” That’s putting it politely. Torn was reacting to a report by Howie Severino (and The Unlawyer also commented on it, including detailing the extremely low fares charged by the railroad).

One major problem, as recalled in Pain On The Train, was that squatters had encroached on the tracks and were, at times, hostile to train passengers. There was once a haunting post by Pulsar in 2006 (well, who says once on the Interweb, something’s forever? The blog’s gone!). Or sometimes, the problem were the passengers themselves, see Test-Riding The Metro-Tren:

But there were dreadfully more – and this was what made me uneasy and had second thoughts about using this mode of transpo on a regular basis or asking friends and family to patronize it. Dark thoughts ran in my mind thinking if I can actually still get out of this situation alive! Here we go:

Amongst the passengers in my coach were shirtless dudes who were not even drunk but were just as dangerously rowdy. Okay, to be fair, not all of them were topless. Two were wearing sando, one did not even have a footwear, and all of them did have confidently loud voices enough for anyone to understand that they are the “masters” in this place. They were huddled on two right-side doors. Some were standing and some were seated on the floor and the little steps that people use when boarding or getting off via those doors. Obviously, no one passed by those two doors. They were not just rowdy in the normal kind of kid things. They had very foul language offensive to many.

These folks were not young kids either. They were men probably in their 20s up to late 40s and they seemed to know just about every person who lived along those rail tracks as they often had a lewd or foul comment at everyone they saw. Samples? Here we go… “Hoy hostess, bihis ka na! Rampa ka ng maaga nang makarami”, or ‘Tangina! Nakaw ang cellphone na yan, kahapon lang”! And they most certainly elicited equally shouted responses from those they were shouting at. Some of the younger kids they teased even ran with wooden sticks or little stones attempting to catch and whack or pelt them as the train chugged along. And you guessed it, these men would run scampering towards the inner portions of the train (which was naturally a commotion that would make you panic). When kids on the ground can’t keep up with the train, these men would be back at the two doors and back to their usual shouting spree at people we passed by. I even saw two women-passengers stand up and walk further front – obviously to get away from this.

I’d be a liar if I said I was not alarmed. I was actually more than frightened! Then again, I could have been over-reacting, right?

Now hear this: As the train went a chugging slowly after that Espana Station going towards Blumentritt, a guy came walking from the front coaches who seemed to be looking for nothing but trouble. As he passed where I was seated and just about to pass the rowdy men by the door, someone shouted on top of his voice saying “o kayong lahat, ingatan nyo mga gamit nyo, yan naglalakad na yan isnatcher yan”! The walking man did not even look back but shouted equally loud saying “tangina mo, hindi ako isnatcher, naghahanap ako ng masasaksak” and as he said that he lashed out a knife in mid-air. I looked at the faces of many passengers and almost all had the same facial expression – they pretended to have not heard that and they all did not look at the knife-brandishing man – and so I did not dare look at him too! This time I felt my balls were already above my forehead.

After having gone to the end part of the train, that knife-wielding man returned to the men perched by the doorway and he joined in the laughter, banter and dirty shouts at people we passed by. I clearly heard him telling the group that it was too unusual the week was almost over and he has not had a fight yet. As if to emphasize that, he said “kahit asawa ko ayaw akong patulan, nakakainip pare”!

This is a Wikipedia map of the NorthRail and SouthRail lines of the Philippine National Railways -theoretically, at least. I happen to like trains very much (perhaps not to the extent of being a trainspotter) and really wish rehabilitating our railways will be accomplished: just getting NorthRail and SouthRail functioning will actually merely return us to where we were prior to World War II, the last major extension having been accomplished with the inauguration of the Manila-Legazpi Line in May, 1938. That still marks the last major addition to our railway network. However, Marcos’ obsession with highways had led to the deterioration of the railroad.

The result? See photos in A Ride On Philippine National Railways Part I and A Ride On Philippine National Railways Part II. See also RILES in Digital Phtographer Philippines. In response to this sad state of affairs, an ambitious program of modernization has started.

One sad side-effect of modernization, however, is the destruction of heritage sites: see Las Estaciones Ferrocarril Manila-Dagupan in the ICOMOS Philippines site.

There are some extremely informative railroad enthusiasts’ blogs out there, which combine a strong historical sense with efforts to document the rehabilitation of the Philippine National Railways. See their mother organization, Railways and Industrial Heritage Society of the Phils. (and its Reese Blog), and these enthusiasts’ blogs: Philippine Railways S.I.G., Philippine Railways, and Laguna Railways,

Courtesy of Augusto de Viana is The railways in Philippine history which, however, so compresses the most interesting years, the 20s to the 50s, as to render that section meaningless. Oh well. Viviana overlooks the ambivalence and even hostility American officials felt towards railways, since it would affect the Philippine market for automobiles (see The Colonial Iron Horse: Railroads and Regional Development in the Philippines, 1875- 1935). When autonomy was achieved, railroad development accelerated. And the policy debate on highways versus railways also began, along with still-unrealized plans such as a railroad for Mindanao (the development of Maria Cristina Fall’s hydroelectric power was originally envisioned as primarily powering the Mindanao railways: there are interesting snippets on these debates in F.B. Harrison’s diary: as an Anglophile, he was pro-railways, pointing with envy to Britain’s not altogether altruistic promotion of its own steam engine industry in its colonies; as for its biggest handiwork in that regard, here’s an interesting item on accomplishing transport reform: Things Looking Up for India’s Trains).

I remember when I was still new in the Inquirer, the President had a dinner with editors and spent much of her time discussing the Strong Republic Nautical Highway (this will be one of her lasting achievements, I think). Along the way, she discussed trains and how she wanted to eliminate the old PNR lines, and have new railroad lines simply feed the metropolis, with intra-city travel done on the LRT. At the time I remember remarking that her strong grasp of detail was one of the President’s most impressive qualities, but one little-seen by the public: just as the overall schemes fed by her grasp of detail failed to be grasped, in turn, by the public: and government is at fault for this.

Today’s Inquirer editorial, Derailed, looks at the possible permutations of the ongoing problem with NorthRail: Even as our government insists that NorthRail project to push thru the reality seems to be Gov’t scrambles to save NorthRail: China threatens withdrawal, legal suit over a situation caused by the sad reality that Northrail ‘mobilization’ate up 23% of total loan. (Here’s a helpful Northrail timeline.)

See Target for Northrail: ’substantial’ completion by 2010:

As things stand now, the most realistic assumption is to have a partially—or at least, substantially—completed stretch of rail road some kilometers short of the first section of the 80.2-kilometer distance between Caloocan City in Metro Manila and Clark in Pampanga.

Officials familiar with the twists and turns of the project told abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak that the initial goal to complete at least the first phase, or the first 32 kilometers up to Malolos in Bulacan province, is not realistic anymore…

A year since the project’s 36-month construction period kicked off in February 2007, clearing the tracks, acquiring right-of-way, and relocation works are still to be crossed out from the list of pre-construction must-do’s.

No civil works on the actual railway have commenced nor has a project design been finalized, yet the designated contractor, the Chinese National Machinery & Equipment Group (CNMEG), wanted to add almost $300 million on top of the current $421 million agreed upon and signed construction cost…

According to various sources, including correspondences from NLRC and the demand letters from CNMEG, the latter unilaterally suspended work on the Northrail in February 1, 2008, with CNMEG’s Chinese engineers returning home.

Pamintuan explained that the engineers have run out of things to do since the project design has yet to be finalized.

But that was only part of the story. Apparently, while the design plan is still pending, CNMEG has been verbally demanding to increase the project cost. In succeeding correspondences, CNMEG has pegged the additional cost, based on computations as of March, 2008, at $299 million.

That would increase the project cost of the 32-kilometer Caloocan to Malolos stretch from $421 million to $720 million. That means the cost of the entire 80-kilometer Manila to Clark distance, which has no financing in place yet, will increase from $1 billion to $1.39 billion…

…After President Arroyo thumbed down CNMEG’s verbal demand in February to increase the construction price by $299 million, CNMEG formalized its demand in their May 13 notice of claim and in their June 3 demand letter to Northrail.

Of that amount, $88.63 million was due to variations in the original scope of work, such as the need to build viaducts instead of embankments in Valenzuela and Marilao areas.

The remaining $211 million was mainly due to foreign exchange losses ($106 million), inflation ($71 million), and cost of the delay in construction. CNMEG pointed fingers at Northrail’s inability to clear obstacles within the right-of-way areas and its non- completion of squatter relocations…

…In the April 24, 2008 letter of resigned Northrail president Arsenio Bartolome III to President Arroyo, he referred to a “presidential directive” regarding the completion of the Caloocan-to-Clark phase.

The directive emphasized two things: that it should be finished by 2010, the end of President Arroyo’s term, and that it should be within the project cost of $1.008 billion.

Construction cost for the 32-kilometer Section 1 from Caloocan to Malolos is $421 million, while Section 2 from Malolos to Clark is $673 million.

The design, supply, construct contract with CNMEG, for Section 1, Caloocan to Malolos, stipulates a construction period of 36 months, or 3 years, after Notice to Proceed was issued in Feb 19, 2007. It was meant to be completed by February 2010, perfect timing for the national election in May 2010.

The relocation of urban poor residents (one day, perhaps, destined to be only immortalized in photos or some videos) has proven expensive but relatively successful (most recently: an amazed foreign friend who had done some filming for a documentary in Blumentritt, Manila, and then saw how the community he’d filmed has been relocated and disappeared) see From ‘Home Along Da Riles’ to ‘Dreamland’) Of course, not every delay is due to gross inefficiency or corruption on the part of government:

The report also says,

Unlike other controversial projects that were also cancelled, like the NAIA-3 airport terminal, where there is already a massive building that just needs a few months worth of repair and remediation work, the Northrail project’s railway construction has not even started.

I’m not sure if this is accurate.

The thing is, if you look at the reports and photos in the railroad enthusiasts’ blogs, you’ll see that a tremendous amount has been accomplished in terms of rehabilitating the railways (see Northrail-Southrail Linkage Project Update and Rail Lifting at Paco Station for example) though perhaps it’s fair to say no real laying down of track has taken place.

The question is to what extent the whole gigantic effort -and it is gigantic, you’re reversing the deterioration of the past forty years while at the same time laying down an entirely new railway system- has been marred by inefficiency or even corruption. These things take a toll on ongoing projects, as the headlines make pretty obvious, but it also raises another problem: even if hounded by corruption and inefficiency, is the solution to simply tear up contracts and scrap the project?

I once heard someone explain Romulo Neri Jr.’s pragmatism as follows. First question: does the country need a modern railway system? Yes. Since it does, can it be built without corruption? No. If it cannot be built without corruption, then whether major or minor corruption takes place, what is essential is for the railway to be built, because the economic benefits of the project dwarfs whatever corruption will take place.

And pragmatically speaking, Neri is correct and was thinking in true Southeast Asian fashion. This was the Marcos way: anyone who remembers the ferocious debates on MRT-1 along Taft Avenue (expensive! impractical! will never work!) will realize that despite all the objections, the elevated railway line has become an essential part of metropolitan infrastructure.

And this brings me to Neri, his latest reincarnation as SSS Chief.

The PCIJ in a Special Report reveals that the resignation of Corazon de la Paz and the assumption of the leadership of the SSS by Romulo Neri Jr. has a major policy shift at its core:

De la Paz first intimated how she has not been able to accustom herself to the workings of government, indicating a preference to return to her work in the private sector. But upon further questioning by the media, she eventually relented to a little known fact: she had stood up against the use of SSS members’ funds for the government’s pro-poor agenda, in the process offending the powers that be.

“Using the fund has limits. (It) cannot be used to finance pro-poor projects of the government unless it is defined in the (SSS) Charter,” De la Paz explained, serving up a warning to SSS members and the public of the potential danger of the fund being misused.

With Neri at the helm of the SSS, many have indeed expressed fear that the funds will be used for partisan political interests. Both Malacañang and Neri’s avowal that the funds will not be touched for government’s welfare programs has not helped assuage such concerns for the very reason that the appointment boils down, not so much to the issue of competence, but to Neri’s integrity and credibility — and that of the one who appointed him — as a public official.

Those who insist that the economy in general, or government financial matters in particular, can and ought to be insulated from politics have another lesson coming in why this is neither possible nor desirable. This is a defect that afflicts not just loyalists of the present dispensation, but bureaucrats, too, as the PCIJ report reveals:

Neri also probably felt his detachment that he had to bring along with him to NEDA people whom he could trust. His consultants, many of whom were not known to the NEDA staff, were like a parallel office which acted as his political arm. At first, some at NEDA appreciated the arrangement as it insulated the staff from politics, preferring not to deal with politicians and just continue to do their work professionally. Later, on instructions by Neri himself, NEDA officials had had occasions to interact with his consultants. Even his meetings with them were recorded as part of his official schedule.

The way one director understood it, Neri played politics as a matter of course in public policy. The NEDA Secretariat and other oversight bureaucracies are to exert effort in providing full information to decide policy, he says, and that necessitated engaging with politicians and playing the game of politics.

From his own experience working with him, the CPBO’s Vicerra believes Neri played politics not in the sense of politicking, which he says Neri always tried to avoid. “It’s more of realpolitik,” he explains, “as he always wants to involve himself in policy issues. And he has his advocacies.”

Doing so may have made the NEDA Secretariat more aware of the nature of public policy in their work, but it also made them vulnerable, admits the same director. “It put the organization and employees unprecedently in an unrequitedly bad light,” he says, though maintaining that the Secretariat has remained nonpartisan, its own standard of integrity and professionalism undiminished by this initiation into politics.

But Neri’s pragmatism, the NEDA staff also claim, conflicted with his reformist image. Some would say on hindsight that this probably explains why he is seemingly not appalled by unethical behavior, that is, corruption by way of commissions, extortions, kickbacks and the like, because these make things move or work. Others find it ironic that he wanted reforms yet “still wants to be in the good graces of this government.” Still others comment that since he is a “political animal” himself, it was not surprising that he had been offered bribes as he had admitted.

This is a confusing passage, but then it neatly illustrates the confused, because ignorant, attitudes of bureaucrats themselves about politics and its place in governance.

Government’s policies and management of the economy can be left alone if the public feels officials are capable and trustworthy stewards. If not, then they can and should be guarded every step of the way.

In its editorial, The Business Mirror, not inclined to be an instinctive critic of the administration, advocates retaining the VAT on oil, but points out the essential problem with expectations being built on spending the windfall for the public good:

Removing the oil E-VAT may be akin to a voluntary disarmament at a time when we need all the weapons we can get our hands on to confront grave threats to our economy.

Gordon’s proposals may not be popular—but they make sense. Having said that, the only problem with following his tack is this: Local experience is replete with evidence that, in this country, it’s next to impossible to get a good accounting of where and how precisely special-purpose funds—say, E-VAT “windfall” as used for infrastructure to rebuild disaster-ravaged areas and spur local economies—were applied. For even as critics complain that letting the government use the E-VAT windfall for doles is tantamount to giving more money to crooks, that same peril lies in using the funds instead, as Dick Gordon wants, for infrastructure.

Finally, in a town where a crusading auditor who keeps asking a warlord to “please liquidate” millions of pesos in public funds may easily get what he prays for—that is, be literally liquidated from the face of the earth, his killer(s) never brought to justice—accountability, like honesty in the Billy Joel song, is such a lonely word. So, to Dick Gordon, you may be right on this one, but, good luck.

Which goes to my point about NorthRail, the handling of the economy, and what Yen Macabenta points out: that the economy is coping with increases in the cost of oil pretty well, not least, it seems, to some pretty OK handling of economic matters by the powers-that-be; the problem is that while this redounds to the benefit of big business, ours is Still a jobless-growth economy; and the powers-that-be don’t quite know how to effectively toot their own horns and even if they do, there’s a widespread assumption officialdom’s on a looting spree (made even deeper, I think, because most of the public can’t quite grasp how it’s being done):

The report on Monday that the government kept its first-semester budget deficit at about P18 billion—only half of the programmed ceiling—despite the food and fuel price crises is encouraging. Two points stand out in the report:

First, revenue collection improved during the first semester.

And second, our fiscal managers were concerned that the various agencies of the government have not been able to absorb additional funding to help perk up domestic growth. In other words, the problem is not lack of funds, but projects to spend on.

When the President decided that the government would no longer aim for a zero budget deficit this year, it was for the specific objective of cushioning the impact of high consumer prices on the most vulnerable among our people. The government has the resources to provide subsidies to the needy during these trying times. And just as important, it has the funds to put into infrastructure and social and economic programs that will boost economic growth this year and next year.

Inflation for now is our biggest worry, as it hit a 14-year high of 11.4 percent in June. But Bangko Sentral Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. believes the problem should ease before the end of the year, and the country should fully recover by next year.

If you’re wondering why skyrocketing oil prices—with talk of crude hitting $200 a barrel by the end of the year—are not taking the bottom out of the economy, here are a few reasons:

1. It’s not just the price of crude oil that has soared to record levels this year; the prices of other commodities have hit peak levels, as well. This is the difference between this oil-price shock and the shock of 1974. Higher commodity prices across-the-board are also benefiting the exports of the Philippines and other countries. So our import bill is not as crushing.

2. Oil is not as all-pervasive in our economy as many believe. It affects mainly transport. Most of our electricity needs are fueled by other sources of energy, such as hydropower and geothermal energy.

3. The general prognosis of experts is that oil prices should come down during the second half of the year, though not to the same level as last year. The bubble is simply unsustainable. Demand will ease and supply will rise following the basic law of economics.

But again, the windfall is there. Surely it’s helped fund the following: Government subsidy for cheap rice in first half reaches P8.6B:

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the rice stocks were distributed and sold through 3,197 Bigasan ni Gloria sa Palengke, 8,080 Tindahan Natin outlets, 540 Bigasan sa Parokya and 199 rolling stores nationwide.

Government subsidy for cheap rice is expected to rise as the DA said 28 million more bags of rice will be infused into the domestic market from now until December to stabilize prices.

The NFA will be injecting some 6.5 million bags monthly, from now until August.

This volume will be reduced to 5 million bags by September, when palay harvests for the wet or main crop will start coming in.

Yap said the government is confident that it will have more rice to distribute until the end of the year as 900,000 metric tons (MT) will arrive in the country before September 30.

But the questions won’t go away whether the windfall’s economic potential’s being maximized. As it is, the President has announced Round Two of her “Katas ng VAT” program (no mention if it’s part of the commemoration of National Nutrition Month):

Which brings me to something Jarius Bondoc puts forward in his column for today (no link to the Star because it still hasn’t figured out permanent links):

The truth is unraveling, slowly but surely. A clique in the Arroyo admin is capturing the energy sector for kickbacks.

First, there was a sudden flurry to amend the Electric Power Industry Reform Act. Rep. Mikey Arroyo, the presidential son who chairs the House committee on energy, said it was necessary to bring down consumer rates. His congressmen-brother Dato and uncle Iggy assented as committee members. It turns out, however, that the main amendment is to advance the start of open access from the time 70 percent of Napocor generators are privatized to only 50 percent. While speeding up open access is fine on paper, since it will allow big users to pick their own electric retailer earlier, it would be unfair in practice. State-owned Napocor will still control half the power plants, so there won’t be true competition. Worse, the Napocor mafia will continue to dictate, for multimillion-dollar kickbacks, imports of coal to fuel the plants, whether sold or not.

Then, Gloria Arroyo appointed amiga Zenaida Ducut as Energy Regulatory Board chief. Aside from Ducut being the town mate from whom Mikey inherited his congressional seat in 2004, they have a common friend, the oft-named jueteng lord Bong Pineda. Ducut’s posting jolted the industry because of a recent Napocor scam. The state firm last Feb. awarded to a four-month-old, undercapitalized and flighty broker a P956.4-million coal import from Indonesia. There must have been P258-million overprice, since the bid price was $109.50 per ton, although the Indonesian posted rate then was only $77 (at P40.418:$1 for three shiploads of 65,000 tons each).

Among the listed incorporators of broker Transpacific Consolidated Resources Inc. are Leslie and Ressie Ducut, but Zenaida disclaims kinship. Still, there are many inconsistencies. Napocor faxed the bid invitation two weeks prior to TCRI’s only known address then, the nearby Danarra Hotel’s business center, closed since Christmas. Now Napocor insists it awarded the deal when TCRI moved into a real office — in two short weeks. Paid-up capital was only P62,500, but Napocor says “so what?”, in disregard of the Public Bidding Act that requires congruity of capital with contract price. Ducut says the scam does not matter since, as ERC chair, she will have nothing to do with Napocor operations. But Napocor spokesman admits that the ERC, aside from the energy department and NEDA, needs to approve coal imports.

The capture of the electricity sector is complete — from the executive and legislative branches to the quasi-judicial ERC. From there the clique can move to other energy sectors — say, oil exploration — if it has not already.

(Incidentally, a sense of deja vu comes from this article: Lights Out in Indonesia: Jakarta as 1990s Manila? With India, Indonesia, Vietnam,scrambling to put up more power plants, and with the Philippines going to need more power plants soon, those who position themselves in the energy sector now are going to be positively minting their own money in years to come) If you’ve ever read how Ferdinand Marcos squirreled away funds abroad, then the stories -occasionally dribbled out in the press, but more often than not, whispered about in business circles- of what’s going on in the energy sector are equally intriguing -because the money’s come home, unlike most of Marcos’ stash. One day, hopefully, someone will write it all down, from the time money began to leave the country, a hop, skip, and a jump ahead of sleuthing legislators, journalists, and American anti-money-laundering officials, with the money making its way to places as far afield as Austria, then eventually, back home again where it could be used to buy banks, and dummy firms.

Manuel Buencamino looks at the curious story of Homobono Adaza’s alleged attempt to extort money from a Japanese businessman.

Ellen Tordesillas has the skinny on what the President was up to in Washington:

A Malacañang source who was part of Arroyo’s entourage in her recent US visit said there was no mention by Arroyo of any plans to implement martial law or authoritarian measures in her meeting with Bush, the first since she fell out of his grace after she pulled out the Philippine military contingent in Iraq in exchange for the release of kidnapped Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz in July 2004.

But he admitted that increased military assistance was top in her agenda in her talks with American officials.

The source was amused that Philippine media covering Arroyo’s US visit followed Malacañang’s spin about the near passage of the Veterans Equity when they know very well that it has a slim chance of it passing in the House of Representatives despite the approval of the Senate.

He said the real reason Arroyo wanted to meet with American congressmen was to explain to them the government’s side on extra-judicial killings. Like in the Philippines, any appropriation bill originates in the House of Representatives. That’s the reason behind the idea of giving the newly minted Order of the Golden Heart Award, which is different from traditional Order of Sikatuna awards given to diplomats or nationals of other countries who have made outstanding contributions to strengthening of relations with the Philippines. According to press reports, not all awardees showed up during the conferment affair in Washington D.C. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came very late.

(Just a correction, which I told Ellen: the Order of the Golden Heart was established by President Magsaysay. It was not “newly-minted.” A more relevant question might have been whether the Philippine Legion of Honor might have been more appropriate; but then a lower-ranking Order might be appropriate because no law has been passed yet.)

Foreign Affairs officials lobbied hard to get a meeting for Arroyo with Senator Barbara Boxer (D., Cal.) chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific. It will be recalled that Edith Burgos, widow of press icon Jose Burgos and mother of missing activist Jonas Burgos, met with Boxer last March.

In the hearing that she conducted on alleged extra-judicial killings perpetrated by the military, Boxer said, “We do not want blood on our hands. We do not want to use US taxpayers’ money to train their (Philippine) military and police to kill their own people.”

Arroyo was able to meet with Boxer, the source said. The meeting must have been so insignificant that it didn’t merit a line in Boxer’s website. Not even Malacañang reported it.

It was unfortunate for Malacañang that whatever propaganda it wanted to generate domestically for Arroyo’s US trip was negated by typhoon Frank which struck on the eve of her departure, sank a passenger ship and devastated many parts of the country. Compounding the stigma was the junket of 63 congressmen whom Arroyo brought along with her as part of her pre-2009 impeachment payment.

But the source said, despite the bad press that Arroyo’s US visit got, she feels that she accomplished her main objective which was to impress the military that she still has the support of the US establishment.

It maybe a meeting of lame ducks but it was still a White House meeting, the source said. Add to that was her meeting in Pentagon with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

She may not have gotten categorical support for the things she might do in case her unpopular administration is shaken by the wrath of a long-suffering people, but it is good enough for Arroyo that she has given the military the illusion that the US is behind her. With that, she believes that her presidency, whatever questions about its legitimacy, is safe.

In the blogosphere, radicalchick aims a broadside at ABS-CBN and its Ces Drilon Kidnap Special.

The Rights of Man

Over the weekend, the Inquirer editorial said current commanders are Nostalgic for Palparan ; but it was this news item -Ships’ 45 accidents listed: Lloyd’s details Sulpicio’s 28-year history- that provoked the most commentary, from yesterday’s editorial, Sucking up to Sulpicio, to today’s editorial, MV Scandalous .

Especially interesting to me is that it took digging around by Inquirer’s research department, and access to Lloyd’s database, for this story to emerge, when it should have been front and center from day one. And the reason it wasn’t -if you’ve noticed, letters to the editor basically supplemented original reports of the number of Sulpicio-related sea accidents- surely has everything to do with the slovenly way our government agencies maintain records. This is fruitful grounds for Congressional action but… the legislature is no paragon of record-keeping itself.

(On a related note: Passenger shipping industry drowns while budget airlines fly high.)

My column for today is Chaos in Barangay Bansot.

Last week’s columns, Bringing the world to our shores and Embracing evolution, were remarked on by The Warrior Lawyer and blackshama’s blog . Even in the context of religion, in Ren’s Public Notebook. Earlier blog entries was commented upon by missing points and Howie Severino.(A kind account of my show also appeared in Jose A. Carillo’s column recently) Incidentally, the website of the program I’m looking at is here: University of Western Australia MBA Program in Manila.

Provincial-related stories to explore further (specifically: is this a real emerging news story or a well-managed media campaign by Evardone?): PDCC brings hope to Eastern Samar bad roads and E. Samar’s biggest calamity: Bad roads.

Als, with regards to food: Food gets scarce in Cotabato as floodwaters continue to rise and P18-per-kg rice disappearing from Bicol markets.

Overseas: Stagflation Sightings Multiply:

Unfortunately for policy makers, different weaponry is called for to vanquish the two heads of the stagflation dragon. Recession can be held at bay by lowering interest rates, while inflation is usually tamed by raising interest rates. Given the impossibility pursuing both courses of action simultaneously, priorities come into play. Historically, inflation has been considered the greater long term economic menace, and has therefore been dealt with first.

This was the plan of attack successfully mapped out by President Ronald Reagan and US Fed Chairman Paul Volcker in the 1980s. With the president’s political backing, Volcker was able to kill stagflation with a short but heavy dose of double-digit interest rates. With the stable currency and low inflation that resulted, the stage was then set for a sustained and robust economic expansion.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has recognized the stagflation threat for some time. But rather than studying the playbook of Volcker and Reagan, his gaze rests on events 40 years earlier. A well-known student of the financial history the 1930s, Bernanke is well aware that when the same beast raised its head following the Crash of 1929, the Fed rapidly raised interest rates. His conclusion was that this overreaction magnified the recession of 1930 into the Great Depression of the ensuing decade.

Scared stiff that these events could repeat themselves on his watch, Bernanke is loath to push up rates. In so doing, he is ignoring the much more recent and equally instructive lessons of the 1970s, in which a politically cowed Federal Reserve stood by while inflation raged uncontrollably.

Also, a long overdue link (from July 4): Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis: Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive.

Today is Bastille Day, the national day of France, a day of inspiration to republicans and revolutionaries down the ages.

The French Revolution gave us the metric system and, along the way, the blueprint for the abolition of monarchy and its replacement with a constitutional, republican regime. And one of its seminal documents was the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

It’s interesting that Jose Rizal set out to translate the Déclaration des Droits de l’homme et du citoyen du 26 août 1789 into Tagalog, which clearly suggests he felt it to be one of those seminal documents necessary for the public instruction of the citizenry. According to Ambeth Ocampo, it’s in Escritos Varios or Escritos Politicos de Rizal, under the title Manga Karapatan ng Tao.

(illustration above: Lafayette’s copy, Library of Congress collection)

Here is a very recent (re)translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citzen:

Preamble

The representatives of the French people, formed into a National Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect or scorn of the rights of man to be the only causes of national misfortunes and the corruption of governments, have resolved to set out, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, unalienable and sacred rights of man,

so that this Declaration, always present to all members of society, reminds them constantly of their rights and their duties;

so that the acts of the legislative power and those of the executive power, being able to be compared at every moment with the aim of the whole political institution, should have greater respect for that aim;

so that the demands of the citizens, founded henceforth on simple and indisputable principles, are always oriented to conserving the Constitution and to the happiness of everybody.

Consequently , the National Assembly acknowledges and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:

First Article —Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only upon benefit for the community.

Article 2 —The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural rights of man, which rights must not be prevented. These rights are freedom, property, security and resistance to oppression.

Article 3 —The fundamentals of sovereignty has its origins essentially in the Nation. No organisation, nor individual, may exercise any authority that does not expressly come from there.

Article 4 —Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not harm other people. Thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those limits that that ensure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights. These limits may be determined only by the law.

Article 5 —The law has only the right to forbid those actions that are detrimental to society. Anything that is not forbidden by law may not be prevented, and none may be compelled to do what the law does not require.

Article 6 —The law is the expression of the collective wishes of the public. All citizens have the right to contribute, personally or through their representatives, to the forming of the law. The law must be the same for all, whether it protects or it punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible for all important offices, positions and public employments, according to their ability and without other distinction than that of their qualities and talents.

Article 7 —No man can be accused, arrested or detained except in the cases determined by the law, and according to the methods that the law has stipulated. Those who pursue, distribute, enforce, or cause to be enforced, arbitrary orders must be punished; but any citizen summoned, or apprehended in accordance with the law, must obey immediately: he makes himself guilty by resisting.

Article 8—The law must introduce only punishments that are strictly and indisputably necessary; and no one may be punished except in accordance with a law instituted and published before the offence is committed, and legally applied.

Article 9—Because every man is presumed innocent until he has been declared guilty, if it should be considered necessary to arrest him, any force beyond the minimum necessary to arrest and imprison the person will be treated with severely.[2]

Article 10—No-one should be harassed for his opinions, even religious views, provided that the expression of such opinions does not cause a breach of the peace as established by law.

Article 11—The free communication of thought and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Any citizen can therefore speak, write and publish freely; however, they are answerable for abuse of this freedom as determined by law.

Article 12—Guaranteeing the rights of man and of the citizen requires a public force[3]. This force is therefore established for the benefit of all, and not for the particular use of those to whom it is entrusted.

Article 13—For the maintenance of the public force, and for administrative expenses, a common tax is necessary. It must be spread in similar fashion among all citizens, in proportion to their capability.

Article 14—All citizens have the right to verify for themselves, or through their representatives, the necessity for the public tax. They further have the right to grant the tax freely, to watch over how it is used, and to determine its amount[4], the basis for its assessment and of its collection, and its duration.

Article 15—Society has the right to ask a public official for an explication of his management and supervision.

Article 16—Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not ensured, nor a separation of powers is worked out, has no Constitution.

Article 17—Property, being an inviolable and sacred right, no one may be deprived of it; unless public necessity, legally investigated, clearly requires it, and just and prior compensation has been paid.

How very far off we are, in terms of achieving what these 18th Century Frenchmen envisioned not only for themselves, but for all humanity.

A magnificent retelling of the story of the French Revolution is “Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution” (Simon Schama). The great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson and his views on The Rights of Man predate Schama’s by two generations, yet his views seem to be echoed by Schama and incidentally, illuminates the Philippine situation as it’s existed since the 1960s:

For the French peasants and workers had not been taught, like the English, to follow their landlords and employers. It had always been the policy of the French government to detach the people from the privileged classes and to maintain direct control of them through the Intendant and the Curé. They lived their own life in their communes and guilds and looked for guidance not to the nobles and the rich merchants but to the ultimate sources of all authority — the King and the Church. And hence, though they had little class consciousness in the modern sense, they had a strong national consciousness which had found expression hitherto in their loyalty to the King and their devotion to the Church. Now, however, everything conspired to shake their confidence and disturb their faith. Ever since the death of Louis XIV they had seen the higher powers at war among themselves; Jansenists and Jesuits, Church and Parlements, the government and the magistrates; and more recently the continual succession of reforms and counter-reforms, such as the abolition and re-establishment of the Corporations and the changes that produced the rises of prices and periodic crises of unemployment and food shortage, caused an increasing feeling of insecurity and discontent. There were the disorders and the revolutionary agitation of the last two years, the sinister rumors of treachery in high places, and finally the appeal of the King to the nation by the summoning of the States General and the extraordinary democratic forms of election which exceeded the demand of the reformers themselves.

All these factors combined to rouse popular feeling as it had not been roused since the days of the League. The deeps were moved. Behind the liberal aristocrats and lawyers who formed the majority of the States General, there lay the vast anonymous power that had made the monarchy and had been in turn shaped by it, and now it was to make the Revolution. To the liberal idealists – to men like Lafayette and Clermont Tonnerre, to the Abbé Fauchet and the orators of the Gironde, the Revolution meant the realization of the ideals of the Enlightenment, liberty and toleration, the rights of men and the religion of humanity. They did not see that they were on the edge of a precipice and that the world they knew was about to be swallowed up in a tempest of change which would destroy both them and their ideals. “Woe unto you, who desire the day of the Lord. It is darkness and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand upon the wall and a serpent bit him”; they were a doomed generation, fated to perish at first by ones and twos, and then by scores and hundreds and thousands, on the scaffold, in the streets and on the battlefield. For as the Revolution advanced it gradually revealed the naked reality that had been veiled by the antiquated trappings of royalty and tradition — the General Will — and it was not the benevolent abstraction which the disciples of Rousseau had worshipped but a fierce will to power which destroyed every man and institution that stood in its way. As de Maistre wrote, the will of the people was a battering ram with twenty million men behind it.

A subsequent passage illuminates, too, the problem with Year Ones and Year Zeros, of New Societies and those who aspire to raze and refashion entire societies:

But if it was a time of freedom and hope, it was also a time of illusion. The Constituent Assembly went to work in a mood of boundless optimism without any regard for the facts of history or the limitations of time and place, in the spirit of their arch theorist Sieyès, who said that the so-called truths of history were as unreal as the so-called truths of religion. When their work was finished, Cerutti declared that they had destroyed fourteen centuries of abuses in three years, that the Constitution they had made would endure for centuries, and that their names would be blessed by future generations. Yet before many months had elapsed their work was undone and their leaders were executed, imprisoned or in exile. They had destroyed what they could not replace and called up forces that they could neither understand nor control. For the liberal aristocracy and bourgeoisie were not the people, and in some respects they were further from the people than the nobles and clergy who remained faithful to the old order. On the one hand there were the vast inarticulate masses of the peasantry who were ready to burn the castles of the nobles but who were often equally ready to fight with desperate resolution for their religion. On the other hand there was the people of the communes, above all the Commune of Paris.

The Commune of Paris would, of course, keep throwing up barricades in an attempt to return to the republicanism of the Revolution. The France of 1789 and of 1870 (the Paris Commune) are commemorated in two songs detested by the Right: the French national anthem and the Internationale, anthem of Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists.

The Marseillaise has ferocious lyrics, which may explain the unease it inspired in regimes wary of the republicanism established by the French. My favorite examples: the Czar of Russia, manifesting a new alliance with France, shocking his fellow monarchs by standing at attention while the French anthem was played; years later, when Lenin arrived in Russia after years of exile, a band played the French national anthem; in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (and mention has to be made here of Beethoven’s extremely jolly Wellington’s Victory which showed how a national anthem could be woven into a crowd-pleasing piece of bombast), and in fiction, see this marvelous paper, Bogart’s Nod in the Marseillaise Scene: A Physical Gesture in Casablanca.

Funny peculiar

As a marching music aficionado I couldn’t pass this up. It seems as part of the new Russian imperium, they’re brushing up on spit n’ polish militarism:

The Russian Presidential Guards in their freshly dusted-off Czarist-era uniforms. And who better to learn from then their German brethren?

Hence.. The Bundeswehr performing Prussian marches in Red Square. How on earth did the Germans feel performing Prussian marches there, and how did the Russians feel watching the whole thing?

And you would have thought they would have abolished torchlight parades entirely:

Or with eagle standards in… Berlin!

Then again maybe the military Can-Can proves militarism isn’t a German characteristic anymore!

You see the combined effect in the 50th Bundeswehr anniversary ceremonies in Berlin, complete with torchlight parade in front of the Reichstag (their new-model American-style helmets resembling Reichswehr helmets):

Maybe the Bundeswehr in Red Square or having torchlight parades in Speyer or drilling around with eagle standards in Berlin is not as potentially chilling as watching a military parade in Chile might have been, circa 1991!

Well, actually, that was more understandable during the Pinochet era.

But as of 2007, still a chilling sight!

The annual budget brouhaha

An interesting theme from commentaries overseas: a kind of all-pervasive mental and moral exhaustion afflicting national elites. Fin de siècle? The 1968 of our times (see contrasting views on that important year by Tom Stoppard and Tariq Ali; Filipinos had their 1968 in, well, 1970… it takes time for fashions to filter through…)? David Sirota thinks that in the United States, the possibility of a grassroots revolt ought to be considered:

America is in the throes of a powerful new uprising right now..

…this uprising is happening on both the Right and the Left. Like most revolts, it is rooted in a backlash to an Establishment widely seen as corrupt and morally decayed. This uprising has more picket signs and protests than pitchforks and pistols… It is a social phenomenon that is impacting all aspects of public life — our pop culture, our media, and most significantly, our upcoming national elections. It could take our country in a very different direction — perhaps positive (think universal health care, an end to the Iraq War, new trade policies), perhaps frighteningly negative (think immigrant bashing and a war with Iran).

Though today’s uprising has been going on since the two major explosions of the last decade — 9/11 and the Enron disaster — polls indicate that it is now intensifying in ways not seen before. Surveys reveal that the public despises its current president, and more importantly, that America is suffering a crisis of confidence in government as an institution. As Scripps Howard’s 2006 poll found, “anger against the federal government is at record levels” and “widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appears to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories” — most prominent being the one suggesting our leaders helped plot the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The political topography resembles that of the last major uprising in our history — the one that took place in the 1970s. America then as today faced the same crises that have catalyzed uprisings since colonists tossed tea over the sides of boats in Boston harbor: among others, an energy emergency, a national security quagmire, a recession, a financial meltdown, and an attack on democracy.

As that uprising gained steam, Democrats nominated an outsider candidate for the presidency (sound familiar?). But when that outsider was elected he and the Democratic Party didn’t effectively represent that uprising – and that uprising did not go away. On the contrary, it became more intense. And by 1980, conservative organizers used the candidacy of Ronald Reagan to channel that revolt into the full-fledged conservative movement we’ve been living under for a generation. Over the next two decades, this conservative movement changed America domestically (tax cuts and social service cuts), internationally (massive increase in the military budget), and politically (wholly changed electoral map).

This same pace of change could be upon us again today — though one key indicator suggests the specific kind of change could be different. According to Gallup’s biannual survey of attitudes toward social institutions, Americans’ disgust with government resembles that of the late 1970s — but the variation between then and now is the antipathy toward Corporate America. Whereas in 1979 one in three Americans told Gallup’s pollsters they had confidence in big business, today a little less than one in five express the same confidence. In 1979, almost two out of three citizens said they had faith in banks. Today, only two out of five say the same thing.

The trend bodes well for progressives. Conservatives’ close affiliation with big business puts them at a disadvantage in the Left-versus-Right competition to harness the current uprising…

Of course, today’s uprising could be squelched completely, with neither the Right nor the Left capitalizing on it. Many institutions inside our government and our political parties exist specifically to crush populist, mass-based revolts.

Jared Bernstien responds by saying,

David is obviously writing about bottom-up uprisings, in many cases, movements that are a reaction to government failure. But in my experience, these groups eventually are demanding that the government alter its policies. So we’ve got to think on both bottom-up and top-down tracks.

And the problem for the top-down track is that government is in big trouble. I’m speaking at the federal level, but let’s not get too romantic about local cases. I haven’t seen much evidence that Albany works that much better than DC.

There are lots of reasons for this, but certainly one of the main ones is that if you elect people who explicitly prophesize that government is the problem, they will fulfill that prophecy with a vengeance. And yes, they’ll enrich their cronies along the way.

The problem cuts deep into the agencies… The depth of dysfunction is astounding, and it’s going to take years to repair.

David reminds us that our country was founded partly on “the right of the people to alter or abolish” destructive government. I’m in the “alter” camp, and I’d like to hear someone with David’s insights and movement experience hold forth on what it’s going to take to get there. What steps ought we be taking now that will ultimately give progressive uprisings a public conduit through which their goals can be achieved?

Are there echoes in how the police are despised, even attacked, in China? See Cracks in China’s Armor. Is this all in marked contrast, perhaps, to what’s going on in Thailand, where those formerly characterized as reformists are now advocating the dismantling of parliamentary democracy, according to The Asia Sentinel’s anonymous correspondent in Thailand’s “New Politics” Charade:

The New Politics turns out to be a startlingly reactionary proposal to move Thailand’s parliamentary system towards a form of appointed corporatism, or what might be called a selectoral democracy. Thirty percent of MPs would come from elections, perhaps one per province, and the rest of MPS would derive from various occupations and associations. Sondhi says the proportion is not fixed, it’s up for debate.

The rationale for wanting to dismantle Thailand’s electoral system is evident: pro-Thaksin forces keep winning elections. And as Thaksin is said to represent everything bad about Thai politics, he can not be allowed to wield power directly or indirectly. Thus, for Sondhi, and it would seem the PAD leadership as whole, there is now a need to bring about a revolution in political representation.

The idea of examining alternatives to electoral democracy is not without some merit, for it is common knowledge that massive amounts of money are required to win parliamentary seats, making parliament a millionaire’s playground and a source of further monopolization and corruption. It wasn’t always so, Sondhi told the rally. In the 1970s socialist politicians in Thailand could get elected on the basis of their ideology and popular support, but the emergence of dirty politics in the 1980s crushed any such possibility in the present.

The New Politics has interesting antecedents. The PAD leadership has clearly been speaking to military figures (this is now well documented in the Thai language press) who tried to stifle the emergence of parliament in the 1980s. Indeed, selectoral democracy nicely fits with corporatist visions of the old “Revolutionary Council”. The Council, to which General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh was said to have an association, held that elections merely led to parliamentary dictatorship and proposed a form of corporate representation to realize the “general will”.

A former communist, Prasert Sapsunthon, was the inspiration for this Thai appropriation of Rousseau, the French theorist of the social contract. Prasert became a leading intellectual among military circles calling for non-elective forms of democracy. When the Revolutionary Council effectively declared itself a provisional government during the political crisis of 1988 the elected Chatichai government took it to court for treason. It then faded into obscurity, but its ideas have never quite gone away, finding support among small rightist groups and even in some labor circles.

The New Politics is unashamedly pro-military and even codifies the conditions under which military intervention may occur. Sondhi has spoken of four conditions for military intervention: when charges of lese majeste are not acted on; when a government is incompetent; when corruption is rife; when a government betrays national sovereignty.

This has striking parallels to many discussions taking place here in the Philippines (e.g., “Should the military be kept out of politics or does military interventionism represent a deus ex machina moment to be ardently desired?” or “The problem with elections is that the electorate elects idiots”, see smoke and Verisimilitude), and reminds me of something I brought up when Adrian Cristobal died: the enduring triumph of Marcos’ concept of a New Society helps explain why Edsa contained the seeds of its own destruction.

The papers today report P1 hike for jeepneys, buses; P10 for taxis. The transport sector has to be placated. Senator Escudero lays down the basis for the next round of placating -of workers- as reported in Inflation cancels wage hike; hope pinned on new law. The Catholic bishops have to be placated, too: Gov’t open to lowering, not scrapping, EVAT on oil.

The problem of course is that soothing all these sectors requires money, and proof of the President putting the nation’s money where her mouth is, will be in the national budget.

Former national treasurer Leonor Briones in her column says something germane to yesterday’s entry (and the foreign commentary above), this time from point of view of economists:

Last week, I talked to two eminent economists. One drew a picture of the gathering of a perfect economic storm. To him, all the signals are already making themselves felt: increased unemployment, accelerating inflation, escalating prices, capital flight, and rise in poverty levels. The social consequences of the economic storm are also building up: increase in suicides, rise in criminality , social disintegration, and loss of hope.

So how come people are not rising in anger? The other economist said that all these negative developments did not occur in one fell swoop. They were building up, one after the other. By the time the perfect economic storm sweeps the country, people will be so weakened they will not have the strength to bestir themselves and take action.

She also happens to think Arroyo’s hold on funds, spending habits ‘dangerous’. One presidential habit I’ve heard about, is that the President travels with a stack of blank government checks when she drops in on local government officials; she then fills in these checks personally, a habit that apparently gives professional bureaucrats the Willies.

Anyway, in her column, Briones says the executive department has to redo the proposed national budget, because the macroeconomic assumptions that served as the budget’s parameters have become obsolete in the months since the Budget Call was made in May. Among the assumptions made were: singe-digit inflation, a balanced budget by this year, and a Peso-Dollar exchange rate of 40 to 43 to 1.

The Inquirer editorial for its part, says that real oversight over the national budget is a Mission impossible.

Anyway, the Palace propaganda machine has begun testing potential messages for the State of the Nation Address. If the Palace number-crunchers are, well, number-crunching furiously now, to come up with new economic assumptions for the national budget, Governor Joey Salceda is also batting for his economic plan by claiming it has presidential approval.

So we can expect the budgetary process to pop in and out of the news in the coming weeks and months. For a closer look at the entire process, visit The Philippine Center for National Budget Legislation. And here’s their book: CNBLbook.pdf which provides a crash course in understanding how the budget’s put together, and what it contains. (The Department of Budget and Management website also makes available the Budget Call for 2009 and last year’s national budget-related documents: the General Appropriations Act for 2008, which was based on the President’s Budget Message for 2008,with supplementary material: the National Expenditures Program FY 2008, Staffing Summary FY 2008 and Budget Expenditures and Sources of Financing 2008.)

I’ve reproduced some charts from the Philippine Center for National Budget Legislation’s book, and supplemented them with some charts I prepared for my show.

The first thing they point out, is that the Executive Department dominates the national budget, with the ratios more or less constant. The 2004 budget, for example, has 68% of the monies devoted to, and in the hands of, the Executive Department, with the next-biggest chunk devoted to debt payments, and a relatively slim percentage for the legislature, the judiciary, and constitutional commissions.

The PCNBL helpfully presents past budgets in a color-coordinated manner:

And then explains what the color-coding means:

Most members of Congress spend their time on the yellow portions, and sometimes run out of time to adequately look into the blue portions, which are meant to supplement the expenses of government offices (in yellow). The blue portions are called Special Purpose Funds, and as this chart shows, they total more than what’s spent for the established offices of the government:

A page from the book explains why Alleba Politics, for example, can complain that the National Government is in arrears to the City of Davao, to the tune of 142 million pesos:

Special Purpose Funds are entirely in the hands of the President, who decides when they’re released and to whom -and this includes the pork barrel funds of members of Congress (a surprisingly slender 3% of the whole) as well as the revenue allocations of Local Government Units. In a sense, then, aside from the fixed (because tied to government’s obligation to fund existing employees and offices) national budget, there is a parallel national budget, one bigger than the fixed budget and purely within the discretion of the chief executive.

This chart shows that of these funds, the biggest chunk is for “Unprogrammed” Funds.

These are, in a sense, promissory funds: if they come in, then they can be spent for certain purposes, still pretty much at the chief executive’s discretion. The book explains this in detail:

These “wish ko lang” funds, in turn, have been growing, percentage-wise:

The book provides a glimpse of the budgets and expenses of the major agencies of the government. By way of illustration, here is a set of charts featuring expenditure programs for the different branches of government, and including samples of two constitutional bodies we all adore, the Comelec and the Ombudsman:

Then there’s a focus on some issues raised by the allocations for various departments and their flagship programs, for example:

As well as an introduction to lesser-known budgetary practices such as earmarking funds. One example the book focuses on is the Motor Vehicles’ User’s Charge, which the group says is the third-largest source of revenue for the government, with a tremendous amount collected in a few years:

The charge, levied on vehicle owners, is meant to be specifically used -or earmarked- for a specific fund, with four main programs funded by it:

Subject to two departments:

Here’s the introduction to the fund in the book:

The organization hopes that their book will enable congressmen to deliberate on the budget more wisely and efficiently, and that it will inform the public so that it can keep tabs on budget preparation and execution.

Victory gardens and that “Perfect Storm”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t? When things are relatively easy, no one wants to rock the boat. When times are tough, we’re told everyone’s too busy trying to keep body and soul together to want to rock the boat. The former is what I heard from middle and upper class types, to justify their reluctance to be politically engaged. The latter is what I hear from them now, to justify their continuing reluctance to be politically engaged. A further difference I’ve observed, on the part of those previously politically engaged: they are too tired and too battered by the ongoing economic downturn to literally afford to remain politically engaged.

Which suggests that as those with businesses, property, a middle class lifestyle, etc.focus on trying to keep afloat or protect, they will retreat from the political scene: leaving it wide open to be seized by whom?

Well, there’s the Roman maxim: fortune favors the bold.

In certain opposition circles, the term “a Perfect Storm” has gained currency, even before Typhoon Fengshen came on the scene and struck such a blow at the administration, that even among its supporters, a certain amount of hostility has set in (to give just one example, the parents of a friend have been fiercely supportive of the President since 2005, and I view their reactions to events as a kind of bellweather of the President’s political stock among her supporters; when Fengshen struck, they were so appalled over the President’s decision to go the United States that they’ve turned critical: the father, who is Ilonggo, is now actively hostile, the mother, a Cebuana, less demonstratively so, but their former enthusiasm seems irretrievably lost; other loyalists I’ve talked to seem to have been quite irked by the President’s chasing Barak Obama around).

Billy Esposo, for one, has gone further and put forward what he calls a “loose ball” situation, one (if memory serves me correctly) was first put forward by Fidel V. Ramos when he proposed solving the political crisis in 2005 by having the President commit to presiding over the shift from the presidential to the parliamentary system. I remember Ramos, on TV, at the Palace, saying he would look down from his Urban Bank penthouse office, at squatter colonies while wondering what would happen if the poor suddenly left their slums en masse, hell-bent on invading the gated communities in their vicinity.

Esposo’s variation on this theme was contained in a recent e-mail he sent out:

…the country is indeed headed for a “loose ball” situation. [A participant in a recent conference] admitted that if the situation deteriorates to the feared “loose ball” situation (food riots, have-nots attacking the haves, open hostilities between warring factions in the country, etc), even a united AFP (which it is not!) cannot hold the country together. The complicating factor is, of course, what hand will the US and China play in such a development.

I’ve said before that my personal view is that we aren’t important enough to have China and America devoting either energy or resources to physically carving up the country; and part of me thinks the “Perfect Storm” scenarios are more about wishful thinking than an actual probability that needs to be confronted. Mon Casiple, much more of a sober observer, puts it this way:

Some have predicted chaotic protests and even vigilante actions because of the high prices. To be sure, it has not been our history that economic issues directly lead to regime change. However, it has the legacy of setting the stage for regime change by rendering an incumbent administration politically vulnerable to a political offensive.

That offensive can take many forms: the mushrooming of protest actions, particularly on the day the President delivers her State of the Nation Address: the “Perfect Storm” scenario being put forward would then be in the nature of a prediction that’s come true; or there might be spontaneous eruptions of public indignation that could get messy if officials on the ground lose their cool; or even an impeachment effort in October -supported, covertly, by an administration coalition prepared to jettison the President ahead of 2010 so as to give itself a fighting chance.

As Casiple puts it,

The GMA administration certainly faces–if it is still possible–a heightened political crisis because of its unpopularity. If the inflation crisis–and more telling, the inept handling of the Frank national disaster–is linked in the people’s consciousness to the poor quality of governance by the GMA administration, then it will translate into a landslide win for an opposition presidential candidate in 2010.

At the moment, this is already the case. If the president continues on into 2010, she will be the only issue of the elections and, if the opposition know its stuff, it will trump anybody whom the ruling coalition puts up against their sole candidate.

For this reason, I find two items Danton Remoto posted in his blog, velly, velly intelestink, indeed. Bopth involve Efren Danao’s column in the Manila Times.

The first is, Loren, Chiz firm up tandem:

Legarda and Escudero belong to the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), although at the Senate, Legarda is with the minority and Escudero, with the majority. Legarda was number one in 2007, having won the most number of votes among all the senatorial bets. Escudero was number two.

… Escudero predicted that there would be no one-on-one contest between the opposition and the administration in the 2010 presidential election, “since no incumbent is running, and there is the question on who is really an opposition.”

The second is Chiz talks about 2010:

“GMA is not running in 2010, and it would be unfair to the people if presidential candidates should still use her as an issue,” he explained.

Indeed, candidates would be like shadowboxing if they will be punching at a non-opponent. Chiz said that instead of raising the GMA bogy, candidates should talk about their platform of government.

“Any candidate who runs on an anti-GMA platform is insulting the intelligence of the people. The people will vote for a presidential candidate because of what he or she intends to do if victorious, not because he or she is against GMA,” Chiz stressed.

This is a familiar strategy: we saw it when the Palace proclaimed the protests against it as “political noise.” Now you might jump to the conclusion that a Legarda-Escudero tandem is under construction as a kind of Trojan Horse for the ruling coalition. That might be premature. But it would be fair to zero in on how the NPC and Danding Cojuangco have skillfully played the game when it comes to the present administration and the political opportunities the pragmatic Big Boss and his party sees in 2010. What the NPC has, in its camp, is a potential dark horse for the presidency, and a formidable one, at that: and I don’t mean Legarda, but rather, Escudero. Again, without dwelling on anything negative, I do think it’s fair to say that he possesses many of the positive attributes of Ferdinand Marcos, not to mention a more contemporary style gift for gab. What other political camp has such young presidential timber, primed to capitalize on an increasingly young electorate?

But enough, for now, on speculating on what might be. Let’s look at what is, and was.

I once described Malacañan Palace as prize, pulpit, and stage: it is all of these things both to our chief executives and the nation at large.

One of the informal but most effective powers of any president, is the power to set the national agenda, simply by saying or doing something. As the country set out to recover from World War II, President Roxas took to personally growing vegetables in Malacañang Park. Such stunts have a value, politically, and I’m surprised Mar Roxas hasn’t taken to proposing Victory Gardens as a worthwhile effort for urban residents and communities to engage in. Or why the President hasn’t thought of something similar, considering the multitudes fed on a regular basis in the Palace. Even Laurel instituted a diet of mongo gruel in the Palace as a wartime austerity measure.

Today’s Malaya editorial says the administration’s actually made noises about boosting food production, but takes it to task for actually not meaning what it says, and embarking on what the paper views as unnecessary fussing over alternative sources of energy:

The Palace said among the measures are a stepped-up program to expand production to answer the food problem and energy conservation, tapping of alternative energy sources and intensified search for oil in response to runaway global crude prices.

Let’s look at these proposed measures to ease the impact of spiraling fuel cost. Conservation of energy will come by itself and not through government effort. With gas at P60 a liter, there will be fewer private vehicles on the road. Public utility vehicles will have to rationalize their operations, plying their routes only when assured of full capacity (no more empty buses careening on EDSA during off-rush hours). Households and business will also be forced to cut costs as a matter of survival.

The Palace should not promise the people pie in the sky in the form of biofuels, solar and wind powered generating plants which will take years to put in place and at a probably higher cost than hydrocarbon-based energy sources.

Food production, on the other hand, is indeed quickly responsive to expansion of areas under irrigation, introduction of high-yielding seeds and liberal use of fertilizers and insecticides. Rice has a cycle of three months from planting to harvest. So bigger investment in farms now will yield dividends in a relatively short time.

Is the government putting extra-ordinary efforts to boost food output? The way we are hearing it from Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, rice production is no longer a problem.

But government has to be shown to be making an effort, when it comes to energy, and that includes kicking off the process of identifying, and harnessing, alternative sources of energy, precisely because it takes years to achieve: meanwhile, officialdom ought to consider that even as the streets have emptied, I don’t think anyone can say there’s been a corresponding reduction in official convoys. In fact, they may not have increased in number but have become more conspicuous, precisely because there’s less of a justification for the convoys to be barging past the citizenry. This is a minor thing, perhaps, but it sometimes spells the difference for citizens being appeal to, to cooperate in a national effort. Seeing an official SUV accompanied by a motorcycle escort does not put you in the proper framework to be receptive to an appeal for belt-tightening.

It was highly symbolic, though perhaps disruptive of efficient governance, for presidents to throw open the Palace gates so as to welcome the citizenry: Magsaysay and Macapagal were particularly remembered for this, with affection. When Marcos, on the other hand, turned the environs of the Palace into a sealed-off area, the public took it as a manifestation of how the presidency was being divorced from the people it was supposed to serve. If every crisis presents an opportunity, then it is up to every leader to seize or waste that opportunity. What consigned Estrada to the dustbin of history was less the sight of the middle and upper classes at the Edsa Shrine, but rather, the contrasting sight -or more accurately, widespread accounts of the sighting- of Estrada holed up in the Palace, armed primarily with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label, uncertain of what to do, as his allies squabbled among themselves and then deserted him. What has kept Arroyo at center stage was her refusing the relinquish the Palace at all costs, which inspired admiration even among her enemies.

But there is a fine line between true grit and the perception that succesfully holding on to power has hardened your heart to the plight of your countrymen. Never mind those long ago convinced that this is actually the case; it’s your supporters now becoming convinced of the same thing that is a problem.

For this reason, the opposition, if it had any imagination, could embark on Victory Gardens of its own… But I doubt any such thing will come to pass. Let’s hope gated communities consider plowing up their parks to make way for vegetable gardens, as a form of community outreach for their neighbors -or collaborating with urban poor communities. It bothers me that there are those seemingly pining for a “Perfect Storm,” which is like wishing your enemy will be scooped up by a tornado. It ignores the reality that tornadoes do not distinguish between humans classifying each other as friends and enemies.

No ifs and buts about it

Read Uniffors.

(yes, this is a day late, but better late than never)

If you can’t beat ‘em, distract ‘em

Before anything else, here’s a glimpse of our national tastes as reflected in the TV ratings. See abscbnfan. And to inspire you even further, the blog’s lists of Upcoming ABS-CBN and GMA Shows Until 2009. Speaking of television, the recent weekend blockbuster provoked two noteworthy comments. First, Howie Severino’s Thank you Darlene for beating Pacquiao and a recent Business Mirror editorial, A plea to temper network greed:

For viewers, commercial overkill is just an inconvenience. However, for advertisers who pay ad agencies and the networks to have their messages formulated, packaged and delivered to masses of consumers, it ultimately amounts to a waste of money.

When you come right down to it, advertisers are the real victims in what amounts to a sting pulled every day by GMA 7, ABS-CBN, et al. The networks promise advertisers their commercials will reach x-number of viewers. But because commercial overload turns away growing numbers of viewers, those expensively made—and placed—ads never get to reach their target audiences.

According to a content analysis of the two leading networks’ programs conducted by students of De La Salle University, GMA 7 has an average commercial load of 30 minutes per hour and ABS-CBN some 15 to 20 minutes per hour.

According to Abrera, the local advertising industry has prescribed a limit of 18 minutes of commercials per hour of broadcast, which is already the highest in the region. In other Asian countries, TV ads are limited to between 12 and 14 minutes per hour.

Notwithstanding the generous latitude that the advertising industry allows media outlets, the two biggest networks continue to flout the commercial-load limit with total impunity. And that is just for regular programs.

During a special broadcast, like last weekend’s much-awaited prizefight, the networks invariably lose all sense of decency and run amuck. No wonder the world’s greatest religions uniformly classify cupidity as a sin.

As on the individual level, corporate avarice is, in the final analysis, counterproductive.

Thank God for cable?

My column today is Sulpicio Lines as political decoy.

In it, I mentioned Marichu Lambino’s blog entry, The President: correct legal advice in 2 instances. Other Suplicio-related articles I looked at were Asia Sentinel’s Philippines Ferry Disaster, and the Inquirer editorial, Sulpicio’s gamble. While now they’ve been forced to relent, the moment news came that ‘Sulpicio nixes ship refloating, wants full insurance claim’ you could see that they’d thoroughly gamed their scenarios and had settled on a lucrative one. Not to mention steely bargaining for some sort of quid-pro-quo, which they got: Arroyo orders Sulpicio cargo operations resumed. In At Midfield, you can find more on Sulpicio’s latest shenanigans.

Other helpful references for my column: Manuel Buencamino’s column, Saving for a Rainy Day , which begins with this gem:

When Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said, “The visit of the President has been scheduled, and when the President left, the situation, as far as the typhoon is concerned, was still in its development stage,” was he lying?

I’ll let Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez answer the question.

In his column on Monday, Gonzalez wrote, “I was thankful to be there when Frank came and left behind a trail of destruction and misery, and to experience and see the extent of the damage. After the winds and rain subsided, I was one of the first passengers to leave Iloilo to make my report to the President personally before Her Excellency left for that very important state visit to the US.”

Gonzalez wrote it, I didn’t. I merely brought it to your attention.

And this entreaty, by way of a comment in my blog from smiling buddha. The media, he said, was focusing too much on the Sulpicio tragedy, to the extent that other tragedies were being sidelined. And this got me thinking…

There’s little the government can crow about. It’s getting chaotic and ridiculous. On one hand, Food shortage looms in Western Visayas while on the other, Arthur Yap has to declare (in response to his administration colleague’s alarums), ‘ No WV food shortage, prices shouldn’t go up’. Yet 3% of farm output lost to Typhoon Frank is no light matter. The latest is Diarrhea, tetanus outbreak feared in typhoon-ravaged areas.

Since media also takes its cues from the authorities, it seemed to me worthwhile to examine if the administration didn’t find it convenient to focus on Sulpicio, too, to the exclusion of the ongoing problems in the provinces. My view, is that Sulpicio’s handy that way. But continued focus on that issue will, inevitably, harm the government.

If you let people zero in on the President too much, it just gets spookier and spookier. Or simply turns into a bungled effort a media management. Case in point: Sobriety for the Philippines recalls, as many did, the recent anniversary of the “I Am Sorry” debacle, and it only underlines news like this: Arroyo allies linked to ‘Garci’ behind mystery firm in Pagcor ‘Tourism City’ . Another case in point: even a glowing account of the President’s arrival by RG Cruz can’t help but bring up the administration’s penchant for nocturnal derring-do (the proclamation of the President, for example). Though RG Cruz does slip in this telling little bit o’ speculation:

3 reasons why Gloria just couldn’t come home.

Bush. Obama and Mccain.

All 3 are insurances for her poltical present and future. Vows of support from all 3 give her a strong pillar for the remainder of her term as whether we care to admit it or not, the Great White (Black in Obama’s case) Father still holds some sway in this country. Even Obama’s alleged snub—giving her just a phone call is cannot be discounted as it came with the most important statement of all, “I look forward to working with her in the years to come.”

In his column, Tony Abaya tartly observed,

Good for her that the exiting Bush was gallant enough to give her 50 minutes of his time. Not quite the two hours that Malacanang had said had been allotted for her. But those 50 minutes should assuage her bruised ego for earlier snubs and earlier 20 minute one-on-one ‘summits’ that were unilaterally cancelled by the Americans or had inexplicably shrunk to seven-minute pull-over photo-ops.

But John McCain, the presumptive Republican heir to the presidency, who has been adopted by the neo-cons, gave President Arroyo only 15 minutes of his time, according to the Inquirer, in a hotel lobby in Washington on June 28, which should be considered a measure of the low regard that the neo-cons have of her

At this point, it has to be assumed that both McCain and Obama have Fil-Ams in their staffs, and that both candidates know all about the 2004 elections, the Hello Garci tapes, the ZTE contract, the Spratlys oil, the Chinese connections, plus revelations from electronic intercepts of the National Security Agency, Joc Joc Bolante and FBI-spy-turned-double-agent-for Erap, Leandro Aragoncillo.

[As for Barack Obama] In fact, she did not get the chance to meet with him at all. He was a no-show at their only scheduled ‘possible’ meeting. And he kept on being somewhere else whenever she went to New York or to Washington.. Was he avoiding her? But he did call her on the phone and they talked, according to Malacanang, for 30 minutes…

But from the geo-political perspective, I would say that if her goal was to protect her flanks in 2009 or 2010, as I had speculated last week, the bare-bones welcome that she got from McCain and Obama suggests that neither The Great White Father nor The Great Black Brother will look with favor on martial law in the next two years.

So, anyway, rather than keep the spotlight on the President, new distractions have to be found.

Presto! New plot to topple Arroyo gov’t bared, what does it mean? Is there a plot, and is it serious or inconsequential? If serious, is it better to advertise its existence to spook the plotters? Maybe. If inconsequential, why bother bringing it up at all? Patricio Mangubat sarcastically points out that if anything, imagining’s become a crime.

Over at Mon Casiple’s blog, he puts it all of the above context. The President is fighting on two fronts: against her critics, and, potentially, an insurgency mounted by her own people, to jettison her as they begin to worry about their political prospects come 2010.In the process, he paints a (sadly, truthful, to my mind) unedifying picture of the swirling ambitions and self-interests of the big players:

President Macapagal-Arroyo had left herself wide-open to scenarios of intimidation and threats. Her unsullied reputation as the most unpopular president ever has been compounded by perception of callousness and insensitivity regarding the plight of typhoon Frank’s victims. Politicians know that the president–if she still sits in 2010–will be the number one issue of the presidential elections.

Ironically, it will be the opposition (defined as the anti-GMA coalition) who would be interested in letting her stay until the elections. GMA as an issue can only benefit their own presidential candidate–a single one, that is. It will be the people in the ruling coalition who would dearly love to see her as a non-issue come election time.

If GMA is out of the presidential seat of power, the whole elections will be a whole new show. Both the ruling coalition and the opposition will disperse and realign into new coalitions around serious presidentiables. This scenario, in a sense, is preferable for many on both sides. In the same sense, everybody is suspect in trying to set aside GMA well before 2010.

Assuming the veracity of the stories that have come out about an “Ides of July” (thanks to Julius Caesar, an innocuous 15th day of a quarterly month becomes a sinister sign of regime change), it can only be within the context of either an outright military-assisted takeover or a deep operation calculated to force a presidential resignation. The rest of 2008 is the only window of opportunity for these type of political initiatives before the imperatives of 2010 elections set in.

What is sure is that the GMA administration is vulnerable to these pressures. As her grasp on the power weakens by the day, and she continues to fail in maneuvering either for an immunity guarantee or for a constitutional extension of stay in power, she becomes increasingly incapable of influencing the political events leading to the 2010 elections. For some, she then becomes increasingly a liability. Removing her from the scene becomes an option, even a necessity.

Economics hogs the headlines, because of the escalating price of oil. A couple of weeks ago, the Financial Times reported Spectre of inflation over global economy. By yesterday, news was Asia stocks tumble; stagflation hits outlook.

While John Mangun believes the cost of commodities (from oil to metals) is bound to start going down, Rene Azurin, in his Business World column (sadly, the paper’s still stuck in the Pay-for-access Age), thinks otherwise:

STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE

René B. Azurin

Changing lifestyles

Don’t look now but our lifestyles are changing. At $200 per barrel of oil, regular unleaded gasoline will be P90 per liter and LPG for cooking will be P990 per 11-kg cylinder. (These figures come from a pricing model developed by Energy Consultant Marcial Ocampo.) At those prices, I will have to shelve plans to tour the country by car –visiting long unseen relatives from Aparri to Davao – and acquire a taste for uncooked fish dipped in Silver Swan soy sauce. (Kikkoman will be too expensive.)

The march toward $200 per barrel oil seems inexorable and trends indicate that it will be here in a short thirteen months. Some oil industry observers have been attributing the skyrocketing oil prices to speculative activity and are suggesting that this speculative “bubble” will burst soon and oil prices will fall to a more “normal” level of $80 to $110 per barrel. Well, this bursting is not likely to happen anytime soon if we are to believe the president of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, when he said the other day that oil prices should rise to “between $150 and $170 a barrel” by summer this year. That means August or September, the European summer.

Personally, I think whatever flurry of activity now being seen in commodity markets is based on the sudden, somewhat delayed realization by traders that fundamental changes are taking place in the oil demand-supply picture, prompting them to scramble to adjust their oil positions for the future. I think global oil production has more or less plateaued while world oil demand cannot help but continue to rise. It should be pointed out that the per capita consumptions of energy in developing countries are still ridiculously low in comparison with the rich industrialized countries. The imperative of raising the living standards of very large groups of people in the developing world to acceptable levels will obviously exert enormous pressure on available energy supplies and this pressure cannot be expected to be relieved for quite some time.

In any event, the era of cheap oil is – we better believe it – gone forever. That means that you might not be able to give away your gas-gulping SUV in the used vehicle market. That means that those of us who still own cars will have to take them off the road and rediscover the communal joys of public transportation. That means that working from home will now become the norm and the main office space inhabited mainly by racks of remote-access servers will become the general case rather than the exceptional one. That means that, instead of lunch or dinner meetings with friends and business associates, we will have to make do with video conversations via Skype or Yahoo messenger. That means that we will have to forego traveling for pleasure and be content with watching the National Geographic channel. That means that, in the end, we will have to consume less and make what we use last longer.

There’s a bright side to this: development of the cleaner, more climate-friendly sources of energy that environmentally-conscious consumers have long wanted is going to finally become profitable for investors. The Philippine Energy Summit last January in fact identified the development of renewable and alternative sources of energy as an absolutely essential component of what must be the country’s logical response to rising oil prices. Thankfully, legislators – even if the huge transportation and travel allowances they pay themselves are paid for by us – seem finally set to pass “An Act Promoting the Development, Utilization, and Commercialization of Renewable Energy Resources.” Its avowed objects are to “accelerate the exploration and development of renewable energy resources such as biomass, solar, wind, hydro, and ocean energy” and to “increase the utilization of renewable energy by institutionalizing the development of national and local capabilities in the use of renewable energy systems and promoting its efficient and cost-effective commercial application.” Great. It’s about time. Let us hope that these easily distracted legislators do not find their attention drawn elsewhere before they vote on this.

Still, new renewable energy options will require two to five years to implement and we need to cope with escalating energy costs now. At $200 per barrel oil, annual inflation is estimated by the University of the Philippines-based Institute for Development and Econometric Analysis Inc. (headed by Dr. Cayetano Paderanga) to hit 14.6% as a result of the oil price’s combined impact on both basic consumer products and the peso-dollar exchange rate. That, I fear, may even be optimistic. Today, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the year-on-year inflation rate is already at 11.2%, which is a 14-year high, and oil is only at $143 per barrel.

Realistically, the only thing we can really do at the moment in the face of high oil prices is to cut down on our use of energy and make our consumption of it more efficient. In that connection, participants at the Energy Summit urged also the immediate enactment of a comprehensive Energy Conservation Act that would provide incentives for energy conservation activities. That law would “encourage the development of energy efficient technologies” and “remove barriers to the effective promotion of efficiency initiatives in the energy market sector.”

Even without such a law, however, a multi-sector task force for energy conservation has already been mobilized by Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes to flesh out and implement the nuts and bolts of a national energy efficiency and conservation plan. That plan includes, for example, the total replacement of the 68 million incandescent bulbs now in use in the country with energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps, the development of energy-efficient standard labeling for all industrial equipment and home appliances, the implementation of a major retrofitting program for local government units, commercial establishments, and industrial firms, the building of more and better mass transport systems for moving people and goods, and the provision of funding support for energy efficiency and conservation projects. We should all support these initiatives.

But, whatever, changes in the way we live can no longer be avoided. We must brace ourselves for new realities. I only hope I won’t have to start biking to my classes in Diliman. I really don’t have the energy for that.

There is very little by way of a concerted effort by the authorities -on both sides of the aisle- to focus on food security, energy conservation and alternative sources of energy, and the improvement of efficiency, say in the improvement of public transportation. This is not to say steps aren’t being taken in that direction, they are, as Azurin’s column details.

There is much the citizenry can do on its own, or the lower levels of the bureaucracy can do in partnership with the private sector, but government still needs to take the lead in many respects, not least in identifying the priorities in terms of necessary investments, now or in the near future, in cost-saving devices and equipment and improved standards and specifications (an end to building airconditioning-dependent buildings, for example, and the installation of windmills, solar panels, etc. on a scale that makes it possible for government, for example, to make it feasible -because affordable- for home-owners and commercial buildings to adopt these technologies, too). This is in addition to the investments required to lift the country out of poverty: RP needs P39.7T from 2007 to 2015 to finance MDGs.

Mong Palatino in Global Voices has an excellent roundup of regional initiatives in this regard, and again, government has to take the lead in ensuring the country’s part of these regional undertakings (an ASEAN consensus on nuclear energy, for example). And past issues that bedeviled development projects need to be addressed (opposition to power plants, including geothermal plants, even nuclear energy, etc. among others).

Overseas, in our part of the world, Malaysia’s Anwar Again Accused of Sodomy. See blogger-turned-parliamentarian Jeff Ooi’s blog here and here for a closer look at how things are playing out, politically, for Anwar. The latest in the Asia Sentinel is Anwar Tries To Face Down His Accusers:

Anwar, the opposition coalition’s most charismatic figure, had expected to stroll through a by-election for parliament sometime in the next few weeks and be handed formal leadership of the opposition. The next step would be a no-confidence vote to sink Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and the ruling Barisan Nasional, a move that would give Anwar the top job and cap a remarkable political comeback for the high-flying politician who was derailed a decade ago by sexual abuse and corruption charges. Now he first has to clear up allegations, justified or not, that have dogged him for a decade…

…However, Anwar must not just win that as-yet unnamed by-election but win it by a landslide. He might already have been facing political headwinds over the fact that the government is attempting to cushion the effect of the removal of petrol subsidies, a major thorn in the side of the public. A highly-publicized attempt to push through a no-confidence motion by the Sabah Progressive Party, a presumed ally, against Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi fizzled, with members of the party accusing the leadership of selling out.

Certainly Anwar’s difficulties give the BN some badly needed breathing space after it lost its two-thirds majority in the March 8 elections for the first time since independence. The defeat came after the once-impregnable political machine suffered through a marathon series of scandals, several of them involving Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who is under fire for unsubstantiated claims over his and his wife’s supposed involvement in the gruesome 2006 murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu and for reports of profiteering on defense contracts. There have also been persistent and convincing charges of endemic corruption in the country’s judiciary.

In the meantime, as for the beleaguered government of Badawi, Malaysia Plays the Illegal Immigrant Card Again.

In Thailand, a commentary, Democracy in Asia? Beware of Thailand, by Francesco Sisci in La Stampa, views People Power from the prism of his country’s experience with Mussolini’s March on Rome:

Massive protests sometimes can push governments to send citizens to the ballots at an earlier date, but this is the exception to the rule. Governments brought into power by the shouting of a mob may be revolutionary, but they are not democratic.

That situation seems to occur in Thailand, where street protests have cried for new elections three times in as many years. However, the government won the elections each time and belied the protesters, who then proved to represent only a minority of society.

When a minority imposes its will on the majority, it is not a democracy—it is a dictatorship. In fact, in September 2006, after months of loud demonstrations, the military staged a coup d’etat in Thailand that did not punish the protesters but banished the ruling party, Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai (TRT). The military set new rules, disbanded the TRT, forbid Thaksin from taking part in campaigning, and called new elections for December 2007. Once again, Thaksin won the elections, with a new party that backed him, the People’s Party.

This should have settled once and for all the situation: If Thaksin managed to win an election held under rules designed to his disadvantage, certainly most Thais wanted him—or his fellow party members—to rule.

Yet, a month ago, protesters took to the streets once again, demanding the government resignation—just six months after last elections!

It is absolutely clear: The protesters represent a minority. As such, they should be allowed to voice their grievances but only as far as they do not interfere with the government functioning.

Moreover, as in any democratic country, demonstrations have to be authorized and otherwise must be forcibly removed. This is necessary to prevent the minority from prevailing on the majority and establishing a dictatorship.

This is not happening—the police seem powerless, the military refuses to intervene, and the demonstrations grow bolder by the day. The protesters insist on the same old thing: The prime minister must quit. Why should he quit? Because a mob said so. Then who should appoint the new government? Who knows. Or does somebody?

But this is not democracy. This is, once again, a coup d’etat. It does not matter whether the military rolls out tanks to banish the prime minister; it is bad enough that they tolerate a situation where a democratically elected government is held hostage to a rabble shouting empty slogans.

Not only that: Last month, the Thai generals publicly announced on television that “they did not want a coup.” This sounded like a threat—so much so that American Secretary of Defense Robert Gates immediately reacted by saying that the U.S. wanted democracy, not a coup, for Thailand.

For a few days, the generals stepped back and the protesters grew silent. But then, the escalation started all over again.

What’s at stake? The power to change Thailand’s old ways. A group of entrenched interests opposes the radical reforms brought by Thaksin. He wants to foster new entrepreneurs, create new small and medium enterprises, give credit to new companies, and let old inefficient ones go bust. But those old companies hate to lose their privileges to newcomers and are trying to cling to their monopolies by any means. Three elections prove that the majority of Thailand is with Thaksin.

His commentary provoked commentary, in turn, from Bangkok Pundit and Jotman who points to a piece by Shawn Crispin in the Asia Times, who says the recent protests lack the essential ingredient of succesfull protest actions: the engagement of the middle class.

Since the Philippines and Thailand seem to be operating on parallel political tracks, what’s going on in Thailand should be of great interest to Filipinos. While the Italian pundit believes Thaksin represented modernity, this update on Thailand’s goings-on isn’t so sure. See A Carnival of Reaction paralyses the Thai political process by a Thai reformist:

On the one hand we see the deterioration of Thai Rak Thai from a modernizing capitalist party with pro-poor policies, but a dreadful human rights record, into the Peoples Power Party, headed by ultra Right-wing Prime Minister Samak Suntarawej. His cabinet is staffed with gangsters and sleazy politicians.

On the other hand, we see the so-called Peoples Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which organized large demonstrations in 2005 and 2006 to oust Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The movement started as a coalition between Peoples Movement leaders and the right-wing royalist businessman Sonti Limtongkul.

This movement was never particularly progressive in its demands, but it has now degenerated into a proto-fascist organization. First they called for the king to sack Thaksin and appoint a new prime minister back in 2006. Then they supported and welcomed the military coup. They supported the idea of appointed senators, rather than elections for the upper house. They backed, and continue to defend, the military’s anti-democratic constitution.

Now they are raising the ultra right-wing slogans of “Nation, Religion and King” while playing fascist nationalist songs from the 1970s. In late June they started a row to try and whip up crude nationalist sentiment over the Khmer temple Preah Vihear…

…The reason the PAD felt the need to use demagogic nationalist politics was because they have tried all means to get rid of Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party which was transformed after the coup into the Peoples Power Party. Repeated demonstrations, a coup, a court-inspired dissolution of Thai Rak Thai and a military constitution have all failed to dent the electorate’s support for the parties. That is why the PAD have now suggested that parliamentary elections be scrapped for 70 percent of MPs. The poor obviously “cannot be trusted with the vote”.

The opposition Democrat Party under the twin leadership of young, Oxford educated, Abhisit Vejjajiva and Korn Chatikavanij, also favors authoritarian means. Its extreme neo-liberal policies are not popular with the poor who are the majority of the population. They supported the 2006 coup and the PAD and want though Internet censorship on alternative news websites like Prachatai. Recently they spent much time in their parliamentary debate attacking the government for “selling Thailand’s sovereignty” down the river over Preah Vihear. The adoption of infantile chauvinism comes from having nothing of substance to say…

…How did it get to this stage? One important reason is the lack of independence among peoples’ organizations, NGO networks and social movements. This lack of political independence stems from a refusal to take political theory and party building seriously.

The concentration on single issues and political lobbying means that the people’s movement has sought one white knight after another, rather than building a party of the left.

I leave it to you to find the parallels with the administration and opposition here at home.

In Europe, the wave of migrants from East to West seems to be receding, see A turning tide? in The Economist.

In America, Cindy’s fortune: An asset and a liability looks at how Republican’s focusing on the fortune of Heinz heiress Teresa Kerry is now biting them in the ass. In the meantime, McCain game plan worries insiders. And here’s a fascinating look at Late-Period Limbaugh and the American radio talk industry. On the other hand, check out BuzzMachine, who looks at how Obama’s supporters have harnessed his internet infrastructure to pressure their own candidate. And Lilly Gorren looks at The Importance of the Angry Voter in 2008:

Scholars studying political psychology have concluded that the angry voter is a potentially swing voter. According to many of these scholars (George Marcus, Ted Brader, W. Russell Neuman, Michael Mackuen, etc.), enthusiastic voters are more likely to continue their established habit and vote for the same individual or party that they previously voted for or supported. Whereas the voter who has become anxious or angry during the political process—anxious because of some of the issues that have been raised or the way in which they have been raised; angry because they are unsatisfied with their options or they do not like the current state of affairs or the direction that the country or party is following, etc.—is more open to considering other options, options outside of their normal habit. Marcus, Neuman and Mackuen explain (in Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment) that “anxious voters are more open minded for having set aside their dispositions.”

Many angry voters here at home in 2010?

Next Page »