The worm within

November 26, 2008 by mlq3
Filed under Daily Dose, Events Mode, Quezoniana

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This will be my only entry for the rest of this week, as I have to clear the decks and prepare for Asia on the Edge in Singapore this weekend. If you’re there, you may want to attend some of the Thought Leaders activities.

The news has now shifted from the killing of impeachment to the Palace game plan on amending the Constitution. After all, it seems RP Elections 2010: The Election Watchblog, might either be an exercise in futility, or a premature one until pending matters are resolved.

On November 11, I wrote of the Poisoned fruit of the Constitution. Instead of incrimental, confidence-building reforms, one problem is that officialdom is immediately going whole hog without the public being in the know as to what, exactly, is being proposed -or if there are any limits.

But I’d like to put forward a survey of past Charter Change efforts as a guide to ongoing debate on Charter Change and ask, along the way:

1. What makes for a succesful Charter Change effort? More Charter Change efforts have succeeded than have failed: 1939, 1940, 1947 all succeeded, and 1967-1971 (to get a convention going) worked; ; 1976-1986 amendents all succeeded; 1987 succeeded.

2. What dooms Charter Change to fail or at least, imperils it? 1973 worked due to force majeure and legal legerdemain; 1997-98, 1999-2000, and 2005-2006 all failed due to public protests, defeat in the courts, or both.

In general, what is remarkable is that Constitutional Change is viewed as some sort of magic pill to cure the illnesses of the country.

When Adrian Cristobal died, it seemed to me that he and his fellow intellectuals who served Ferdinand Marcos brought forth the only real game in town, other than Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. And that is, the idea of a New Society, a Bagong Lipunan. Though both are essentially two sides of the same Year Zero coin.

Bagong Pagsilang (Hymn of the New Society) – Bagong Lipunan Choral Ensemble, Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, Felipe Padilla de Leon

May bagong silang,
May bago nang buhay,
Bagong bansa,
Bagong galaw,
Sa Bagong Lipunan.Magbabago ang lahat,
Tungo sa pag-unlad,
at ating itanghal,
Bagong lipunan!

From the Right to the Middle,the -or a- New Society is the dominant perspective to this day: the idea that there is an Old Society and that it is possible -and desirable- to institute a New Society. This goes against traditional notions of nation-building as an evolutionary process.

The President is a product of history, in her case, a thoroughbred history, and the various members of the ruling coalition partake, too, of that thoroughbred history, with its own dynamics.
let’s look back at why the populace is often so hostile to any proposals to amend the Constitution. You can see contemporary attitudes reflected in Daily Musings and A Simple Life.

From the very start, our efforts to establish and live under constitutional government have been constrained by events. Let me suggest is that the reason is the public generally takes a reverential attitude towards the law, while the political class, because of its colonial experience, takes a more fluid, tactical approach while maintaining an outward reverence that’s necessary both to keep in step with public expectations, and because that reverence is required to maintain public order and security.

Yet there are times when the public is confronted by what it perceives to be a divergence in its attitudes between the public itself and its leaders.

When the Revolution began, it was under the auspices of a secret society, the Katipunan; dissatisfaction on the part of established provincial leaders, used to a more orderly and legalistic manner of doing things, led to the elimination of that secret society and its replacement with a series of nominal republics until the Revolution could be resumed against Spain; but attempts at establishing a fully-functioning state with a true national reach was aborted, in turn, by conflict with the United States.

Under American rule, Filipino leaders, more often than not, also called to the bar, had to walk a kind of tightrope: by training and instinct they were oriented towards the law; by avocation and even ambition, they were tasked with undermining that law, or diverting it to ends not intended by the colonial ruling power. Yet the ultimate means to replace one regime with another -armed force- was not an option for a generation and a people who’d lived through the defeat and trauma of the Filipino-American War. So they did it by fundamentally playing within the rules but pushing the envelope as much as they could.

In 1923, Manuel Roxas was quoted by Time Magazine as saying,

We have encroached upon the rights of the Governor General because in that guise liberties are won.

This admission that they were out to subvert the powers of the American governor-general was nothing unique or surprising for it was the bedrock of other independence efforts, such as the Congress Party’s independence agitation in India. Your allegiance to the law and logic of an alien power extends only to such allegiance being convenient to your ultimate cause, independence from that alien power.

Of course, the perspective of a lawyer, however incendiary his rhetoric may be, is different from that of the ideologue, the bobm-throwing revolutionary; in that sense the Nacionalista Party’s leaders in the Philippines were closer in attitude to temperament, tactics and objectives to Mohammed Ali Jinnah than they were, say, to Gandhi (Gandhi would only become relevant to a later generation, as Ninoy Aquino’s embracing of Gandhian tactics during martial law demonstrated). See Stanley Wolpert’s summary of Jinnah’s life and ideas.

Yet as American historian Joseph Ellis recently pointed out in his book Founding Brothers, the problem of any generation self-consciously embarked on establishing a new nation, is how to dismantle the old system on one hand, while establishing firm foundations for a new state. The danger of any revolution, whether violent or peaceful, is that it plants the seeds for an endless cycle of revolution and rebuilding.

In the 1935 Constitutional Convention, as Teodoro M. Locsin recounted (quoting another writer),

Among the delegates there were, as one writer pointed out, “blue-blooded nobles from the Moroland, trained intellectuals from world-famous colleges and universities, religious leaders and moral crusaders, political moguls and parliamentary luminaries, eminent educators and outstanding jurists, revolutionary generals and World War veterans, business entrepreneurs and banking magnates, opulent hacenderos and small planters, noted writers and famous orators, wealthy landowners and indigent professionals, and former school teachers and actual university professors.”

Yet nearly all had memories of the Revolution of 1896 and the Republic of 1898, of the Filipino-American War that followed. How, then, to establish a government that would endure? See Constitution Day, February 7, 1953.

The debate over amending the 1935 Constitution took place over five years, practically from the ratification of the charter until amendments were finally accomplished and ratified in 1940. During that period, three main points emerged and it’s interesting that the three main points -the issues- have remained consistent over time. It’s important to note, and this is often overlooked, that before World War II, two main branches, or approaches, to constitutional amendments emerged. The first was economic, the second, political and structural.

With regards to the economic provisions of the Charter: For a kind of prologue, refer to Some free trade nonsense, April 3, 1909. See Committee Thrashing Out Details of Independence, December 24, 1932 and ; how the Philippine economic lobby operated under Joaquin Elizalde in the late 30s; how this framework evolved: and my own article, Institutionalizing state interventionism.

See Primer on the plebiscite, October 21, 1939. which provides a rundown on the economic questions put before the people.

With regards to the politico-structural debate, they centered, in turn, on two debates:

1. The term of the chief executive:

2. Unicameralism vs. Bicameralism:

Economic provisions proved less contentious, before the War, than political provisions. The first glimmerings of public opinion by means of polling began could be seen in the national debate over term limits and the restoration of the senate.

So then the issues having been joined, the question was how would the administration accomplish its objective of amending the Constitution?

One of the most interesting political autobiographies I’ve read is Jose E. Romero’s Not So Long Ago, now sadly out of print. In Chapter 11 of his book, he recounts the circumstances surrounding the amendments of 1940. His recollections provide an insight into how such proposals arise, and the rollercoaster ride such proposals go through before they reach fruition.

He begins by pointing to the problem faced by the Nacionalistas, who had established, for the first time, in 1938, a complete and total dominance of the legislature. And their natural worries that by 1941, that party dominance and unity might be fractured by fighting over the successor of the incumbent:

Midway in his term of office [1937-38], the inevitable speculation as to President Quezon’s successor and the beginning of the stirrings of the potential candidates began. Of course everybody realized that President Quezon would determine the choice of his successor. Vice-President Osmeña was a logical choice. President Quezon had given him some encouragement, but he also encouraged Mr. Roxas and, it seems, Speaker Yulo. At one time he even considered the possibility of a compromise candidate, and I remember his mentioning Teofilo Sison, who was then Secretary of the Interior and who had done a good job in that important position and also as Governor of the big province of Pangasinan. Mr. Osmeña who as I said was the most logical successor, had often been unfortunate politically. On the one hand, his ambition was opposed by the leaders of the National Assembly, Speaker Jose Yulo and Floor Leader Quintin Paredes. The peculiar situation had arisen that while all the different factions were reunited under the leadership of President Quezon, the cleavage between the former Quezon followers and the followers of Osmeña and Roxas had persisted. There still was rivalry and mutual suspicion between the ANTIs, who had followed President Quezon in the fight on the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Independence Act, and the PROs, who had followed the leadership of Osmeña and Roxas. Now on top of the opposition of the ANTIs, Mr. Osmeña had to reckon with the opposition of his erstwhile ally, Mr. Roxas. When Mr. Osmeña would press his claim on President Quezon, the latter would tell him that he would have to have an agreement with Mr. Roxas. Mr. OsmeÃ±a would tell President Quezon that Mr. Roxas had assured him that he had no ambition for the position himself, but Mr. Quezon would smilingly tell him that he should get an iron-clad assurance from Roxas because the latter had given him to understand otherwise. It was quite obvious to me that President Quezon was playing one against the other as the threat of disruption of the United Nacionalista Party would inevitably give rise to a movement to draft President Quezon to prevent such disunity. Either their ambitions had blinded Messrs. Osmeña and Roxas to this strategy or Mr. Roxas actually preferred the reelection of President Quezon to OsmeÃ±a’s succession to the office.

The solution, as Romero pointed out above, was to maintain the status quo; but that political objective had to be couched in terms more appealing to the public than merely preserving party dominance:

So it was that the movement was started to draft President Quezon. One day, he appeared before the National Assembly together with the members of his Cabinet. He told the members of the Assembly that he could no longer ignore the movement to amend the Constitution to permit his reelection; that what he was particularly interested in among the proposed amendments was the one reestablishing the bicameral system of legislature; that as to the proposed amendment to permit his reelection, he would only consent to this provided that at the same time a provision was adopted limiting the term of office of the President to not more than eight years, following the example of George Washington.

Yet there remained the problem of how to maintain that status quo, without provoking a new split in the ruling party:

As soon as President Quezon left the session hall of the National Assembly, the Assemblymen held a caucus to discuss the proposed amendments, and if a vote had been taken that same evening the proposal would have been rejected.

I called the attention of my colleagues to the fact that the President had just told us that he would be receptive to the amendment permitting his reelection with the proviso he stipulated and for us, immediately after his speech, to reject the proposed amendments might be taken as a slap in the face. I suggested that we take a little time to consider this very serious matter and go about it in the most tactful manner. I was promptly seconded by Assemblyman Pedro Sabido, and the meeting was adjourned.

This gave the proponents of the amendment time to do some arm-twisting, and by the time the matter was taken up again, the majority had shifted in favor of the proposed amendments. Regarding this arm-twisting, Assemblyman Tomas Oppus, the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and one of the wittiest Assemblymen, described the situation in his inimitable way in a story he told his colleagues. He and his colleagues had asked the directorate of the Party if they could vote freely on the amendments since this was a matter of conscience, involving as it did the fundamental law of the country. The party leaders replied that the party had taken a stand on this question and that while they were free to vote in accordance with their own conscience, the party would take a dim view of their reliability as party men.

The situation, said Oppus, was like that of a little boy who asked his uncle if he could go to the show. The uncle said he could do so but that when he came back, he would get a whipping. “That,” said the little boy, “means I cannot go to the show.”

Romero then describes how the leader concerned, Quezon, set about finding out how public opinion -and his allies- would react to his extension in office; arm-twisting in such a case, wasn’t enough; conviction, not compulsion, was essential if public opinion was to be won:

Still, the President was bothered by what history might say of his part in the approval of the amendment to permit his own reelection. He organized a group of nine men that he considered his close friends who could wisely advise him as to whether the amendment to permit his reelection should be presented. I can easily remember those who composed this group because there were four Joses in it -Jose Yulo, Jose Abad Santos, Jose Laurel, and Jose Romero. There were two Manuels -Manuel Roxas and Manuel Briones (three, if President Quezon, who was always present in spirit, was to be counted as member of this group) and there were Claro Recto, Quintin Paredes, and Pedro Sabido. We were made to promise not even to mention the existence of this group. We even agreed not to arrive together at the place selected for our meetings, which was the office of the Chairman of the Board of the PNB, the Chairman then being Secretary Abad Santos. At one of these meetings, Dr. Laurel said that if he had his way, he would not touch a comma of the Constitution. Eventually, however, Dr. Laurel and the rest of us would line up behind the proposed amendments. After thorough deliberation, we took a vote. The vote was four in favor and five against. Those who voted in favor were Abad Santos, Yulo, Paredes, and Roxas. Those who voted against were Recto, Laurel, Briones, Sabido, and I.

I really thought that with President Quezon already bothered by compunctions as to the move he was about to take, this majority opinion against the proposal expressed by men whose loyalty and wisdom he reposed confidence and whom he had called on to give their honest opinion, would deter him from proceeding with the proposal. In any event it did not turn out that way. In later deliberations of the party caucus, the proposed amendments were approved.

Romero then recounts how lobbying was done, one-on-one:

I hied myself off to Malacañan and was immediately taken to his office. “Romero,” he said as soon as I was seated, “I wish I had died before this question of my reelection arose.”

I was shocked. I told him I saw no reason why he should be so concerned with the problem, that the great majority of the people were behind him, and that they would accept whatever decision he made. As I have said, I knew that he had been bothered about the moral issue involved and about his image in the future being tarnished with the same brush of ambition that characterized most of the presidents and dictators of the banana republics. But I did not imagine that this would worry him so much that he preferred to have died before he could face such a problem…

He said that now he was doubtful whether he should encourage the movement for his reelection… I asked him if he would take it as a lack of of affection and loyalty towards him if we started an opposition to the proposal. He said that we could go ahead and spearhead such an opposition. He suggested, however, that the term of office of the next President should be reduced to four years without reelection…

Everyone having been consulted and heard, the time then came for the enforcement of party discipline:

As I was entering the session hall of the National Assembly a few hours later, I was met at the aisle by Speaker Yulo, who asked me what it was that I had told President Quezon which made him change his mind. I narrated the whole story, but the Speaker was adamant, and he said he would proceed with the campaign for the approval of the amendments irrespective of President Quezon’s desires. I told him that the process of amending was not easy as we needed only a few votes to defeat the proposed amendments. At that time we were adhering strictly to the interpretation that questions had to be approved by three-fourths of all the members of the National Assembly, and not only of those present. There were many vacancies at that time in the National Assembly, mostly due to the appointments in the Executive Department, and a mere twenty votes either voting against or abstaining from voting or absenting themselves would defeat the proposed amendments. I told the Speaker that I had the President’s permission to oppose the amendments and I thought I had the votes to succeed in our opposition.

I began getting the signature of those opposing the amendments. Many assemblymen were wary about signing although, at heart, they were opposed because of their regard for, or more candidly, fear of President Quezon. I assured them I had the President’s permission and they signed on condition that they were assured that the President really had no objection to our move. Predictably, the Assemblymen from Cebu and from Capiz were among the first to sign. Thereafter, others followed and I thought I had the required number of votes to defeat the amendments. The leadership of the house, seeing we were making headway, appealed to President Quezon to ask us to withdraw our opposition. This came about one night, at a gathering at Manila Hotel when everybody who was anybody in politics was in attendance. I was surprised and flattered when, leaving all the other political moguls, the President took me by the arm to a corner. He began by asking me if my political antagonists in my province were still bothering me. I told him they were still preparing the ground against me in the next election. He told me I had nothing to worry about for, if need be, he would go and campaign for me. Then finally, as if incidentally, he said that as regards the matter of the amendments, the leadership of the Assembly had committed themselves too deeply, that their prestige was involved, that that he was therefore requesting me to withdraw my opposition to them.

As I have already said, the opponents signed the agreement on condition that really President Quezon was not interested one way or another in the approval of the amendments and so, naturally, when I told them about the final word of the President, the whole movement collapsed…

These extracts indicate the dynamics at work both among legislators and between legislators and the chief executive; in three generations, the dynamics have hardly changed.

The issue of party solidarity having been resolved, what was taking place in private could now unfold in public. See United behind Quezon, July 15, 1939 which identified the way the various proposals evolved into a menu of proposed changes:

“AYE!” With a tired roar that echoed hollowly in the dark bowl of the Rizal basketball stadium in Manila, one night last week, the Nationalist party convention approved the proposal to amend the Constitution, so as to allow the reelection of the President.

“Nay!” A half-hearted and scattered cry in opposition went up, after hours of resounding but futile debate.

An undisputed majority sent up an “Aye!” again, the following morning, approving another amendment, to revive the old senate.

The “Nay!” was even weaker.

For three days and nights last week, the party which rules the country met in the stifling shadow of a gathering typhoon to deliver itself of a series of historical mandates to its members in Malacañan, in the Assembly, in the cabinet, in every important office of the government. The mandates, expressed in resolutions, were to:

1. Change the Presidential term from one six-year period, to two four-year periods;

2. Revive the old bicameral legislature;

3. Create an administrative body to take charge of all elections;

4. Revise local governments to make them more, responsible and efficient (presumably, along the lines of the Quezon plan for appointive mayors and governors);

5. Readjust the three-year terms of assemblymen, provincial and municipal officials, so as to make them fit the new four-year presidential term;

6. Reaffirm loyalty to the coalition platform, including independence in 1946;

7. Request President Quezon to call a special session of the Assembly;

8. Ratify Presidential and Assembly action on the JPCPA report;

9. Congratulate President Quezon for his social justice program, and to request him to remain in office (that is, take advantage of the reelection amendment);

10. Congratulate Party President Yulo for his handling of the convention;

11. Increase the representation of governors in the Nationalist executive commission, from five to 12, thus putting them on a par with the Assemblymen.

The whole menu being called, by Speaker Yulo, a series of “Conservative Reforms,” which were opposed by one Assemblyman as going against public opinion(see Free Press straw vote will feature reelection, May 6, 1939. according to the October, 1939 article above, public opinion, as expressed in the poll, opposed re-election).

A year later, in 1940, the amendments had been boiled down to four:

1. Changing the President’s term from six years, no re-election, to four years, with one relection, with a special election in 1941 qualifying the incumbent to a two-year extension to make for eight years; furthermore, the change in the President’s term was reflected in the proposed lower house, making the terms of representatives and local officials 4 years instead of three years, while senators would be elected for 6 year terms.

The argument of the “indispensible” man was put forward by Quezon himself, as a signal to his partymates that their forty year old one-party dominance (in the 1938 mid term election, for the first time, not a single opposition Assemblyman had been elected) might be imperiled on the eve of independence:

“The only thing that I am afraid of,” he confessed, “is that after I leave the presidency the country may be divided, not along political lines, but on the choice of my successor. The country is not prepared for a great division among our people.”

2. Restoring the Senate but on a purely national basis; unicameralism had only won out in the 1935 Constitutional Convention because the bicameralists were divided on whether the Senate should be elected according to districts, as was the case under the Jones Law, or nationally. (One compromise no one has noticed is that the restoration of the Senate came at a price: the Congress of the Commonwealth and the Republic would both have a Commission on Appointments composed of congressmen and senators, in equal measure, a deviation from the Jones Law and American practice that puts the vetting of executive appointments strictly in the hands of the Senate. Further research, I think, might reveal that this was a very clever move to make assemblymen agree to diluting the powers of their chamber, while ensuring that no Senate President would be able to wield the powers Quezon had so effectively wielded in fighting the American governors-general by threatening to reject the confirmation of appointments. The always-pliable House would at least be able to obstruct any senatorial inclinations to put a squeeze on appointments: thus, while future Senate Presidents would always look back to the 1916-1935 Senate as a blueprint for their presidential ambitions, in truth, the 1940 setup makes using the Senate Presidency as more than a rhetorical podium a structural impossibility)

3. Establishing a Commission on Elections: combined with bloc voting, this made for the kind of equity of the incumbent that remains a reality in other Southeast Asian countries; removing bloc voting in the early 1950s, however, began a quarter century of erosion that led to the parties being unable to stand up to Marcos in 1972; and the multiparty system, in turn, has entrenched executive influence on national elections but in terms of a single person and not a ruling party, which reconfigures with every new presidency.

4. (Actually accomplished, separately, in 1939) approving the amendment of the Tydings-McDuffie Act to establish preferential trade relations with the United States up to the 1960s.

a dangerous president

The amendments were approved in a national plebiscite. See Prelude to Dictatorship? Monday, Sep. 02, 1940 for Time’s account of the campaign for amendments in the context of the Far Eastern situation, and Bedroom Campaign: Monday, Nov. 24, 1941 (where block-voting was first practiced) for an account of the amendments finally operating for the first time: and the establishment of what, if the war hadn’t intervened, would have been a political system very familiar to the Malaysians and Singaporeans today (hency my belief that the Philippine experience since World War II has been a tug-of-war between our political class, whose instincts and preferences aren’t far removed from their peers in Malaysia and Singapore or even Japan, and the public, increasingly Western or at least broadly populist in its political actions and orientations; hence the constant frustration of the political class, which has failed to return to the comfortably setup envisioned before the War but came quite close to it in under martial law).

What the ideological and political development of the Commonwealth would have been if uninterrupted by the War, is perhaps best explored by the French historian William Gueraiche, reflecting the most recent scholarship on the subject.

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Politics US Federal language philippines

But the War took place, proving that the best laid plans of mice and men can be derailed.The country had been poised, more or less, to make a smooth transition to independence prior to the War; but in a matter of a few months, the country was devastated and its infrastructure wrecked. The generation that reached adulthood during the Spanish era passed from the scene. The first generation that reached maturity under the Americans were now at the helm.

With independence finally taking place under Roxas, and with the issues of the president’s term and the legislature’s composition having been settled in 1940, the question of economic provisions once more emerged, this time on the basis of the destruction of the economy and infrastructure.

See Economic Relations with the United States:

The most controversial provision of the Bell Act was the “parity” clause that granted United States citizens equal economic rights with Filipinos, for example, in the exploitation of natural resources. If parity privileges of individuals or corporations were infringed upon, the president of the United States had the authority to revoke any aspect of the trade agreement. Payment of war damages amounting to US$620 million, as stipulated in the Philippine Rehabilitation Act of 1946, was made contingent on Philippine acceptance of the parity clause.

The Bell Act was approved by the Philippine legislature on July 2, two days before independence. The parity clause, however, required an amendment relating to the 1935 constitution’s thirteenth article, which reserved the exploitation of natural resources for Filipinos. This amendment could be obtained only with the approval of three-quarters of the members of the House and Senate and a plebiscite. The denial of seats in the House to six members of the leftist Democratic Alliance and three Nacionalistas on grounds of fraud and violent campaign tactics during the April 1946 election enabled Roxas to gain legislative approval on September 18. The definition of three-quarters became an issue because three-quarters of the sitting members, not the full House and Senate, had approved the amendment, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the administration’s interpretation.

In March 1947, a plebiscite on the amendment was held; only 40 percent of the electorate participated, but the majority of those approved the amendment.

What is significant in the 1947 Parity Amendment campaign were two things:

1. The first time an assassination attempt was made on a President (a crazed barber, as it turned out, not a full-scale plot; but a close call nonetheless for Roxas at Plaza Miranda).

2. The removal of enough opposition congressmen and senators (on charges of fraud and terrorism) in order to obtain the votes required to propose the amendment to the people.

See Time’s Two Freedoms, Monday, Mar. 24, 1947 for a contemporary overall report and Report on the Plebiscite, April 5, 1947 for a report from the critics of the plebiscite.

Death had prevented Roxas from seeking a second term and possibly, uniting the Liberals and Nacionalistas and restoring the one party system carefully built up prior to the War. Roxas’s death put the presidency in the hands of Elpidio Quirino who became the first president to face an impeachment effort and who was unable to unify his own party, much less consolidate power to the extent he could envision a restoration of the prewar, one party system.

But his defeat at the hands of a charismatic protege -Ramon Magsaysay- meant that the old instincts to unify under one party government could reassert themselves. Magsaysay himself had reached maturity in the prewar years, was an admirer of, and consciously modeled himself in terms of how he wielded executive powers, on Quezon (this is often overlooked by those attempting to describe his government). See The “dictatorship” of Ramon Magsaysay, October 15, 1955.

Ramon Magsaysay was poised to run for re-election in 1957 as the combined candidate of the LP and NP; his reelection, had it taken place, would then have confronted the country with a question set aside only by Quezon’s death in 1944 and Roxas’s in 1948: what then, after the President’s succesful re-election? An amendment to allow a third term?

Of course Magsaysay died in 1957 and with his passing, instead of what seemed an inevitable return to the prewar single-party system, the country lurched, instead, and it seems to me, quite accidentally, in the direction of a multiparty system; Carlos P. Garcia was elected as the first plurality, and not majority, president in the country’s history. Garcia remains under-appreciated, or more accurately, under-studied, in terms of his institutional and political influence on the development of the presidency. He wrestled with questions that have become par for the course for post-Edsa presidents: how do you govern without a majority mandate? How do you wage a campaign if you lack charisma and popularity?

This man beside Magsaysay, Ferdinand E. Marcos, would set out to accomplish what was probable under his predecessors but which fate had intervened to foil. Marcos was ten years younger than Magsaysay, so less thoroughly steeped in the unselfconscious pro-Americanism of Magsaysay’s generation; was more ambivalent about democracy perhaps and definitely, Marcos was fundamentally different from Magsaysay in that FM was steeped in the fraternity power-culture of the prewar University of the Philippines, and had an entirely different and again, ambivalent experience during the War years.

Of Marcos what has insufficiently been written about, is how he grew up in the closing years of the American colonial period, but at a time when leaders were attempting to lay out the premise for a political development that consciously deviated from the American experience. Quezon had begun the building of an Army as the “backbone of the nation,” had proposed “partyless democracy,” had put forward the need for a national ideology, which Jose P. Laurel, one of those who’d been drafted to come up with those ideas, during the Japanese Occupation actually tried to undertake. Thus were the intellectual foundations laid for what Marcos would later describe “Constitutional Authoritarianism”. In Laurel’s 1943 Inaugural Address, there are three passages of particular relevance.

First,

In the ultimate analysis, all government is physical power and that government is doomed which is impotent to suppress anarchy and terrorism. The Constitution vests in the President’s full authority to exercise the coercive powers of the State for its preservation. In order to make those powers effective, my administration shall be committed to the training, equipment and support of an enlarged Constabulary force strong enough to cope with any untoward situation which might arise. Certainly, everything must be done to forestall the indignity and humiliation of being obliged to invoke outside intervention to quell purely internal disturbances.

Next,

Without political consolidation, we cannot hope to accomplish the desired integration of our political, economic, and social life. The abolition of political parties is a desirable feature of the military regime which we must conserve especially during the formative period of our Republic. Political parties have divided us in the past and we should avoid the recurrence of our sad experience. We must eradicate the baneful influence of factional strife and strike at the very roots of partisan spirit. I shall stand for no political party while I hold the rudder of the ship of State. We must serve, only one master-our country; we must follow one voice-the voice of the people. We must have only one party, the people’s party, a party that would stand for peace, for reconstruction, for sound national economy, for social reform, for the elevation of the masses, for the creation of a new world order.

And finally,

I consider as rallying centers of our national unity: the Flag, the Constitution, the National Anthem, and the President of the Republic. The Flag, because it symbolizes the sacrifices of our heroes and synthesizes our common imperishable tradition. The Constitution, because it expresses our collective and sovereign will and embodies the sum of our political philosophy and experience. The National Anthem, because it epitomizes the trials and tribulations, and crystallizes the longings and aspirations of our race, The President, because he is the chosen leader of our people, the directing and coordinating center of our government, and the visible personification of the State. Four-square on these rallying points, the dynamic instinct of racial solidarity latent in the heart of each and every Filipino must be aroused from its lethargy and inflamed with the passions of faith in our common destiny as a people.

Notice the legislature doesn’t even enter into the picture. A formal legislature in this context is less important than instituting mechanisms for consultation with the national-provincial leadership.

Still, it’s important to note that both main influences on Marcos’ political development: the intellectual underpinnings provided by Laurel, the up-close understanding he gained of executive-legislative and executive-public dynamics he obtained by being the son of an assemblyman, and an up-and-coming leader himself, the institutional weaknesses of institutions such as the courts, all molded Marcos in a direction the Germans might call Führerprinzip but with Filipino characteristics. In that periodic consultations, if only to give the appearance of importance for subalterns and to save face all around, take place, preferably discreetly behind closed doors, so that a united front of authority can be maintained in public.

There had been questions concerning the political structure established under the 1935 Constitution, and through a combination of populist-democratic rhetoric and weak executive leadership, the concentration of powers in the hand of the presidency was reduced. Briefly, the main reductions were as follows:

1. Making mayors elected and no longer appointed by presidents (hence, the first elected mayor of Manila, Arsenio Lacson, would prove a thorn in the side of Elpidio Quirino and all his successors).

2. The elimination of bloc voting, reducing party influence in the election of senators, and ushering in the era of media popularity as an antidote to political machinery; ironically, even as the elimination of bloc voting weakened party influence, it made presidents even more important to candidates on all levels, for Palace, instead of Party, support.

3. The gradual limitation of the President’s powers to juggle funds.

This wasn’t helped by fate intervening to knock out presidents poised to achieve second terms (Roxas, Magsaysay) which would then have led to the still-unresolved issue of presidential term limits having to be faced.

In 1969, Marcos finally achieved what had last been achieved in 1941, and that was, reelection to the presidency. Marcos, however, was saddled by sagging unpopularity and the rise of something last seen when Marcos himself was a young man -a nascent youth movement. Except this time, the youth were far less polite and infinitely more radical, than Marcos et al. had been when they were young.

After fits and starts (and one wonders, since the Constitutional Convention law was passed in 1967, whether with the encouragement based on foresight, of Marcos, preparing for his second term), a Constitutional Convention was called, with several main proposals to consider:

1. Unitary versus Federal

2. Presidential versus Parliamentary

3. Unicameral versus Bicameral

Though it seems economic issues were not at the forefront of people’s minds.

The results of the Convention would, of course, have an impact on Marcos’ political future. Leadership in the Convention would become the means by which the agenda of the Convention might be determined.

Blogger-lawyer Kataspulong, in recounting the fight between Carlos P. Garcia and Diosdado Macapagal for the presidency of the 1971 Constitutional Convention, points out the powers of an incumbent president in pursuing his own desired political outcome by aiding and abetting the ambitions of others:

It was a fight between him [Macapagal] and his 1961 routed political rival, Carlos P. Garcia. But Garcia was a dyed-in-the-wool Nacionalista, the party that adopted FM in 1965. Garcia looked at it as his last hurrah against his conquistador, the Liberal DM. Perhaps Marcos could not get over the promise made by his party mate DM in 1961 that he would not seek reelection and that Marcos was it.

In not so many words, the Boholano made it all known to the Ilocano that he wanted a last bout with the Pampango. How Garcia remonstrated with Marcos was in a manner only understood by weathered politicians. Maybe it was in Garcia’s voice or body gestures that sent Marcos in stitches. The showdown went on, and Garcia proved to be the better man. Marcos, like a statesman, disowned any hand in the selection. In just a few days, Garcia died in what was alleged to be a heart attack. His relatives swore that in his death bed, they saw the faint smile of the man Serging Osmeña christened, El Negro.

Again, the convention sought about looking for a new leader. But after Garcia there was Raul Manglapus, Teofisto Guingona and other dark horses that proved intractable. Macapagal, it was bruited about, again repaired to the Palace and sought the benediction from the tenant. The meeting was swift and soon after, the charter caucus sworn in DM as its new president.

So the 1973 Constitution, passed by the Convention convened in 1971, ended up passed in a manner similar to the way Congress passed the Parity Amendment (Parity, too, scheduled to expire in 1974, provided an impetus for foreign investors to welcome martial law, which might maintain parity by other means, though many had already sold out, hence the transfer of control of such hithertofore American companies like PLDT and Meralco to Filipino hands in the late 1960s as the Parity clock counted down to the zero hour): by means of removing the critics from the scene.

And by other means, as well: when Marcos managed to maneuver the defeat of the “ban Marcos resolution,” he then maneuvered a sweetener to ensure a healthy majority for approval: dangling seats in the proposed National Assembly for Convention Delegates who approved the draft Charter. With this incentive, the niceties of parliamentary procedure could be dispensed with, further fortifying the administration’s advantage since the opposition within the Convention had been reduced by means of arrests and some of its leading members being in exile, as Delegate Augusto Caesar Espiritu recounted in his diary on the day the Convention approved what had become a document essentially written by Marcos himself:

Teroy Laurel made a brilliant defense of his proposed amendments to the draft. We should not limit membership to the National Assembly to the delegates who would opt to serve, as was provided for in the draft, because this was really making the thing a mockery; it was humiliating.

It would seem from the amount of applause he received and the raising of hands that followed, that the amendment was carried. Indeed, it was announced by Abe Sarmiento, who was then presiding, that the motion was carried.

But then Fidel Purisima demanded voting by tellers. This changed the situation. Many delegates would not express their true wishes because the walls of the session have many eyes: the dissenters would be watched by Big Brother!

In the voting by tellers, the result was 128 to 123 -or something like that- in favor of retaining the original draft provision which states that members of the 1971 Constitutional Convention who opt to serve in the Interim Assembly by voting affirmatively would be the only ones who would be members of the National Assembly. This is c;early immoral, unfair and unjust -but the proponents have made up their minds

Yesterday, I casually told Ramon Encarnacion that perhaps the President would be a little more reasonable than his own lieutenants in the session hall. I overheard Bebet Duavit was willing to give 72 hours to those who were not present during the voting to signify their intention of voting affirmitavely. I, therefore, went to Duavit in order to persuade him to lengthen this to, say, two weeks, to enable those who are abroad to come back and give their decision. But Duavit said this was impossible. As it was, he was only trying to get them to agree on this 72 hoursâ€™ grace, but not as an amendment to the provision. It is going to be some kind of suspension of rules before actual voting on the amendment.

Later, I rose, anyway, to introduce an amendment to extend the time for those who are absent to be able to vote. Before I could complete my first few sentences, however, the floor leader, Munding Cea, cut me off, and on the same theme, said it would be completely unfair and unjust to preclude our colleagues who are not present from votingâ€¦

To our great chagrin, Toto de la Cruz, chairman of the Committee on Rules, stood to oppose this.

How could anyone in conscience oppose something like this? Where is our sense of fairness? But then, a people secure in their numbers and certain of their purpose can too easily forget that democracy requires tolerance!

Arturo Pacificador would not brook any moderation. Evidently following a “script”, he announced that those absent would be given 72 hours, provided they personally cast their votes in an open session. When some amendments were proposed, such as to allow voting by cablegrams and tegerams or letters, Pacificador, his porcupine hair blasphemously pointing heavenwards, arrogantly gesticulated. “If this is under question, I better withdraw my motion,” he haughtily trumpeted.

So we had to vote.

The tension in the air was very heavy during the voting. The roll call took place. There were 14 “No” votes.

Afterwards, the dominant group made a motion to have our vote considered, for all purposes, as the same vote for the second and third readings.

It seems no quarter are to be given. Like a no-prisoners taken stance in war. In other words, the majority would take what it can -everything- now; why wait?

It was indecent, of course. But decency could not wait any longer. Immediate voting was done -and it passed almost unanimously.

In one stroke, so to speak, we actually voted on second and third readings on the provision in question -and that means then that the provision is finished -passed!

What is done is done. We have failed our people. We were elected to be members of the Convention, not to be assemblymen. The grant of extraordinary powers and the ratification of all actions of the President does not seem to bother the delegates too much. The fact that ours is now a rubber stamp Convention and that the Assembly would be a rubber stamp Aseembly does not really matter. What is ultimately important to them, it would seem, is that we are going to be members of the Assembly -so the next area of concern is what salaries we are going to have.

Marcos therefore accomplished reestablishing what had been in place in 1941, what might have been restored sooner in 1949 or 1957, yet did so by means that hadn’t been contemplated in the more obedient days of the 40s or 50s. You actually never fully restore what once was; people and institutions are never static, even if harking back to old forms, they are somehow altered by what took place in the past. Instead of cajoling the public and Congress he did it by means of a “Revolution from the Center” -a coup d’etat- and establishing his “Constitutional Authoritarianism.”

In 1978, after having amended the 1973 constitution in 1976 to guarantee himself legislative powers even if a parliament convened, Ferdinand Marcos finally restored the legislature. It’s interesting to consider what the process of constitutional amendments was like, when the Batasan Pambansa was eventually established.

In 1980, one of his lieutenants, Assemblyman Rodolfo Albano Jr. of Isabela province proposed a constitutional amendment. The amendment would turn the immunity from suit enjoyed by a president during his term of office, into a permanent protection. That is, immunity from suit for life. Assemblyman Arturo Tolentino rose in parliament to oppose the amendment (Tolentino also wrote one of the most interesting autobiographies ever penned by a Filipino politician, titling his book Voice of Dissent).

In a move reminiscent of Quezon’s informal committee to study his re-election, Parliament set up a committee composed of Justice Minister Ricardo Puno, Solicitor-General Estelito Mendoza, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Minister Leonardo Perez (Marcos’s adviser on political affairs) and Assemblymen Emmanuel Pelaez, Juan Liwag, and Tolentino. Tolentino convinced the committee to refuse to tackle the proposal. It was sent to President Marcos and discussed in a meeting.

Tolentino recounts that in the meeting, Marcos was furious. He asked, “Where is it? Where is that provision? What will the military think of me if I will have only my own immunity as president and during my tenure?” He looked at the report and angrily repeated, “What will the military think of me when I will continue to be immune from suit as president but those who are under me and who followed my orders in times of crisis and in an hour of need will not have any immunity?”

Marcos’ table-thumping met with silence. So he went further: “This is the time for us to determine who are with me and who are not with me; and for those who are not with me, the door is open. You can join people who are like you. You have no place here.”An Assemblyman immediately chimed in suggesting not only that the proposal for lifetime immunity for the President be presented to Parliament, but immunity should be lifetime as well for other officials. Tolentino recounts, “in the face of presidential ire, nobody objected; I did not object.”

The proposed amendment was debated in parliament and Tolentino devoted six pages of his memoirs to a transcript of the debate. He claimed he was able to”water down” the amendment through a typically lawyerly definition of terms:

The extended immunity after tenure would not prevent a court from acquiring jurisdiction over the person of the ex-president who had become a private citizen, and as such subject to the judicial process. But the court would have no jurisdiction over the subject matter of the suit if it is a lawful official actâ€¦ and so the case would be dismissed. The ex-president would not really be immune from suit but cannot be held liable because what is charged is an “official act”.

In other words, no president would be exempt from being charged in court; but because every official act’s presumed legal, and thus every official act is lawful, the courts would have had to automatically dismiss any charges against any former president.

There 1973 Charter was the most heavily amended charter, the Wikipedia entry on this will have to suffice:

The 1973 Constitution, promulgated after Marcos’ declaration of martial law, introduced a parliamentary-style government. Legislative power was vested in a National Assembly whose members were elected for six-year terms. The President was elected as the symbolic head of state from the Members of the National Assembly for a six-year term and could be re-elected to an unlimited number of terms. Upon election, the President ceased to be a member of the National Assembly. During his term, the President was not allowed to be a member of a political party or hold any other office. Executive power was exercised by the Prime Minister who was also elected from the Members of the National Assembly. The Prime Minister was the head of government and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces…

The 1973 Constitution was amended in 1976 to allow the incumbent president to hold the position of prime minister and president simultaneously and to exercise legislative powers as well…

A minor amendment in 1980 changed the retiring age of judges from 65 to 70 years of age.

Amendments were done again in 1981 which established a semi-parliamentary or (semi-presidential) form of government with a president elected by direct vote of the people. Additionally, executive power was transferred back to the President (who was now the Chief Executive) and the position of Prime Minister was reduced to a minor position. Additionally, the 1981 amendments created an Executive Committee…

The last amendments in 1984 abolished the Executive Committee and restored the position of Vice-President (which did not exist in the original, unamended 1973 Constitution).

What is noteworthy that in the time of Marcos, the ghosts of history haunted all those involved, since many of them had received their political baptism of fire in the heated debates over the 1940 amendments (Marcos, Tolentino, Speaker YÃ±iguez, had all been prominent members of Young Philippines, opposing the 1940 amendments).

Since 1987, the historical memory of the public and the politicians has become far more limited. The ghosts of past amendments, however, live on, institutionally:

1. From the 1940 amendments, the bicameral composition of the Committee on Appointments, a nationally-elected Senate (but weakened by the elimination of bloc voting, briefly restored under Marcos then abandoned again), a Commission on Elections.

2. From the 1980s amendments, the position of Vice-President and the retirement age of 70 for justices.

At best, that memory goes back only to Marcos, whereas the memory of his generation went back all the way to the Revolution. There was 1896-1946, the period of national identification and creation; and 1946-1986, the period of the great divide between liberal democracy and constitutional authoritarianism; and 1986-2006, the rise and fall of people power as a Third Way.

As the PCIJ reported in 2006, In 1971 and 2006, New Charters Designed to Keep Embattled Presidents in Power, which makes for a struggle and debate untouched and uninformed by the great debates that took place prior to Marcos: which accounts for the essential sterility of the debate today.

Paul Hutchcroft is an advocate of incrimental reform, and lists several he thinks might be less contentious than going into the presidential-parliamentary or unitary-federal debate. Among them: senators elected by districts; reforms to the Comelec; abolishing Party-List representatives but coming up with better ways to elect members of the lower house.

Journal of Democracy

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Campaigns and Electi Politics

I myself think either a return to the two-party system, or run-off elections for the presidency if the multiparty system is to be retained, are essential. I’m in favor of bloc voting, too.

After 1987, every proposal for Constitutional amendments has foundered on the question of:

1. Fear of presidents perpetuating themselves in power and mistrust of the ruling coalitions of the day as being interested only in their own self-perpetuation, too.

2. Presidents, all of them armed with mere pluralities, lacking the mandate necessary to demonstrate political will; instead, they are hostage to whichever of their coalition supporters are best-funded and best-organized; yet none of these coalition members can sufficiently mobilize to convince the public that they represent anything more than sectoral interests.

3. The lack of any durable party identity to stiffen the resolve of the political class or sufficiently weaken opposition from the public or sectors opposed to any changes (including those who will oppose any and all change).

4. No organized constituency capable of blunting the ferocity of the Left in portraying any change to economic provisions as a sell-out and treason. The latent inclination of the public -specifically, the middle class- to go along with liberalizing economic provisions therefore, hasn’t been tapped.

Fidel V. Ramos came closest, but in the end held off from a full-blown confrontation with his erstwhile allies. Jose Almonte later said he felt FVR had backed off prematurely; but perhaps Ramos himself, a master of minority, factional politics, knew that he lacked time to properly consolidate the coalition he’d built up.

Joseph Estrada proposed economic revisions but the divided Edsa forces who’d failed to unite to block his election to the presidency recombined in enough numbers to topple him from the presidency, because of scandals that helped erode Estrada’s formidable popularity.

The most recent effort to achieve Constitutional change foundered in 2006 but the lesson from that effort is that the old Edsa coalitions are divided themselves, sapped by old age and diminished standing before the people. And the public itself, its civic sense sapped over the two decades since 1986, has proven difficult to arouse and organize.

To answer the questions I proposed in the beginning:

1. Success is achieved by marshaling the support of:

a. the political class to undertake changes even if, in the short term, they may seem not entirely beneficial to that class itself. The most effective appeal, to the political class, is a conservative one, that dangles political advantage and stability in the system in equal measure.

b. public opinion, if not to the extent of enthusiastic, widespread public support, then at least, without provoking widespread, sustained public opposition.

c. Invoking political will, on the part of a presidency armed with popularity or aty

2. The proposals made should be:

a. concrete, that is, specific enough to be adequately discussed: or at least give the impression of a sufficient national debate;

b. they must offer, in terms of institutions, at least some sort of incremental benefit over what currently exists; in terms of the financial bottom line, of economic gain for Filipinos and not just foreigners, which is why the President’s son really ought to keep in the background:

“…I have to admit I really want some provisions revisited like the economic provisions, especially foreign ownership. If we liberate this barrier of foreign ownership, more investors will come into our country and have more control of our money. Thatâ€™s what they have been saying. Iâ€™m only interested in that specific provision,â€ Arroyo said.

c. they must not require changes so extreme as to raise the frightening possibility for most ordinary people already comfortable with the present system, that their knowledge and their current place in the current scheme of things might end up rendered obsolete overnight;

d. reflect some sort of national consensus.

3. The process should be accompanied by:

a. Ample and vigorous debate, as much as possible with the leadership being forthright in taking responsibility for the changes proposed;

b. Engage the support of crucial institutions with no particular bloc publicly exercising its veto power (since 1986, the Catholic Church exercises a strong veto power; the Iglesia ni Cristo, a weaker one; informally, the military wields a kind of veto power, too, as does big business)

c. Pass legal scrutiny and challenges and avoid confrontation being taken to the streets, or be close enough to an election so that, in case of failure, its proponents then risk some sort of reckoning in the polls.

The Inquirer editorial for today, Constitutional menace, suggests the cart has been put before the horse, politically speaking. The story Plan to zap 2010 elections exposed: Resolution for term extension of all elected execs, because indicating subterfuge, only heightens public alarm.

You also want to read Congress on the dock in the PCIJ and in New cha-cha move tied to ‘Arroyo Supreme Court’ in Newsbreak (and Three Likely GMA Appointees To SC Listed; Tinga To Be Ombudsman? in At Midfield).

Also, Manila Gets Set for the Downturn in Asia Sentinel.

Tags:

Comments

141 Comments on "The worm within"

The EQualizer on Wed, 26th Nov 2008 8:35 pm

Charter Change will be the final battle of our dancing lola.She will throw everything including the kitchen sink in that last desperate attempt to cling to power!

Let her last dance begin!

mlq3 on Wed, 26th Nov 2008 9:00 pm

I don’t think she’s the type to actively seek a final battle scenario. this is just one of many balls up in the air.

UP n grad on Wed, 26th Nov 2008 9:13 pm

Cha-cha is not the biggest item for Filipinos. Tne Enrile-”IN”–de-Villar-”OUT” means zero to the average Filipino. The much bigger issue is the economy. Things are headed for worse. Call centers are already firing staff and hiring has slowed down. Importers’ costs of doing business has risen as the peso is now at P50-to-$1.

Asia-Sentinel report has:
UBS said earlier this month that OFW remittances in 2009 could fall by as much as US$800 million, or nearly 6 percent of the $14 billion that flowed into the country last year.
. . . ..
The government also estimates that unemployment next year will likely increase to 9 percent, from 7.4 percent in January this year.

. . . . .. An October survey by Ibon Foundation, for instance, found that 75 percent of the 1,494 respondents â€œhad difficulty buying enough foodâ€ during the preceding three months. The figure was no different from a similar survey in April.

In the October survey, 64.5 percent said they had difficulty paying for their childrenâ€™s education, 68 percent said they didnâ€™t have enough money for transportation, nearly 73 percent said they had trouble paying their bills, and nearly 69 percent said they had problems paying for their medical expenses.

anthony scalia on Wed, 26th Nov 2008 9:43 pm

there is still the plenary. only 1/3 vote is needed to overturn the junking and send the impeachment to the Senate.

go to work impeachment fans. remember how erap got impeached

UP n grad on Wed, 26th Nov 2008 10:39 pm

Two things are needed to get the 1/3 vote. Evidence (which is less important).. and leadership.

supremo on Thu, 27th Nov 2008 3:35 am

To restore confidence to the process of amending the 1987 Constitution, Congress should introduce one benign amendment like abolishing the Judicial and Bar Council. Then go through the whole amendment process without the convoluted interpretations of the procedure.

mindanaoan on Thu, 27th Nov 2008 10:19 am

“Two things are needed to get the 1/3 vote. Evidence (which is less important).. and leadership.”

have the evidence everyone can believe, and everyone will believe you.

declaration of independence | IBM.COM IBM - United States on Thu, 27th Nov 2008 10:44 am

[...] The worm within This admission that they were out to subvert the powers of the American governor-general was nothing unique or surprising for it was the bedrock of other independence efforts, such as the Congress Partyâ€™s independence agitation in India … [...]

istambay_sakalye on Thu, 27th Nov 2008 11:04 am

i have seen the light, same light as the pro cha-cha has seen before me! cha-cha is good for our country. we filipinos enjoys too much constitutional rights to a point that the few are disrupting the flow of governance and impeding the move towards economic progress, towards a first world philipines.

i propose that we amend the constitution right away and for it to include to limit our constitutional rights and freedom. also, that surveys should be outlawed unless it is commissioned by the government and will only show results favorable to the current administration. those are only a few i can come up with right now that i believe will be goods for us the real majority, not to believe the noisy, paranoid, and disruptive minority.

again who need OBAMA, when we have GMA!!!

CHA-CHA! CHA-CHA! CHA-CHA! NOW NA!

istambay_sakalye on Thu, 27th Nov 2008 11:07 am

boo impeachment! it is just the product of paranoid and gma obsessed, opposition’s active imagination and/or hallucination! just move on and get on board the mikey a.’s cha-cha train. nognograles will be the engineer and will lead us to the promise land!

Philippine SEO on Thu, 27th Nov 2008 12:21 pm

Then will come a new republic a republic that is composed of the rich and never for the poor… In the end it will still be a struggle between classes… sigh…

alliance air | Dell.com on Thu, 27th Nov 2008 1:12 pm

[...] The worm within The denial of seats in the House to six members of the leftist Democratic Alliance and three Nacionalistas on grounds of fraud and violent campaign tactics during the April 1946 election enabled Roxas to gain legislative approval on … [...]

muddynights on Thu, 27th Nov 2008 10:04 pm

ey. you’ll be in town. how long will you be in Singapore?

bpga on Fri, 28th Nov 2008 1:51 am

Ala ey ano gang kabalbalan ‘yang proposal na NO EL ni kabayang Mandanas? Anu gang nakain ni Mandanas at kapit tuko na rin sa posisyon, one year extension laang ey sinikmura na ang kahihiyan! “kala ko ga kabayang Mandanas eh walang TUTA sa ating bayan?

Dfish on Fri, 28th Nov 2008 9:22 am

Hi Sir Manolo, this is off-topic. But I’m logging in to solicit your support for the Blog Prayer Brigade for the future 2010 President of the Philippines. Initially, there’s a good exchange of perspectives and show of support at http://utoysaves.wordpress.com. I hope you can join us, or get your endorsement for the Blogging Community.

peace across asia on Fri, 28th Nov 2008 1:10 pm

[...] The worm within Teroy Laurel made a brilliant defense of his proposed amendments to the draft. We should not limit membership to the National Assembly to the delegates who would opt to serve, as was provided for in the draft, because this was really â€¦ [...]

BrianB on Fri, 28th Nov 2008 8:29 pm

A good post ruined by pingbacks.

Luvin on Fri, 28th Nov 2008 8:39 pm

I am a mindanaoan, and am tired of Manila centric talk or decision making. There are other views outside of the clogged and polluted metro Manila.

Give Mindanao more freedom. Lets change our constitution.

cha-cha makes sense : Inquirer on Fri, 28th Nov 2008 11:23 pm

I have seen the light, same light as the pro cha-cha. The worms within are local callous businessmen, evangelists and high school teachers who cooperate and even encourage : outsiders like Lebanese and Taiwanese and Egyptians, Brits and Kiwis, Germans and Japanese, Ethiopians and Samoans, Indonesians and Peruvians to take advantage of the purity and virginity of Filipino hospitality and coconut-based cooking.

vic on Sat, 29th Nov 2008 12:26 am

And who said Parliamentary system is any better than any system? Yesterday, the Conservative Government Finance Minister revealed his government Economics update and among the oppositions parties didn’t approved them, especially one dealing with cuts to Party’s Funding and if things go Well defending which political party one’s belong, Former Liberal PM Chretien and New Democrat Leader Broadbent are brokering a deal for a coalition government of the opposition parties, to be headed by One of Leadership Aspirants for the Liberal party. This is not a conspiracy, but a legal process in a Parliamentary System, where the sitting Government is a minority and an election can not be possibly called because one just been held a month ago. Now any bill that will be introduced by the Government will be defeated if the oppositions is ready with their coalition agreement.

Think about it, if in case the same scenario happens in a Philippines’ Parliament of the Future.

BrianB on Sat, 29th Nov 2008 12:39 am

Believe me, you teach schoolkids how government works, make them memorize the bill of rights… all our problems will vanish in one generation.

mindanaoan on Sat, 29th Nov 2008 6:31 am

it’s simplistic… really!

mlwnag on Sat, 29th Nov 2008 11:28 am

The reason to CC is to computerize election. With popular volting system, we cannot have quick count. Electoral voting(US system) and parliamentary are the choices. Electoral voting provision can be constitutional amendment only. On both systems, a president or prime minister can come from a small province or region

anthony scalia on Sat, 29th Nov 2008 1:17 pm

mlwnag,

few questions:

the US president is not elected by popular vote, but by electoral votes.

yet how are they able to tally the popular votes in one day? (‘popular votes’ means ‘actual votes cast right?)

is it because only one vote per ballot is read?

TonGuE-tWisTeD on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 12:42 am

I learned more from today’s post than 2 sems from profs Miranda and Constantino combined. Thanks, Manolo. Er, Prof. Manolo pala.

TonGuE-tWisTeD on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 12:45 am

Pardon me for asking, why “The Worm Within”?

UP n grad on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 2:31 am

terrorism is a worm. I don’t think it is THE worm that mlq3 was alluding to, but terrorism (given MILF and NPA and even right-wing destabilizers) is a worm. Here is a fervent wish that terrorism ala Mumbai is not a worm getting healthy inside the bowels of the Philippine society. Mumbai-in-Makati-plus-Quezon-City is not a pleasant thought to think about.

BrianB on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 2:36 am

Manolo, you have a big problem writing a book, any book. What is the thesis here?

You know why big ideas are big ideas? Because everyone could understand them or at least pretend they could understand them.Not so with this post. You begin with charter change then move on to a look-back and an analysis of past regimes… based on what? Opinions?

BrianB on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 2:40 am

With all your study on the subject, can you give us a clear concise picture? then maybe we can move on to detailed analysis. I’d like to hear your view on the status quo. Are we an oligarchy, officially? Sounds like we are.

istambay_sakalye on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 4:03 am

our problem as a nation is not with the constitution and not with politicians per se. we have bad politicians, so many old and young politician so corrupt. it would take a least a generation if ever to see any positive change. pessimistic as it may seem but it is a very reasonable assumption on my part.

look at the current politicians in the government, same families who have been involved in executive and legislative departments. so few have broken through. the chances of having a obama type personality to rise to top is almost nil. i said almost because ed panlilo actually proved that it is actually possible.

and the current administration has manage what it took marcos 20 something years to achieved in just 6 six years! gma and her minions have destroyed and corrupted almost every aspect of governmental department. she has the SC and senate standing in her way. and with chance to appoint more SC justices in the coming months and with enrile at the helm of senate she might completely do a marcos. all the gains we have as so few as it maybe post EDSA1 is all but gone.

from being the bright spot of democracy post ESDA1, we have becoming one of most corrupt and dysfunctional government and nation.

we politicians so corrupt and unprincipled. many of them for sale, enriching themselves with bagful of money handed to them by malacanang to keep the queen in her palace. selling their soul to the devil for selfish reasons.

and last where the blame rest the most, is us pinoys. we allow these politicians to rule they way they do. feeling helpless and contented to sit and wait for a “cory” to rally as everytime! we forget that being a citizen is not just following the law, paying our taxes and going to church, but also activism and making our so called representative in the government accountable. and by not selling our votes and crying foul when you one selling his vote. we outnumber the politicians in the government collectively and it is enshrined in our constitution as our rights as a citizen.

rule of law only function as it is intended if the leaders elected to lead this nation respects and let the law be applied to everyone without exception. our current leaders have bastardized and prostituted our laws beyond recognition and we have allowed them to do so!

we need to act and teach our youth the proper and right way. otherwise we will be doom to repeat same mistakes over and over again.

i am not saying that other countries does not have our problems, they do. however in countries, like in the USA the check and balance system actually works. it not just maturity but actually character, decency and morality. take the japanese, their leaders resigns if not kill themselves out of embarrassment if they fail to deliver what they promise or at the slight sign of impropriety! that is why they a healthy and productive nation and pinas do not!

The EQualizer on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 3:01 pm

“God indeed has a lot of sense of humor. He has given this nation a government run by a President who lost the election, an unjust and ever-heckling justice secretary, liars who would rather not lie by invoking executive privilege, and many other officials who are beyond description. God has given us an opposition that stops opposing after they are given government positions. God has given us a breed of bishops and priests who the flock may lead to salvation. And Filipinos just laugh at these realities.

If we would still have Ms Arroyo and her lackeys beyond 2010, it would not be due to Godâ€™s sense of humor. It would be due to the Filipinosâ€™ sense of stupidity.”C.Bisa

Claro Margallo on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 9:52 pm

If the necessary ingredient is for partylist B&W and other anti-GMA opposition to unite beyond their personal ambitions, GMA will be in Malacanang past 2020.

anthony scalia on Sun, 30th Nov 2008 11:56 pm

“He has given this nation a government run by a President who lost the election”

i take my hat off to whoever started this propaganda. it really spread like wildfire. thanks to a gullible media

it requires the naive presupposition that the other candidates were squeaky clean! yikes!

here a candidate either wins or is cheated

“liars who would rather not lie by invoking executive privilege,”

***sigh***

what would it take for people to realize that its already clear that gloria gave the go-signal to the NBN-ZTE deal even with the knowledge of the bribe try!

piercing “executive privilege” is no longer needed!

shows how bumbling stupid idiots the bright people of the ‘united opposition’ are

just for once – please blame the ‘united opposition’ for their continued ineptness in getting gloria removed

“And Filipinos just laugh at these realities.”

and who would not laugh at the quality of the ‘united opposition’ –

1. they are only ‘united’ in name!

2. they have the ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!

3. they are good for nothing beyond being anti gloria!

4. yet they parade themselves a saviors of the country!

5. and they showed that whining is a great way to win a senate seat!

“It would be due to the Filipinosâ€™ sense of stupidity”

no, it would be to a realization that the country has more pressing problems than removing gloria before 2010

it would be to a realization that dignifying the ‘united opposition’ is a much higher form of stupidity

anthony scalia on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 12:07 am

one manifestation of Filipino “stupidity” is voting a politician whose only platform is being “anti gloria”

God must be really fuming mad at the country if He gives us a leader whose only credential is being anti gloria.

but not so.

if the country is run by a leader who is good for nothing beyond anti gloria, it is an opportunity for God to show that He is in control of the country’s destiny by not letting such leader to get in the way to progress

istambay_sakalye on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 1:47 am

we could actually include the american public to class of stupidity, as the filipinos, because most of those elected in congress and senate even their prseident is on the platform that they are against bush and the vote against republicans were votes against bush!

i thought onli n da pilipins! mga kano is making gaya the pinoys! how baduyyyy! omg! HOHOHOHO!

vic on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 2:17 am

There are also worms in the Parliament House in Ottawa and comes December 8, we will find out if they are worthy of the worms they are. They opposition Parties, having majority of seats, vowed to defeat the Government Fiscal Stimulus, and already agreed on a Coalition partnership to take over the Government from the ruling Minority Conservatives without Earning It. It is not much of the Stimulus but the proposed cuts on Funding for Political Parties and candidates and also of Politicians and public servants discretionary allowances and expense and even as the Government offered to withdraw the cutbacks, they Worms already made up their minds, also with support of the other worm in the Separatist Party which only represent the Province of Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois.

This will put the Governor General in a very precarious Balancing Act as she will be hard pressed not to bring the writ of Election as we have had just one Oct. 14, but she will be setting a Precedent if she consents to the Coup and the Reaction of the Voting public could not be as predictable. Right now it is a wait and see scenes as everyone is preparing for a fight. The fight of the worms!!

TonGuE-tWisTeD on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 4:54 am

So God really wants Gloria in there, ha?

istambay_sakalye on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 9:06 am

gma is JC per pablo garcia!

istambay_sakalye on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 9:07 am

JC <——- Jesus Christ

leytenian on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 12:12 pm

a worm within the group of worms . a corrupt within the many corrupts.

mlq3 on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 1:00 pm

brian, the purpose is as put forward at the start and beginning of this entry. what attempts at constitutional change have worked, and why, and which ones failed, and why. the sources are there too. and also, that we view constitutional change from the framework of the idea that we can reboot our society based on changing the constitutional operating system.

the other thing of course is that our political class likes things cozy and tidy but the need to derive political legitimacy from a public they either fear or despise gets in the way of that tidiness.

mlq3 on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 1:02 pm

tonuge thats a reference to my column, where our constitutions contain within them the means for their own subversion.

mlq3 on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 1:04 pm

geo, i do think the 6 out of 10 is correct, in that those interested in constitutional questions are a definite minority, though in some sectors (such as some but not all businessmen) are interested in it and some regions would like it. most people simply want the system to function are not convinced changing the rules with the same leaders would be anything more than window-dressing.

rego on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 11:19 pm

“terrorism is a worm. I donâ€™t think it is THE worm that mlq3 was alluding to, but terrorism (given MILF and NPA and even right-wing destabilizers) is a worm. Here is a fervent wish that terrorism ala Mumbai is not a worm getting healthy inside the bowels of the Philippine society. Mumbai-in-Makati-plus-Quezon-City is not a pleasant thought to think about “.- upn.

Hi UPn,

Watching the very unfrotunate event in Mumbai on TV , I just cant help but have this nagging thoughts about the Triallnes antics in the past. Probably becuase they both did it in a luxurious hotel. ( and geeze now they are resorting to online recruitment)

Then came this anti gloria’s justifications of their never ending destabilization tricks just to get rid of gloria.

My question is where to draw the line between terrorism and the never ending destabilization action until they get what they wanted. And never minding who gets hurt?

rego on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 11:25 pm

“one manifestation of Filipino â€œstupidityâ€ is voting a politician whose only platform is being â€œanti gloriaâ€-scalia

This reminded me of that reply from buencamino on my question on the other thread on why cant the filipinos wait for Gloria to finish her term unlike teh american to bush.

he branded the americans as stupid, like the anti Gloras and the “united opposition wher he belongs ” are smarter or less stupid for redoing thing t for about 3 years now that really never work at all…. he he he he

rego on Mon, 1st Dec 2008 11:49 pm

“it surprises me that some readers expect me to do their thinking for them. iâ€™ll do my own thinking, present things as i see it, explain to you why i see it that way, assert your every right to hold a contrary opinion and advocacy, but you have to look at what i write and what others who hold a contrary opinion write, and make up your own mind. itâ€™s not easy – nor should it be.-mlq3

Manolo,

I got this from the previous thread, And I just cant believe how and why did you say this.

People think, Manolo. That s their very basic and very fundamental ability. You dont do the thinking for them. They dont need it. They dont want you to do it for them. They wanted to do their very own thinking and act according to what they think would make life better.

Yes we should let each other do our own thinking and explain clearly why and how we see it that way.

The problem comes in when people like you and your ilk would go to the extent of destabiling the country to reinforced your belief system that you truly believe in. Resort to anything and everything just to get your way.

Yes you are a writer its your job to write thing that you believe in and see the way you see it. The same way that your readers has a job to agree or disagree with what you write and convey why the see the other way.

Ther is no need to brand your readre as move on crowds or nay thing. Just write what you think you should write and let the readers read what you write and let them agre or disagree with you.

Dont ever ever ever think for readers. Becuase they dont need it. You will be MORE EFFECTIVE that way!

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 12:31 am

“gma is JC per pablo garcia!. JC <â€”â€”- Jesus Christ”. istambay.

Comments like this one and name calling like using the word “bansot ” just make you and the united opposition. even more unbelivable to the non partisan people. This where you start losing your cause and your advocaies to them. Its more of a reflection of your own ugliness, negativeness, even evilness, not Gloria. Its very low, very childish, very uncreative, very ineffective!

If you want to fight Gloria fight her eye for an eye in a more positive way. If you dont agree with how she govern. get back at her by showing how to govern better, if you dont like the ideas she promoting, fight her with a better ideas. If you believ she is corrupt fight her by showing you are an honest elected or goverenment official and not corrupt…. if you believe she cheats in the election fight with her by not cheating in the election. If you believ she violate steh consititutionand rule of law , fight her by following the constitution and rule of law.

Thats the only way non partisan people can see and be convince that you ( the united opposition) is better than her. Then, that is time these people will go to your side and for the tipping point to happen.

Sad to say, you just dont get it after all these years….

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 12:55 am

Bravo to president elect Barack Obama for reaching out to his adversaries in the last election and making them a pert of his administration. I asluet Hilary Clinton and Jihn Mc cain too for beeing cooperative with Obama on the rebulidng America.

Will this ever happen in the Philippines. Gloria has been reaching out to her enemies but enemies just used it to even embaraas her even more. Now who is really bad?

istambay_sakalye on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 1:07 am

“Comments like this one and name calling like using the word â€œbansot â€ just make you and the united opposition. even more unbelivable to the non partisan people. This where you start losing your cause and your advocaies to them. Its more of a reflection of your own ugliness, negativeness, even evilness, not Gloria. Its very low, very childish, very uncreative, very ineffective!”

–you read your newspaper? let us not get emotional or childish please!

istambay_sakalye on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 1:18 am

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20081127-174640/Bishop-hits-Arroyo-Christ-analogy

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20081126-174423/Methuselah-likens-Arroyo-to-Christ

–for rego

UP n grad on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 1:20 am

rego: so far, none of the anti-government destabiliziers (from Gringo of years ago to Trillanes of a few months ago) have fired indiscriminately into crowds. So far.

Compare it to the Mumbai attackers who took the time off to stop at Mumbai’s major train station. Leopold-restaurant and the 5-star hotels make logical targets if one were anti-foreigner and/or anti-rich. But the train station???
—
The Mumbai-terrorists resemble the Muslim terrorists who sunk the SuperFerry.

hawaiianguy on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 2:43 am

Will this ever happen in the Philippines. Gloria has been reaching out to her enemies but enemies just used it to even embaraas her even more. Now who is really bad?

Asus! This is quintessential of comments that delight in comparing apples and oranges. Obama won without cheating, a clear case of fair game. Gloria cheated her way into the presidency, and that makes the difference a CHASM.

supremo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 2:56 am

Sino ba naman matinong tao ang gustong makatrabaho si Gloria?

hawaiianguy on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 3:54 am

supremo,

Wala! Sinabi mo pa.

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 5:43 am

“Asus! This is quintessential of comments that delight in comparing apples and oranges. Obama won without cheating, a clear case of fair game. Gloria cheated her way into the presidency, and that makes the difference a CHASM.”

On the other hand, the comment is not actually comparison between Gloria and Obama. Its actually a question. And a statement of fact that Gloria indeed tried to do the same without success. Thats was just it .

And personally , that only showed to ME how immature the Pinoy politicos are.

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 5:46 am

“Sino ba naman matinong tao ang gustong makatrabaho si Gloria?”

Are you talking about MLQ3? he worked with Gloria once.

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 5:48 am

Or you are finally convinced na mas matino pala si President elect Obama kesa ka John Mc Cain?

BTW you promised me a cab fare if Obama wins.

supremo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 5:58 am

rego,

I promised you a cab fare to the airport. So are you going home now and will not come back?

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 6:01 am

On the other hand, It can be a more smarter move for the “united” opposition to get inside Glorias administration had they accepted Glorias offer of partnership. Who knows they could have successfully destroyed her from the inside…

hay naku, I just can help it but believe that Gloria is still the smartest among all pinoy politicos, until now. And I mean it as a plus points and a credit for her. The United Opposition can just whine to all their hearts content. And eat their hearts out too!

supremo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:04 am

rego,

‘Are you talking about MLQ3? he worked with Gloria once.’

I believe mlq3 quit as soon as the Garci tape blew up on Gloria’s face.

‘Or you are finally convinced na mas matino pala si President elect Obama kesa ka John Mc Cain?’

I am not but I’m willing to give him a 2 year break. If he fails his party mates will get the boot in 2010.

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:06 am

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:07 am

some losers are really funny and stupid

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:08 am

theyd rather be like that than accept defeat graciously

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:15 am

a typical pinoy attitude. when will ever they learn to say , ah OK I lost in this one.

rego on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:18 am

pag nanalo naman, vindictive. Hay naku saan naman kay papunta ang mga ganitong klaseng tao….

refelction kaya ang kalagayan ng bansa ng ganito klaseng asal?

nagtatanong lang po!

anthony scalia on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:38 am

rego,

“a typical pinoy attitude. when will ever they learn to say , ah OK I lost in this one.”

the sad thing about Pinoy politicians – they can’t do an Al Gore

kung sabagay, sino ba naman ang di magagalit, eh kuwarta na sana kung nanalo!

“some losers are really funny and stupid”

example – the ‘united opposition’

istambay_sakalye on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 10:08 am

“some losers are really funny and stupid”

–DUH!

leytenian on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 10:57 am

To restore trust from our people and improve our investment climate, lets learn from Indonesiaâ€™s Heroes.

Indonesia’s anti-corruption heroes

BrianB on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 12:02 pm

The anti-Gloria DOES seem a lot less serious about making her leave than she is about staying.

mlq3 on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 12:46 pm

just for the record, i left the president’s service because the inquirer offered me a job and it was a good chance to get out since i’d worked on ther assumption she would only serve till 2004. i cut all ties with the administration after the i am sorry statement, prior to that i’d campaigned for her as much as was allowed.

rego, even as you ask me to respect your views -which is similar to scalia’s in which rectitude and legitimacy are measured by success on holding on to power and fending off enemies, and not according to any, intrinsic, objective, standards of right and wrong, legal or illegal (because not everything legal is right)- you do so by establishing the parameters of what you consider objective, permissible, positive, etc. immediately categorizing anything else as the opposites of these.

well then it becomes tit for tat and so it goes and has gone. which only proves that the division is caused by the president as she herself admitted in the finest moment of her presidency, when she announced she wouldnt run for office in 2004.

but like i said there has to be pressure because postponing things for the sake of the peace of mind of the non-partisan will only condemn partisan and non-partisan alike not only to more of the same, but worse. if the president, for the sake of argument, steps down on june 30, 2010 you can be sure every president after her will try to do worse. because the lesson will be its not how you play the game, its the winning that counts.

you can speak of the stability of america all you like, after the democrats decided not to pursue a confrontation but decided to take the country back slowly. and to be sure the lesson here is many if not most filipinos actually decided to do the same thing. if she steps down in 2010 they will have been validated; but if she doesn’t, what then? the pressure has to be kept on her, ironically, for the non-partisans who will not act, but who will be very satisfied when she does step down. there’s an irony in that. but as for me it would be healthier for the country if she were to go sooner rather than later.

Geo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 12:59 pm

Today’s news:

1. Liberal Party (the anti-GMA wing) declares it wants Chacha.

Once again, people who are knowlegeable about the Constitution affirm the need for amendments.

Granted, the LP wants a Concon with elections for members in 2010 and not a Conass now. For me, that’s OK…either approach will do. The key is to get some momentum and to start addressing the issue. It will take time and effort, no matter what.

2. Pro-CARP farmers have to come to Manila because Congress still hasn’t dealt with the issue of extention. Last June, they simply voted to delay any decision until now. And now they still aren’t prepared.

The Congress has been a mess. The only thing they do is put on made-for-tv circuses. Budgets don’t get passed, pending laws pend, new laws aren’t introduced, important decisions don’t get made.

Bert on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 1:31 pm

Not so, BrianB, I think the anti-Gloria is exhausting its limit of tolerance because they have a time frame for her to hold on. Just as long as she don’t overshoot that time frame there will be calm.

But you are right, I too believe she is serious, too serious in fact the whole family is moving heaven and earth, in making a way to a perpetual hold.

mlq3 on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 2:02 pm

Brian, there’s greater unity of purpose among the pro-GMA than there ever has been among the anti-GMA. In the first place, the pros have a leader. the antis do not. the pros know what they want, the antis can’t agree. so the numbers of the antis are neutralized by the cohesiveness of the pros plus their access to institutions and resources. not to mention the reality that there is a chunk of antis posturing opposition but who have more in common with the pros than the rest of the antis (particularly those already in office: they would stand to gain as much from a shift to parliamentary, for example; while among those jockeying to replace her in 2010 it upsets their plans if gma were to leave early, better for them to drag it out to 2010 but not beyond).

Geo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 2:15 pm

mlq3,

You wrote: “intrinsic, objective, standards of right and wrong, legal or illegal.”

Where can I find these standards? Who determined them? Who applies them?

The reality, mlq, is that there ARE standards, laws, processes and procedures. Those who accuse GMA of breaking the laws must themselves obey these laws.

The anti-GMA’s rejection of some facts (PET results, for ex) and the lack of objective facts to support allegations erase the credibility you are trying to achieve. They are taking actions — against the democratically elected government — based on their special ability to see “The Truth”.

Non-partisans like me don’t ask for “peace of mind”, we are for maintaining peace, having an open mind, and creating a better economic environment.

mlq3 on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 3:09 pm

geo, why are the foreign businessmen saying the following?

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2738:cha-cha-not-critical-to-economic-reforms&catid=26:nation&Itemid=63

anthony scalia on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 3:16 pm

mlq3,

“in which rectitude and legitimacy are measured by success on holding on to power and fending off enemies, and not according to any, intrinsic, objective, standards of right and wrong, legal or illegal (because not everything legal is right)- you do so by establishing the parameters of what you consider objective, permissible, positive, etc. immediately categorizing anything else as the opposites of these.”

by virtue of the results of the congressional canvass, gloria won. that makes her legitimate.

you are making it sound that the burden is on her to show her legitimacy. but the burden is on you to show otherwise.

up to now you have not commented on the repeated reference of geo to the results of the PET protest

anthony scalia on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 3:35 pm

mlq3,

re business mirror article

the answer is in the article itself. there are some changes which only require new or amendatory legislation and new administrative orders.

the problem is, with your senators just preferring to come up with committee reports, those needed legislation cannot be passed

Geo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 4:17 pm

mlq3,

That article doesn’t say much that’s new.

1. FDI is behind our neighbors.
2. Significantly more FDI will come in if the laws are changed.
3. Many laws are outdated, vague, irrational…but Congress hasn’t fixed them.
4. Political tension is bad for the economy.

Yeah, one can hope that Congress might suddenly get down to doing their primary responsibility…and pass/re-do/undo laws. Then, maybe, they will address these infirmities one-by-one. How long will that take?

On the other hand, by fixing the “Master Law” — the Constitution, one can immediately rectify the law behind those laws/policies/decrees.

Remember, too, that Sears, Forbes and Schumacher are old hands and they know well that they are their country’s business ambassadors here. These guys know how to use language diplomatically.

Not one of them was quoted as saying what the headline said (and in quotes!) — “Chacha not critical to economic reforms”. They said that changes are needed and helpful. Only Forbes mentioned that timing could be critical, insinuating that a political backlash was possible. All the other quotes were about how needed and good pro-FDI laws can be.

Lastly, the article (with the misleading title) was written by an Anti-GMA reporter. He also throws in Alberto Lim to make it seem like local businesses are anti-Chacha, too. (And the foreigners know all too well Lim’s personal views and I’m sure they spoke extra-carefully.)

An excellent piece of propaganda wrapped in the guise of “straight news.”

Jon on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 4:42 pm

Geo, charter change is no panacea to our ills. As the article pointed out, it may help but if done at the wrong time, may even cause more harm.

These are of course their own opinion which are contrary to yours. What makes you think your idea that changing the economic provisions in the constitution will immediately bring results?

There are other factors like corruption, red tape, politics, etc. that can (and are currently hindering) progress.

Geo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 5:23 pm

Jon,

Wrong, Jon. Those men have extremely similar views as mine. I know them. It is the writer of the article who has a different view.

Forbes said: â€œIt will not answer the countryâ€™s problems, it will help answer some of the countryâ€™s problems; the timing of that, if itâ€™s the wrong timing, may increase the countryâ€™s problemsâ€.

That’s diplo-speak for “yes, changing the economic-related parts of ther Constitution will help address some of the country’s problems, but if the timing is wrong politically, it might create problems.”

Again, he’s sitting there at the table with Lim. So he isn’t going to say “Chacha is great! Do it now!”. He can’t. He won’t. He’s obliged not to.

By the way, the article has a list of immediate benefits to the economy if the laws are changed. But you are right, there are many things that need fixing. That’s why progress is needed.

But a minority group is threatening political instability if these reforms are pursued.

anthony scalia on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 5:38 pm

for Jon and mlq3,

http://www.amchamphilippines.com/media_publications.php?id=31&sub=excerpt

as per the American Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the Philippines:

“When the constitution is amended, restrictions on foreign investment and land ownership should be removed.”

Jon on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 5:44 pm

That has been in the news for some time Anthony, and fully understood. Currently, businesses use “dummies” to subvert this constitutional provision. Foreigners use “dummies” to own land. When this restriction is taken out, it is expected that more foreign investors will come with their money.

So what’s the point? Even the removal of this restriction can wait after 2010.

Jon on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 5:49 pm

Geo, you’re hitting MLQ3 on how he can read minds. It should apply to you too. How can you read their minds?

Geo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 6:35 pm

Jon,

I didn’t read their minds, I read their quotes (without confusing the author’s contention/interpretation with the actual quotes).

The facts are: Forbes has to be dilomatic in his role; Lim was sitting with him; Lim is personally anti-GMA, as Forbes knows very well.

I guess you can still say that I’m speculating that Forbes knew/remembered to be selective with his words. Of course, on the other hand, that’s exactly his job. He has to work all sides…including anti, pro and anti-anti.

Geo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 6:43 pm

Jon,

I’m guessing you’re not a businessman.

There is absolutely no question that opening up the economy will bring a substantial increase in FDI.

That’s EFFICIENTLY USED capital, btw. Dummies carry very costly risk premiums and/or are flatly rejected (and the capital goes elsewhere).

And you want to delay economic amendments until sometime after 2010…but you want political disruption/confusion now??? Gee, that should help the poor, create jobs and improve life, eh?

istambay_sakalye on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 7:06 pm

“Wrong, Jon. Those men have extremely similar views as mine. I know them. It is the writer of the article who has a different view.”

–wow. you personally know those men? are we reading same article? spin a win!

Geo on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:02 pm

istambay,

Yes, I know them. They’ve been a part of the business (and political) community for a couple of decades.

Are you seperating the quotes from the words of the author?

Anyway, this isn’t worth a million posts. The essence of the foreign businessmen’s views are that they believe it’s in everyone’s interests for them to be allowed to openly compete in an emerging economy. Step-by-step or all-at-once is a secondary consideration…but, of course, the sooner the better (“Well, if no Chacha now, starting on the laws piecemeal would still be positive”).

The men interviewed are entrusted to promote this line of thought to the Administration and the Congress…without getting people angry (“Chacha is something the Filipinos need to decide. But we do hope that the end result is a further integration with globalism.”) .

Like I said: “diplo-speak”.

anthony scalia on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 8:27 pm

Jon,

“That has been in the news for some time Anthony, and fully understood. Currently, businesses use â€œdummiesâ€ to subvert this constitutional provision. Foreigners use â€œdummiesâ€ to own land. When this restriction is taken out, it is expected that more foreign investors will come with their money.”

“So whatâ€™s the point? Even the removal of this restriction can wait after 2010.”
——————————————————————————-

the point my friend is this – the use of dummies is against the law. putting those amendments in place will do away with dummies

Jon on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 9:21 pm

Anthony, I (and many others) agree with that. What I prefer is for the change to happen after 2010.

Geo, yes I’m willing to wait for 1.5 – 3 years before these changes take effect. How long have we been living without those changes? If we were able to survice albeit with difficulty for some time, we still can. Remember haste makes waste.

Bert on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 9:41 pm

“the point my friend is this – the use of dummies is against the law. putting those amendments in place will do away with dummies”-anthony

Heheh, anthony. As usual you are very confusing. By intent, is it?

The use of dummies is against the present law.

Putting those amendments in the new chacha law and the use of those dummies will still be against the law.

So, what are you trying to explain to us?

leytenian on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 9:52 pm

the government is a government of the fools, by the fools and for the fools.

Even if Gloria is out tomorrow, this country remains so corrupt. the next worst thing to happen is another corrupt presidency coming from the sleepy head Senate. the cycle will repeat by itself unless people know what they demand.

this country is so backward with a Stone Age system. The old political personalities are a drag to this economy.

There’s no Democracy.

Bert on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 10:05 pm

leytenian, you are speaking like an anti-anti, heheh.

UP n grad on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 10:05 pm

If not in the Senate, then where else are the breeding-grounds for the next Pinas president ?

Jon on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 10:13 pm

UP n grad, it’s in showbiz. Bong Revilla and Lito Lapid are just waiting for the right time. If you don’t like them, you better go to Thailand where the elites are trying to get rid of western style democracy! (That’s said tongue in cheek of course)

UP n grad on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 10:26 pm

Maybe Pinas needs a Mother Teresa-type, so what about a leader from NGO-type work? B&W type work is too narrow… but a candidate with more responsibilities like from Red Cross.

Bert on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 10:41 pm

ahh, I get it na, anthony. you want the restriction on foreign ownership of land and investment be removed by the new charter? ok, that’s what you want then, is it?

mlq3 on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 11:18 pm

scalia, i’m not so sure. we’d have to see if the legislation has been passed or if it’s being pushed. most economy-related major policy measures have not been derailed, whether the e-vat or JPEPA etc. Land Reform, on the other hand, is in danger of being stalled and the Negros Bloc to which the President’s brother-in-law belongs is central to this.

mlq3 on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 11:35 pm

scalia, i have commented on the pet decision.

but here is the resolution penned by Justice Quisumbing.

http://www.supremecourt.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2005/mar2005/pet_002.htm

As he put it, the SC acting as the PET, was confronted by the problem of FPJ having died. And being asked, despite his death, to resolve the case of the legitimacy of the President-elect proclaimed by Congress. In the resolution, the PET recognized the process had not yet reached a conclusive point, but that public unease was widespread enough that the Court recognized the gravity of the situation:

As counsels for the parties exchanged lively motions to rush the presentation of their respective positions on the controversy, an act of God intervened. On December 14, 2004, the Protestant died in the course of his medical treatment at St. Lukeâ€™s Hospital. The medical certificate, filed by counsel as part of the Notice of Death of the Protestant, showed that he died of cardio-pulmonary arrest, secondary to cerebral infarction.

However, neither the Protesteeâ€™s proclamation by Congress nor the death of her main rival as a fortuitous intervening event, appears to abate the present controversy in the public arena. Instead, notice may be taken of periodic mass actions, demonstrations, and rallies raising an outcry for this Tribunal to decide the electoral protest of Mr. FPJ against Mrs. GMA once and for all. The oracular function of this Tribunal, it would appear, needs to be fully exercised to make manifest here and abroad who is the duly elected leader of the Filipino nation. All these, despite the fact that the submissions by the parties on their respective sides in the protest and the counter-protest are thus far, far from completed.

Needless to stress, this Tribunal cannot shirk its constitutional duty. Yet, neither could it go beyond its mandate under the Constitution and the law. Further, this Tribunal is guided by its Rules, as well as the Rules of Court in a suppletory manner. Considering the transcendental importance of the electoral contest involving the Presidency, a rush to judgment is simply out of the question. Yet decide the matter we must, without further delay, to prevent popular unrest and avoid further destabilization of government at the highest level.

The PET ruled that since it was Susan Roces pursuing her husband’s case, it had to be dismissed. The other candidates could have pursued it, but since they didn’t, the SC acting as PET had to throw out the case, based on its rules, and without resolving who actually won.

We are not unaware that a contest before election tribunals has two aspects. First, it is in pursuit of oneâ€™s right to a public office, and second, it is imbued with public interest.

Indeed the personal aspect of the case is inextricably linked with the public interest. For an election protest involves not merely conflicting private aspirations but is imbued with public interest which raises it into a plane over and above ordinary civil actions.[17] But herein movant/intervenor, Mrs. FPJ, has overly stressed that it is with the â€œparamount public interestâ€ in mind that she desires â€œto pursue the processâ€ commenced by her late husband. She avers that she is â€œpursuing the processâ€ to determine who truly won the election, as a service to the Filipino people. We laud her noble intention and her interest to find out the true will of the electorate. However, nobility of intention is not the point of reference in determining whether a person may intervene in an election protest. Rule 19, Section 1 of the Rules of Court[18] is the applicable rule on intervention in the absence of such a rule in the PET Rules. In such intervention, the interest which allows a person to intervene in a suit must be in the matter of litigation and of such direct and immediate character that the intervenor will either gain or lose by the effect of the judgment. In this protest, Mrs. FPJ will not immediately and directly benefit from the outcome should it be determined that the declared president did not truly get the highest number of votes. We fully appreciate counselâ€™s manifestation that movant/intervenor herself claims she has no interest in assuming the position as she is aware that she cannot succeed to the presidency, having no legal right to it. Yet thus far, in this case, no real parties such as the vice-presidential aspirants in the 2004 elections, have come forward to intervene, or to be substituted for the deceased protestant. In our view, if persons not real parties in the action could be allowed to intervene, proceedings will be unnecessarily complicated, expensive and interminable â€“ and this is not the policy of the law.[19] It is far more prudent to abide by the existing strict limitations on intervention and substitution under the law and the rules.

Conformably then with the law, the rules and prevailing jurisprudence, this Tribunal finds no justifiable reason to grant the petition/motion for intervention and substitution.

There was another case, that of the Vice-Presidential election, which however, though involving the same set of documents, involves votes cast separately and counted separately for the Vice-Presidency. In the end, the case was dismissed, again not on conclusive findings one way or another, but because the Court acting as PET deemed the protest moot and academic after Legarda ran for the Senate. On the past precedent of Miriam Defensor’s similar move during her protest vs. FVR, seeking a new position was deemed an act relinquishing all claims to the position being contested in the PET.

http://elibrary.supremecourt.gov.ph/decisions.php?doctype=Decisions%20/%20Signed%20Resolutions&docid=1208828619415682894

The Court’s final say has an interesting discussion of how you go about determining if enough cheating took place to affect the outcome, the legal requirement for overturning a proclamation by Congress. The Court acting as PET said that by its rules you have to be specific about where you allege the cheating was, and that the PET then proceeds on that basis, with findings then dictating if you have to dig deeper. The Court in its decision said that based on the sampling conducted they found no reason to dispute the proclamation:

as the pilot-tested revision of ballots or re-tabulation of the certificates of canvass would not affect the winning margin of the protestee in the final canvass of the returns…

Which after all is probable , both because the Court will only look at the original sampling and only if there’s something there can it proceed (which places the burden of proof on the one protesting, as the accuser).

But again, one does not necessarily prove the other: different sets of votes, even if on the same documents.

Since then of course it’s been alleged that even if the PET had gone through all the election documents housed at the Batasan, those documents had been doctored during the break-in. But without even touching on that all that happened was:

1. In the case of the presidency, the PET ruled that with FPJ having died, and no other presidential candidate contesting the results, the Poe protest had to be thrown out (which is different from a conclusive finding that the election was properly won by GMA) and;

2. In the case of the vice-presidency, the Legarda protest was deemed at an end when Legarda ran for the Senate, which again is not a conclusive finding for or against the legitimacy of de Castro.

istambay_sakalye on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 11:43 pm

“Like I said: â€œdiplo-speakâ€.

–ahhh…is it like when the administration tongresmen say they just want to amend the constitution for economic progress, while actually what they mean is to amend the constitution to keep gma past 2010? forked tongue or in pinoy linggo, “ahas”. another example is gma speak of , i will step down after 2010, then she would say, i will lead this country to first world status to 2020! “diplo-speak”, i get it! thanks for the info.

mlq3 on Tue, 2nd Dec 2008 11:49 pm

Ge, very illuminating insight on how reps of foreign chambers of commerce operate, thanks.

I’d dispute though your characterization of Business Mirror, it’s about as neutral as a paper can get on these things, I think, and may even veer on the side of the administration more often than not.

actually, it would be helpful (but not politically helpful) if critics of the critics of charter change would list the bills of economic importance the President has proposed, to see how many got derailed on a purely partisan basis.

But then this would show: they cannot be derailed on a partisan basis in the House. Her majority there is too overwhelming.

So then, have they been derailed in the Senate, on purely a partisan basis? But if you go down the list, you’d find the President has a pretty good scorecard there, too. Specially after the Drilon logjam sorted itself out (he seems to have been a pretty ineffective traffic cop) and Villar managed to smooth things out in terms of separating political bills of partisan interest from bills that were more neutral because focused on the economy (a good example is the recent law creating a credit bureau and allowing people to access their credit information, etc.; obviously a law passed with Senate approval).

The credit you give the President for economic management has to be at least partially shared with the Senate you so thoroughly despise. They are, at the very least, capable of distinguishing what ought to be slowed down or amended (unless you think every bill submitted or certified urgent by the Palace should be adopted in toto without debate or amendments) which is their job, too, after all. JPEPA, a flagship treaty of the administration, ended up passing, after what could have been fatal constitutional infirmities were fixed due to Senate scrutiny from both sides of the aisle.

shrapnel on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 12:11 am

Another crusader against corruption beaten by the systemâ€¦a tribute to Gloria’s exemplary governance!

Going, gone: Mr. Go throws in the towel

Wanted: New textbook crusader

MANILA, Philippinesâ€”It all began when a publisher offered Antonio Calipjo Go a Mitsubishi L-300 van in exchange for a three-year textbook supply contract.

The academic supervisor of Marian School of Quezon City was incensed that learning materials not only were being treated as commodities bundled with special offers but were also shot through with errors.

Go decided to mount a campaign against what he called â€œsick books,â€ writing protest letters to the Department of Education (DepEd) and lawmakers, appearing in congressional hearings, giving interviews to reporters and sending articles to newspapers and magazines.

His was a lonely crusade that angered DepEd officials, academics, publishers and authors with strings of MAs and PhDs to their names.

After a 12-year campaign that included pulling out newspaper advertisements worth P1 million paid out of his own pocket and four court cases filed against him by angry publishers, Go is throwing in the towel.

Read the whole article :

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20081202-175573

shrapnel on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 12:44 am

Non-partisans? There is no such thing.

shrapnel on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 1:07 am

Selling off our patrimony to foreigners? Nice try non-partisans, but no cigar!

shrapnel on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 1:19 am

Selling themselves as non-partisan but deliberately ignoring facts, unable to find out the truth (hiding behind legalese), and stubbornly clinging to a seemingly other-dimensional reality-smells so fishy you could guess where they come from.

http://www.golez.com/downloads/Resignation%20Speech-5%20Committee%20Investigation%20of%20Garci%20Tapes.doc

leytenian on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 5:01 am

bert,

I am not anti nor pro.. there’ none in our country to a part of be anti nor pro. there’s no room for good people like me hehehe

supremo on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 5:38 am

Why is FDI needed again?

vic on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 7:45 am

â€œ I will not agree to a coalition with the socialists and the separatistsâ€ Resigning Leader Stephan Dion of the Liberal Party of Canada during the Campaign. He decided to resign after the election for bringing down the party to defeat (losing more seats than the last election) during the latest Elections and 7 weeks after the New Minority Government was installed He and the Socialist Leader signed a deal with the support of the Separatists to Take over the Government without the Mandate of the Voters. There is a battle going on the Parliament Right Now. And the Government might even delayed the Introduction of its first bill December 8 as counter measure to the Plan. Tomorrow, our Party will flood the airwaves with commercials reminding the Public of what Dion Promised during the Campaign (he is resigning anyways, maybe his way of punishing his Party for betraying Him as he was not supported by the Big Wigs during the last campaign) and start the petition against the Coalition as polls after polls shows that the Public is against this Betrayal. Once again a reminder, given the opportunity, Politicians no matter where have something in common.

anthony scalia on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 8:56 am

mlq3,

“scalia, iâ€™m not so sure. weâ€™d have to see if the legislation has been passed or if itâ€™s being pushed. most economy-related major policy measures have not been derailed, whether the e-vat or JPEPA etc. Land Reform, on the other hand, is in danger of being stalled and the Negros Bloc to which the Presidentâ€™s brother-in-law belongs is central to this.”

1. evat was passed in the last congress. its a bitter pill, but necessary.

2. JPEPA is not legislation, but a treaty. Only the Senate had a part in its ratification. what took them so long in ratifying it? the country could have enjoyed the benefits much earlier

3. you’re talking about the House. besides, the Negros bloc is just a handful. they can easily be overturned by a majority

anthony scalia on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 9:20 am

“Non-partisans? There is no such thing.”

so its true – our dear blog host/owner is not non-partisan!

anthony scalia on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 9:24 am

mlq3,

the JPEPA has constitutional infirmities?

that only means one thing – in areas where the JPEPA and the constitution are in conflict, the constitution prevails. the ‘constitutionally infirm’ provisions of JPEPA will not be enforced

its that plain and simple

anthony scalia on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 9:36 am

mlq3,

“Iâ€™d dispute though your characterization of Business Mirror, itâ€™s about as neutral as a paper can get on these things, I think, and may even veer on the side of the administration more often than not.”

neutral? try reading the editorial section of Business Mirror daily.

only John Mangun is neutral in BM

Bert on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 11:35 am

â€œNon-partisans? There is no such thing.â€

Of course there is. The bats are neutral, neither bird nor beast.

mlq3 on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 11:48 am

oh for heaven’s sakes scalia, you mean we still have to go back and discuss the difference between the op-ed pages of a paper and the news pages???? or that the business mirror has a healthy presence of your administration’s people in it????

and re your jpepa opinion, you’re standing diplomacy and constitutional law on its head. the power of the senate to ratify or reject a treaty is absolute. and the senate’s ability to insist on amendments or changes or additional agreements to a treaty entered into by the president as a condition to its approval by the senate, is well established (see the requirements to ratifying our country’s treaty of friendship with spain in 1946-47). no self-respecting country just willy-nilly approves treaties and leaves its details to be sorted out by the courts or meeting some sort of post ratification constitutional muster.

re your comments on the house: you really don’t understand how legislatures anywhere in the world work??? they will always be run by a cabal of senior leadership. the influence of the sugar bloc in our politics and legislation is well known and well documented.

on evat, the composition of the congress that approved it was not very different from this one and again, the challenge for you is to find out whether partisanship has substantially derailed/defeated/diminished etc. the economy-related legislation deemed vital by the administration. my assertion is that in legislation related to the economy, the congress -both houses- has passed what the president has certified as needing passage.

you may want to try reading up on the well organized opposition to jpepa to see why the senate had to review the treaty and put it through a fine toothed comb and again compare it to other treaties other administrations viewed as centerpiece treaties (such as the visiting forces agreement) to see if it was outstandingly fast or unbearably slow in deliberating on it.

rego on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 12:08 pm

Manolo,

Ah so hindi pala dahil sa garci issue kaya ka umalis?

I was wondering if you somehow you feel that Gloria yuo something dahil kinampanya mo sya?

And so nag kamali ka kay Gloria, How can you be so sure then na hindi ka na mali sa mga kinakampaya mo nagayon mapapoltico man o advocies.

Sometimes I also find it really “amusing” that those who campaign for Gloria ( I remember CVJ also voted for her.) are the ones leading the the oust Gloria at all cost now? Is it becuase you feel you have some a power over her becuase you help put her in that position ? Is it guilt? that you help created the problem so you should do something to eradicate the problem?.

Cruious lang talga ako kung saan nanggaling ang lahat ng panggagalati nyo kay Gloria. Na sa pakiramdam ko ay over na over at sobra na talaga ang pag ka over reactive nyo.

mlq3 on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 1:48 pm

rego,

wala namang sigurado sa buhay. you make a decision according to the best information you have at the time, according to whatever guides you use to decide on what political stand to take at any given time. this is why i was always careful to approach it and explain it from my particular perspective as a former employee and supporter of the president. the stand and actions of others who never supported her or worked for her will be entirely different.

again and again i try to explain this precisely so everyone knows where i’m coming from:

http://simpliving.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-gloria-has-to-go-according-to.html

you gravitate to a leader because you believe you have shared goals. you maintain your allegiance so long as those goals are united. if they are no longer so, your choice is whether to trust in the wisdom of the leader or to part ways because supporting that leader is coming at too great a cost to what brought you to support that leader to begin with. in my case, the process of parting ways began with her decision to run again, but was not enough to not support her in 04, though i was already troubled with how it turned out (you can review my writings on fpj where i differed with the other supporters of the president on what he represented) particularly in how the proclamation was accomplished.

there is nothing amusing about it. the supporters of a leader have every right and indeed the obligation to hold the leader to account for they both went into the political process believing in certain things. that is why even within parties leaders can rise and fall, depending on their supporters’ views. what more, the country, where besides being supporters of particular leaders we’re called upon to be active and conscientious citizens first and foremost?

the alternative is pakikisama simply for the sake of pakikisama, and loyalty to a person that transcends your loyalty to institutions and the process. you are loyal to a leader in politics not for jobs or positions, though those can help in achieving things, but ultimate, because you and the leader believe you are all instruments in achieving something better than what we have today.

we you become convinced otherwise, it’s time to part ways, and if it is a parting of ways over something fundamental, then it’s time to fight.

BrianB on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 3:26 pm

Manolo,

You were still with her in spirit after Garci? Can you explain your feelings then?

anthony scalia on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 4:06 pm

quezon,

oh for heavenâ€™s sakes scalia, you mean we still have to go back and discuss the difference between the op-ed pages of a paper and the news pages???? or that the business mirror has a healthy presence of your administrationâ€™s people in it????

oops i must have touched a nerve. coz i was right

my dear kababayan, the slant of a broadsheet can be ascertained from its editorials.

im shocked – you think BM is slanted towards “my” admin because of the front page stories? oh my, is that you, my dear blog host? the BM has to sell copies, you know

and excuse me, your senators get more exposure than “my” admin people. whining really gets media attention and sells copies too!

and re your jpepa opinion, youâ€™re standing diplomacy and constitutional law on its head. the power of the senate to ratify or reject a treaty is absolute.”

very true!

“and the senateâ€™s ability to insist on amendments or changes or additional agreements to a treaty entered into by the president as a condition to its approval by the senate, is well established (see the requirements to ratifying our countryâ€™s treaty of friendship with spain in 1946-47). no self-respecting country just willy-nilly approves treaties and leaves its details to be sorted out by the courts or meeting some sort of post ratification constitutional muster.”

very true! all the senate does is ratify or not.

the senate ratified the JPEPA after all. why the long wait? i think there were no changes in JPEPA.

your senators ratified the JPEPA because they finally saw the light.

your senators forgot their constitutional law. the “constitutionally infirm” provisions of JPEPA simply won’t be enforced

re your comments on the house: you really donâ€™t understand how legislatures anywhere in the world work???

i do. how about you?

they will always be run by a cabal of senior leadership. the influence of the sugar bloc in our politics and legislation is well known and well documented.

noted

on evat, the composition of the congress that approved it was not very different from this one

oh really? i don’t see its author there. your senate is a lot different now.

and again, the challenge for you is to find out whether partisanship has substantially derailed/defeated/diminished etc. the economy-related legislation deemed vital by the administration. my assertion is that in legislation related to the economy, the congress -both houses- has passed what the president has certified as needing passage.”

i think the more precise way of saying it is “the congress finally passed what the president has certified several months earlier as needing passage”

you may want to try reading up on the well organized opposition to jpepa

***cough cough***

excuse me, did i just read “well organized”?

“noisy” is more like it

to see why the senate had to review the treaty and put it through a fine toothed comb and again compare it to other treaties other administrations viewed as centerpiece treaties (such as the visiting forces agreement) to see if it was outstandingly fast or unbearably slow in deliberating on it.

let me see…the ratification of JPEPA, which would result to the creation of thousands of jobs, had to take a back seat to the making of committee reports. JPEPA was ratified Sept or Oct 2008. It was with the Senate since late 2006!

no question on the eventual passing of legislation certified as urgent. those legislation would have been passed much much earlier if your senators did not prioritize the making of committee reports

anthony scalia on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 4:12 pm

quezon,

yikes sorry for the misplaced quotes. the following comments of mine should not be in blurbs:

————————————————————————–
i think the more precise way of saying it is â€œthe congress finally passed what the president has certified several months earlier as needing passageâ€
————————————————————————–
“***cough cough***

excuse me, did i just read â€œwell organizedâ€?

â€œnoisyâ€ is more like it”
——————————————————————————-
“let me seeâ€¦the ratification of JPEPA, which would result to the creation of thousands of jobs, had to take a back seat to the making of committee reports. JPEPA was ratified Sept or Oct 2008. It was with the Senate since some of your senators were elected in2007.

no question on the eventual passing of legislation certified as urgent. those legislation would have been passed much much earlier if your senators did not prioritize the making of committee reports
——————————————————————————-

Bert on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 5:00 pm

leytenian,

there’s always room for you here in manolo’s blog, if I have the say. you are a welcome sound, always cheerful to the last bite.

mlq3 on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 6:48 pm

scalia, once again. review the jpepa. review the debates, i will not do it for you. the senate’s holding off forced the executive to renegotiate things with the japanese. and while you’re at it review the entire rhyme and reason for having deliberate bodies which is what the legislature is. it is not to pass laws swiftly. only rubber stamp parliaments which aren’t real parliaments do that.

mlq3 on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 6:49 pm

brian, i’ve explained the process i went through regarding 2005. you can review the entries during those weeks where i was doing my thinking aloud.

anthony scalia on Wed, 3rd Dec 2008 10:52 pm

quezon,

maybe you’re the one who should review the jpepa and the debates. i won’t do it for you.

the jpepa was not renegotiated, as it was already ratified by the japanese diet while awaiting ratification by the Philippine senate.

http://info.ibon.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=279&Itemid=50

and if it were not for your senators’ penchant for committee reports, the jpepa would have been ratified much earlier

so for you one year is the minimum time for a deliberate body like the senate to put something like a mere bilateral treaty through a fine comb?

when committee reports get in the way, no legislation can really pass swiftly!

supremo on Thu, 4th Dec 2008 12:18 am

The Philippine Senate is in good company when it comes to approving treaties. Some treaties stuck in the US Senate.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women – since 1979

Firearms Convention – since 1998

U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea – since 1982

Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies – since 1979

rego on Thu, 4th Dec 2008 12:17 pm

“rego, wala namang sigurado sa buhay. you make a decision according to the best information you have at the time, according to whatever guides you use to decide on what political stand to take at any given time.” mlq3

right manolo, that is why we cannot really judge other person merely because they differ from your decision.

all those thing that you have been advocating is not really sure that will work. there is really no guarante that if Gloria is overthrown life will be better for all if not majority of us….

I following up this the situation in Thailand on the TV. I think that validate smy fears of supporting another peopel power.

Jon on Thu, 4th Dec 2008 3:03 pm

Rego, did you say that right? If you’re not sure it/something will work, don’t go for it? Does it only apply to Gloria, or to all aspects of life?

mlq3 on Thu, 4th Dec 2008 11:22 pm

rego,

which is why i have been aware and have pointed out on several occasions that there is a certain logic behind the decision of many people not to take the plunge. part of it was the inherent logic of people power itself as a phenomenon -it has to be peaceful, that those calling for it can’t be those who were its targets in the past, that at the same time those who benefited from it in the past can’t deny it to anyone in the future- which meant that on the whole people held back from joining people power efforts because they saw some contradictions in those trying to head it, but also, whenever the government clamped down severely on it, the public didn’t like it either.

and also, that taking the plunge would require certain questions being answered, too (sinong papalit? is the most powerful one), and that unless it could be answered, people would hold back from joining it or supporting it; but certainly we have had people power of a more moderate kind, too, such as to stop the last cha-cha, and to put an end to the controversial schemes with zte and to show displeasure with the way people were being abducted and killed. in that sense, the public has utilized people power in a more targeted manner without going all the way to regime change. for regime change, i also pointed out several times that the public seems to have a broad consensus that it wants the president pressured into good behavior, but will not remove her unless it’s done through the constitutional processes, sorry na lang kung di kaya ng mga kumokontra sa kanya -but as the elections show, they do appreciate those who are anti or at least independent, more than those fanatically loyal to gma. so a kind of balance is being worked out that may not leave either the most anti or pro gma happy but which works out well for the country as a whole.

i do recognize that and take pains to point it out; but also, that there are some contradictions that reveal themselves in the attitudes of those who uncritically support the government or who try to disguise their support for the government as some kind of independence, or superior form of democracy. as for being anti the anti, well, the entire resources of our government are being devoted to pursuing that line, together with those genuinely anti anti or whatever, so it also all works out in the end.

scalia: either we are arguing apples and oranges again or are going around in circles because of incompatible definitions. in the first place, the JPEPA is no mere treaty, it’s a very important treaty, both bilaterally and in terms of our overall economy and how we are interacting with the world in economic terms. It certainly had a formidable opposition to it which can’t be swept aside or ignored, at least if you are interested in democratic government. the treaty was negotiated by the executive with the japanese, but it was public pressure and senatorial scrutiny that saved it,in a sense, from the overeagerness of the government to conclude the treaty. the exchange of notes between the japanese and our government can be viewed in the nature of an amendment, additional understandings of an official nature that sort out potential pitfalls in the agreement. that the japanese agreed and our government approached indicates that both sides knew these issues had to be resolved to guarantee concurrence. failure to do so might have imperiled the treaty not just in the senate, but in our courts. again, you may have viewed the treaty as a run of the mill agreement meriting little debate and a swift approval; but both the government and its critics viewed the agreement as a landmark one.

mlq3 on Thu, 4th Dec 2008 11:33 pm

Geo, I was talking to a foreign businessman earlier today and he asked a very good question. “Do you really think these people in Congress really want to allow foreigners like me to own land and businesses in this country?” He said they haven’t seen any concrete proposals.

Another point someone else raised: might there not be foreign investors who’ve already gone in, regardless of existing official limits (just ask the local tax lawyers, etc. who are making a fine business of arranging all those neat shell companies), and still another: there simply isn’t a large enough market to make it worth coming in, in the scale and extent some proponents assume there’ll be, with or without relaxing existing rules, the local market simply lacks the purchasing power (e.g. comparisons with china and thailand). i’d be interested in your thoughts on this.

as you know, our political class (increasingly one and the same as the business class) and a large portion of academe and even media are uncomprehending or patently fearful of true competition.

Geo on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 1:33 pm

mlq3,

Forgive me for not being able to quickly respond to several posts you directed at me. I’ll try to address some of them now…starting with your last post (12/4 11:33pm).

The market certainly offers many opportunities for foreign firms (and local ones). The risk premiums are a problem, not a lack of current market size.

Many firms won’t go through the dangers (and costs) of shell companies, dummy companies, etc. because of their own country laws, their investors’ desires/restrictions (esp in publicly traded companies), and/or because similar opportunities elsewhere don’t require such contortions (and risks and costs).

Now, is it in the country’s interest to open up the economy further?

Certainly the communists and socialists don’t think so. Smugglers don’t think so. Monopolies don’t think so. Laymen with a strong anti-foreigner mindset don’t think so.

There are enough Pinoys in the biz and political classes, though, who are aware of the economic benefits of increased globalization, domestic market access, increased FDI, etc, etc. They understand that widespread job creation is a major, urgent necessity.

Hence you’ll hear PCCI and MBC (never mind the foreign chambers) push for more opening. Congress will follow the money, of course. They also want more money, investments, jobs in their districts.

Geo on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 2:20 pm

mlq3,

You wrote: “Ge, very illuminating insight on how reps of foreign chambers of commerce operate, thanks.”

** I guess you are being sincere, but all I said was that they promote the membership’s agenda to the appropriate government bodies…tactfully (not always, though…as they angered the Senate recently).
——————-

You wrote: “Iâ€™d dispute though your characterization of Business Mirror,”

** I take back my comment on the writer…if it was his editor who came up with the misleading (false) headline.
—————-

You wrote: “actually, it would be helpful (but not politically helpful) if critics of the critics of charter change would list the bills of economic importance the President has proposed, to see how many got derailed on a purely partisan basis.”

** A couple of years ago, I found very detailed info on Congress, including how many bills passed, etc. Now, I can’t. All I’ve seen now is the 14th’s record to date, but no historicals.

Do you (or anyone) know where I can find historical info on what laws/bills/acts were proposed/passed/etc?
————–

mlq — At least I can tell you that I agree that the Senate is crucial in passing laws, so of course they get *credit* for doing so…but that’s a pretty low bar to set. We need to look at how many, how long they took, etc.

Anyway, I’m not sure what your point is. That this Senate — if pressured enough — will at least pass the most urgent bills? So?

Geo on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 2:45 pm

mlq3,

Nice to see you finally try to rebut the 2004 election results.

It will be interesting to see how others react. After all, they think the Garci tapes were bona fide…and they are convinced GMA cheated. Most anti-GMA types don’t even know that the foundation they rest their case on — illegitimacy — has been shown to be wrong.

Let’s review…..

You wrote: “There was another case, that of the Vice-Presidential election, which however, though involving the same set of documents, involves votes cast separately and counted separately for the Vice-Presidency.”

“In the end, the case was dismissed, again not on conclusive findings one way or another, but because the Court acting as PET deemed the protest moot and academic after Legarda ran for the Senate.”

“The Court in its decision said that based on the sampling conducted they found no reason to dispute the proclamation:

as the pilot-tested revision of ballots or re-tabulation of the certificates of canvass would not affect the winning margin of the protestee in the final canvass of the returnsâ€¦”
————————————————————

Nice try, mlq, but no cigar.

1. For there to be cheating for the VP or the Prez, one would see it while looking at the same documents…which were either fraudulent or not.

But the ER’s were real…and they tallied with the Congressional’s copies and counts.

Meanwhile, you don’t think both parties (with their lawyers and allies) were looking at both???

2. The “pilot testing” you referred to means that the ACCUSER can pick 3 provinces and specific districts and municipalities to prove one’s point.

These were Legarda’s (and assumingly, UNO’s) BEST EXAMPLES IN THE NATION FOR FINDING “PROOF”. But they found little. Ouch.

3. The SC said that the case was “dismissed for lack of legal and factual basis”. You forgot to mention that.

Yes, it was also dismissed becuase she was to become a Senator, but the SC first established that she had a lot of time and leeway and had not been able to produce any evidence of significant cheating.

The SC said: “To say that the protestant had shown enough evidence to prove that the whole or even half (440,862)[44] of the lead of the protestee over the protestant is spurious, would go against the grain of the evidence on hand.” Ouch.

Jon on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 3:04 pm

Geo, is there any chance that the ballots used by the PET were tampered with? After all, there was an accussation that a special op was made to carry this out.

mlq3 on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 3:33 pm

geo, i’m not as convinced as you that the politicians will see the benefits of liberalizing the economy in the same manner as businessmen, mainly because businessmen seem to be mastering the ability to dodge the politicos when they go around begging bowls in hand, come election time, though there are of course some big players who have mastered the traditional game of funding politicians in a strategically-sound manner. in that sense one would hope lobbying would advance in this country in a formal manner, instead of keeping in the shadows. i have this impression because of the many cases you hear of once flourishing local industries (such as the seaweed industry) that have been hammered by the short-sighted approach of local governments and the indifference of the national government (and equally self-defeating business practices among the players) so that they become increasingly uncompetitive and then lose talent to more aggressive competitors, such as indonesia (where filipino seaweed farmers were actively poached to convince them to work and bring their expertise to that country).

i wonder though how businessmen and in particular, entrepreneurs can do to show there’s effective public opinion on their side, willing to demand these reforms from the local and national governments.

you bring up a crucial point about the divergence between headlines and actual reports. this is a cause of frustration even among journalists, and i think you’d find it interesting to compare the headlines on inquirer.net and those on the broadsheet, for example.

regarding congress: this is one of my biggest frustrations concerning anything to do with government in general, the lack of an appreciation for comparative data. it’s sometimes out there but a real pain in the ass to obtain, much less make sense of. which makes for a lot of inefficiency to start with and people arguing apples and oranges much too often, even within the government itself. the lack of any real institutional memory is a big obstacle to consensus or rational planning etc.

but this is not just a government problem, it’s a societal problem, too, one of my future entries will deal with the overlap in activities and data-gathering various civil society groups are engaged in, too. also, the disinclination of authority to shae potentially damaging information (clamdown in NEDA, for example, executive privilege all around, etc.). Even the House of Representatives, hammered with headlines about absences, dispensed with the PR problem of absentee congressmen by simply abandoning taking attendance, so there’s nothing to compile, ergo nothing to report, which means no embarrasing headlines to deal with. My understanding from House and Senate reporters I’ve talked to, is that getting copies of bills and even the journal of either chamber is difficult because the staff make money from xeroxing documents so they basically aren’t interested in simply providing soft copies of all these documents. add to this the lack of follow-through in various agencies so that otherwise promising starts to providing information end up petering out. i’ve discussed how basically this lack of tidy record-keeping dates back to the secretive nature of the martial law government.

my point concerning the senate is that as part of congress, if you focus on legislation oriented towards the economy, it seems to me that the batting average of the administration is pretty good, and might actually be outstanding. partisanship seems to affect economics-related laws (including the national budget) less than other legislation. as for other legislation, the political mood of the times has put the burden on the senate and the supreme court as the front line in holding back the most aggressive assertions of executive authority in a generation. and again, the validation of this are the elections.

with regards to the election results, to return to your point concerning the garci tapes, the comittee report(s) by the house may be of interest to you, it seems to me, it reflects the sum total of what can be officially said to have been determined about it, to date:

Committee Report No 1653

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Campaigns and Electi Politics

the members of the house who put together this report took great pride in it, and their approach was different from the public’s. while the public viewed it as a smoking gun (the tapes), the house expressed concern that if the president of the philippines could be tapped, this was a major national security breach. they did not reach any definite conclusions on the tapes, and called for the executive branch to mount investigations. these have not been done. even the question of proving the tapes a forgery or at least a misleading and highly selective editing of other tapes, foundered on the palace itself releasing versions of the tapes and various officials muddling efforts to authenticate the tapes. this lack of interest in achieving any definitive finding was of course, part of the president’s strategy of keeping her legal options open, with the very real possibility of an impeachment fight; but the absence of any effort since then to resolve the tapes only strengthens the perception that there’s something incriminating there, or that, the actual contents aside, the circumstances surrounding the tapes would be too much of an explosive issue to fully explore (tony abaya subscribes to the view that it was an effort by the usa to topple arroyo, something neither washington nor manila would want to unravel once the president survived the intitial challenges to her stay in office).

and on one point the house did point out that the palace, for its part, undertook a coverup concerning the tapes -and if you recall, this was enough grounds on my part, to conclude the president had to go (e.g. watergate).

concerning the supreme court and the election controversies, the supreme court was careful to establish the parameters within which it has to operate, as the pet, and the regulations concerning the discovery of fraud. in the first place the mechanisms at the disposal of institutions like the pet date back to the era when ballot-stuffing was the mechanism for fraud. the more sophisticated accounting procedures first explored in the twilight of the marcos years and increasingly made even more sophisticated since then, makes the discovery of proof that much more difficult. yet, it’s possible, as the case of aquilino pimentel proved and has been indicated by the protest of koko pimentel moving forward are concerned. we don’t know if it could have been ultimately proven in miriam’s case, because the case was dismissed when she ran for the senate.

setting aside the possibility that operators like garci weren’t just operating for the administration but other candidates as well, i think it’s enough to point out that an operation to alter the results for the president would be different from an operation for the vice president, that absence of cheating for one would indicate the absence of cheating for the other.

while i do find it convincing, as argued by the fpj people, that two operations actually took place, a sophisticated one to inflate voting results to provide wiggle room for incrementally shaving votes for opposition candidates on one hand, while adding those small increments to the president on the other, the tiny fractions not upsetting the overall results people expected (where she was expected to win, she won; where she expected to lose, she lost: but add all the little incremental fractions together and they totalled a winning margin), but which proved insufficent to obtain the desired margin, thus requiring a hasty and clumsy effort by garci which was made worse by the active meddling of the president (robbing her of plausible deniability), obviously i won’t expect you to give this theory any credence.

still, the question then becomes that as far as the presidential results are concerned, no thorough analysis has taken place, because by the rules, fpj died and no one could pursue his protest except him; and no other candidate wanted to spend the time and resources to mount their own protest (i suspect, had he lived, maybe roco could have done so, but he died soon after the garci issue broke out: you could argue ping and the others were too interested in cloak and dagger people power promotion to pursue this avenue). the president’s own priorities were clear during the canvassing by congress, when her interest was in avoiding a power vacuum and having herself proclaimed as quickly as possible.

the legarda protest then is only proof that she most probably lost, or that she could not point to where real monkey business took place in case it incriminated her, too. but there is no iron-clad resolution beyond the already controversial proclamation by congress, based on documents the supreme court would have referred to but which it could have gone beyond, except the whole question was rendered moot by fpj’s death. and since then ample time has passed to tidy up any discrepancies in the records going all the way down, possibly, to the ballot box.

anthony scalia on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 3:48 pm

quezon,

the jpepa is a mere bilateral treaty. no different from any other treaty – they all need senate ratification.

my only issues with you regarding jpepa is:

1. you said it was renegotiated, presumably because of your senators’ “vigilance”.

again, it was not renegotiated. the jpepa was ratified as is.

2. why did it take for your senators more than a year to ratify the jpepa? a mere bilateral treaty? whether to ratify it or not is much much more important than making committee reports

“formidable opposition”? to jpepa? to repeat – “noisy” is more apt!

im really surprised by your statement:

but it was public pressure and senatorial scrutiny that saved it,in a sense, from the overeagerness of the government to conclude the treaty. the exchange of notes between the japanese and our government can be viewed in the nature of an amendment, additional understandings of an official nature that sort out potential pitfalls in the agreement. that the japanese agreed and our government approached indicates that both sides knew these issues had to be resolved to guarantee concurrence. failure to do so might have imperiled the treaty not just in the senate, but in our courts. again, you may have viewed the treaty as a run of the mill agreement meriting little debate and a swift approval; but both the government and its critics viewed the agreement as a landmark one.

again, for the nth time my dear kababayan -

the jpepa was ratified as it is! in its original form when it was submitted to the senate for ratification!

the Japanese ‘agreed’? it was not renegotiated!

the Japanese Diet ratified the jpepa earlier, in late 2006. senate action on jpepa took longer.

just imagine if the hearings on the making of committee reports gave way to jpepa hearings. for sure a few months after your senators were elected, the senate would have ratified it before year end 2007

mlq3 on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 4:17 pm

Scalia:

That the Senate of the Philippines concur, as
it hereby concurs, in the ratification of the Japan-Philippines
Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) as modified by the
Supplemental Agreement consisting of the Exchange of Notes
Between the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs and the
Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs known as the Romulo-
Aso Exchange of Notes of 23 May 2007 and the Exchange of
Notes between the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs and
Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines known as the Romulo-
Komura Exchange of Notes of 28 August 2008.

The Senater cannot tell the Japanese authorities what to do, but can make its approval of a treaty entered into by the president on behalf of the republic, conditional.

Senate Resolution 131

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Geo on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 6:02 pm

Jon,

You wrote: “Geo, is there any chance that the ballots used by the PET were tampered with?”

** Yes, there’s a chance. There’s always a chance around here for tampering. However, since there’s always an equal chance that someone is making intrigues, let’s look at the SC’s own findings:

“the protestant had not adequately and convincingly rebutted the presumption that as public documents, the Congress-retrieved ER copies, used for the proclamation of the protestee by the NBC, are authentic and duly executed in the regular course of official business.”

“As to the alleged break-in in Congress, which allegedly facilitated the switching of ERs, no conclusive evidence has been given. One of the protestant’s own witnesses, Atty. Artemio Adasa, Deputy General for Legislative Operations of the House of Representatives, categorically denied that a break-in and a switching of ERs had occurred in Congress.”

Geo on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 6:54 pm

mlq3,

You wrote: “geo, iâ€™m not as convinced as you that the politicians will see the benefits of liberalizing the economy in the same manner as businessmen, mainly because businessmen seem to be mastering the ability to dodge the politicos when they go around begging bowls in hand, come election time, though there are of course some big players who have mastered the traditional game of funding politicians in a strategically-sound manner. in that sense one would hope lobbying would advance in this country in a formal manner, instead of keeping in the shadows. i have this impression because of the many cases you hear of once flourishing local industries (such as the seaweed industry) that have been hammered by the short-sighted approach of local governments and the indifference of the national government (and equally self-defeating business practices among the players) so that they become increasingly uncompetitive and then lose talent to more aggressive competitors, such as indonesia (where filipino seaweed farmers were actively poached to convince them to work and bring their expertise to that country).”

** No offense, but I’m not sure I followed all of that. My tentative response is that most good politicians know that PROVIDING JOBS is even better than pork barrel roads or bus stops (or ocho-ocho dances!) when it comes to getting votes. If a foreign firm goes to a district with a plan for creating a competitive export business, you don’t think that the Governor, Congressman and Mayor aren’t interested?

Like I said, politicians usually follow the money…

…and the whole idea here is that the current monopoly holders just aren’t delivering enough benefits/opportunities to enough people in enough barangays/towns/munis/districts/regions.

There is a vacuum since Marcos’ fall which has yet to be completely filled.

And there is now a large pool of politicians who have figured this out.

Problem is…the foreigners aren’t too ready to cede so much control to their non-risk-taking local counterparts. So if the laws are that discriminatory, they might as well do a project somewhere else.

And there is now a large pool of politicians who have figured this out.

(As a side note — This is arguably the only way the oligarchy can be brought down several notches. In my own vision, this is one of the key parts of a devolutionary process. Hence my support for Federalism, Parliament and the rule of law.)

anthony scalia on Fri, 5th Dec 2008 8:25 pm

quezon,

a supplemental agreement?

1. thats a whole lot different from your earlier claims of a “renegotiation” due to your senators’ “scrutiny”!

you are making it sound like jpepa itself was changed despite being ratified already by the Japanese Diet, that the contracting parties went back to the drawing board, thanks to the heroics of your senators

Miriam was “confident that with the supplemental agreement, there would be no need to renegotiate the JPEPA. The Japanese government is not expected to renegotiate with the ratification of the JPEPA by the Diet, the Japanese parliament”

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2007/nov/15/yehey/metro/20071115met6.html

2. what were the contents of these exchange of notes in august 2008? according to Miriam:

â€œThe exchange of notes means that the areas of investment activities reserved by the Constitution to Filipinos will remain reserved, and will not be opened to Japanese investors.

â€œThis will ensure that the to [deal] will not result in violation or amendment of any nationalistic provisions of the Constitution, notably the ownership of lands of the public domain and exploration, development and utilization of all waters, minerals, coal, petroleum oils, all sources of potential energy, fisheries, forest or timber, wildlife, flora, fauna and other natural resources.

â€œThis also makes it clear that Japanese nationals and companies are prohibited from operating any public utility, practicing any profession or owning mass media and advertising firms in the country.â€

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=felMaragay_sept13_2008

exactly my point – in areas where our constitution conflicts with the JPEPA, the constitution will prevail. but the rest of JPEPA which does not run counter to the constitution will remain valid.

mlq3 on Sat, 6th Dec 2008 1:49 am

scalia, you’re nit picking. you can review my past comments and your disputing the government obtaining the undertakings it did with the japanese government to satisfy the objections of the senate, and going back to the example i gave of you of our country’s treaty of friendship with spain in the 1940s.

anthony scalia on Sun, 7th Dec 2008 9:10 pm

quezon,

“supplemental agreement” is not the same as “renegotiation”

you are making it appear that the JPEPA that was eventually ratified by your senators was not the same JPEPA that was first submitted by the executive branch to the senate for ratification.

no sir. what was ratified was the same one that was submitted

if your senators really objected to JPEPA, they should have rejected it outright. if the “formidable opposition” to the JPEPA should be heeded, then JPEPA should have been rejected without delay.

the “formidable opposition” to JPEPA wants the whole JPEPA rejected.

Current » The referendum scorecard 1935-1987 on Tue, 9th Jun 2009 1:29 am

[...] required for success in proposing constitutional amendments in my November 26, 2008 entry, “The worm within“; you may want to review [...]

The referendum scorecard 1935-1987 : Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose on Tue, 9th Jun 2009 1:38 am

[...] required for success in proposing constitutional amendments in my November 26, 2008 entry, “The worm within“; you may want to review [...]

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