First Things First. The President Should Step Down. What If She Won’t Resign?

The perception that she rigged the results of the elections puts a cloud of doubt over Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's ability to lead this country. The Vice President will then take over the reigns of government, steer the bureaucracy forward and salvage whatever credibility is left of the government. Only then can we go back to the political table and decide on the best way to preside over the destiny of this country.


What about if the President won’t resign?


I propose that we ignore her. Let the politicized sectors of our society engage the President and her ilk in a protracted but non-violent confrontation until a tipping point is reached.
At the same time, the rest of us should focus our remaining energy in solving problems that will benefit the lives of actual and real people by working with the local government units and the communities.


Forest regeneration should be top of the agenda. With less than twenty percent forest cover, we cannot sustain the productivity of our farm lands, we cannot have natural protection against destructive typhoons and heavy rains, and we cannot improve the supply of our fish stock. We should plant native species of trees to re-green all our communities by at least 60 percent.


Rehabilitation of the marine ecological system comes next. Some studies point out that the Philippines is “the center of the center” of the world’s marine biology. We should, therefore, support Atty. Antonio A. Oposa Jr. and his partners in “cleaning up our mess” and then in protecting the Visayan Sea and other marine sanctuaries to ensure a stable and sustainable supply of fish for all Filipinos.


Promotion of ecotourism comes third. Yes, we have natural endowments that have attracted local and international tourists but tourists do not go to these places if their personal safety is threatened, if transportation is difficult, if the ecological systems are degraded, and if our taxi drivers behave like hold-uppers. In other words, there are many things that we need to put in place to make the promise of ecotourism a reality rather than a figment of our imagination.


There are other things that are equally important. Fighting graft and corruption, improving the conduct of our elections, providing basic social services, preventing crimes and punishing criminals, etc. are manifestations of good and effective governance. I propose that we let GMA tackle these issues. Anyway, it will take her entire lifetime to clean up the bureaucracy judging from her performance levels these past years.


Recently, however, GMA has asked the Department of Budget and Management to rate the performance of 17 agencies that have undergone the integrity development review or assessment of their strengths and vulnerabilities to corruption. I am hopeful that she will eventually rate the performance of all government agencies, including the local government units. Soon, she will intensify her earlier pronouncement enjoining government organizations to install their respective quality management systems and have these certified by independent auditors. After that, the National Economic Development Authority will include social and economic indicators or perhaps sustainable development indicators in the government organization performance assessment system.


I am conservative but hopeful that there will be continuous improvement in our governance system. What I am worried about is our ecological system. And this is the area that requires all our talents and energies. We don’t need a president like GMA to rehabilitate our forest. The Boholanos in Tubigon, Bohol won an award for their community-based mangrove plantation despite being neglected in the past by Malacanang occupants. The coastal town of Buswanga in Palawan has also maintained good quality mangroves despite the mediocre performance of the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development. Some of our indigenous communities have successfully opposed mining operations despite the insistence of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources that mining will generate revenue for the country.


Our environment is a matter of life and death, especially for our descendants. Nobody should mess with us as far as ecological health is concerned. If our environment is continuously degraded, we can’t just simply point accusing fingers to GMA or to the bystanders at DENR. We can only blame ourselves, as individuals and as a collectivity. Our descendants will not blame the presidents of our generation for whatever ecological tragedy they will face. They will blame us, their parents.


Come on people. Leave GMA alone. She has left us already. The next administration will go after her. If not, the Firm will.

Jose Rizal and Education

What makes Rizal current and significant is the idea that intelligence is the best weapon and that spirit is the best force in life. He became an intellectual by studying, absorbing and reflecting on ideas that he gained from school and experience and by using his intellect to formulate solutions to the problems that the country faced during his time. 


He did not stop there. He embodied his ideas by risking his life and ultimately offering it to the sacred altar of freedom.

Today, the Secretary of the Department of Education, Mr. Jesli Lapus, was quoted in the newspapers as lamenting the current state of education in the country. He says that education has sunk to its lowest level. He is not just talking about the low pay and the limited school buildings and facilities. He is also talking about the low level of competency of most of the teachers.

It is certain that Mr. Lapus knows what he is talking about. He knows too that the problem is systemic and the product of several years of neglect.

However, it should also be pointed out that the capability of the students is also an important factor in the process of producing outstanding graduates.

The question is: Do we have students who have the intelligence and spirit of Rizal?

Several young people, like Rizal, have offered their lives in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship, for instance. It is safe to assume, therefore, that the Filipinos are not lacking in spirit. Now, is it safe to assume that anyone out there has the solution to the country’s problems? This is the question that I’d like to invite you to think about.

Happy New Year po!

Adrian Cristobal, intellectual

I do not know Adrian Cristobal personally. It doesn’t matter to me that he wrote for Marcos. Or that he earned awards and honorary doctorates from two or more universities. I read at one time that he delivered a lecture on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas at the University of Santo Tomas. In one of the news stories about his death, I learned that he once served as a full professor of the University of the Philippines despite (or in spite) being a college drop out from the same institution. I have a high regard for the man as an intellectual, which Wikipedia defines as “one who tries to use his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate, or ask and answer questions about a wide variety of different ideas.”

As a columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Bulletin and the Philippine Graphic, Cristobal asked questions about age, death, politics, economics, philosophy, theology, etc. He was one writer who could allow the reader to see the difficult questions behind simple things, such as when he sort of told Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that there’s no truth to the statement that it’s lonely up there when you’re on top of the political ladder as president. He could also be sarcastic. At one time he wrote about a group that informed him of his nomination for best opinion writer. When asked to submit at least five of his columns and an endorsement from his publisher, he did not just simply say no. Instead, he used his pen to dismantle the false but hidden arguments behind the invitation.

Cristobal wrote like Nietzsche and Camus, who were among his favorite writers. He defended the superiority of prose because, he says, it is not easy to comfort or inflict a reader with every sentence that he reads. 


True to his word, Cristobal delights his readers with every sentence in his columns. There’s no need for him to write about big ideas or controversial issues to make his columns interesting. He could make something ordinary interesting and make something interesting ordinary. 


Cristobal’s ideas on print will surely be missed by those who have become accustomed to his style of writing.

About the picture: Temenos #9: The Writer; Oil, Acrylic on Canvas; 29 15/16 in x 40 in; Collection of Jason Hughes)

The Birth of Jesus and the Slaughter of the Innocents

That the birth of Jesus Christ upset and troubled not a few political leaders of the Roman Empire is a perspective that has current significance in Philippine politics. The number of persons killed under the administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is not certain. Similarly, the number of children who were ordered killed by Herod is also not certain. Some sources estimated that as many as 64,000 boys were killed, although modern writers have reduced this number to twenty or so. Some human rights groups in the Philippines claim that nearly 800 people, who have denounced the policies of Malacanang, have been executed since 2004. Some sources say the number is lower than thirty.

The number of persons killed, regrettably, is not the core issue. One death that is sanctioned by any instrumentality of the State is enough to render a judgment on the moral significance of the action. The State's instrumentality cannot kill any citizen on whatever ground outside the rule of law. Thus, any instrumentality of the State that is responsible for any form of extra-judicial killing is legally and morally accountable to the State. Failure on the part of the government to go after the perpetrators of such crimes and mete out the appropriate penalty is a sign of moral and legal indifference. That effectively makes the policy of the administration to defer the implementation of the death penalty law an empty rhetoric.

Picture is taken from http://images.google.com

Bribery, Pay-offs and the GMA Bonus

Sometime this year, the government, through the Office of the Ombudsman and the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission, which are both headed by women who are not on talking terms, issued strong statements in reaction to a banner story of the Philippine Daily Inquirer that big time corruption is on the rise.

After the denials, the Senate of the Philippines conducted hearings, in aid of legislation, regarding the multi-million dollar ZTE project that was supposed to be implemented by the Department of Transportation and Communications, in partnership with a Chinese firm. The investigations turned nasty. At one point, a Senator asked one of those investigated, the Chairman of the Commission on Elections, if the content of a “text” message was true. The message alleged that the person under investigation is the father of the child of a young woman, who is not his wife. There were other twists and turns that marred the investigations. Eventually, the Chairman of the Commission on Elections resigned.

The ZTE investigations were followed by another scandal that rocked the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration. This involved the giving of cash gifts ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 pesos to selected elected officials, such as the provincial governors, who attended a meeting with the President in Malacanang Palace. Non-governmental sectors of society scorned the distribution of money. They said the President used public funds to thank her supporters for killing the impeachment complaint filed against her in the House of Representatives.

No law has been drafted as a result of the ZTE investigations. Nobody is sent to jail after the investigations of the alleged pay-off in the Palace.

A few days ago, after plucking the rebels out of the Manila Peninsula, Malacanang announced the release of the ten thousand pesos bonus for each employee of the government. Seventy percent of this amount will come from the Department of Budget of Management. The remaining amount will be taken from the savings of the respective government organizations. The President directed the Department of Budget and Management to formulate the implementing rules and regulations of the order.

The bonus translates to 833 pesos per month. That is an average of 28 pesos per day, more or less. 


Assuming that the average take-home pay of each government employee in Metro Manila is 15,000 pesos per month, each employee should have received a total of 205,000 pesos by end of 2007. That is inclusive of the 13th month pay and the announced “GMA” bonus.

Divided by 12 months, the 205,000 pesos is 17,083 per month or about 570 pesos per day. If an average government employee has six members in his or her family, and assuming that s/he is the sole bread winner in the family, each member of the family has a budget of 114 pesos daily.

Each member of the family approximately pays 40 pesos per day for water and electric bills. Meanwhile, a minimum of 30 pesos is the per capita budget for food. This is based on the assumption that everyone eats food that is cooked in each household. If the family is renting a room at 2,500 per month, each member of the family pays 14 pesos per day.

After deducting the daily per capita expenses for utilities, food and rent, each family has an excess of 30 pesos, more or less, or five pesos per person. If the bread winner of the family goes to work using public transport, s/he spends a minimum of 15 pesos per day. If at least one child goes to school using public transport, s/he spends 15 pesos per day. 


Assuming that the bread winner and the school child do not leave the house during weekends, the family saves about 240 pesos every month or about eight pesos every day. The savings will then be used to buy soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and perfume, among others, subject to the availability of the saved amount.

Have you wondered why government is prone to corruption? Are you now beginning to see why small bonuses given to hundreds of thousands of government employees are not perceived at all as a form of pay-off in the same manner that the alleged bribery in Malacanang is treated in media? Did you know that any amount saved in government organizations means the non-delivery of a form of public service? Did you know that government organizations, in general, deliberately set aside an amount for savings that can be used as counterpart fund in response, for instance, to a mandatory “GMA” bonus.

It is high time for government to improve the salary structure of its officials and employees. This is not the cure to corruption, for sure. This is just a step forward. This can raise their morale and reduce their indebtedness. This can also encourage competent men and women outside government service to take a career as a public servant.

Let this call be, at the very least, one of the immediate outcomes of the investigations initiated by the Congress of the Republic of the Philippines and the Executive Department.

Sumilao Farmers and Human Rights

Today, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines, is quoted in newspapers as giving the Sumilao farmers land ownership to the disputed 144 hectares of farm land. The decision came after the farmers marched 1,700 kilometers in a period of two months. The farmer’s representatives met with Arroyo earlier.

The rights-based approach (RBA) to development aims to make people capable of choosing, determining and pursuing the economic, social, cultural and political process by which to fulfill their human rights. Its standards for development initiatives are the established and accepted human rights. RBA is guided by four fundamental principles: One, the human person is the subject, participant, owner, director and beneficiary of development; two, development and its process are based on human rights principles; three,development and its process should respect the normative content of human rights, and, four, development and its process should be coherent with the levels and natures of a state’s human rights obligations.

RBA is premised on the notion of poverty as powerlessness rather than a mere lack of commodities and services. This idea is consistent to Amartya Sen’s definition of poverty as the absence or inadequate realization of certain basic freedoms, such as the freedoms to avoid hunger, disease, illiteracy, and so on. RBA is also attuned to the conclusion of a World Bank study that “development should ultimately increase people’s freedom to live the life they value.”

In Thomistic philosophy, human rights are those that are due to a person; thus the goal of development is the fulfillment of human rights or justice. As such, development is demandable and holds the instrumentalities of the state accountable if the demand of justice is not fulfilled. Poverty, including the denial of the right to own a land to qualified beneficiaries of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, violates human rights; hence, the instrumentalities of the state that are responsible for such poverty are liable for committing an injustice. Under the Thomistic theory of human rights, RBA demands that the instrumentalities of the state promote development though the heavens fall!

Although human rights can be traced to ancient, medieval, modern and postmodern political theories from the east and the west, the current human rights regime is built on various theoretical foundations. According to Varun Gauri,

Because social rights and, more broadly, human rights are established on several different foundations, there exist disagreements regarding their content and form. A foundation for social rights based on dignity, for example, might suggest a stronger principle of equality than one based on agency, which only requires that individuals enjoy the minimal social infrastructure necessary to articulate and enact a life plan. What people have a right to, whether people can hold rights without a designated person or entity bearing a duty to fulfill or protect those rights, and whether or not rights exist prior to their legal establishment are all controversial topics (Sen 2000). What people have rights to, for instance, has evolved (Varun Gauri, Social Rights and Economics Claims to Health Care and Education in Developing Countries, March 2003).

Given the pluralism of the theoretical foundations of human rights, which one should be applied in the case of the Sumilao farmers? Can we say for certain that Arroyo is morally justified to give the land to the farmers? Is Arroyo telling us that we could only get justice if we demand and fight for it? Should the government not be punished for the delayed delivery of justice?