Can we expect the Americans to help in maritime row?

With no let-up in China's island-building acivities in disputed islands in the West Philippine Sea/South China Sea, the Philippines is seeking help from the United States to monitor "real-time" developments in the area through surveillance and reconnaissance.

      

The request for help from the US was conveyed to U.S. Pacific Command chief, Admiral Harry Harris, who visited Palawan on Thursday to see first-hand the situation in the area near where China has built artificial islands.

      

Specifically, the DND wants the US to provide air cover to a civilian ship that regularly delivers supplies to Second Thomas Shoal in the disputed waters.

      

The Philippine request for military assistance is justified as China has blocked attempts by the Philippine Navy to rotate troops and bring supplies to a ship that ran aground on Ayungin shoal.

      

China's frenzied reclamation works in what is clearly part of our Exclusive Econmic Zone under the terms of the United Nations Convention  on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has heightened tension in the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year.

      

The Philippines is on the right track in exhausting legal and diplomatic efforts to resolve the maritime dispute. But since we have yet to modernize our military and  deter Chinese incursions on our western flank, we have no choice but to ask our longstanding ally, the United States, to help in aerial surveillance and reconnaisance.

This is a reasonable request that the US should consider favorably as it is also in its national interest to protect the vital sealane. –End-

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Plain baloney

It’s doubtful that overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) allowed themselves to be used by the group which initiated the No Remittance Day last August 28 in protest of the scuttled plan by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to open and tax balikbayan boxes.

In the first place, while the group is known to help OFWs in distress in some countries, it cannot arrogate unto itself the role as leader or voice of OFWs.  Likewise, the  Malacañang order stopping BOC from conducting random inspections of the balikbayan boxes all but removed the raison d'etre for overseas Filipino to continue airing their gripes.

BOC can now only open boxes whose contents have been deemed suspicious after x-ray scans. In short, the BOC  must first have probable cause to suspect a box contains taxable goods or contraband before it can open it.

But in case the No Remittance Day proved a success, it’s not true at all that several billions of pesos in foreign currencies not remitted last August 28 would have any tangible and jarring effect on the economy.

OFWs remit money to their families in the Philippines once or twice a month. Whatever amount was not remitted on any single day would surely be remitted some other day – if not on August 28^th, then on the 29^th, 30^th or 31^st.

The No Remittance Day campaign appears to be an epic failure, and plans to extend it are plain baloney. –End-

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Premature campaigning

If the law on premature campaigning embodied in the Omnibus Election Code were to be implemented strictly, then those who have declared their intention to run for public office in the 2016 elections and are now going around the country and regularly  airing political advertisements on television and radio would all be sent to jail.

      

But no thanks to the Supreme Court, there is no such thing as premature campaigning as not one of the presumptive candidates have officially filed their certificates of candidacy.

      

And there's the rub: No one can be sent to jail or given even a slap on the wrist because the Supreme Court has greenlighted premature campaign.

      

In other words, what the legislative branch has deemed as illegal, the judicial branch has deemed perfectly legal. 

      

The Constitution, however, is very clear: "The State shall guarantee equal  access to opportunities for public service." 

      

If only those candidates with enough money can hit the campaign trail or put out expensive advertisements, that is not giving equal access to opportunities for public service, that is giving the rich the monopoly of public service.

      

What is needed now is an amendment to the Omnibus Election Code that would make it illegal to engage in premature campaigning in whatever guise, whether promoting the programs of this or that government office, citing one's achievements in public office in advertisements or streamers, or hanging tarpaulins in public places with the politicians' names and photographs prominently displayed and congratulating new graduates or greeting the public "Merry Christmas", for instance.     

      

Filipinos are being taken for fools by the presumptive candidates shamelessly promoting themselves for the 2016 political contest. But if there's no law against premature campaigning, we can always avail of a remedy at our disposal: Don’t vote for them on Election Day. –End-

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Untangling Metro's Traffic

The odd-even scheme being planned by Malacañang is not the solution to unsnarl the worsening traffic in Metro Manila.

There’s absolutely no need for the government to use the odd-even scheme to force people to leave their cars at home three days a week instead of just once a week under the present “color-coding” scheme.

The majority of motorists would gladly and happily use our mass transport systems if they are not in the dilapidated and life-threatening state they are now as in the case of the LRT and MRT and the flying coffin buses and jeepneys on the streets.

Why would the middle class spend money on cars and to pay for petrol and maintenance if they have access to efficient light railway systems such as those seen in Singapore and Hong Kong?

To solve the traffic mess, the government should do the following: 

Rehabilitate the LRT, MRT and PNR lines to ensure there are sufficient trains running on time to meet rush-hour demand;

• Complete all public work projects that cause heavy traffic

•  Weed out rogue traffic enforcers who themselves cause traffic at intersections while mulcting money from drivers;

• Strictly enforce traffic rules to discipline drivers or to weed out the recidivists;

• Force government officials to drive themselves to work without the need for several other vehicles as escorts;  -End-

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What's the agenda?

Members of the Iglesia ni Cristo held an overnight vigil outside the Department of Justice (DOJ) compound on Padre Faura street in Ermita, Manila in what they said was to protest Justice Secretary Leila De Lima's alleged meddling in the affairs of the INC.

      

The protest action took place after the filing of an illegal detention case by expelled INC minister Isaias Samson Jr. against eight leaders of the religious sect.

Samson had claimed he and his family were held captive inside their home after he was accused of writing a blog that disclosed corruption practices and other irregularities inside the church.

      

The INC members have every right to take part in a protest action over what they feel is government's interference in their internal affairs. This is part of freedom of expression in a democratic society.

      

But we must caution against any rash action that could lead to intimidation and violence against lawful authority.
      

The rule of law must prevail at all times.

      

Lawyers of the INC should answer the allegations in the proper forum as part of due process. They can also exhaust all legal means to clear the name of the church. 

      

Protest actions in the streets are guaranteed by the Constitution. But the line should be drawn between the articulation of legitimate grievances and what could be a hidden political agenda.       

      

After all, the principle of separation of Church and State works both ways, i.e., it applies to both sides. –End-

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NOT SO COMMON SENSE

There’s a niche market for collectors of sports trophies, title belts, championship rings and medals. But athletes do not buy those trophies in stores; they pay for them with blood, sweat and tears.

That said, shame on the Bureau of Customs (BOC) for levying a P6,000 tax on the title belt won and brought home by a Filipina boxer from abroad. She brings honor to the country and this is what she gets in return?

The grant of tax exemptions to athletes for their medals, belts and trophies should be automatic without requiring them to suffer the red tape of getting exemptions at the finance department.

The only time sports memorabilia should be assessed taxes is when they are sold to collectors. Seems common sense is not so common at BOC.

What would the BOC tax next? The medals brought home by amateur athletes from the Olympics (where we have yet to win a gold), the Asian Games or Southeast Asian Games? –End-

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Chatty ‘spymaster’

Senator Antonio Trillanes IV should be reminded that he was elected to craft laws and not to turn his office into an intelligence agency employing spies.

Put on the defensive over reports that he has allotted millions of pesos of his office’s funds to hire his former colleagues in the Magdalo group as consultants, Trillanes all but admitted that they are sleuthing for him.

According to a veteran defense reporter who now heads the Manila bureau of a major wire agency, “as a former naval officer and coup plotter, it sends a chilling effect that he (Trillanes) uses ‘consultants to’ to spy on certain individuals.”

“He was elected to make laws and not gather dossiers on people not in his friends list. Maybe he should be in the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency.”

Here’s what Trillanes said which raised the eyebrows of many mediamen.

“Here, our idea of consultant is always high. That's not always the case. That's clear, what kind of job are we gonna give them in relation to our job here.

“So that's it, he will just stand there and tell us what time Attorney (Rico) Quicho leaves, what's his car, where does he pass.... they can't understand this because they had never done things like this."

Still, while spies go by their code of silence, Trillanes seems to be too chatty to fancy himself a spymaster.-End-

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Quo vadis America?

The United States of America is once again grappling with the senseless killings of a TV journalist and her cameraman while on live broadcast, raising to the fore anew polarizing issues like gun-control, work-related violence and racial bigotry.

The black American shooter, who killed himself when cornered by the police, was a co-worker of the victims who got fired at their TV station for being a “difficult man” to work with.

The sordid videos of the shooting, including those taken by the shooter himself using a Go-Pro “action” video camera and the footage taken by the news cameraman before he himself was shot, made the rounds of social media. Facebook and Twitter immediately shut down the shooter’s accounts where he posted his videos. 

With US President Barack Obama admitting that more Americans die from gun-related violence than from terrorist attacks, anti-gun proponents are expected to mount yet another campaign for tougher gun-control legislation.

First and foremost in the minds of many was how was a man who was clearly unbalanced based on his social media postings about being “a powder keg” ready to explode was able to get access to the gun he shot the victims and himself with.

The shooting also focused the spotlight on the gravity of workplace violence in the U.S., which the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ census put at 14,770 workplace homicide victims from 1992 to 2012, or an average of 700 homicides per year.

Over half of the work-related killings occurred within three work classifications, as follows: sales (28 percent), protective service occupation (17 percent) and transport and material moving jobs (13 percent).

In firing people, psychologists have emphasized that it should be done  in a way that the separated employees will have their dignities intact and that the underlying reasons for the separation should be fully justifiable.

In the touchy issue of gun-control in a nation where gun ownership is protected by the Constitution, it is not clear what America is going to do with the mounting victims of gun violence.  America, where are you going?  -End-

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Heed your body’s distress signs

A well-known radio commentator sounded somber but relieved in his earling morning show today in announcing that he has just undergone angioplasty to restore blood flow to and from his heart.

Known for his witty and funny quips, the radio personality said he never imagined that he’d be a candidate for an angioplasty because he is a very active man who goes to the gym and rides his mountain bike on weekends.

He related that suddenly occurring chest pains prompted him to visit his doctor who, upon seeing his angiogram results, told him that he had to immediately undergo angioplasty.  

One artery was blocked 95 percent while another was blocked 75 percent, recounted the radioman quoting his doctor.

According to the Intervasc Bay Radiology center, angioplasty is a medical procedure that opens up blocked or narrowed blood vessels without surgery. In the procedure, the blocked vessels are opened up by the insertion of a very small balloon.

With heart attack and stroke among the leading causes of death among men and women, getting checked by doctors regularly could mean the difference between life and death, especially for those whose families have a history of the disease.

The radioman said he was thankful that he heeded the warnings given by his body. How about you, have you been tarrying in going to a doctor despite your body's distress signals. Don't because time is of the essence. –End-

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You sure that’s sugar?

The Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) should immediately ban the sale of the highly toxic cleaner oxalic acid after forensic tests confirmed that at least four people have died from ingesting the substance.

The deaths last month of Jose Maria Escano and his wife Juliet in Las Piñas City were confirmed the other day by the PNP crime laboratory to have been caused by “shock secondary to ingestion of a toxic substance” which it identified as oxalic acid.

The substance generally used to whiten clothes during laundry was also blamed by toxicologists as the cause of the deaths of Ergo Cha owner William Abrigo and customer Suzaine Dagohoy in  Sampaloc, Manila last May.

Whether the deaths were due to inadvertent or advertent mixture of oxalic acid on the fatalities’ food or drinks, the substance is just too dangerous to be allowed to continue proliferating in the market.

It is just too easy to mistakenly put oxalic acid in foodstuff. First, it looks very much like iodized salt or white sugar. Second, it is repacked in small plastic bags also used in repacking sugar and salt. Third, even minors can buy it in sari-sari stores.

Because oxalic acid is readily available in the market and is commonly used in households, it can be considered to be more dangerous than the jewelry cleaners containing cyanide or the cyanide used in illegal fishing.

The jewelry cleaners and the cyanide fishermen, at least, know they are dealing with poison so lethal that spies during the Cold War years were said to have used them to commit suicide rather than be caught by the enemy.

However, cyanide from kamoteng kahoy or cassava is also as deadly as seen from the deaths of 27 school children who ate cassava fritters in Bohol in 2005. Let us be very careful with the many toxic substances in our homes. Better be safe than sorry. –End-

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Cheap publicity stunt

Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) chairman Francis Tolentino should stop trying hard and engaging in cheap publicity stunts such as directing traffic himself—with media present, of course. A radio station monitored him directing traffic in at least two busy thoroughfares on Wednesday.   

      

Everyone knows that Tolentino is angling for a slot in the senatorial slate of the Liberal Party. And what better way to please his boss, President Aquino, and gain tremendous media mileage, than by being seen directing traffic.   

      

The problem is that Tolentino is the head of the agency that's supposed to untangle Metro Manila's horrible traffic jams. And he has an army of traffic constables at his beck and call. What he should be doing as chairman of the agency is to craft policies and programs and supervise their implementation through his subordinates.

      

So, to be photographed directing traffic along busy Katipunan and later near SM Megamall appears to be part of his effort to gain maximum political exposure in the run-up to 2016.

      

How else explain his increased presence in various parts of the country delivering speeches and on one occasion, even bringing an MMDA vehicle with him to faraway Bicol, an area which is not within his geographical jurisdiction?

      

Politicians will do anything to call attention to themselves and Tolentino is no exception.

      

It's our singular misfortune that as Metro Manila residents, the one person who should be spearheading efforts to rid the metropolis of traffic, floods and garbage, among others, is too busy doing other things, such as getting  himself elected to higher political office.

      

By the way, who's paying for his TV ads running on primetime that costs no less than half a million pesos for a 30-seconder? –End-

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SPACE ODDITY 2015

The Doors popularized in 1966 The Alabama Song in asking to be shown the “way to the next whiskey bar.” In 1971, Joni Mitchell vowed to get sloshed in A Case of You.

Whatever tipple fancies your taste bud – brandy, whiskey, wine or the sundry variants of cocktails – getting them in the right state (aged for decades or freshly brewed; ice cold or warm) is critical to enjoyment.

In fact, if the Door’s Jim Morrison hasn’t yet (with apologies to Elvis) left the building, I’ll tell him to go find his next swig at the International Space Station (ISS), where a Japanese purveyor of spirits sent a keg or two.

Still, disabuse your minds of the stereotype of a drunken Russian cosmonaut peddled by Bruce Willis’ tearjerker movie Armageddon. The six scientists at the ISS are not even allowed a sniff of the six types of liquor sent hurtling their way through space.

Not even for Christmas 2015? Yes, and definitely not even for New Year 2016! Major Tom can sing himself hoarse with lines from Space Oddity but he’s not getting even a single drop.

It’s kind of harsh but it’s all for science folks: An Einstein-ian endeavor to see how vacuum and weightlessness would make for a smoother single malt experience. Bet those spirits would cost a small fortune upon touchdown on Gaia.

But let’s get our feet firmly planted on terra firma, people. It’s not really about whether you’re drinking Erap’s pricey Petrus or Johnny Walker Blue. It’s about who you swap jokes and stories, laugh and cry with, as you partake of life’s elixir. 

Hell, my pals and I can drink ourselves silly with stale beer left over from yesterday’s barbeque. Really, it’s the company you keep that matters. Eat your heart out Stanley Kubrick. –End-

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It's all in the game

Last Sunday, the Gospel of John admonishing wives to submit to their husbands and for the husbands to love their wives the way Jesus loves His Church was read in churches all over the Philippines.

Expounding on the gospel, a parish priest in Metro Manila cautioned women in his homily to be very careful in choosing lest they marry a drug addict, a total bum or a mama’s boy who does not have the spine to properly raise a family.

Fools, the priest said, of the women who would delude themselves with the notion that with time they could straighten men with fatally flawed characters just by showering them with love and affection.

Here, Olivia Newton John’s classic song Have You Never Been Mellow comes to mind.  But there’s an altogether different breed of men whom the priest failed to warn his flock about. They are the Lotharios, the Don Juans and for the more vain GQ-reading metrosexuals, The Players.

They come with the above various fancy names (Lothario from the play Don Quixote and Don Juan from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni) but they are of the same chameleon-like skin.

They are the seducers of women, the philanderers who have already perfected the Art of the Players in luring especially the young, the naïve and the provincial women to their perdition.

They are the most dangerous of all men to which Johnny Mathis sang : “Many a tears will fall, but it’s all in the game.”   Yes, for The Players, love is just a game of conquests, of moving from lap to lap to satisfy their narcissism, and to make them forget the emptiness of their own existence.

But at what cost? At the cost of shattered lives of women whose only fault was to fall for the wrong men.   Still, women are also very capable of playing this game and many have and many are into it. Ask Ashley Madison. It takes two to tango. –End-   

    

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All based on humanitarian and legal grounds

The eight Associate Justices of the Supreme Court who voted to grant bail to Sen.  Juan Ponce Enrile are now the object of scorn and ridicule by various groups for supposedly engaging in "selective justice" and a "double standard of justice" for favoring someone who is rich and keeping the poor in jail. 

      

But what’s the real score?

      

Enrile is charged with plunder and graft for alleged involvement in the pork barrel scam. The majority of Supreme Court justices said that since Enrile, who is  93 years old and suffering from various ailments, should be granted bail on humanitarian grounds. Besides, because of his advanced age, he is not likely to be a flight risk.

      

But it is not humanitarian considerations alone that Enrile was granted bail despite the fact that plunder, according to our laws, is a nonbailable crime.

      

Fr. Ranhilio Aquino, Dean of the San Beda Graduate School of Law,  has pointed out that a legal principle that has been missed by laymen and kibitzers, that is, "where bail is not available as a matter of right, it can be denied only after it has been determined that evidence of guilt is strong."
      

In the case filed against Enrile, Fr. Aquino said "there has as yet been no determination that the evidence against him is strong—this, being possible only after the prosecution presents its evidence, which it has not yet finished doing so."  

      

Enrile's lawyers have been asking government prosecutors for a bill of particulars, or an item-by-item narrative of how he is alleged to have pocketed his PDAF allocaions. This bill of particulars should be detailed—when, where and how each transaction took place, who were the persons involved, and so on. Apparently, the supposed truckload of evidence collected by the NBI and the DOF did not contain these details which are crucial in pinning down Enrile for plunder and graft. 

      

Without the "smoking gun", therefore, how can the Sandiganbayan say that the evidence against Enrile is so strong that he should be denied bail?

      

Fortunately for Enrile, he appears to have hired good lawyers—and the kibitzers have been out in their proper places. –End-

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Bleak Christmas, no thanks to BOC

Instead of  insisting on opening up and levying taxes on the so-called balikbayan boxes, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) should straighten its priorities by going after the real big-time smugglers of rice, onion, garlic, etc.

For one, there’s no real data to back up BOC’s claim that about P50 million in taxes is lost allegedly because highly dutiable goods are being shipped by unscrupulous forwarders using the balikbayan boxes. Where did they get that figure? From thin air?

And if some forwarders are to blame, why not clamp down on them and their protectors at the BOC via honest-to-goodness intelligence work? Why make ordinary Filipinos abroad and their families in the Philippines suffer? Why throw the baby along with the bathwater?

On the other hand, there’s real, hard and recurring data that billions and billions of pesos are being lost by the government from real smuggling, including oil transported by barges. The billions of pesos in revenues would not be lost if BOC is really doing its job.

Naturally, overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and balikbayans are up in arms and are very angry at the BOC because the boxes whose contents they work hard for are being exposed by BOC to pilferage by its employees and inspectors.

So many viral videos are floating in the Internet showing the theft of the contents of parcels done by some Customs and Philpost personnel. That’s even before this newfound zeal by BOC to go after the balikbayan boxes.

With the order to open the balikbayan boxes, the BOC all but declared an open season to its “trustworthy” personnel as far as depriving OFWs and balikbayans and their families of their hard-earned money is concerned.

So is this how the OFWs who remit about US$24 billion a year are being repaid by the government? By making them look like they’re smugglers and by taking away the fruits of their labor sent to their families through the balikbayan boxes? This would be a bleak Christmas indeed for our so-called New Heroes. -End-

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A careful study is Needed

Will a change in the form of government from presidential to federal solve the Mindanao problem?

      

A close aide of Nur Misuari, Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) founding chairman, believes that the resolution of the decades-old armed conflict in Muslim Mindanao and the demand of the Bangsamoro people for self-governance lies in the adoption of a federal system.

      

Haji Gapul Hadjirul, political director of the Misuari-led MNLF, argues that the federal system would do away with the current overcentralization  of power in Manila and give the regions real autonomy.

      

Hadjirul says that under a federal set-up, the island provinces can be one state, the Lanao provinces can be another, while the Maguindanao and Socksargen areas can also be separate states.

      

The shift to federalism is also being pushed by Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, as well as by former Chief Justice Reynato Puno and former Sen. Aquilino "Nene" Pimentel Jr.

      

Bu the shift to a new form of government will not be easy sailing  for its proponents. In the first place, it would entail amending  the 1987 Constitution, whether through a constitutional assembly or a constitutional convention. There's still contentious debate on what form Cha-ha should take.

      

Besides, the federal system may be able to give real powers to the regions that will be reclassified as states, but will it be able to check the dominance of political dynasties in certain areas of the country?

      

What form of government should be adopted should be carefully studied as we simply cannot plunge headlong and adopt a system that may not be in accord with the real needs of our people, our historical experience and even our culture and traditions.

      

In the end, our people will have to decide which form of government or combination of forms can best reduce poverty, fight corruption and sustain economic growth.-End-

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Justice for Pamana

Is the uproar over the killing of Philippine eagle "Pamana" and strident calls for the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator uncalled for? 

      

That's the position taken by human rights groups who are saying that the government should instead go after those accused of human rights violations and ensure their conviction.

      

We say: It should not be an either/or question, of prioritizing one over the other.

      

The government should run after the killers of Pamana AND human rights violators. 

      

Human rights groups should add their voices to the calls for the arrest and conviction of the killers of Pamana because the killing of the endangered species is a violation of the law.

      

And if we live in a society where the rule of law should prevail, even the killing of a bird endemic to the country and threatened with extinction should be condemned by human rights groups.  

      

It shouldn’t be only animal rights groups and environmentalists who should view with grave concern the killing of endangered wildlife such as Pamana.

      

Human rights groups are correct in taking government to task for failing to stop impunity in the killing of political activists and crusading journalists. But maybe they too should help gather solid evidence against the perpetrators instead of merely raising a ruckus in media and in the streets. 

      

Is putting up a reward amounting to P150,000 is being offered for information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of those who shot dead Philippine Eagle Pamana unwarranted?

      

No. It’s not.  –End-

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