Category: 2010

amBisyon 2010: Blurry vision, message lost…

By ISKHO F. LOPEZ

The growing popularity of independent movies (indies) is seen to be a trend towards the resurrection of the local movie industry. The successive gains local filmmakers have achieved at international film festivals most recently compliment the idea. Maybe so or hopefully, it does follow this positive trend. But certainly, an event like amBisyon 2010 is no occasion for Indie enthusiasts to gloat.

Ambitionmeans aspiration, desire, or the goal an individual wants to realize. Thus, ambisyon in the vernacular would be an appropriate name for a project aimed at encouraging the liberal expression of ideas. With the project focused particularly on the potential of the film medium as communication tool, amBisyon lends itself to a clever, more refined redefinition and becomes “ang vision.”

As reported, ANC, the ABS-CBN News Channel intended amBisyon 2010 for young aspiring filmmakers, for them to have a venue for their craft, as it would likewise be an opportunity for the network to “contribute to the national election awareness effort.” Where programming was concerned, the idea sounded rather innovative, which was fine, as it would be an act of benevolence or gesture of compassion for the filmmakers as well. (Applause!)

Its implementation would be an entirely different story, however. Participants were invited. Some 14 from a list of active filmmakers, with the six others culled from aspiring filmmakers who were encouraged to apply, which involved submitting scripts of their short films. Finally, a total of 20 short films led to a semblance of a festival of sorts. One could imagine that all these looked good and feasible on paper. Ambitious, too, but it was manageable.

Grand premiere

ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs head Maria Ressa didn’t mince her words during the grand premiere of the network’s 20-film project at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on April 6. “We need to see the world in a different way and we need to have thefreedom to express it,” she said during the opening ceremonies. (Shivers.)

The poster for the event graphically presented the concept and paid tribute to the participating film directors. Each of the 19 filmmakers who gracedthe occasion (one was out of the country and could not attend), was called onstage and presented with a poster for keepsake. The formal proceedings was such that one participant quipped, “Parang awards night. Sana isinama ko ang nanay ko.”

To say that amBisyon “is about the dreams of a nation, the vision of a future in the context of a country locked in poverty” is a loaded statement. That it is about “hope, possibility, and truth – through the lenses of those who tell its stories” is, to say the least ambitious, indeed.

Even contextually pretentious, considering the corporate profile of ABS-CBN, a television network that enjoys the popularity of its commercial program packages.

This is not to downgrade the well-meaning effort behind the concept but to underscore the irony.

The project, amBisyon 2010 may have laudable objectives but to say that it succeeded with this initial venture is highly debatable. What appears rather clear is that its implementation is confused, its organizers rather vaguely familiar with the efficacy of its structure. There may have been comprehensible moments but sophomoric should best describe the effort. To generalize it as successful can be downright misleading, in effect offering filmmakers and the public false hopes.

No amount of window dressing will sufficiently camouflage the shortcomings of the project. It was generous for the likes of Brillante Mendoza, Jeffrey Jeturian, Erik Matti, and Raymund Red, among others to have shared their prominence with amBisyon thus lending it a veneer of legitimacy. Unless the idea is to revel in our shortcomings, then that’s another story.

Rated X

The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) may have unwittingly boosted viewer interest for amBisyon 2010 when it gave “Ganito Tayo Ngayon, Paano Tayo Bukas” (Jeturian) and “Ayos Ka” (Mendoza) an X, which prohibits the public screening of both. The board eventually reconsidered the rating of Mendoza’s music video and changed it to an R. Network management is reportedly inclined to seek a legal way out of the predicament.

Jeturian’s short film shows a newspaper with itsheadline heralding the administration’s economic prospects eventually being trashed literally, as a man wipes feces off his foot with it. Evidently, the board resolved the shot as repulsive with the newspaper page carrying a photograph of the incumbent President. The graphic rendering may have been considerably irreverent but the metaphor undeniably relevant as it echoes the public disenchantment for the current leadership. Expectedly, the MTRCB was not amused and its members will argue to no end its right to censure such a filmic dare.

The music video is easier to justify. Mendoza opts to document a prevailing scene – utter depravation, grime and squalor interestingly contrasted it with rap tempo and innocent smiles in the faces of children. Besides such an offering, what else?

Disarray, disorder, and confusion

A variety of 20 short films, from four to eight minutes in length, translate to a diversity of views and treatments of pressing national issues like justice and human rights, education, health, economy, environment, population, poverty, security, corruption and democracy. Twenty film directors, 10 issues and a marathon screening of the short films at the CCP Dream Theater, and the result was expectedly disarray, disorder, and confusion.

Erik Matti chooses to be lyrical in his treatment of the population issue in “The More, The Meniyer,” tracing its beginnings with the inhabitants of a cartoon paradise and the first couple’s simplistic interpretation of the multiplication dictum from an almighty.

A documentation of events following the Maguindanao tragedy with scenes shown in reverse suggesting the wistful thoughts and anxieties among the relatives of victims. Balloons fall from the sky, petals briskly fly into waiting hands; people walk backwards indicating the futile desire for events to return to wherever it started in “Requiem for M,” a short film by Kiri Dalena.

Memories of martial law moving onwards to a regime change are recalled in a short film titled Wasteland by Paolo Villaluna with a family losing just about everything in the process, with their sense of values in shatters as well. Concentrating on style, “Wasteland” offers charming vignettes, a lot of melodramatic moments with Snooky Serna and Gerard Madrid, while its message as empty as the household of its characters.

Villaluna, who conceptualized the project with fellow director Emman Dela Cruz, said he hopes to answer his own questions about the country through this project. “Not only is amBisyon 2010 supposed to inspire but more importantly, it’s supposed to provoke people into thinking again about their future,” he explained.

The amBisyon 2010 films are being shown via a five-part TV special on ANC (SkyCable channel 27) at 11 p.m. every Friday until the week before the elections. For more details on the project, just visit www.abs-cbnnews.com/ambisyon2010.

A multi-media practitioner, Ishko F. Lopez has worked as feature writer, columnist and editor in several major publications. He scripted TV material in the ’70s and is credited as screenwriter of about 20 movies.

homestretch blues

dismaying but interesting.   our minds and communications are on mercury-retrograde mode for the next three, four weeks, right smack in the last three weeks of the presidential campaign, which means that instead of moving on to other important issues we’ll be going back over old ground, which means more of hacienda luisita, alleged psychological incapacity, lack of experience, etc. with regard to noynoy, and more of c-5-at-taga, landgrabbing charges, and the poverty spin with regard to villar.   we will see how low either camp would stoop to discredit the other all the way to election day.  mas madaling magsiraan (hindi mauubusan) kaysa magmagaling (mauubusan).

are we going to see survey kulelats gordon, bro.eddie, jc, perlas, jamby giving up the fight to endorse either noynoy or villar, erap or gibo?   i seriously doubt it just because, if memory serves, it hasn’t happened in recent multiparty history.   to the very end they all think they have a chance, surveys are questionable, anything can happen, never say die, not even when llamadong llamado ang mga kalaban.   a pinoy macho thing, i suspect ;)) but hey i’d love to be disproven on this, just because it could tip the balance one way or another, make for a most definite win for the lucky one.   and then, again, maybe not.

what we ARE likely to see, i’m afraid, even now, are all kinds of glitches with machines, esp. those that have to do with communications and transportation, anything that moves people and ideas around, including the machines for automated counting of votes and conveying of results.   sana hindi.   sana suwertehin tayo, for a change.   but the odds are against us, so dapat ay paghandaan by having plans B and C, just in case.

meanwhile i still don’t have a president.   and i haven’t stopped wishing, how retrograde of me, that it were mar running for president and noynoy for vp.   i disagree with the notion that if noynoy had run for prez later rather than sooner, he could not have counted on the same phenomenal love and energy a la edsa generated by (ninoy’s) cory’s death that birthed the clamor for the unico hijo’s candidacy last august.

i don’t see why not.   i think that noynoy as vp (mar would have won easily, with noynoy behind him) could have used the next six years to clean up his act, do the morally, and politically, correct thing with regard to hacienda luisita, AFTER reading of course ninoy’s testament from a prison cell and other writings that might enlighten him a little about the Left.   if there were no poverty and oppression, there would be no Left;  snubbing and demonizing the Left (instead of finding a way for Left and Right to work together for the good of the whole) would not have been ninoy’s way, is no way to honor ninoy’s legacy, in fact it dishonors ninoy’s legacy.   anyway, if he used the six years wisely andcreatively, maybe also studied the education problem thoroughly — an additional two years of schooling is not the answer —  i have no doubt that the cory-ninoy effect would have kicked in as powerfully, and there would not be so many undecideds in 2016.

for now hindi ko pa mapatawad si noynoy for the hacienda luisita killings and for being so anti-Left, or is it anti-poor.   i guess i’m still hoping to hear him say something reassuring, to the effect that he will prevail upon the cojuangco-aquino clan to follow the law and give up luisita to the farmers, and that he would snub the likes of palparan and get the military to produce jonas burgos atbpang missing activists.

lacking either or both, well, there’s villar, pero kahit kayanin ko siyang patawarin for c-5 at taga and, even, the obscene spending, ay di ko yata kayang patawarin his obdurate stand against reproductive health.   si erap, he got his turn already, and he botched it.   gibo looks good but he reeks of status quo politics.   amboy gordon i considered, but only briefly.   bro.eddie is too fundamentally religious, perlas too green, jc too sophomoric.   jamby at least has not only the best-looking FG (french gentleman), she has the best platform of the lot.   so hmm, if not noynoy, it could be jamby for me, a protest vote, on principle.

Why Fighting Corruption Is Not Enough

By Walden Bello

After nine years of witnessing increasing poverty among the masses and spiraling corruption in high places, it is understandable that Filipinos see a strong correlation between corruption and poverty. And the judgment of many is probably correct that the candidates that are free of the taint of corruption stand the best chance of turning this country around. Moral leadership may not be a sufficient condition for successful leadership but it certainly has become a necessary condition in a country that has been so deprived of exemplary public figures like the Philippines.

Corruption, however, has become the explanation for all our ills, and this brings with it the danger that, after the elections, campaign rhetoric might substitute for hard analysis on the causes of poverty, leading to wrong, ineffectual prescriptions for dealing with the country’s number one problem.

Let me be more explicit: Corruption must be condemned and corrupt officials must be prosecuted because being a violation of public trust, corruption undermines faith in government and leads to an erosion of the moral bonds among citizens that serve as the foundation of good governance. Corruption, however, is unlikely to be the main cause of poverty. Wrongheaded policies are, and clean-cut technocrats have been responsible for more poverty than corrupt politicians.

The complex of policies that have pushed the Philippines into the economic quagmire over the last 30 years might be summed up in that formidable term: structural adjustment. Also known as neoliberal restructuring, it involved prioritization of debt repayment; conservative macroeconomic management that involving huge cutbacks in government spending; trade and financial liberalization; privatization and deregulation; and export-oriented production. Structural adjustment came to the Philippines courtesy of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, but it was internalized and disseminated as doctrine by local technocrats and economists.

Prioritizing Debt Repayment

Corazon Aquino was personally honest and her contribution to the reestablishment of democracy was indispensable, but her submitting to the International Monetary Fund’s demand to prioritize debt repayment over development brought about a decade of stagnation and continuing poverty. Interest payments as a percentage of total government expenditures went from 7 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 1994. Capital expenditures, on the other hand, plunged from 26 percent to 16 percent. Since government is the biggest investor in the Philippines—indeed in any economy—the radical stripping away of capital expenditures goes a long way toward explaining the stagnant one percent average yearly growth in gross domestic product in the 1980’s and the 2.3 per cent rate in the first half of the 1990’s.

In contrast, our Southeast Asian neighbors ignored the IMF’s prescriptions. They limited debt servicing while ramping up government capital expenditures in support of growth. Not surprisingly, they grew by 6 to 10 percent from 1985 to 1995, attracting massive Japanese investment while the Philippines barely grew and gained the reputation of a depressed market that repelled investors.

Trade and Financial Liberalization

When Fidel Ramos came to power in 1992, the main agenda of his technocrats was to bring down all tariffs to 0 to 5 percent and bring the Philippines into the World Trade Organization and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), moves that were intended to make trade liberalization irreversible. A pick-up in the growth rate in the early years of Ramos sparked hope, but the green shoots were more apparent than real, and they were, at any rate, crushed as a result of another neoliberal policy: financial liberalization. The elimination of foreign exchange controls and restrictions of speculative investment attracted billions of dollars in the period 1993-1997. But this also meant that when panic hit the ranks of foreign investors in Asia in the summer of 1997, the same lack of capital controls facilitated the stampede of billions of dollars from the country in a few short weeks in mid-1997. This pushed the economy into recession and stagnation in the next few years.

The Estrada administration did not reverse course, and under the presidency of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, neoliberal policies continued to reign. New liberalization initiatives in the next few years were initiated on the trade front, with the government negotiating free trade agreements with Japan and China. These pacts were entered into despite clear evidence that trade liberalization was destroying the two pillars of the economy, industry and agriculture.

Radical unilateral trade liberalization severely destabilized our manufacturing sector, with textile and garments firms, for instance, being drastically reduced from 200 in 1970 to 10 in recent years. As one of Arroyo’s finance secretaries admitted, “there’s an uneven implementation of trade liberalization, which was to our disadvantage.” While he speculated that consumers might have benefited from the tariff liberalization, he acknowledged that “it has killed so many local industries.”

As for agriculture, the liberalization of our agricultural trade after we joined the World Trade Organization in 1995 transformed the Philippines from a net food exporting country and consolidated it into a net food importing country after the mid-1990’s. The year 2010 is the year that the China ASEAN Trade Agreement (CAFTA) negotiated by the Arroyo administration goes into effect, and the prospect of cheap Chinese produce flooding our markets has made our vegetable farmers fatalistic about their survival.

Depressive Fiscal Policy

What likewise became clear during the long Arroyo reign were the stifling effects of the debt repayment-oriented macroeconomic management policy that came with structural adjustment. With 20-25 percent of the national budget reserved for debt service payments owing to the draconian Automatic Appropriations Law, government finances were in a state of permanent and widening deficit, which the administration tried to solve by contracting more loans. Indeed, the Arroyo administration contracted more loans than the previous three administrations combined.

When the deficit reached gargantuan proportions, the government refused to take the necessary steps to contain the key factor acting as the main drain on expenditures; that is, it refused to declare a debt moratorium or at least renegotiate the terms of debt repayment to make them less punitive. At the same time, the administration did not have the political will to force the rich to take the brunt of bridging the deficit by increasing taxes on their income and improving their collection. Under pressure from the IMF, the government levied this burden on the poor and the middle class via the adoption of the expanded value added tax (EVAT) of 12 percent on purchases. The tax was passed on to poor and middle class consumers by commercial establishments, forcing them to cut back on consumption, which then boomeranged back on small merchants and entrepreneurs in the form of reduced profits, forcing many out of business.

Facing the Policy Challenge

The straitjacket of conservative macroeconomic management, trade and financial liberalization, and a subservient debt policy kept the economy from expanding significantly, resulting in the percentage of the population living in poverty, according to the World Bank, increasing from 30 to 33 percent between 2003 and 2006. By 2006, there were more poor people in the Philippines than at any other time in the country’s history.

The country’s plight under the lash of wrong policies over the last four administrations becomes even clearer in a comparative perspective. According to the United Nations Development Program Human Development Report, the Philippines registered the second lowest average yearly growth rate, 1.6 percent, in Southeast Asia in the period 1990 to 2005 —lower than that of Vietnam (5.9 percent), Cambodia (5.5 percent), and Burma (6.6 percent). The only country registering average growth below that of the Philippines was Brunei, which, being an oil-rich high-income country, could afford not to grow.

So yes, we must wage an unrelenting campaign against corruption because it destroys faith in government and weakens the moral fiber of the country. And yes, let us by all means punish corrupt officials and elect morally unquestionable people to power. But let us not mistake corruption as the principal cause of poverty and believe that anti-corruption crusades provide the main response to the country’s economic ills. The main source of our lack of economic dynamism is a wrong policy paradigm that we have allowed ourselves to be straitjacketed into.

It is disturbing that the policy errors that have led to our present state are hardly mentioned in the presidential debates. It is unfortunate that we are not taking advantage of the current international economic crisis that has dragged down our local economy to debate the wisdom of the policies of globalization and liberalization that have brought us to this impasse. Yes, the issues of corruption, management experience, and bureaucratic reform that dominate these debates are vital, but unless the winning team has the courage to reverse 30 years of failed neoliberal economic policies, the country will remain in the economic doldrums, unable to take off, with poverty possibly rising to the point of no return.

america’s boy 2010

na-confuse naman ako kay carmen pedrosa, kolumnista ng philippine star na panahon pa ni fvr ay kilala nang chacha-federalism advocate.   inaamin niya na she has been / is critical of noynoy aquino’s candidacy, allegedly because he is the candidate of a “former colonial power” that’s against constitutional reform, i.e., chacha.

A number of readers have asked me why I am zeroing in on Noynoy. Why don’t I criticize MannyVillar or Gibo Teodoro or Dick Gordon? I could, but that would not help in exposing what I consider the most important aspect of this election: the intervention by a former colonial power.

The main objective of this intervention was to frustrate constitutional reform and to make sure that a candidate of their choosing should be elected. That candidate was Noynoy.

but really?   america is against charter change?   is not the opposite true?   i was thinking more along the lines of lila shahani sounding off on filipino voices against anti-pinoy anti-noynoy bloggers who are pro-american and pro-chacha.

Ben’s a half-White guy trying to hustle a business who has a vested interest in endorsing Gordon: they’re related. Bong’s busy opening websites in Arizona, etc. His Dad hobnobs with US officials. They’re both neo-cons who r very pro-American and I suspect want charter change so foreigners can have 100% ownership of Philippine companies. There is a Gordon/Mindanao link because the US, among others, wants its hands on Mindanao’s endless resources. Note that Davao contributed a lot to the Red Cross during Gordon’s time.

They hate Noynoy because he won’t touch his Mom’s constitution. Their dislike of Noynoy is distinct from those of others here who simply prefer Gibo or Villar, etc, which is certainly not a problem. Noynoy has been their agenda from the get-go: 90% of the posts on Get Real r about Noynoy. Why? Because they stand to lose a lot if Noynoy wins. So it’s a concentrated campaign to demonize a candidate and his supporters. But the point is that Gordon is willing to sign off far more to the US than most Filipino patriots r willing to accept.

I, for one, am not against constitutional change as such, but think there should be a plebiscite and it should be discussed nationally outside the context of a presidential election. It should most certainly not be enacted simply to extend GMA’s stay in power. After all this noise that Bong and Ben have been making, I have started to wonder MORE about Gordon’s motivations, despite his flamboyant statements about Bangit and Villar. Like Enrile, I wonder if these hits r hard enough, or if they r simply for show to placate the general public. I find it odd to routinely see people in Makati sporting the green AND red bracelets on their wrists at the same time: what does that mean? I’m surprised they don’t even bother to be more subtle.

I for one am not willing to sign off this country to GMA and to greater foreign interests, which is why I am not for charter change right now. I believe the Filipino middle class desperately needs to grow, and needs to be given a chance away from the stranglehold of monopolies and foreign corporate interests. I think the Philippines should primarily be owned by Filipinos.

seems to me that america is pro-charter change (think mindanao) and probably supporting the likes of villar, gibo, and gordon even if these candidates swear they’re not raring to chacha, haha, who do they think they’re kidding.