Category: 2010

the audacity of chiz

nagulat ako kay chiz.   nagulat ako nang sabihin niyang he’s out of the nationalist people’s coalition, that is, out of the shadow of party bosses playing traditional politics.    napa-wow ako sa kanyang declaration of independence, at sa wari ko ba, as i watched him declare himself a free man, free to serve the filipino people as they deserve and not as a political party dictates, i swear his aura changed, gumaan at umangat, at nagkaroon ng ibang kislap ang kanyang mga mata, no kidding!   it must be, like, you know, liberating?

before this, since ondoy, i’ve been saying to anyone who asked kung kanino ba ako na i will campaign and vote for the candidate who will promise to clean up not just the government but also the environment, and one who has the character and the personality to impose and implement a zero waste policy nationwide, which would mean radical changes all around that should shake up the system.   to my disappointment, i’ve heard nothing like this from manny, gibo, noynoy, erap, or chiz.   BUT to the credit of chiz, he was is the only presidentiable who has  concrete proposals re the relocation and rehabilitation of flood victims to alleviate  suffering.   This one in particular was an unexpected surprise:

Sen. Francis Escudero asked landlords to help in rehabilitation efforts by donating land to be developed into relocation sites.

“If they have a hundred hectares, perhaps it will not be too much to ask for them to donate 10 hectares,” he added.

i wondered of course what danding would have had to say to that.    it might even explain the rumored limited funding by npc.   but whatever triggered offchiz’s decision to bolt the party, it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that he bolted.

While Escudero’s resignation surprised many, a lawmaker from the militant Bayan Muna party-list group welcomed the move.

It is “a major political development in the presidential race. His move to bolt the NPC is a welcome move that should develop his capacity to take on many people’s issues in performing his duties to the people,” Rep. Satur Ocampo said.

Ocampo dared other aspirants to also take the stand of Escudero.

Rep. Mong Palatino of Kabataan party-list group said that the senator’s move could usher in “platform-based politics” in the 2010 polls.

this is even bigger and braver than mar roxas sliding down to vp.   suddenly noynoy isn’t such a sure thing.   audacious chiz is looking smelling talking good.   the game continues to change.   noynoy has some catching up to do.

environment & revolution

if junie kalaw were alive he’d be saying i-told-you-so, just like odette alcantara.   junie and odette were our leading environmentalists, pioneers, who didn’t live to see the great floods wrought by ondoy & pepeng [and some dam(ned) officials] but who warned us often enough since the 1980s that this would happen one day unless we changed, radically transformed, our politics and lifestyles.

i never got to meet odette but junie i knew very well.   youngest son of maximo m. kalaw, the author, educator, and fierce advocate of philippine independence from the united states in the early 1900s.   met junie in ’84 through jorge arago and it was as researcher and managing editor of his journal Alternative Futures that i learned all about the sad state of our environment, thanks to bad government policies.

in ’97 anvil came out with junie’s book Exploring Soul & Society, a compilation of papers on sustainable development published and presented in different publications and fora here and abroad from1986 to 1995.   the first part, Environment & Revolution, opens with a call to empower ourselves a la EDSA.

finally the time has come.   john nery is correct,  the political dynamic has changed, the environment is an agenda waiting for a president.

A LETTER TO FUTURE FILIPINOS

by Maximo ‘Junie’ Kalaw

Our story began more than 14 billion years ago with a burst of cosmic fire and the evolution of our solar system. Ten billion years later, life forms were spawned on our planet, followed by the emergence of human consciousness, which formed and informed different cultures.

Early myths speak of a Being who created us, our land, forests, rivers, mountains, oceans, and all living creatures. This Being — known as Apo to the Lumads of Mindanao, Kabunian to the Kalingas of the Cordilleras, and Bathala to the Negritos of Central Luzon — imbued all creation with a sacred potential.

Beginning in the 16th century, however, waves of colonialism washed over our island archipelago. The Spaniards, then the Americans, then the Japanese brought with a different source of power and revelation about the nature of life. The Divine was driven up to the heavens and life hereafter. Nature was viewed as a mere resource for making mechanistic and utopian dreams come true, legimitizing conquest, exploitation, and two world wars.

Five centuries later we find ourselves at a critical moment in our history. Our survival as a people is imperiled by the destruction of our tropical rain forest, the erosion of our topsoil, and the killing of our coral reefs. We are shutting down, ierreversibly and at an alarming rate, the very systerms that support life.

Yet our population continues to increase, even as more than half of us live on incomes inadequate to feed an average-sice family. Because every one of us owes foreign creditors over Php 3,000, we sell what remains of our precious natural resources at undervalued prices and allocate more than 43 % of our foreign exchange to servicing foreign loans. If present conditions continue, the sustainability of our society is doubtful.

We cling, however, to the belief that grave crisis is a correspondingly great opportunity for change. This crisis is pushing us to take a different view of ourselves, our Inang Bayan, our planetary home, and the process we call development.

It is an opportunity to recover our cultural identity and affirm the values of our indigenous peoples; to create with them an alternate way of caring for the life that flows through all beings; to translate this vision into new forms of villages, farms and factories, transportation and communication; and to live a sustainable spirituality which translates the teachings of great spiritual traditions into norms and ethics that can guide the realities of large wholes and systems.

It is an opportunity to empower ourselves anew, as we did at the EDSA revolution, by participating in decisions that affect our future. We need to create a completely different chapter in our story as a people and as a species where the predominant ethics of our actions will be based on the authority of Nature and our interconnectedness with her, thus empowering us to transform state, party, and church bureaucracy.

It means the exercise of a different kind of politicalwill, that is, a new politics of facilitating the flow of life/resources rather than accumulating it as political bounty. It means the exercise of true service in the noble enterprise of creating a Filipino community within the sacred community of life on earth.

On our ability to transform ourselves rests your future.

Time Magazine, December 1990

political chitchat

for the latest political tsismis i always make silip the tribune column of former senator ernie maceda a.k.a. mr. expose(y) who is also the spokesman of former president erap.   no thanks to ping lacson’s disclosures, erap’s reelection bid might be in trouble, and manong ernie must be wishing for the good old days before cory died when the erap camp was supremely confident of a win in 2010.   just the same i t don’t see him advising his boss to give it up.   manong ernie loves the political intramurals much too much.   he loves being in the thick of things.   besides it’s early days.

anyway here’s what manong ernie says about alfonso yuchengco’s statement in the inquirer re ping lacson’s allegation that yuchengco was forced to sell his shares in pldt to manny pangilinan when erap was president.

Yuchengco sick. Ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco, 86, is in New York for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. He could not himself have issued the statement confirming Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s exposé that President Estrada coerced him to sell his 3 percent stake in PLDT to First Pacific headed by Manny Pangilinan.

It is alleged that Ambassador Albert del Rosario accompanied by 10 soldiers forced him to sign the Deed of Sale in August 1998. But the record shows that deal was actually consummated in November 1998 after several months of negotiations over the price. So, it is clear that when the sale was consummated in November 1998, there was no coercion consideringthat there were continuing negotiations and the original contract that Yuchengco alleged he was forced to sign was even amended to reflect a much higher price. If there was coercion, then Helen Yuchengco Dee would have had nothing to do with Manny Pangilinan or PLDT. But she accepted to be member of PLDT’s Board of Directors and PLDT continued to keep RCBC, the Yuchengco owned bank, as its major banker.

The question remains: Did Ambassador Del Rosario who allegedly forced the Yuchengco’s to sell, act upon President Erap’s order or was he acting for someone else? Del Rosario is a Manny Pangilinan man, not close at all to President Erap.

Stock market brokers call attention to the fact that one of Yuchengco’s daughters is very, very close to First Gentleman Mike Arroyo.

Here comes former Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez saying that Erap could be charged with coercion. Secretary Gonzalez is again showing his partisan ignorance. The alleged coercion happened more than 10 years ago. Therefore, the crime has prescribed.

hmmm.    just because there were price negotiations and just because a yuchengco daughter is on the board of directors of pldt, hindi ibig sabihin na hindi napilitan ang mga yuchengco na magbenta.  it only tells methat the yuchengcos managed to negotiate some terms, sort of.

but what about the alzheimer thing?   perhaps it was the yuchengo kids who issued the statement in the name of their father?   and yet and yet and yet i just heard in the evening news that erap is charging al yuchengco and the inquirer with libel and asking 10-20 million php in damages.   no mention of the alzheimer thing, which, if true, would put into question the validity of the allegedly libelous statement di ba?

tungkol naman kina mar at korina and their future plans:

Mar and Korina say yes. At the birthday party of RC Constantino at the Architect’s Center, Sen. Serge Osmeña told us that Sen. Mar Roxas finally decided to accept Noynoy’s offer of the VP slot after fiancée Korina Sanchez withdrew her objections to Mar’s accepting the offer.

Sen. Serge Osmeña, who admitted he was running Chiz Escudero’s campaign for the last 12 months said he has decided to run for the Senate and implied he has left the Chiz Escudero campaign. He revealed he did commission the latest SWS survey conducted on Sept. 5 and 6. He conceded that after the euphoria has gone down, Noynoy’s ratings should go down. While he did not say so, it is clear that he will be running on the Liberal Party ticket. Serge ran for VP to Mayor Lim as LP official candidate in 1992. At the moment, he is a member of PDP-Laban. Serge admitted that with a 30-percent discount from ABS-CBN head Gabby Lopez, he will budget P100 million for his TV-radio ads

tungkol kay noli de castro and his future plans:

Noli de Castro’s ranking dropped to 7 percent in the latest SWS rating. Reports say ABS-CBN chairman Gabby Lopez has informed Noli he is supporting Noynoy and advised him to give up his plans to run for president or vice president and just return full-time to his TV hosting job.

at tungkol sa kung ano-ano at kung sino-sino:

Tidbits. At the Umagang Kay Ganda, ABS-CBN’s early morning talk show, the audience roundly applauded President Erap after his interview by Pinky Webb and ABS-CBN employees requested picture with Erap. The picture taking lasted for 30 minutes… Kim Atienza told us that he had not witnessed this happening to other guests… For the month of August, the top spenders on TV commercials are DILG Secretary Ronnie Puno — P87 million; Sen. Manny Villar — P84 million and Sen. Mar Roxas P64 million… Former Batanes Rep. Butch Abad is the de facto campaign manager of Noynoy. Active behind the scenes is uncle Peping Cojuangco. Will Sen. Tessie Aquino Oreta and Paul Aquino leave the GMA camp for Noynoy?… Lawyer Pancho Villaraza of the FIRM and his Sigma Ma Ro associates are supporting Manny Villar. Partner Nonong Cruz is with the Noynoy-Roxas camp.

masaya.  samantala umiinit na naman ang usaping reproductive health.   the bill is up for final debate and vote sa house of representatives, that is, as soon as the church stops objecting, so the speaker can muster a quorum, haha, what a house of wimps.

the games begin

was going to blog on alex magno’s game-changer series, express amazement at how cory’s death and noynoy’s audacity seems to have changed his politics, and wonder what his bosses gma and fg have to say.   then i read manuel buencamino’s bading post on gary olivar, and someone asked about gary o’s fellow ex-radical alex magno, bumaliktad na nga ba?   and manuel said no, and he seemed very certain.   so napaisip naman ako.   magno has been saying all the right things since cory died and noynoy declared.   Game-changer 5 is a piece i wish i had written.

… Despite all the tinges of retro here, what has commenced is a highly experimental political initiative. The goals are larger than Noynoyfor President. Larger than the presidency itself.

This is no longer about “opposition” versus “administration” — although that continues to be a bogey in the minds of some. It is about new versus old — although that might be difficult for some to even begin imagining.

This political initiative draws its power from voluntarism at the grassroots. That voluntarism can only spring from clear principles about what leadership ought to be and at what standards we ought to hold the wielders of power.

It is about reestablishing governance on a new ethical basis, reinventing government so that it becomes an enabler rather than a hindrance to getting things done. It is about rediscovering a new cadre of leaders who will catalyze the energies of the nation rather than stunt them. It is about neutralizing the old cabal of powerbrokers by calling up people’s power in its most sophisticated, less populist form.

There will, no doubt, be a large dose of emotionalism in this effort. That is indispensable. People will have to be shaken enough to abandon politics as usual and be freed from the traditional habits of Filipino politics. All the disgust and all the anger that have accumulated need to be re-channeled no longer at settling old scores but at building a new scoreboard for governance.

In a matter of weeks, the doors of our electoral politics have been thrown wide open. The new forces must now march in. This is what this experiment is all about.

Until a few weeks ago, the politicians of the old mold and the powerbrokers of the old trenches controlled the dynamic of democratic selection. They hired the best minds from the industry that successfully sells shampoo and toothpaste and deodorants to our consumers in order to sell contrived constructs of political personalities to a dumbed down electorate.

For this experiment to succeed, we will have to raise the quality of the electorate, force them to think about abstract options more than just people in the flesh — or worse, money in the bag. This, win or lose, will be a major step forward in itself.

This is more than just enabling one candidate to win the count over the others — although that, too, is important. This is not a battle fought to be lost. But in order to win, it must succeed in its larger goal of bringing in new forces and new ideas into the electoral field.

The Edsa Revolution was exactly like this. It asked the people to contemplate what seemed impossible because it had become almost an alien concept: be free, be decisive in our numbers, build a government accountable to the people….

indeed.   hope springs eternal.   the game has changed.   suddenly ping lacson has found the courage to denounce erap in no uncertain terms.   tanong ni erap, bakit ngayon lang?   eh kasi, i suppose, ngayon lang naging timely for ping, to defend himself in the dacer case, and to further the cause of unity behind noynoy, why not.   the game has changed.

tanong ko lang kay ping, bakit to-be-continued, bakit hindi pa niya tinapos kanina?   anong strategy ‘yan, in aid of under-the-table behind-closed-doors wheeling-and-dealing, to what end?   or maybe it’s just to prolong his stint on center stage.   whatever.   if as a result erap decides not to run, good for him, good for ping, good for us.

also looking forward, of course, to jinggoy estrada’s privilege speech in defense of his father.   magkukuwento din daw siya tungkol kay ping.   sige sige, let’s hear it all.   matira ang walang bahid.   matira ang malinis.

as for senate president juan ponce enrile’s report that there is no yellow fever in the countryside, not in the north, not in the south.   hmmm.   well.   maybe he’ll be the last to know, just like in EDSA ’86.