Category: 2010

matt defensor asks, “bakit magkakagulo?”

caught the the dzmm teleradyo program of henry omaga diaz and nina corpuz with political analyst joel rocamora and congressmen teofisto guingona 3 and matt defensor yesterday. they were talking of course about hr 1109’s con-ass and how upset people are, how it’s truly a sensitive issue pala, and defensor agreed, dapat ay tantanan na muna ng kongreso, as in, it’s not worth it if it causes instabilityand discord…

but towards the end of the show, after gracefully enduring, when notdodging, the anti-gma brickbats thrown his way by rocamora and guingona, who refused to believe defensor when he said that gma had absolutely nothing to do with the railroading of hr 1109, defensor suddenly raised the question:

what’s wrong, if we go through the process of electing gma again, and she wins.   it means gustosiya ng taong bayan.   so bakit magkakagulo?

rocamora quickly pointed out that for that to happen, the constitution would have to be amended first nga; guingona brought up the problem of cheating, as in 2004, and the question of gma’s legitimacy.

and then it was time to wrap up, nag-overtime na nga, which left me bitin and intrigued by defensor’s question that’s obviously a reflection of the kind of thinking that gma’s gang indulges in.

it tells me that hr 1109 was a case of congress testing the waters, testing the people’s limits, baka makalusot, maybe not enough people would be bothered to raise a hue and cry, or maybe people have realized that gma’s doing a good job pala, whatever the illusion, 1109 was worth a try, nothing to lose but credibility, and gma’s majority in congress lost that a long time ago…

so now they know better.   the people say no to con-ass until after gma’s gone forever.   and maybe the people would rather have a con-con, kung talagang kailangan.

on to plan b, i suppose.   maybe start making ligaw , making gapang, the senators, under the table, one by one, until there are enough who will go for joint voting, or until there are enough to win in separate voting, depending on how the supreme court rules or doesn’t rule on con-ass.

clearly, okay lang kay defensor and his ilk the idea of amending the constitution to accommodate gma’s desire to stay in power beyond 2010, whatever her reasons, because, correct me if i’m wrong, they actually want to stay in power too, and, ilusyonado ones, they actually believe that the best of gma is yet to come.   and if she can win in pampanga and win a future parliament’s votes to become prime minister, ibig sabihin noon she has the mandate of the people, so bakit magkakagulo?

bakit magkakagulo?   because it’s a lie that gma is good for the country.   gma is part of the problem.   she’s been forever and will be forever on status-quo oligarchic mode, with all that it implies for our basket-case of an economy, agrarian non-reform, population non-control, graft and corruption, the debt cycle, inadequate educational services, no health care, high cost of basic necessities, low wages, environmental exploitation and degradation, and so on and so forth.   the worst would be yet to come.

bakit magkakagulo?   meaning, hindi magkakagulo?   that can only mean na bawal na kasing magprotesta at magdemo.   ibig lang sabihin, martial law na uli.   nangangarap sila.

trying times for villar

seems to me that manny villar is in a lose-lose situation.   damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t, attend the senate trial of the ethics case filed against him by jamby madrigal over the c-5 scandal.

says armida siguion-reyna in the tribune:

The presidential election of 2010 is literally around the corner. The public has the right to know if Villar, one of the top contenders, is guilty of using his office to insert in the national budget another P200 million to enable the C-5 road extension project to pass through his properties for such properties to increase in value.

I must admit I’m puzzled by the good senator’s refusal to face his accuser Sen. Jamby Madrigal and instead chose to trade low-brow barbs with her. She called him “Corruption King,” and he shot back with “Sinungaling Queen,” when he could have used the time for tit-for-tat to demolish her allegations. He publicly cast aspersion on the entire Senate and tagged it a “kangaroo court” ready to pre-judge him without benefit of a proper hearing – a charge that so incensed my brother Senate President Juan Ponce- Enrile into reacting with “That is bullshit.”

Villar apologized to the Senate president, the apology was accepted. Still Villar maintained his position, explaining he did not mean to include Senator Enrile in his sweeping statement, just especially the presidentiables of the lot. Meaning: Lacson, Legarda, Roxas, Gordon and Escudero.

And I am once more puzzled. There are 22 senators,  23 including Senator Trillanes, whose right to vote still hangs in the balance. Of the 22, six are known to be interested in running for the highest office, including Villar himself. Of the remaining 16, at least five are known Villar allies: Joker Arroyo, Kiko Pangilinan, Nene Pimentel, the siblings Pia and Alan Peter Cayetano. E di 11 na lang ang natira: Enrile, Angara, Aquino, Biazon, Estrada, Santiago, Honasan, Lapid, Madrigal, Revilla and Zubiri – and Villar distrusts them as well?

This is nothing personal against him, as he’s always been polite, even invited me once to a small dinner in his house. It’s just that I really can’t understand why he’d rather talk to the media and show them this and that of the ongoing C-5 construction when really, the easiest way out is for him to simply present his side of the case to his colleagues, ‘yun lang.

Now, if it’s true he’s milking sympathy from the public and trying his darndest to appear as the underdog, naku. It’s going to be very, very hard to convince people that a multi-billionaire is kawawa – all his achievements could be for naught. Sayang.

says winnie monsod in the inquirer:

One cannot help but comment on the intransigence of Sen. Manuel Villar and other members of the opposition who, from where I sit, have treated their institution shamefully (and contributed to its already deteriorating image). He insists he is being singled out and persecuted  by his peers because he is a presidential aspirant. Nonsense. Wasn’t he elected Senate president by the same people, or at least by a majority of the chamber? It looks more like he is hiding behind, or maybe even exploiting this “persecution” theme, for partisan political purposes. What’s wrong with answering the charges formally? He either used his position for personal (business) gain or not. If he can show the media-which doesn’t seem to be buying his line-that he did not, why can’t he show his peers in a more formal setting? Does he really think that Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, who has been on both the receiving and giving ends of real political persecution, or for that matter, the Filipino people, will allow this to happen? Come on.

even more unbelievable is the way joker arroyo has taken villar’s side when back in 1998 in the house of representatives arroyo himself raised the very same issues against villar.   says manolo quezon:

The case, basically, was this: Congressmen and senators are required to inform their respective chambers of their financial and business interests. If there’s a chance any legislation they propose might represent a conflict of interest with their financial interests, they’re supposed to inform their peers. This, Arroyo said, is a disclosure Villar never made.

Arroyo then detailed what he maintained was Villar’s modus operandi, in using his political office to further his private commercial gain. Arroyo mentioned loans from government financial institutions; the development of properties despite a lack of environmental clearances; and he subsequently expressed interest in allegations of land-grabbing.

…Arroyo built the foundation for future cases, in which Villar is accused of maneuvering government projects, such as roads, to ensure they pass through his properties, even if the route of the roads have to be changed, wasting the funds already paid for right-of-way along the old, discarded path. The time and trouble to literally redraw the path of a road is worth it because it allegedly ate up portions of his properties, enabling him to seek compensation for right-of-way and saved Villar the expense of building roads to improve access to his developments.

Most interesting of all, is the allegation that his high office may have made possible his being paid at a rate higher than others, and collected these payments even when related to properties put up as collateral for government loans, and foreclosed.

Since I do not think Arroyo insincere, or senile, or corrupt, I can only suggest that Arroyo defends Villar today out of an insistence on the equality of House and Senate. If he failed in the House, no one should succeed with the same case in the Senate.

what a joker.   buti na lang enrile is no pushover.   villar should just forget about running for president.   maybe heshould slide down to vice, no pun intended.

bookbug blues

i could be more upset about the book tax.   i am a bookbug, after all.   i buy imported and local fiction and non-fiction regularly, mostly imported mostly english, and i read them all as a matter of pleasure, of study, sometimes of survival.   do i really not mind paying more?

i mind, of course.   times are hard, money is tight.   maybe it’s just mercury being retrograde, i’ve been through this before, the post office has been taxing our mail-order books for someyears now, and talaga i know i should could be angrier but i just can’t get beyond a hay-naku sabay buntong-hininga.

kumbaga sa “straw that broke the camel’s back” this is not it, this is far from it.    because a tax on imported books simply is too lightweight and too burgis an issue to get me as mad as i already am about the scandalizingly high cost of basic goods and services e.g. food, shelter, clothing, utilities, medicines, and schooling.    “non-educational”  books simply don’t belong in the same category.

nonetheless i wish robin hemley and manolo and jessica and teddyboy and the blogosphere success in the campaign to jolt the government back to its senses and back to full compliance with the florence agreement. until then, books getting more expensive just means i’ll be buying less.   maybe i’ll even stop going to bookstores, as a matter of protest, as 1read2 suggests:

… the government as represented by the Department of Finance and Customs Bureau has made its stand on the Book Tax and Duty.  “Sue us” seems to be the battle cry: A very arrogant one at that.

…Hopefully, someone does sue thembut in the meantime what to do?

Given that it seems that the bookstores and booksellers are somewhat hesitant to challenge this ruling. Perhaps it would be time to do something against this taxation.

Do not buy books that have duties imposed. Do not buy it. Book readers and book collectors are the customers of this industry. And they make it prosper and if the industry cannot defend itself from unjust and illegal taxes it might be the time to not buy.

Books can be downloaded from the Net . Read and even share the ebook with a friend or fellow book reader.

…Refuse to pay the taxman his unjust taxes

Books can be gained in several ways and not all of them involves buying. No I am not referring to stealing. Borrow from the library or share a book with a friend.

Establish book clubs with libraries…

meanwhile as reminds in his comment to mlq3 there’s the 2010 elections coming.   how about if we not vote for candidates who support the book tax.   or, to be positive.   how about if we campaign and vote for candidates who would rescind the book tax (other things being equal ;)

also meanwhile, there’s always booksale.   i don’t mind secondhand books.   i’m also willing to trade, but first i have to put together a list of books that i can bear to part with, fiction and non-, all of them educational.   promise.

mike’s defense

so what’s mike defensor up to, dredging up the rot of the nbn-zte-fg deal that saw (alleged fixer) ben abalos resign as comelec chief and the project stopped in its tracks.   natabunan na nga ng walang katapusang iba’t ibang atraso at iskandalo ng arroyo govt, dapat ay nagsasaya na lang si mike, jun lozada’s camp was rather quiet, tila lusot na ang mag-asawang arroyo — thanks to romy neri, let’s not forget — at tila okey na lang sa bayan na hintayin ang 2010, malapit na naman, after all.   goodbye gloria, no immunity from suit.

so why?   i don’t buy mike’s spin that it’s just a perjury issue, nothing political daw, he just wants to clear his name.   josko.   eh walang kalatoylatoy ang inihain niyang kaso.

In his complaint for perjury, Defensor said Lozada had given conflicting versions of their conversation:

“Mr. Lozada’s testimony before the Senate significantly deviated from what he gave before the Court of Appeals. In the Senate, he stated that I asked him to deny that he was kidnapped; in the [appellate court] however, he said I asked him to deny any knowledge about the NBN-ZTE deal.

“The statement of Mr. Lozada before the Senate and the appellate court are clearly contradictory and cannot be reconciled. After validating the completeness of my story before the Senate, Mr. Lozada cannot thereafter change its tenor in the court hearing without being held liable for perjury.”

But on Nov. 14, 2008, Judge Jorge Emmanuel Lorredo of the Manila Metropolitan Trial Court (MTC) Branch 26 found no inconsistency on Lozada’s part and dismissed Defensor’s complaint.

In his ruling, Lorredo said: “In the second and third statements [at the Court of Appeals], Lozada was given the impression that if he does not stop, there will be a demolition job against him.

“The Court notes that even in [his Senate testimony], Mike Defensor also said ‘Tapusin na natin ‘to.’ To the Court, that shows the intention of Mike Defensor to put an end to all these things about the ZTE deal …”

well, mike is so lakas, a manila regional trial court obligingly reversed the decision.

Manila RTC Branch 11 Presiding Judge Cicero Jurado Jr. reversed Lorredo’s decision on March 19, upon Defensor’s appeal through his counsel, the Fortun Narvasa lawfirm.

Jurado said the MTC went “a notch above” the requirement for determining probable cause and seemed to have already rendered a verdict without conducting a trial when it concluded that an element of the offense was absent.

He said the question at hand was whether there was evidence showing that a crime had more likely been committed and the accused should be placed under custody.

it is quite conceivable to me that in that conversation between mike and jun, a lot more was said, including both statements mike takes issue with.    and neither is illogical in the context of the other, so what’s the fuss?

obviously naghanap lang ng dahilan to get lozada out of the hands of the religious / civil society and into the hands of the judiciary, where the arroyo admin has some influence (from the lowest to the highest courts) as we can see.   and, really, it has to be connected with jun lozada being urged to run for the senate in 2010.   may panalo kasi (inggit si mike), so the idea is to neutralize him early, let him run from jail, let him serve from jail?    trillanes shows the way?

if mike really wants to clear his name for the sake of his children, it’s simple: withdraw his support from the arroyo administration.   fat chance, yes, but that would wipe the slate clean.