Category: cory

Midnight CJ and the Four R’s

Rene Saguisag

The framers could have said the position of Chief Justice (CJ) should be filled up immediately and that only the CJ could swear in a Prez. They did not. They said any judicial vacancy should be filled up within 90 days, which I suggest is even merely directory, not even mandatory. No way we can mandamus a Prez.

The case of Justice Minita Chico Nazario, where the vacancy was filled up six months later is instructive; she twisted in the wind that long before finally taking her oath and becoming a credit to the SC.

It took more than six months for CJ Querube C. Makalintal to replace CJ Roberto R. Concepcion. Thus, the virtue of collegiality. It also shows that when the Constitution gave the Prez 90 days to name a new Justice, the lack of urgency was seen. May the SC order the JBC, headed by the CJ?

When Marcos won, if my memory is true, I had at least two excellent teachers who had been named to the bench just before Macapagal himself was to step down. Seen as more than qualified, maybe, but no one in the judiciary, or elsewhere, is indispensable. The two had to go. In May, 1982, for a working week, we had no Supreme Court at all! All told, vacant days added together, we had no CJ for years. The nation moved on. There simply was no fire.

Now we have a golden chance for a transparent process in lieu of arcana. Justice Rene Corona must disclose in open hearing his suspicion that Justice Tony Carpio was out to smear him. Tony denied the charge, corroborated by Nanding Campos, who Rene had said tried to influence him improperly by using three ex-Justices to approach him (which those of us of the old school us would never do; it just was not and should not be done).

GMA acknowledged on December 30, 2002 that she divides our people. Now, she plans to continue in public life, and some salivate. Why? Are these but the noises of democracy we were glad to have again in 1986 after 15 years of coercive elimination of dissenters, leading to Jackson’s unanimity of the graveyard?

Charito Planas I first met in Washington, D.C. in 1982. She has chosen to be with GMA. The right to pick we cannot question, be it elixir or poison we choose. But, as in the case of Gary Olivar, what does she have to say about the Morong 43? The duo both courageously fought martial misrule. May God bless them both. But we in the human rights community need to hear them on the 43.

FOCAP (like our friend, Tony Lopez) could be naughty. Last Tuesday it held a forum entitled Who Will Fix the Mess? I saw no one take issue with the tendentious theme. All prez wannabes said No to operating the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Bravo! A Korean firm said it would need a billion pesos at least, which may yet double, or triple, to repair and upgrade it. But, we are pasable-OK-na-puede-na Pinoys. I hope Prez Cory and I would no longer be blamed for not operating the plant in 1986, when Chernobyl made it easy to mothball it. But, I had not realized I was so effective chairing the Cabinet and Senate Committees on it that here we are, 24 years after the event and no Prez or wannabe is for operating it.

This fact emerged with crystal clarity in the FOCAP affair. Nick Perlas was with me in the 1986-1992 effort.

Even Engineer FVR would not dare put the nuke plant on line (his home province is Pangasinan; I married one from there and it now welcomes nuke power in a nation where Murphy’s Law—if anything can go wrong, it will—prevails in rampancy: I am not sure we can be like Russia or Japan ably dealing with Chernobyl or Toyota’s recall). We need new energy plans. We need to know from the bets what their plans are, on top of their other sales talk, to pay public servants above the level of corruption by laying down the economic foundation of honesty. Dick Gordon would want school teachers to get P40,000 a month, less than the additional bonus of House employees last Christmas given by Congressmen: how much did they get for themselves?

There must be a better deal for employees, whether public or private, for them to compete for admission into public service.

On specifics, what do they have to say on senior citizens discounts where an employer’s profit is marginal and who will go under with the additional discount? Is this not confiscatory? Any subsidy? Else, the employer may fire employees to salvage the ailing business. There must be a health program too so one with a dollar (less than P50) can have dialysis monthly. More than Motherhood spiels we need from the leading bets. Those who have no chance should withdraw, to improve the chances of even a bad bet; else, by hurting him, we may get a worse, or even the worst one, in lying, cheating and stealing. Balzac said that behind every great wealth is a great crime. How many of the bets have no great wealth?

Anyway, I need to see in the text of the 1987 Constitution, or maybe, someone can show us that, in the debates, the intent was that in the judiciary “midnight appointments” are allowed, contrary to what the SC has nixed. I know how careful the JBC and SC are in observing the no-appointment rule during the critical two months. That was why the promotion of some RTC Judges created a hassle some years ago (even if admittedly, the nominees were good); there was static about antedating to make it appear as not falling within the interdicted two-month period. No transparency. Shielding the nomination process from scrutiny should go. If it would need a constitutional change so be it. Back to the Commission on Appointments? Noynoy I don’t recall ever having opposed any change in the 1987 Consti. He and his Mom, along with millions, simply wanted to do the Right thing in the Right way at the Right time for the Right reason.

Nothing says the CJ should administer the oath. Cory and Doy were sworn in on February 25, 1986 by “mere” Associate Justices, who used the rather unconventional formulation I rushed the night before in a rinky-dink typewriter. Indeed, an ordinary notary public can administer it. When we took power in 1986, I had no time to take it but then it was a risky revolutionary government we had inaugurated. Later, in a more normal time, I took it before a notary. It could not be said that I violated my Four R’s.

Today, what is not being violated in the violent time in the vilest possible way?

de quiros, aquino, edsa

conrado de quiros is sounding like a broken record these days, insisting that “edsa” &  “people power” and “good vs. evil” are the themes to work on if we want to see noynoy aquino again racing ahead of the pack like after his mom died.

and so a guy asked him daw:

“DON’T you think that transforming the choice into a moral one is a little too high for the masa to grasp? Don’t you think the better tack would be to talk about gut issues (malapit sa bituka)?”

the noted columnist’s reply is so last decade:

Not at all.

To begin with, you would not be transforming anything. You would not be raising or reducing or reshaping anything. That was exactly how the masa saw the choice from the very start, when Cory died and Noynoy Aquino announced his intention to run: the choice was a moral one. It was not a gratuitous choice between presidential candidates, between Noynoy and Villar (Villar never even figured in the equation), between what the candidates had to offer. It was a desperate choice between the GMA curse and the Cory legacy, between Noynoy (or what he represented) and Gloria (or what she is), between life and death.

It was a choice between Good and Evil.

The fact that Noynoy got more than 60 percent showed this wasn’t merely a middle-class or elite sentiment…

yes, but that was then, we were in grief, we were emotional and romantic, we wanted more of cory and ninoy (not of gma) and noynoy seemed like the next best thing.   but this is now, we have been through a lot since cory died — killer floods, the ampatuan massacre, the murder of the rh bill, and now the illegal arrest and torture of 43 ngo health workers — and some of us are looking for answers to many questions beyond who-what is good who-what is evil, according to whom?   dams are good in times of reasonable rain, but evil in times of excessive rain.   due process is good, but why is it that the law is more protective of the rights of indicted evil-doers?   and where is due process for the health workers accused of being bomb-makers?   is the military good or evil?    is contraception good or evil?   it’s all too muddled to work as a winnowing concept and yet de quiros thinks the world of this good vs. evil theme.

For a long, long time, GMA was seen as the worst leader this country has ever had after Marcos, or for some even before Marcos. Yet all that it elicited from the public was cynicism and text jokes. It was only after Cory died and Noynoy arose in her wake that the cynicism turned into a revulsion for an intolerable situation and the text jokes turned into an epic desire to change things.

For the Aquino camp, that means it’s not just enough to harp on the hell that the GMA curse is, or the heaven that the Cory legacy can be, it needs to harp on the hell that the GMA curse is and the heaven that the Cory legacy can be, at the same time. For the Aquino camp, that means that it’s not just enough to harp on Villar as the embodiment, continuation or extension of GMA (literally or in a kindred way) or Noynoy as the inheritor, keeper, and perpetuator of the Cory legacy, it needs to harp on the one as the disease and on the other as the cure.

but what is this heavenly change that cory’s legacy will bring about through noynoy?   mababaw ang kaligayahan ni de quiros.

Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for education? Simply removing the monsters whose very existence teaches the young that lying, cheating and stealing are rewarded and whistle-blowing, telling the truth, and being courageous are punished is an entire curriculum unto itself. Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for economic development? Simply stopping a reign of corruption stops poverty completely literally in that there is no mahirap where there is no korap, and completely spiritually in that nothing impoverishes a country more than an utter lack of moralidad. Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for national security? You arrest the usurpers who made the country home to desperation and insecurity, and line them up against the wall, or its legal equivalent since we don’t have the death penalty anymore, though we can always make an exception, and we will have more security than can be guaranteed by the armed forces or the insurance companies.

but we should care about a presidential candidate’s plans for education; the curriculum problem goes beyond / goes deeper, it’s not just ethical and moral but academic and pedagogic and even a problem of language.   and we should care about noynoy’s plans for economic development because de quiros exaggerates, stopping corruption will not stop poverty “completely literally”: it would only mean a little more money for health education and dole-outs for some but not nearly enough to make a sustainable difference in the lives of the many many poor, not while the oligarchy reigns and the debt policy rules.    and we should care about noynoy’s plans for national security because current policies discriminate against pinoys (think vfa) and civil society (pro-poor ngos) and do nothing to secure our environment, and our very lives, from deadly trash and irresponsible land use and destructive mining and rapid reckless deforestation.

in another column, de quiros waxes nostalgic about edsa and people power and the cory magic.

The Cory magic hasn’t lost its magic, it has simply not been used. Or the Cory magic hasn’t lost its magic, it has simply been lost on the people who held it in their hands but never knew what they had. The Cory magic is Edsa. The Cory magic is People Power. The Cory magic is the glimmer of hope piercing through the dark of despair.

I said last year that the Noynoy camp had a tremendous advantage in that the opening of the year presented two Edsas, January being Edsa II and February being Edsa I. Both resonated with good triumphing over evil, a concept GMA has been at pains to make people forget, which is why she has tried to hide the very thing—and people, who were Cory and Jaime Cardinal Sin—that brought her to power. Both stood to unleash the Cory magic in all its glory.

January came and went, and not a single statement on Edsa, or about Edsa, issued from the lips of the Aquino camp. We’re on the second week of February, and not a single statement on Edsa, or about Edsa, has issued from the lips of the Aquino camp. We’re on the fifth month after Noynoy declared his intention to run, and not much, if not not a single statement, has issued from the lips of the Aquino camp about their cries of anguish and anger from the pit of the land, about the glimmer of hope piercing through the dark of despair, about the people and their power.

The Cory magic is not something that works by itself, it works only by being used. The Cory magic is Edsa, the Cory magic is People Power, the Cory magic is people drawing the line, demanding change, commanding change, shouting at the top of their lungs, “tama na, sobra na, palitan na.” You do not invoke these things, you do not conjure these things, you do not say the magic words that unleash these things—there is no Cory magic.

ah, yes, EDSA.   de quiros makes it seem like we are back in 1986 and the choice is simple, black and white, good vs. evil, cory vs. marcos.    indeed “tama na, sobra na, palitan na” were magic words back then, but it was clear kung sino ang dapat palitan at sino ang dapat ipalit, the opposition being united behind one cory (doy did a mar upon the clamor of the people).   eh hindi naman ganyan ang sitwasyon ngayon.   ang daming choice.   maliban kay mar, walang kandidatong kusang nagbibigaydaan kay noynoy, each one thinks himself/herself as the good one vs. the evil one.   and maybe all of them are right, all in their own small ways.

if the object was were to beat gma’s annointed and everything evil she stands for in the may elections, and if the strategy was were to go by, be guided by, the EDSA tradition, then villar erap gordon gibo jamby perlas bro.eddie and jc, should have, one and all, when cory died, humbly nobly happily rallied behind noynoy as the one opposition candidate.   of course it didn’t happen because there was no clamor to that effect.   the real clamor is for CHANGE but noynoy is only promising small change — to stop corruption and streamline the system, the very system that needs changing.

truth to tell, it’s jamby madrigal and nicanor perlas who are running on platforms of CHANGE, and noynoy and the rest should be giving way to them, i.e., if we are to go by EDSA.   but the people aren’t ready, pinagiisipan pa nila, pinagtatalunan pa, kung sino ano ba talaga ang paniniwalaan, ano nga ba yung tama na, alin ba ang sobra na, paano ba papalitan, atano ang ipapalit.   clearly people power continues on “hold” while seeking to level-up beyond good vs. evil.

environment 3: forests gone

FORESTS GONE
(In Defense of Kaingineros)

Junie Kalaw

In 1863, after three hundred years of free access to forests for all, natives and Spaniards alike, the Inspeccion General de Montes was created by royal decree to keep track of, and control access to, the forests that blanketed the archipelago.  It was charged with all matters that had to do with the cutting of timber, the opening up of virgin forests, and the selling of forest land.  The discernible goals of forest policy were to (1) provide for Spanish civil and naval needs for timber, (2) contribute to government revenue, and (3) perpetuate forest resources. These goals were not met. Revenues from commercial timber exploitation and forest use were low. Timber could be used freely under a permit but few bothered; illegal cutting of trees and clearing of forest lands for cultivation increased among the natives.  In 1874 kaingin farming was banned and commercial cutting a crime.

Fortunately the population was small and forest loss negligible.   In fact, when Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States in 1898, the islands were still covered with forests, plains and mountains alike.   According to a report of the U.S.-appointed director of the Forestry Bureau, the forests of Mindanao, Palawan, Samar, and Luzon were intact, “waiting to be explored.”

The forest industry flourished under American rule, thanks to America’s huge demand for Philippine hardwood.  Soon enough the forests started to suffer from both destructive logging and kaingin farming.  By 1934 only about 17 million hectares or 57% of the country’s 30 million-hectare forest remained. By World War II the lumber industry ranked second in employment and fourth in value of production among Philippine export industries, with annual government revenues from forest charges averaging Php 2.5 million.

During the occupation, the Japanese took every opportunity to exploit Philippine forests.  Forest stations in occupied territories were made to continue operations, resulting in severe destruction of forests and the devastation of the industry, with 141 out of 163 sawmills completely destroyed.

Upon independence, the state’s ownership of all forest land was affirmed.  Projecting a bias for social justice and equity and envisioning democratic participation, the Philippine Constitution mandated that natural resources belong to the state.  In practice, the “state” has meant politicians and their business partners, and the doctrine has been “what is good for business is good for the general welfare.”

The forestry industry was rehabilitated and mechanized with American help and the exploitation of timber institutionalized through the concession system used by most governments of the tropical world.  Set up for the private management of commercial forests and to allow public authorities to collect revenue, the state controls exploitation through (1) a system of licensing that limits the area and duration of concession to 50 years, including renewals; (2) the collection of fees based on the volume cut; and (3) the enforcement of a maximum allowable cut derived from estimates of sustainable productivity.  Firms capable of setting up or linking with a complementary sawmill or wood–processing operation are more likely to be granted licenses.

In response to U.S. market demands, and to raise revenues for industrialization, the country resumed exporting forest products, with exports valuing Php 3.3 million in 1949.  Early in the next decade Japan stepped up its imports of Philippine hardwood, lauan in particular; from half a million cubic meters by 1952 to 4 million cubic meters by the end of the decade.  Forests were then clear-cut, large-scale, without concern for the future, until 1954 when government imposed the selective logging system on commercial loggers.   Designed as a “sustainable yield management scheme,” it requires the logger to refrain from cutting a certain proportion of trees in the concession, as designated by the Bureau of Forest Development, the residual stand to be managed by the logger, who arranges a second cycle of cutting after a specific growing period.

In the 1960s the Japanese government decided to develop its own wood-processing export industry, treating the forest resources of the Philippines and other South Seas countries as a singe resource base.  Hardwood imports, mainly logs, were processed into plywood in Japan and the best-quality production exported to the U.S.   This trade enjoyed special government privileges since it helped obtain precious currency for the Japanese economy and fueled the development of its plywood manufacturing industry.

In 1969, the peak year of the “logging boom,” the Philippines exported 8.3 million cubic meters of logs to Japan.  Two co-existing systems facilitated the process.  The first consisted of local concerns (Chinese timber merchants who generally managed the logging for the well-connected Filipino concessionaires) borrowing large capital from Japanese trading houses for the purchase of logging equipment; loans were repaid with log shipments.  The second system consisted of joint ventures between local capital and Japanese trading houses, with the Japanese supplying as much as 30% of the capital investment through the back door.

In the early 1970s log exports started to decline.  Despite the selective logging policy, Mindanao had been largely deforested, its high-density dipterocarp stands in accessible areas exhausted.  Logging continued but mostly in Luzon.   In principle, a ban on exports and a ban on logging in seven provinces, later reduced to six, were introduced in 1976.  However, government repeatedly delayed their implementation for “economic recovery” reasons.

Deforestation took place most rapidly under the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos.  The Japanese system of processing imported Philippine hardwood and then exporting the best products to the U.S. not only earned the Japanese government scarce currencies but also permitted the excesses of Marcos cronies.  When the Aquino administration came into power in 1986, several large concessions, some of them directly connected with Japanese interests, were canceled and a number of people, including government officials, were charged with corruption.

President Corazon Aquino, on whom the hopes of the 1986 revolution were pinned, did not fare much better, unfortunately.  By 1988, according to the latest nationwide inventory survey, Philippine forests had shrunk to 6.3 million hectares or 21% of their original area, with as much as 80% of these remaining forests partly logged over.  The most severely affected type is the naturally-grown dipterocarp forest.   Once dominating the country’s silvicultural pattern, it now stands marginally in (only) 4 out of 12 regions. From 1934 to 1988, the size and proportion of this type of forest declined between 11.1 and 13.6 million hectares to about 1.04 hectares.   In other words, almost 90% of the natural dipterocarp forest existing in the mid-’30s had been either cleared or transformed into residual forest areas, unproductive mossy fields, and open cogon lands by the 1980s.

The problem is essentially an institutional one, having to do with rules of access and control.  The red tape and complicated requirements involved in acquiring a Timber Licensing Agreement (TLA) or forest concession effectively squeeze out small-time operators or community interests in favor of big and influential concerns.   Besides, the prices assigned to standing timber are so low relative to their true market values that logging concessionaires make a killing in “rents,” which is the “surplus” profit available to a logging company once labor, equipment, and marketing costs are accounted for.   Since they incur no costs in producing the timber, loggers’ profits are often far higher than normal capital remuneration, which has led to the overexploitation of the resource.

This would also explain why the selective logging system has not worked for Philippine forests.   It has been shown that while the first cutting cycle is profitable for the private logger, the timber-stand improvement phase is not, due to the long period of time involved in waiting for the second cut.  Thus loggers tend to maximize revenues from the first cut, and then forego the second.   Invariably, when the loggers move on, “informal” forest users follow in their wake to clear logged-over areas for kaingin farming. These are mostly migrant farmers from lowland communities, numbering some 14 million Filipinos.

It is important to recognize the critical nature of this population pressure on the forest areas, which are now mostly in the uplands.   Unlike indigenous tribes that have long adapted to the environment, migrant farmers tend to overexploit the land quickly, using technology suited only for lowland agriculture.  It is therefore not surprising that government has singled out these kaingineros as the major culprit in 75% of forest destruction.

But if there is anything that the ecological crisis teaches us, it is to have a systems view of life, from which perspective everything is interconnected and interdependent.  We need to ask why we have 14 million kaingineros in our uplands and why they were forced to migrate in order to survive.  And we need to ask why only a few well-connected people are benefiting from forest resources.

From 1979 to 1982, loggers made a profit of US$ 820 million (roughly Php 16.4 billion) and the government earned approximately US$140 million (Php2.8 billion) in taxes.  Clearly now, this centralization of access to and benefits from forest resources has directly contributed to the poverty and environmental degradation in the countryside.  At a national level, benefits from forest resources have been used to finance political power through the dispensing of patronage to an impoverished electorate and the buying of military protection.   This has produced a basic anomaly in our democratic system.  Authentic democratic elections are not possible when the voters are poor and depend upon the patronage of a powerful few for their survival.  Ecological consciousness points to the necessity of acknowledging that the right to a life-support system from our natural resources is an inherent human right that must be given to people before the rights of the state and political leaderships can be voted on.

After the authoritarian Marcos regime, any other administration would have had to cope with the problem of poverty and democratic access, including Marcos himself, had he won the snap election as he claimed, and come to terms with the assault unleashed by an outraged civil society.  The history of primary-resource exploitation in the Philippines is replete with the names and interlocked fortunes of politicians and foreign interests, as left-wing ideologues have not tired of repeating.  These ideologues, however, seek to impose a political solution to what is at the core a problem of ecological relationship.  Until this is understood, poverty, as well as the aggravations created by insurgency, will continue to bedevil us.

A HARIBON READER ON THE PHILIPPINE FOREST, September 1989
Philippine Daily Inquirer 26 July 1988

not yet, noynoy

huwag ka sanang magpadala kay conrado de quiros o kay alex magno o kay bongbong marcos (strange bedfellows, eh?) na hinahamon kang tumakbo for president sa 2010, na para bang if you dont seize the day ay tipong you will miss the bus altogether.

i so disagree.   while it is true that you could win because of the ninoy-cory-kris connection, are you really ready?   the nation would expect great things of you.   the nation would expect you to be a president extraordinaire who would at the very least bring about a palpable improvement in the lives of millions of filipinos looking for jobs here at home and food on the table three times a day.   that won’t happen just because you aren’t a liar, a cheat, or a thief.

i agree with tony abaya, what we need is a forward-looking president, a truly revolutionary president, someone with the attributes and visions of lee kwan yew, mahathir mohamad and gen. park chung hee.

… it is someone who has the qualities of these three foreign leaders that the Philippines badly needs in order to overcome decades of consistently poor governance, restore our badly battered self esteem, and draw for us a credible vision of what we want our country to be.

We need someone like Lee Kwan Yew who was/is personally incorruptible and at the same time was/is so conversant with economics and international relations that he could speak ex-tempore and defend his policies before an assembly of multinational CEOs and diplomats and made/make solid sense, whether they agreed/agree with him or not.

In addition we need the strong sense of nationalism of Mahathir Mohamad who in the 1980s drew a vision – Malaysia Vision 2020, that sought and seeks to transform Malaysia into a fully industrialized country by the year 2020 – that he was able to convince the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious people of Malaysia to embrace as worthy of their national loyalty, beyond the narrow appeals of their tribes and ethnic groups. No mean feat, considering the catastrophic demise of equally multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Mahathir’s nationalism also expressed itself in his readiness to fearlessly fire back at other countries, other world leaders, as well as international agencies whenever he felt they were trampling on the national self-interests of Malaysia.

We also need the single-minded determination of Gen. Park Chung Hee to transform his impoverished, resource-poor and inconsequential Republic of Korea from 1961 to 1979 (when he was assassinated) into a fully industrialized country that is now one of the ten biggest economies in the world.

… this is what the Philippines needs, a leader who can start and lead a revolution, a peaceful one, as much as possible; a violent one, if necessary.

you could be that leader, noynoy.   given your parents, the history, the genes, the values, you, more than any other filipino, can do it, can be it.    but not without serious preparation for the role, which would mean learning not just from your mother’s successes but also from her mistakes — e.g., land reform, foreign debts, atbp. — and, most importantly, by being truly your father’s son not just in terms of his sacrifice but also of his political ideology.

when your father came home in ‘83 he had a program of action that he drafted while in exile in boston.   surely that program of action is worth looking into — other  than the dismantling of military rule, things haven’t changed much, except gotten worse, since the  80s — and hopefully, you will be up to the revolutionary challenges it poses.

forget de quiros and other hopeless romantics who urge you to run in 2010.   to do so, and to fail at non-violent revolution because you are not ready, would be the end of you.    in effect, you’d be neutralized, which would be a shame.