Category: politics

erap free

wow, that was fast. gloria must be desperate for new allies to replace fvr & jdv.

problem is, i can’t see pro-erap forces going along with the deal and supporting the new glo-erap alliance. can’t see ninez cacho olivares and her tribune troops changing their anti-gma tune.

so what’s in it for gloria? erap swears there’s no trade-off, but i doubt it. i wouldn’t be surprised to see him, eventually, doing a honasan, as in, you know, biglang critical of the opposition and of senate investigations into zte and hello-garci, a la joker arroyo.

i think maybe gloria is thinking long-term, as in charter change pa rin, which would also explain the hand-outs, cash advances, to mayors, governors, and congressmen for a final cha-cha war, huling hirit kumbaga.

with erap on her side, helping convince the masses, maybe even making movies pushing federalism, gloria may think may panalo siya (if she can hold out that long, that is). hope she’s wrong. hope i’m wrong.

gloria & glorietta

what a coincidence, really impossible to ignore. the arroyo administration can deny it to death, and she may even be telling the truth this time, but there’s no stopping people from thinking/seeing a connection between the bribery blues ni gloria and the bomba-like explosion sa glorietta.

it’s an intuitive thing, a right brain operation, this sense of a meaningful relationship between apparently unconnected events when they occur simultaneously or in close sequence over a certain period of time. the mystic scientist carl jung called it synchronicity, which “takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance” and which is the very principle underlying the use of the i ching and astrology (among other occult arts) in making sense of “the essential situation prevailing” for any one  person or group at any moment in time.

and so the essential situation prevailing for gloria is frankly explosive, as explosive as glorietta that afternoon of oct. 19.

take note that the makati business club, heretofore super-supportive of gloria’s free-market policies, has made an about-face. executive director alberto lim was the first to go on anc soon after the blast to wonder aloud if it were a malacanang tactic to distract us from the bribery scandal, and if not, to ask that gma clear her name, clear the air, by appointing an independent commission to investigate the crime. a demand that has since been echoed by the bishops and civil society, for both the palace payola and the glorietta explosion.

unfortunately gloria does not see fit to oblige her critics. which is no way to defuse a ticking bomb, or a deadly explosion, as the case may be.

media missing “the big picture”

so what was so big about the picture ricky carandang painted when he and his fellow media practitioners vergel santos, john nery, and juliet javellana talked about nothing but their small elitist corner of media where confidentiality between journalist and his/her sources is higher even than the national interest. newsstand.blogs.com even has the nerve to recap: “The journalistic privilege is indispensable to the free flow of information.”

oh please! free flow? you call that free? more like restricted, selective, problematic than free. in my book, the lowest kind of information.

i think jarius did the right thing. but it wasn’t the pros and cons of what he did that merited a whole show. it was what he said, the info he offered, added to info that emerged in the senatehearings, that media should be looking into. isip-isip naman, mga bata.

the question is no longer whether gma and/or the first gentleman were part of the fix — that’s already obvious, di ba, as obvious as her voice on the garci tapes. the question that media, and the senate, should be gnawing to the bone, instead of avoiding, if they are truly in the service of all filipinos, and not just of their publishers/networks and advertisers/sponsors and campaign contributors, is: do we really need a national broadband network?

because the answer is yes, never mind muna about the last mile chuchu. not only the government bureaucracy but we the people who already use cellphones and the internet but who find pldt and globe rather expensive as service providers would have a cheaper alternative in a national broadband network that’s run not for profit but for public service, lalo na kung di naman tayo pasosyal o tight ang ating budget at mababaw naman ang kaligayahan natin.

this is why pldt and globe are so against nbn in any kind of reincarnation, and ito na rin ang “razon” kung bakit pilit na sumasawsaw ang tycoons sa isang public service project. and so naghalo na ang balat sa tinalupan, kumbaga.

read manila times’ a backbone-breaking straw by benjamin g. defensor.

mvp & zte

so what does manny v. pangilinan of the telecom giant pldt have to do with zte-fg?

twice his name has come up.

once in the senate, when nene pimentel asked the two deans (one current, one former) of the u.p. school of economics something like, who did you write the paper for, that paper socritical of government’s national broadband network project. abah. it was commissioned by manny pangilinan of pldt no less for a very cool million bucks.

the second time in a very long text message from a “palace loyalist” that manolo quezon posted in his blog, to the effect that the zte deal involves a manila counterpart, and zte chose multimedia telephony (once owned by joey de venecia, now by bigbusinessman ricky razon na super-close sa arroyos and owns manila standard today), and that it was not only joey who was jockeying to become the manila counterpart, si manny pangilinan din daw

tried 2get a share of d biz but Razon wont let him. N return, PLDT paid d UP prof P1M 2 make d study dat wil put d NBN-ZTE look bad. PLDT s fundingall d bad PR on Razon & giving d oppositionsenators d bullets 2 kill d NBNZTE. NBN-ZTE s nothing but a fight of greedy pipol but could cause enormous economic loss 4 d country.

Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose

hmm, di ba. too much. how greedy talaga. talk about corporate social responsibility. nasaan na ang spirit of giving back to society? kung getting to that last mile ang problema, malinaw naman kung saan kailangan ang tulong, ang charity, ng pldt at globe, di ba? given their billions in profits last year (47!), they should be giving back, paying back, the right way, the right place, to the right people. instead we read in the inquirer about filipino firms investing $1.8 billion dollars abroad from january to june this year! and we read in the manila times that only 160 families own the economy and the politics of this country! where’s the justice?

but i don’t agree with the texter na cancelling zte would cause enormous economic loss for the country. i hope s/he’s just talking about the many other big projects that were in the bag na sana. because, sa totoo lang, nakaka-tense yang super-close relations ni gma with china. what’s she up to ba talaga? playing the china card and selling us out bigtime? is that really the way to go? can’t we be more creative than that?