EDSA discourse 2009

hay naku, looks like the discourse on EDSA is back to square one.   pinagtatalunan na naman kung kailan ba natin dapat ipagdiwang the famous February revolt that the government has always celebrated on the 25th because that’s the day cory was sworn in as president on the sheer force of people power, but which this year we’re celebrating on the 23rd  holiday economics daw even if  school holiday lang, which date as it happens is fine by me, february 23 1986 being the day the crowds converged on that strip of EDSA prepared to die for Cory, and stood in the path of, and stopped, the mighty tanks of marcos and ver.   that, in my book, was the climax and turning point in favor of cory and the people.

but efren danao of the manila times prefers the 22nd, the day that then defense minister juan ponce enrile and his chief security aide gregorio honasan and their men broke away from the marcos military.

World history has always given greater importance to the initial act of defiance that had rallied a nation than to the subsequent installation of a new government. The United States considers July 4, 1776, as its first Independence Day and yet it was not until 1789 that the Americans finally defeated the British soldiers. France celebrates Bastille Day as its Independence Day, to commemorate the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. This despite the fact that the First French Republic was not established until 1792. Here in the Philippines, we celebrate June 12, 1898, as the day of our independence. It was the day when the Katipuneros led by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo established the first Philippine government. However, it was only on Ju1y 4, 1946 that we became a trulysovereign nation.

“On February 25, 1986, victory was already at hand. There was virtually no risk involved then. The country was already reaping the fruits of the bravery of those who, three days earlier, dared to go against a dictatorship. I can completely understand why Juan Ponce Enrile, Sen. Gringo Honasan and other key players of EDSA 1 had never participated in any February 25 commemoration of that historic event.”

say naman ni volt contreras sa inquirer today [broadsheet only, i wonder why], “Cory speech was turning point of Edsa,” which speech happened monday afternoon, february 24.   that morning, jejomar binay says, he and joker arroyo were in camp crame where joker met with enrile and ramos.

“When Joker finally came out, he told me: ‘Mukhang malayo na tayo rito. Mukhang malayo na rin si Cory. [We seem to be out of the loop already. So is Cory.]’

“Ang nagmamando na sina Ramos, kasi wala si Cory dito physically. [It’s Fidel Ramos and company calling the shots because Cory is not here physically. They were calling the (foreign) embassies , the press; they were calling the shots,” Binay recalled Joker telling him.

… Aquino was personally briefed by Joker about his earlier meeting in Camp Crame and about his sense of alarm over who’s “calling the shots,” Binay said.
“The long and short of it is that Cory told us: “Lalabas tayo [We’re coming out],” Binay told the Inquirer.

But someone butted in: “Cory, panalo na tayo. Baka madisgrasya ka pa [We’ve already won. You might only put yourself in danger].”

Aquino then replied, as Binay put it: “Akala ko ba usapan natin dito ay kung kailangan mabuwis ng buhay, magbuwis ng buhay? Bakit naman nag-iiba na tayo [I thought it was agreed that we would sacrifice our lives if we need to? Why the change?]”

The duly elected President of the February 1986 elections had given her stand, and “nobody dared to disagree with her [wala nang kumontra],” Binay said.

Aquino then asked his younger brother Jose “Peping” Cojuangco … to look for a spot on Edsa where she could address the crowd.

Why was the POEA building chosen? For one, its lobby allowed a wide view of the spectators but still provided ample overhead coverage against “snipers”, Binay explained.

Asked how Edsa I would have turned out had Aquino not “come out” that day, Binay said the initial sense of his group was that a “troika” or a “collective leadership” – rather than the Aquino presidency as Filipinos now know it-could have risen to power.

hmmmmm…. but only the people around POEA at the time knew that cory had come out to make a speech and claim EDSA as her victory.

“We have recovered our freedoms, our rights, and our dignity with much courage and, we thank God, with little blood. I enjoin the people to keep the spirit of peace as we remove the last vestiges of tyranny, to be firm and compassionate. Let us not, now that we have won, descend to the level of the evil forces we have defeated.

“I have always said I can be magnanimous in victory, no more hate, no more fighting. I appeal to all Filipinos of both sides of the struggle. This is now the time for peace, the time for healing.” [Bulletin 25 Feb 86]

enrile had no idea she made an appearance, even disputes that she was ever in EDSA at all.   cory coming out made no difference to the way things turned out;  it was not why enrile and ramos, over-ruling rebel generals, decided to attend the cory inauguration in club filipino the next morning and submit to her authority.

anyway it should be interesting what enrile will have to say in tomorrow’s event hosted by radio veritas that efren danao says the senate president will be attending as one of the heroes of EDSA.

will enrile toe the line of gloria arroyo who in a wreath-laying ceremony today, according to an inquirer report [website only, i wonder why] actually asked the public not to bother reliving the four days?

Arroyo reiterated that another “revolt” would spark “condemnation” from the rest of the world.

“The world embraced EDSA 1 in 1986. The world tolerated EDSA 2 in 2001. The world will not forgive an EDSA 3, but it will instead condemn the Philippines as a country whose political system is hopelessly unstable,” she said in a speech at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes’ Cemetery) in Taguig Sunday morning.

Arroyo asked the public “not to relive” the four days of the first revolt but instead learn from them and “refresh our spirit against the new challenges oftoday.”

She said one such lesson was “boldness,” a quality the country should show in the face of the global financial crisis.

yeah, right. how does one learn “boldness” from an experience that one knows of only in a distant sense.   i’m sure gloria herself and her mike of course took the trouble to re-live the run-up to, and the, four days of EDSA when they plotted in 2000 to oust erap a la marcos.    it’s time we learned from their example.

OMGWTFIDONTWANTTODIE 2

since that comment posted by lem about the death of the policeman who was injured at the u.p. friday the 13th riot, i’ve been googling news sites and broadsheets to either confirmor deny the news but nothing, absolutely nothing, which is so weird.   so i emailed lem to ask where he got the balita and he said from a rakista, pero sadyang “hindi raw ipinapaalam sa media, ewan kung bakit.”

ganoon?  like the warrior lawyer says, sana hindi totoo, sana buhay pa at on the way to recovery si sgt. ramon mondrigo of the u.p. police.  pero kung totoo that he has passed away, what is the news blackout all about?  is it possible that mainstream media have no idea, are not interested, do not care, or can it be that they just do not care enough to let us know?  baka napakiusapan ng u.p. admin o ng u.p. orgs that organized the concert na huwag nang palakihin,  sila-sila na lang ang bahala sa mga namatayan?  OMGWTF ganoon na lang ba ‘yon?  what does that say about u.p., and about our youth, hope of the motherland!

for all our sakes i pray it’s not true, and sgt. mondrigo lives.

OMGWTFIDONTWANTTODIE

check out radical chick‘s take on the u.p. friday the 13th riot that found burgis youth freaking out, as in OhMyGodWhatTheFuckIDON’TWANTTODIE, and suggesting that the u.p. admin close the university and limit access only to u.p. people.  haha, as if u.p. were close-able.  and, hey, what does it tell us about these u.p. youth and about u.p. diliman today.  how burgis naman talaga.

in fairness, alex maximo’s post in reaction to radicalchick’s is gracious and thoughtful, more agreeable than defensive, pero defensive pa rin, of course — he was misinterpreted, he wasn’t done, it’s a stream of consciousness in process.  well, possibly.  benefit of the doubt, just because some of the thoughts are worth remarking on.  particularly the ones regarding that clear line drawn between the jologs and the burgis, and about being burgis:

For the longest time, I have been arguing that the discourse of the blogosphere is the discourse of the burgis. At one point, I considered playing the anti-burgis role in the blogosphere but dropped the thought altogether. The fact remains that I am burgis and all the people I know who blog are burgis too. I’ve resigned to the fact that there will always be struggle between classes and, as a member of the petty-bourgeois, it is inevitable for me to acknowledge the differences between social classes.

Whether the burgis guns for egalitarianism in their discourse or not is based on their own ideologies and now I do agree with Manolo in his answer to a question I personally asked him – that the blogosphere’s voice is heterogeneous.

In the context of the anti-jolog sentiment, even some of the kindest people I know who were in the Fair that night drew the line between themselves and the jologs. I really do understand why people think this current blogging discourse on the UP Fair is quite “classist.” I really do. Maybe I’d be with them in this one if not for that delectable experience of being in the middle of a sea of angry jologs with barbecue sticks and water bottles who were cursing UP, the fair, the organizers, etc…

… Oh well. I’m sounding too defensive to my distaste. I’d be a bigot for now and if this becomes a prime example of classism then I think I have strengthened one of my points regarding hegemony and the discourse of the Philippine blogosphere. Quite interesting to find myself as part of the dominant bloc in this one.

good honest thoughts, these that grapple with conflicted values.  the clearly sensed perceived line between burgis and jologs is the very line that has to be crossed, and deleted, if there is to be any hope for inangbayan.  after all, burgis and jologs share many common interests, good and honest governance, transparency and the right to information, among many others.

we are them.  they are us.  ang sakit ng kalingkingan ay sakit ng buong katawan.  being burgis but concerned for the masa shouldn’t, doesn’t have to, be so hard.  some tibaks have gotten the hang of it and do a pretty good job at balancing things.

the burgis youth have as much to learn from the masa, as the masa youth from the burgis.   imagine if burgis and masa were friends that night in u.p.  that raw energy could have been channeled constructively — they could have together helped bring down those fences to accommodate everyone along some arrangement that would keep everyone happy in place.  and the next day they could together have ganged up on the concert organizers and given them hell (well, rotten tomatoes at least, and maybe some baho tsinelas) for inciting violence.  ang saya sana.

defending celso

i’m not going to pretend i understand what’s really going on with celso de los angeles and the banking establishment.  my kneejerk response when i read that his rural banks had a ponzi-like scheme going, promising high returns to depositors, higher than that offered by the big banks, i was disgusted, lalo na’t it seemed that he was counting on the pdic to bail out his depositors just in case…

and then i read manila times columnist dan mariano‘s vilification of celso de los angeles, and it made me think again. in the wake of the u.s. economy’s crash thanks to innovative financial schemes, it’s hard to think positive of celso’s own innovations, especially because he has been painted as an incorrigible scoundrel by the mass media.

but if it’s true that big banks could actually match the interest rates he offered on savers’ deposits but big banks just won’t because it would eat into their huge profits, then talaga, it’s possible that celso is the victim of a vilification campaign that was meant to panic his depositors, thus to protect the interests of big banks rather than the interests of the banking public.

makes me wonder about the senate and house investigations.  sino ba talagang pinoprotektahan nila?  makes me wonder too about vice-president noli de castro’s deafening silence.  anyway here’s dan mariano’s column in full:

Vilification of Celso de los Angeles

If you are convinced that Celso de los Angeles is as guilty as sin, read no further.

Off the bat, let me say he is a former classmate of mine. I still regard him as a friend even if these past couple of weeks he has not replied to my calls, text messages and e-mail. Given the pressure he is under, I don’t fault him at all.

As Celso’s friend, I am ready to give him, if not sympathy, then certainly the benefit of the doubt. I am still so prepared-even in the current lynch-mob atmosphere created by certain central bank officials and other quarters.

Not too long ago, Celsotold some of his friends he was anxious about a plot to shut down his businesses. The rural banks he set up, for instance, were offering depositors interest rates on their savings that the big banks could not-or simply refused to-match lest it cut into their profit margins.

As a result, the number of depositors in Celso’s banks, which were spread out across the archipelago, grew at such a rate that the big banks began to feel genuinely threatened.

Serves the big banks right, I thought. Their interest rates were so tiny they did not even allow their depositors’ savings to keep pace with inflation. Keeping your money in one of those big banks was only a bit better than stuffing cash into your mattress, but it still was a losing proposition for the average depositors. I had thought that the aggressive marketing tack taken by Celso’s banks would ultimately stir the big banks into giving their customers a similar or an even better deal. I had hoped the big banks would finally wake up and realize that they now face a serious competitor.

Boy, was I wrong.

Instead of stimulating the big banks’ competitive instincts, Celso’s rural banks-along with his “preneed” ventures, which formed an integrated business-became the object of what amounts to corporate murder. The big banks decided to deal with the competition the only way they knew how-elimination at all costs.

For months, articles and columns were caused to be printed in newspapers and aired on radio and TV questioning the “unsound practices” of the rural banks identified with De los Angeles. Predictably, politicians saw a chance to draw free publicity to themselves and grabbed it.

In what seemed like the blink of any eye Celso had become one of the most vilified men in the Philippines.

Even before the hatchet job was completed, enough of the rural banks’ customers had been so unnerved that they understandably withdrew their money.

Result: A bank run triggered, not by the lack of assets or fraudulent business practices, but by negative publicity and intimidation by officials-far too many of whom look forward to a cushy sinecure in conglomerates that own big banks after retirement.

But was there anything intrinsically illegal in how Celso’s banks and preneed companies operated?

For an answer let me quote excerpts from a column written by Dean de la Paz in the Busi-nessMirror. Last Friday, de la Paz wrote in part:

“Despite the absence of an elementary preneed code, regulators and Monday-morning quarterbacking politicians cry illegality. Because there are no laws, to declare criminality requires some amount of creativity for the charges to stick if fraud and malice are to complement illegality.

“Let us examine a hypothetical preneed offering and see whether those are present.

“Matching revenues against costs is critical in the preneed industry. Where revenue sources and fund providers are one, through a virtual holdout feature, risks of defaults are mitigated, collections more efficient and the matching of revenues to costs closer. Note that here we have a preneed subscriber as clients of either a credit-card company or borrowers in affiliated banks.

“By enhancing this financial model, either through a compounding mechanism on the invested fund where interest earned is compounded monthly, quarterly or even semiannually, a doubling of earnings can be achieved.

“For instance, a credit-card holder paying an effective annual interest of 36 percent, or 3 percent monthly, quickly covers a holdout on the same individual whose funds provided costs a nominal 12 percent annually. By tying an investment that earns 12 percent annually to a debt, or a revenue source that earns 36 percent within the same period, a financial institution can earn 300 percent over the same base. Depending on the compounding schedule-doubling can occur in less than five years.

“In the preneed industry, a hypothetical educational plan can be offered featuring a front-end 20-percent rebate. With warrants that allow repurchases where credit-card companies buy the plan via postdated checks [PDCs], a double-your-money instrument can be offered.

“Should the plan holder liquidate prior to maturity, the 20-percent front-end rebate and the PDC repayments that double the plan’s initial value count as the cost of the investment. Matched against the credit-card company’s 36-percent-per-annum revenue, the cost of the assignable preneed plan can adequately be covered under normal circumstances.

“When offered as a contiguous package, is this patently illegal? Was fraud the intent? Are these designed to steal from plan holders? Or were they meant to offer yields matched against specific revenues?”

Some commentators bewail the fact that the deposit insurance cover for the customers of Celso de los Angeles’s rural banks will cost taxpayers some P14 billion.

Yet some of the same pundits remain mum on, say, the billions of pesos in kickbacks from World Bank projects that were reportedly cornered by a close relative of a high-ranking government official.

Now, why is that?