My name is Bambi and I am a young street dancer awakened by the twerking movement of the 70s… That is, according to Wikipedia before we changed the text back to my true, albeit less vivacious, biography.
Apparently, I have what is now known as an Internet troll changing my Wikipedia page regularly.
My troll made me a Ninja Turtle a few times in the past and, though that is extremely flattering, I unfortunately don’t have the martial arts skills to back it up.
In the curious case of Bam’s Wikipedia page, the untruth is so outrageous that it’s clearly unbelievable.
But in other cases, it is not so easy to distinguish fact from fiction or, dare I say, propaganda.
These days, there are people whose job is to sway public opinion on social media, whether it’s a strategic communications campaign or a swarm of troll accounts flooding a comments section.
While creativity and innovation in marketing and communications is more than welcome, untruth and ill intentions are not easily detected.
The biggest phenomena of the Internet age, social media and search engines, incorporate paid advertising to the user experience and now, money can buy eyeballs as well as people to produce bots and troll accounts to post, like, share, and comment incessantly. Click on a regular troll on any popular Facebook page and you may find him or her lacking a true identity.
Online manipulation
This is a difficult pill to swallow when a large part of me prefers to engage people who genuinely agree or disagree, and are not being paid to do so.
There is a lot of manipulation happening online.
A far cry from the free marketplace of ideas that we envisioned the Internet to be, it has transformed into a lawless arena where gladiators compete for our likes, shares, eyeballs, clicks, and money by whatever means possible.
When we first discovered the World Wide Web, people celebrated the idea that anyone and everyone could use it as a venue to speak out, to share information, to formulate opinions and generate insightful discussions.
We found a space without propaganda or advertising, free from the control and influence of powerful politicians and wealthy businesses.
Today, what we have is a battleground of messages ceaselessly pushing us to buy a product, watch a video, share a meme, or vote for a particular candidate.
The boon and the bane of the Internet is the freedom it provides. Anyone can share information and go viral like the Al-Dub phenomenon and our DOTA2 related post about Team Rave that was shared 3,445 times!
This freedom also allows anyone to mask lies as truth and post it a hundred times from a hundred different accounts until it worms into your psyche.
Campaign season
So how do we take back the Internet?
Should we look at regulation to control trolling or do we leave it up to the websites to ban abusive language and verify identities?
Do we just tune out when confronted with abrasive comments, potentially ignoring opposing ideas that are worth our consideration?
Do we doubt everything we see online and limit our network to a curated circle, wasting the potential of an open, diverse, unpredictable debate?
Will we end up restricting our use of the Internet to that of self-expression?
How do we take the Internet back from the paid trolls and propagandists, especially during the campaign season where candidates have the machinery to invade both traditional and social media?
In our case, we take back our Wikipedia page by checking it everyday and updating it as often as possible. Perhaps, as users, more diligence is required when absorbing information.
Maybe there is a need to evolve our thinking – to be more analytical, to sift through the barrage of messages on the World Wide Web before we come to our own conclusions.
Bambi’s fearless forecast? The more trolls and propagandists attempt to take the Internet away from us, the more we will put up our own filters, exclude them from our circles, take their comments with a pinch of salt and heaps of humor, and find ways to generate free and open spaces for genuine dialogue and exchange of ideas.– Rappler.com
Senator Bam Aquino is the youngest Senator of the 16th Congress of the Philippines. With 6 laws under his belt, he has actively pushed for cheaper and faster Internet in the Philippines and is among the 50 Most Influential Filipinos Online according to Rogue Magazine. Connect with Sen. Bam on Facebook and Twitter - @bamaquino!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.With the way political ads are bombarding our TV sets, the 2016 polls may well turn out to be the most expensive in our history. And the official campaign period hasn’t even started yet.
Reports indicate that from January to November 2015, candidates for national and local electoral posts have already spent at least P3.55 billion on TV ads, or P323 million per month for 11 months.
The figures are disputed, however, as to who has spent the most, and Nielsen plans to set the record straight in a definitive report to be released late January.
Compared to the government’s budget of P2.6 trillion in 2015, or the P2.4 billion we lose daily to Metro Manila’s “carmaggedon," these amounts may seem minuscule. But if you think about the range of social services and good causes these sums could have been allocated to instead, they all seem exorbitant (even “scandalous” as some put it).
We’ve only just begun in this election’s campaign spending spree, which seems to revolve around the principal belief that more money translates into more votes. But is it always the case?
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Does election spending translate into votes?
Offhand, it would seem that more money is related to more electoral success. Some studies show, however, that it is not so much the campaign money that brings success, but the candidates’ inherent traits or popularity which bring in money from the supporters.
One rigorous study on US congressional contests found that, when one controls for the effect of candidates’ abilities, doubling campaign spending resulted only in an extra 1% of the votes – a negligible impact.
Even here in the Philippines we see some evidence of money failing to ensure electoral success. For instance, despite having supposedly spent billions before and during the 2010 campaign season, former senator and presidential aspirant Manny Villar lost to President Aquino by a huge margin.
If money does not really guarantee votes, why do politicians continue to splurge anyway? Perhaps, some candidates have no choice: by not spending enough, less popular candidates forgo a sporting chance of being elected.
Luckily for some, a lack of popularity doesn’t necessitate a colossal campaign bill. Lesser-known candidates can take advantage of inexpensive techniques to garner more votes, including some well-known psychological and behavioral hacks.
The results of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) surveys in 2015, for example, exemplify the importance of so-called “framing effects," or the way survey questions themselves influence people’s responses.
When Davao City Mayor Duterte’s name figured prominently in the November 26-28 survey question, and the list of candidates went down from 12 names to 5, Duterte’s approval rating jumped almost fourfold. This advantage disappeared in the next survey round when the number of names was increased from 5 to 10. (READ: Magic in Duterte survey? The case of vanishing survey tables)
Note that this boost in popularity came despite Duterte having spent just a fifth of what Vice President Binay spent on TV ads in the same period last year. (READ: Duterte: Not spending my own money for TV ads)
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Does election spending boost the economy?
If election money does not necessarily bring votes, and is hardly a definitive determinant of electoral success, does it at least boost the economy?
Back-of-the-envelope calculations using official GDP figures show that indeed there seems to be an uptick of national output growth correlated with election years. Specifically, there has been a 3 percentage-point difference between average growth rates in the first half of election versus non-election years since 2004.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
A more thorough study showed that the 2007 midterm elections resulted in as much as P13.5 billion extra spending in the economy that year, mostly on the service sector (e.g., advertising and staffing).
Thus, elections do have a real impact on the Philippine economy. But far from being broad-based and long-term, election-induced growth tends to be narrow-based and short-term.
There are also election-related transfers which, in addition to being undetected in official GDP figures, also fuel a system of rent seeking and corruption especially at the local level.
With a party system that is ideologically bankrupt and political alliances that are extremely fluid, politicians are compelled to seek help from wealthy private individuals or groups likely to expect a “return” on their political investments. An uncompetitive salary grade system further incentivizes some public officials to engage in the trading of political favors during elections.
Quid pro quo arrangements between election winners and their campaign financiers may range from ill-conceived environmental permits to monopoly privileges given to favored businessmen.
The deadweight losses arising from such perverse exchanges could easily amount to billions annually, and these could easily undo the economic stimulus effect of elections we mentioned earlier.
Things money can’t buy
No matter how much we detest the extravagance of election spending, money will always be part and parcel of any election. Perhaps the more important questions would be: How much money should be involved? From whose pockets should the money come from? And how do we regulate the flow of money?
To be sure, a number of campaign finance reform measures have already been instituted in the past, but the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) needs to clamp down harder on campaign overspending, now more than ever.
For the long term, an overhaul of our political party system seems necessary to curb the power of personality and the influence of moneyed private interests. Without such sweeping reforms, our electoral system will remain as vulnerable to rent-seeking, corruption, and clientelism as ever.
On a more practical note, how could we – as citizens and voters – reduce the influence of money in the coming elections? How do we show in our own simple way that money cannot buy our elections?
For starters, there’s no good substitute to outwitting crafty politicians at their own game than by doing the usual homework: going beyond their sound bites, carefully studying their platforms, evaluating their past performance, and engaging in debates. All of this is made easier now by the Internet and social media, which have proven increasingly impactful in the last few elections.
Moreover, voters could support deserving but cash-strapped candidates by actively volunteering in their campaign activities online or elsewhere. There are also innovative movements today like “political crowdfunding," which is becoming increasingly popular in other countries and could help wean candidates from their reliance on big individual donors.
In the long run, let’s vote for candidates who fully support the enactment of contentious but crucial political reforms, namely the Political Party Reform Bill and the Anti-Dynasty Bill, both languishing in Congress.
We’ve always taken pride in the fact that the Philippines is the oldest democracy in Asia. But the way money and personality have figured in our past elections shows that we’ve yet to become a mature one. Proactive and critical engagement in the upcoming elections, especially among the Filipino youth, will bring us closer to the democracy we truly deserve. – Rappler.com
JC Punongbayan (@jcpunongbayan) is a PhD student at the UP School of Economics. Kevin Mandrilla (@kevinalec) is an MA student at the UP Asian Center and concurrently works as a business analyst.
The recent terrorist attack in the heart of crowded Jakarta, claimed by the jihadist Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), sends a chilling message to us: ISIS and its supporters have come closer to home.
Eight were killed and more than 20 people were injured.
While President Aquino assured the country that there is no “specific” terror threat suggesting similar bomb blasts here, he urged citizens to be vigilant.
The question in many people’s minds is: how influential and capable is the ISIS in Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines?
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Rappler has reported the presence of ISIS affiliates in Mindanao who, experts warned, shouldn’t be downplayed by Philippine authorities.
Various analysts have pointed out that with ISIS losing ground in the Middle East, its foreign fighters – there are thousands of them from many countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines – may return to their origins to set up units.
At least 600 Southeast Asian fighters are in Iraq, according to a December 2015 study by the Soufan Group, a consultancy. Majority are from Indonesia, with Malaysia a far second. The number of fighters from the Philippines was placed at 100 (as of 2014) but this has not been verified. One thing definite is: Filipinos have been spotted in ISIS videos.
Even with ISIS propaganda said to be losing its edge and suffering a beating in its finances, this should not keep our guard down.
Sure, presidential candidates keep security in their campaign agenda but they should be able to propose specific responses to counter terrorism, including ISIS and its followers. This would entail getting out of parochial mindsets to find solutions.
Emphasis should be given to cooperating with Asean and other countries, in multilateral and bilateral arrangements, for intelligence sharing and beefing up capabilities of police forces and the military.
The ISIS is not that easy to defeat. Fighting it is fighting the idea of a return to a “medieval religious nature” by a group that believes it is a “key agent of the coming apocalypse,” as The Atlanticthoughtfully explained.
It would benefit us all for presidential candidates to come up with carefully considered policies to combat terrorism and the ISIS – and for us, citizens, to keep tight watch. – Rappler.com
Ayon sa Pinagkaisang Lakas ng Kababaihan at Kabataan (PiLaKK), isang malaking pederasyon ng mga maralita, ninakawan sila ni Senator Tito Sotto.
Dahil sa sama-samang pagkilos, kung saan malaki ang pinapel ng mga lider at miyembro ng PiLaKK, ipinasa ng Kongreso ang reproductive health (RH) law noong 2012. Matagal ang naging prosesong ito – 16 taon. Ginawa nin Senator Sotto ang lahat upang mapigilan ang batas. Nguni't batay sa paulit-ulit na survey, salungat ang posisyon niya sa paniniwala ng nakararaming Pilipino. At kahit anong gawin pa ni Senator Sotto, matapos ang mga pagtatalo at debate, natalo siya at naging batas ang RH law.
Ayon sa RH Law, dapat maglaan ng sapat na pondo para sa mga modernong contraceptive. Ang “sapat” ay batay sa mga siyentipikong pag-aaral. Sa mga pag-aaral, lumalabas na nais ng 81% ng mga Pilipinong may-asawa na ipagpaliban muna ang pagbubuntis o di kaya'y di na magbuntis. Ayon din sa pag-aaral, higit na marami sa mga kababaihang mahirap ang walang kakayahang bumili ng mga contraceptive, lalo na sa mga rehiyon kung saan laganap ang kahirapan, tulad ng Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Matagal nang sinasabi ng mga pro-RH na ang RH law ay hindi lang isang batas para sa kalusugan ng kababaihan, isa rin siyang batas para sa pag-angat ng mahihirap na pamilya. Hindi madali para sa ordinaryong mamamayan ang bumili ng contraceptive. Hindi madaling mapunan ang mga gastusin sakaling madagdagan ang dami ng anak na higit sa pinagplanuhan.
Kaya't sa pananaw ng mga babaeng maralita na nagtaguyod ng RH law, ang badyet na hiningi ng Department of Health na P1 bilyon para sa mga contraceptive – perang inilaan ng dalawang kamara ng Kongreso nang ipasa nila ang 2016 na badyet – ay pera nila. Perang ipanaglaban, perang pinag-ipunan upang gastusin para sa sariling kalusugan at sa kinabukasan ng pamilya.
Magnanakaw! Magnanakaw!
Ang problema ay ubod ng yabang nitong si Senator Sotto. Hindi niya matanggap na tinalo siya ng mga maralita at mga kababaihan. Hindi matanggap ang demokratikong pasya ng karamihan.
Kaya't nagmistulang akyat-bahay gang ang senador. Tulad ng magnanakaw, hinintay niyang natutulog tayo matapos ng mga kasiyahan ng Pasko at Bagong Taon. At habang tayo ay mahimbing na natutulog, ninakaw niya P1 bilyong pinag-ipunan natin.
Alam ito ng mga kasamahan kong maralita dahil natuto kaming lahat nang ipinaglalaban ang RH law. Matapos dumaan sa Kamara ng mga Representante at sa Senado ang isang batas (tulad ng 2016 badyet), mag-uusap ang ilang lider ng mga senador at kongresista upang gumawa ng pinal na bersyon ng batas sa isang komite, ang bicameral committee. Dito nangyari ang nakawan. Nang magising tayo, nalaman ng lahat na tinanggal ni Sotto ang badyet na pambili ng contraceptives sa bicameral committee.
Angkop na tawagin siyang “magnanakaw” ng mga lider ng kababaihan sapagkat, tulad ng magnanakaw, ay lumabag siya sa batas. Nilabag niya ang RH law mismo.
Ngunit kung susundan natin ang katwiran ng mga kababaihan, hindi nag-iisa si Sotto. Inside job ang nangyari. May nagbukas ng pinto ng ating tahanan upang papasukin ang magnanakaw – walang iba kung hindi si Senator Loren Legarda. Taksil.
Patago ang ginawa. Dalawa lamang ang nag-usap tungkol sa pagtanggal ng badyet ng DOH para sa mga contraceptive. Ang dalawang ito ay si Sotto at si Legarda.
Hindi ba't bumoto si Senator Legarda na ipasa ang RH law? Kaya't laking gulat ng lahat nang pumayag siyang tanggalan ng badyet ang isang napakahalagang aspekto ng serbisyong pangkalusugan ng kababaihan. Mahimbing ang tulog ng mga mamamayang maralita dahil sa buong akala nila, nakabantay si Legarda. Bantay-salakay pala!
Di nakapagtataka na pati na si Senator Pia Cayetano ay nagprotesta. Hindi rin niya maisip na itinago nina Sotto at Legarda ang ginawang pagkuha ng P1 bilyon.
Palusot at panlilinlang
Siyempre pa, tulad ng mga magnanakaw, ayaw umamin ng dalawa. Ayon kay Sotto, tinanggal daw niya ang badyet para sa contraceptives dahil pinigilan pansamantala ng Korte Suprema ang pagbili nito. Palusot. Ang pinigilan pansamantala ay ang pagbili ng isang klase lamang na contraceptive, ang mga hormonal implant. Tinanggal niya ang badyet para sa lahat – condom, pills, IUD.
Sabi naman ni Legarda, may savings daw ang Department of Health at hindi mauubusan ng pondo para bumili ng mga contraceptive. Pinasubalian naman ito ni DOH Secretary Janet Garin sapagkat iyong savings daw na tinutukoy ni Legarda ay para sa ibang bagay, tulad ng mga blood pressure apparatus. Alangan naman, aniya, na hindi na lang bumili ng mga kagamitan sa pagkuha ng blood pressure ng pasyente, at ipambili na lang ng contraceptives?
May kasabihan tayo tungkol sa mga abusanteng lingkod-bayan: kung gusto, may paraan; kung ayaw, may dahilan.
Sa aking palagay may karuwagan pa ang dalawa. Hinintay na mahimbing ang taumbayan, kumilos nang walang nakakaalam, hindi iniharap sa kapwa mambabatas at sa taumbayan ang kanilang balak.
Hamon
Sayang lang at hindi tatakbo si Legarda sa darating na eleksyon. Kung hindi ay hahamunin ko siya tulad ng paghamon kay Sotto. Nguni't iiwan ko na lamang sa kasaysayan ang paghusga sa kanya. Sapat na para sa akin na paalis na lamang siya, mababahiran pa ng eskandalo ang kanyang rekord.
Nguni't tumatakbo si Sotto. Alam kong nangunguna siya sa mga survey. Palagay ko, dahil popular ang Eat Bulaga. Ngunit alam kaya ng nakararami ang kanyang mga kilos na labag sa kanilang kabutihan? Ikampanya kaya niya ito nang magkalinawan na! Sabihin niya sa kanyang mga fans: “Iboto 'nyo ako kapag nanalo ako, tatanggalan ko kayo ng family planning!”
Malay natin, baka bumagsak ang ranggo niya sa mga survey. Malay natin at baka magising ang mga mamamayan na hindi lahat ng kilala natin sa TV ay kumikilos para sa interes ng nakararami. – Rappler.com
The election fever is on. And in sorties, debates and voter education programs, this question is often asked – “What kind of leader does the Philippines need in 2016?”
Some say it takes a leader with technical knowledge and vast experience in government to continue the Philippines’ path to inclusive growth. Others make a case for the return of a strongman, someone who can instill fear among citizens incapable of following simple traffic rules. Then there those who think we need a compassionate leader – the leader who will provide free lunches to undernourished school children or give birthday cakes to senior citizens, all while lowering the taxes of the middle class.
But this is a complex time.
2016, unfortunately, belongs to an age of misery. We live in a world where global movement of labor has brought over a million Overseas Filipinos Workers in countries under repressive regimes. We are in the age of the "anthropocene" – the epoch where human activity has caused severe and lasting impact on our ecosystems, which, in turn, has caused catastrophes resulting in unspeakable anguish. And, perhaps, most disturbingly, it is a period of inequality: a return to the gilded age where the world’s wealth is concentrated to a handful of families while one person dies of hunger every four seconds.
It is within this context that we must decide what makes not just the leader we want, but the leader we need. While it is true that integrity, work ethic, platform and track record are important considerations when vetting presidential aspirants, it is also crucial to envisage how candidates can step up to distinct roles only a President can perform in a world vulnerable to tragedy.
Let me provide two examples of these roles.
Healer-in-chief
In times of violent conflict and disasters, the President does not only need to step up as commander-in-chief, but, as American pundits put it, the President should also act as healer-in-chief.
A healer-in-chief is not part of a President’s formal job description. Instead, it is a product of a President’s moral intuition on how he can provide comfort in the worst of times. As the nation’s figurehead, the healer-in-chief embodies the country’s collective grief. He mourns with parents of OFWs who were not spared from death row. He leads the memorial service of fallen soldiers and police officers who died defending the nation. He commiserates with orphans who lost their parents in a storm surge and lights a candle with them in a mass grave.
A healer-in-chief is physically present at ground zero because he treats his constituents as comrades. He considers it his personal responsibility to tell those who are suffering that the nation is thinking about them.
In the United States, Barack Obama is known for adeptly performing this role in the aftermath of frequent mass shootings. In his eulogy for victims of racist attacks in Charleston, Obama led the crowd into singing Amazing Grace as he carefully read the names of each victim. Obama may not have put an end to gun-related violence but his searing speech on race relations set the tone for the nation’s reckoning on the persistence of racial injustice in America.
It is crucial that the next President of the Philippines has the capacity to serve as healer-in-chief. Ours is a society vulnerable to disasters and violent conflict. The country deserves a leader who can judiciously combine courage and humility to face the nation at its worst moments, be it the next Yolanda, Mamasapano or OFW beheading.
The healer-in-chief may not be able to provide immediate answers as to why tragedies happen, but he, at the very least, could provide assurance that the memory of those who suffered will not be in vain. The question, therefore, is who among the Presidential aspirants can face the nation when tragedy strikes? Who can inspire hope that strength can emerge from sorrow?
Torchbearer
Our future, however, does not have to be bleak. The age of misery can also be the age of possibility. While citizens in large parts of the world have lost trust in electoral politics as the venue for change, there are a number bright spots from which we can take inspiration.
Ten years ago, Bolivia elected Evo Morales, its first indigenous president born to a family of subsistence farmers. Now serving his third term in office, Morales has taken the lead in the global campaign for climate justice. Instead of hosting glitzy economic forums, Morales hosted the inaugural People’s Conference on Climate Change, which provided space for thousands of grassroots activists to get their voices heard. While his regime is far from perfect, Bolivia has hugely narrowed the gap between rich and poor households and increased minimum wage while sustaining economic growth.
Six years ago, Uruguay elected former guerrilla fighter Jose Mujica, widely known as the world’s poorest president. Aside from donating 90% of his earnings to charity and driving a rickety car to go to work every day, Mujica stood out in the United Nations when he delivered a powerful speech about globalization. “We promise a life of consuming and squandering,” he said. “It is a civilization against simplicity, against sobriety… and against the most important things: Adventure. Solidarity. Family. Friendship. Love.” Uruguay may still fall short in achieving economic justice, but Mujica’s oratory has set a new tenor on how to achieve progress. “We’re friends of businessmen,” he said. “But we don’t sell them our souls.”
And, just last year, Canada elected Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister who dazzled the world with his gender-balanced, ethnically and professionally diverse Cabinet appointments “because it is 2015.” He showed how compassion can drive foreign policy when he opened Canada’s borders to 25,000 Syrian refugees and called on Canadians to make them feel welcome.
Wouldn’t it be timely for the Philippines’ proudest moments in the next six years comes not only from a boxing champion, a beauty queen or an international singing sensation but from the nation’s top leader who put the Philippines on the map for bearing the torch of progressive politics?
While the next President will have to serve as healer to his suffering constituents, he can also take the global center stage to inspire better citizenship and whet our appetites for a different kind of politics. To be a President in the age of misery is to be a torchbearer for multiple possibilities—to make people feel that politics is emancipating, not degrading, that the project of democratic governance is a project where things happen.
Politics and personality
Politics should never be about personality, we are often told. And on this matter I am beginning to change my mind.
A chief executive can appoint competent and honest cabinet members, heed the advice of the best and the brightest and come up with concrete policies that improve the lives of ordinary Filipinos. These, of course, are important.
But in the age of misery, the President’s humanity is always put to a test. There are dire moments when it is only the President’s moral intuition that can restore our nation’s dignity.
To be a President in the age of misery needs a personal quality that can embody virtues of compassion and solidarity, inspire confidence that we, as citizens should invest in the unfinished project of nation building, and speak to the world about our shared virtues as a people.
This may not appeal to skeptics and empiricists but for pragmatic idealists – those who have a disciplined imagination – this should be one of the considerations when choosing the sixteenth President of the Republic of the Philippines. – Rappler.com
The Supreme Court (SC) decision declaring field experiments on Bt talong permanently enjoined was justified on the basis of the “precautionary principle.”
The precautionary principle says that “where there are potential adverse effects (of a technology), lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing appropriate measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
This principle is recognized both by international conventions, where the Philippines is a signatory; and by EO 514, an Executive Order issued by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Thus, the use of the precautionary principle is deemed a legal matter, and well within the scope of work of the judiciary.
Bt talong refers to eggplant that has been genetically modified to control the fruit and shoot borer, an insect pest that can cause more than 80% economic loss to farmers.
Researchers on Bt talong from the University of the Philippines Los Baños have experimentally demonstrated that it is effective, and the use of this technology can dramatically reduce the current use of toxic chemical insecticides. The safety of Bt talong is strongly supported by experimental and other evidences.
However, critics led by Greenpeace argued that Bt talong can cause adverse effects to the environment, also citing evidence from various sources. This conflict of opinion created a scenario of uncertainty, that, along with the claim of “potential adverse effects,” constitute the conditions for application of the precautionary principle.
The SC necessarily had to accept, too, that Bt talong can cause potential adverse effects before it could decide to apply the precautionary principle on the case of Bt talong. However, potential adverse effect is a judgment that is not a matter of interpreting law but a matter of evaluating scientific evidence. While it may be correct to use the precautionary principle, because it is what the law says, deciding whether a technology should be covered by the precautionary principle is another matter. While all technologies have elements of risk, not all of them can be banned on the basis of the precautionary principle.
Did the SC err in judging Bt talong to have potential for adverse effects and therefore, should be covered by the precautionary principle? To answer this question, one must apply standards.
There are two standards to choose from: absolute safety and relative safety. The standard accepted by all regulations on plant genetic engineering, including the Philippines’, is relative safety, because absolute safety is impossible to achieve for Bt talong or any technology for that matter. Establishing absolutely safety means proving that harm does not exist, and the scientific method is not adequate for this task. If absolute safety will be used as the standard by the courts, no technology will pass judicial challenge.
Simply stated, the concept of relative safety means that a new technology must not be more harmful than the old technology it is trying to replace. Since the decision of the SC did not show any evaluation of the “old technology” being replaced by Bt talong, its judgment of the relative safety of Bt talong can be challenged for lack of rigor, leading to injustice, or worse willfully exposing farmers and consumers to greater risks. (Is the latter a criminal offense? Let the courts decide!)
What are the “old technologies” in question? One is the natural defense mechanism of the eggplant. The SC should have evaluated these. Like all plants, eggplant cannot run away from its enemies, so it resorts to intimidation and chemical warfare. The “natural” eggplant intimidates it enemies with its thorns, and kills those who cannot be intimidated by poisoning. Thorns and glycoalkaloids, the weapons in question, are not known to be very selective. For the natural eggplant, humans are enemies because they eat their babies (the seeds of eggplant).
Fortunately, most varieties of cultivated eggplant do not have these weapons anymore. Farmers and plant breeders eliminated these weapons by breeding and selection because they cause hazards to farmers and consumers alike. This is the reason why farmers now have to use synthetic chemical pesticides to protect the eggplant from insect pests.
The SC also failed to evaluate the safety of synthetic chemical pesticides. What do synthetic chemicals do to other forms of life in the farm? How toxic are they to humans? Have they been subjected to long term feeding trials? How do they compare in safety to Bt talong?
The Bt talong is an attempt to use a natural defense mechanism, but selectively. The idea is to prevent collateral damage by targeting only the pest; not humans or other forms of life. However, like other “natural” defense mechanisms, the Bt eggplant is not perfect. If one is really determined to show it can do harm, there is likely to be something that it can harm, in addition to the pest itself. One can easily demonstrate harm in the lab, even with perfectly harmless stuff, simply by giving high doses or longer exposures. Think of table salt, which can kill at high dosage, or ice, which can kill with prolonged exposure.
The safety of Bt eggplant should have been evaluated in comparison with alternatives, which are also imperfect. The fact that the SC did not perform this evaluation before judging that Bt eggplant should be covered by the precautionary principle, is a good reason why it should reconsider its decision.
There is no doubt, considering the wisdom of the SC, that if it attempted to do the relative safety evaluation and found that information is insufficient, it would have ordered additional field trials instead of “permanently enjoining” these. – Rappler.com
Eufemio Rasco Jr, PhD., is an academician at the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), the country's highest scientific recognition and advisory body. Dr. Rasco is also a former director of Institute of Plant Breeding – University of the Philippines Los Baños; former director of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice); and the author of the book "The Unfolding Gene Revolution: The Ideology, Science, and Regulation of Plant Biotechnology.”
A friend once told me that when a senior official of the University of the Philippines was asked which mantle he would rather wear – that of an academic or a “public intellectual” – the official bragged that he would rather be the latter. For, to paraphrase what he said, how many academic books will the public read as compared to how many readers and listeners would receive a pundit’s wise (sic) words?
I thought it strange that an official of an academic institution would crow about being a non-academic (two foremost scholars are still read widely: Renato Constantino and Teodoro Agoncillo). For if he indeed desires to be a public intellectual, then perhaps he should abandon his post, go on television regularly, write for one of those rags, and leave the teaching of our top students to academics.
Unless, of course, he believes UP has ceased to function and perform its principal role – education and the research of social and scientific phenomena. The nation-state’s prime institution of higher learning should – going by his logic – be turned into a giant television set for Boy Abunda’s pretend smart hour or an extension of either those think tanks that serve government and opposition.
However, the more disturbing question is why such philistinism permeates the very leadership of UP. One can, of course, attribute this to an individual’s ambition or the personal pursuit of fame (your face always on TV is often good for the ego, particularly if deep down you feel a Gollum-like insecurity about your talents).
However, I do think there is also something institutional that is unfolding. By this I mean a gradual shift in UP policy that, under the pretext of “serving the people,” is aimed at lowering the standards for academic and intellectual thinking.
Reduced requirements
I had a confirmation of sort when I received this email from a colleague and friend regarding the final deliberation and voting by the University Council – UP’s highest policy-making body – to reduce the requirements for a general education program from a high 45 to a mere 21 units.
Proponents of this reduction justify this cutting down of GE courses because the implementation of the new K to 12 programs has virtually forced UP to reconsider the fundamental requirements for a background education. They have also argued that reducing GE requirements was necessary so that the natural science and engineering departments can add more courses to enhance the education of their majors. The third and most lame justification is that the new 21-unit GE program contains courses that could adequately address and fulfill the requirements that the old program had.
Alas, there is no direct correlation between the K-12 plan and the general education program. My friend cited the recent statement of the coalition UP SAGIP GE (UP Save GE) which noted that Asia’s top five universities with K-12 programs maintained relatively high GE requirements: The National University of Singapore has 36 units; the University of Hong Kong (54); Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (36); the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore *36); and the Hong King University of Science and Technology (46). Note that three of these five schools score high in science and technology, and yet, they have kept their GE requirements relatively robust.
The reason for this high GE percentage in a student’s education plan is simple: these schools aim to produce graduates who are experts in their fields and who recognize the merits of a holistic and critical education. It is not enough to graduate an engineer or a physicist; it is equally of value that these students graduate into the outside world with a fairly comprehensive critical knowledge of that world.
UP, however, appears to be going the other way.
Its leadership has conflated academic excellence and social relevance into one package that is attractive to parents wracking their brains as to where to get tuition money, but one which sacrifices the development of a student’s critical and intellectual faculties. It is this second goal that makes the UP student stand out among her peers; that makes him take the slogan “Pagasa ng Bayan” seriously because the nation and Filipinos demand that she take the lead in the country’s progress.
This won't be the case anymore if this new GE program is to be implemented. The statement of UP SAGIP GE (UP Save the GE) captures this concern by those who are still serious academics at the State University.
The group states: “The truth is that UP students need a productive and intensive GE Program. The intensified standardization of curricula and syllabi on an international level creates an even greater need for deepening the national context of subjects on history, society, culture, arts and languages. In an era of homogenized qualifications for certain professions, there is an urgent need for the National University to provide a relevant GE Program common for all UP students.”
This alumnus has reached a similar conclusion and hopes that UP stop this march into vocational oblivion. – Rappler.com
MANILA, Philippines – Her name is Rosalie. She has been pregnant 22 times and has 17 children. She had her first child at 16, and as she puts it, “just kept having them.”
She’s quite famous in her neighborhood of Tondo, an urban slum area cited as one of the mostly densely populated on earth. Her story has attracted a number of both foreign and local journalists who come looking for the “woman with many children."
Rosalie became an inadvertent poster girl for the passage of the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill that took more than a decade to pass.
While Rosalie was certainly a rarity by virtue of sheer number, she was hardly alone. There are many women in Tondo who have “many children."
If Rosalie is not around, solicitous neighbors will not have difficulty offering other choices and directing journalists to another woman “also with a lot of children.”
“There’s one who has 6 children,” one will say.
“That’s not a lot. There’s one who has 10 children,” will counter another.
“No, no. We should take them to the one with 12 children,” will say yet another.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Laura Jane
Her name is Laura Jane. She dreamed of being a scientist when she grew up. It is not a dream that she liked to talk about – not because she was afraid of being laughed at but because she already knew that her dream would remain just that – a dream, the wish of an overstretched imagination.
Every day she conditioned herself to believe that. It was better than being disappointed.
She lives in the same neighborhood as Rosalie where dreams are a luxury. The reality of grinding poverty is more apparent. (READ: Young, pregnant, and poor)
She became a mother at 15.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Her poverty secured limitations rather opportunities. It was so overpowering that it bred helplessness rather than persistence. (READ: Teenage pregnancies: Untangling cause and effect)
“I once wanted to be a scientist,” she told me when we interviewed her in her little home of boards and other odds and ends sewn together to make four walls and a roof. All around us the wailing of other babies mixed in with the howling of stray dogs.
Her voice trailed off and she didn’t complete her sentence. She just looked down at the newborn she held in her arms.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Jeremy
Her name is Jeremy. She had just given birth to her second child when I met her at a birthing clinic in Malabon.
She was 18-years old.
I asked her if she and her 19-year-old live-in boyfriend were considering family planning. She gave me a blank look. “Hindi po ba pang mag-asawa lang yun?”
(Isn’t that just for married people?)
In our cautiousness, we couch words like “sex” and “birth control” into more socially acceptable but ambiguous terms that have the subtle but real power to exclude.
Safeguarding and extolling our virtues, we have comprised the sexual literacy of young people, leaving them to blindly navigate a minefield where one miscalculation can result in a lifetime of ramifications.
Jonamae wanted to work in a beauty salon filled with colorful palettes of lipstick and eyeshadow. She wanted to be surrounded by pretty things and make women pretty and happy.
Christian wanted to be a seafarer who would sail off to faraway lands and see the world, but he had only finished second grade.
They have a child now. A chance to start over. A chance to give someone a chance at life. They can’t say they were ever robbed of chances – from the beginning, they never had them.
“Ilan po ang gusto nyong anak?” The barangay health worker asked them. (How many children do you want to have?)
They answer at the same time but their answers differ. They laugh softly and give each other a shy sideward glance. They haven’t had that conversation yet. They aren’t sure what birth control options are available or viable.
They need the guidance of the barangay health care worker – these walking talking maternity clinics – to help them plan their families.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Unmet need for birth control
There are an estimated 5.25 million Filipino women who have what is called an “unmet need for contraception” – meaning they need birth control to plan the size and spacing of their families but do not have access to contraceptives. Often, the barrier to access is economic. (READ: #SONA2015: The state of the RH Law)
The RH Law would have guaranteed access to free contraceptives for Filipinos like Rosalie, Laura Jane, Jeremy, and Jonamae and Christian.
They are just some of the millions of Filipinos who depend on free contraceptives provided by the government. They are not promiscuous teenagers ruled by hyperactive hormones rather than rationale. They are people just like you and me.
However, unlike them, my entire reproductive health future – my lifetime – does not depend entirely on the illogical whims, questionable morals and inflated egos of legislators who do not know my name and are arrogantly oblivious to my story.
Senator Pia Cayetano estimates that 24 million women of reproductive age will not have access to reproductive health products because the P1 billion fund allocated for contraceptives was scrapped by Senator Vicente Sotto with the concurrence of Senator Loren Legarda. Four million of them are among the poorest of the poor.
“It means married women who are probably on their fifth pregnancy may then become pregnant this year. Young women who have had two miscarriages and should not get pregnant again might die because they won’t have access to contraceptives. So it goes on and on and that’s millions of women who will be deprived,” said Cayetano.
Millions and millions of women just like Rosalie, Laura Jane, Jeremy and Jonamae.
Bic Bic Chua, executive director of Catholics4RH was enraged and incredulous when she learned of the budget cut. “All these men and women want is help planning their families – is that too much to ask?”
Apparently, for Sotto and Legarda it is. – Rappler.com
"Tondo" film was produced for Sex and Sensibilities and Likhaan Center for Women's Health to call for the passage of the RH Bill.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Asian continental “economic tiger” – after more than a quarter-century of sustained economic growth – is now confronting a defining challenge of inequality.
Many Asian countries have prospered and created new wealth. However this wealth, and the prosperity and opportunities that it promises, are not being equally shared.
Asian inequality has risen by as much as 18% between the mid-1990s till now. Around 1.6 billion people continue to live in Asian countries on less than $2 a day. The Gini coefficient – a common measure of inequality – has worsened in the past two decades in countries where more than 80% of the Asian population lives.
Last year Oxfam revealed that 240 million people in Asia could have escaped poverty had inequality not increased from 1990 levels. Millions of Asian workers and farmers are being left behind the economic curve, trapped in poverty, despite of being part of the engine that is driving the very growth from which they are being marginalized.
This extreme division of wealth is part of a worldwide trend that is – in every sense of the word – indefensible.
Growth but inequality
Oxfam’s new inequality report published today before the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, "An Economy for the 1 Percent," says that just 62 individuals now have the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world’s population.
As recently as 2010, 388 of the world’s richest people shared this dubious honor.
The consequences of these new extremes are huge. Economic inequality can act as a brake on growth, slow poverty reduction efforts, and spark social unrest. Oxfam estimates that the much-heralded goal to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 will be missed if we do not resolve inequality.
The damage that inequality does to people’s lives can be seen across our continent – for school children whose education is cut short because they can't afford school fees, for women who work long hours but whose incomes don’t cover their rent or the cost of the medicines for their children. (READ: Abusive work conditions persist despite gains – UN report)
It is good news that economies across Asia continue to grow; people throughout the continent are establishing businesses, developing new technologies, and running multinational corporations. But inequality of the levels we are seeing in Asia is not simply the natural outcome of talent, hard work and healthy competition.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
No trickling down
Over the last 30 years, the phenomena of unchecked deregulation, privatization, financial secrecy and globalization has allowed big companies and well-connected individuals to use their power and influence to capture an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth.
On the other side of the ledger, the benefits for the poorest have shrunk. This trend of a relatively few wealthy individuals and corporations having undue influence may damage fledgling democracies and create wider discontent in Asia.
As the President of the World Bank stated last year, wealth is simply not trickling down – it is being sucked up by a powerful and wealthy minority. And once there, an elaborate system of tax havens and an industry of wealth managers ensures that it stays there – far from the reach of ordinary citizens and their governments.
Tackling extreme inequality across Asia is going to require action on many fronts. Governments, businesses and those creating wealth in Asia must build inclusive and sustainable economies that provide decent jobs with fair living wages.
We must act to reduce gender discrimination in the workplace and the wage gap. Governments must invest more in healthcare and education, promote the economic empowerment of women, increase social protection expenditure and tackle injustices in the ownership of assets such as land.
Tax havens and poor wages
Amongst the most urgent actions is to put a stop to tax havens. Tax havens allow super wealthy corporations and individuals to avoid paying their fair share of tax. (READ: Tax havens and illicit money)
This denies governments of vital revenue that should be spent on schools, healthcare, roads, and other essential services and infrastructure. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimate that developing countries lose around US $100 billion in tax revenues each year as a result of corporate tax avoidance schemes that route investments through tax havens.
Countries in Southeast Asia are moving towards more economic integration under the ASEAN Economic Community. The AEC could be an effective place to develop a common political vision for tackling inequality in Asia.
It could help to end the era of tax incentives to rich individuals and corporations. It could agree upon harmonized corporate tax in the region and demand transparency in the operations of corporations. Most importantly it should agree hard standards on fair living wages and conditions for workers.
G20 governments agreed steps to curb tax dodging by multinational companies in 2015, yet these measures largely ignore the problems posed by tax havens, and do little to help Asian governments claim their fair share of taxes.
Now, with tax havens becoming an ever more common way of doing business – 109 of the WEF's 118 partners have a presence in at least one tax haven – it’s time to put a stop to this practice.
Taking action
That is why I will be pressing political leaders, CEOs, and others in Davos to act. I will be asking wealthy individuals and business leaders to commit to bring their money back on shore and I will be urging our politicians to work together to agree a new global approach to end tax havens.
It would be wrong to suggest that many of those gathering for the WEF do not care about inequality – they do.
However, they have collectively failed to recognize that the solution to this crisis is not just about helping the poorest get a foot on the economic ladder – it must also be about tackling the corrupting influence of the extremely wealthy who are pulling up the ladder as the poor try to climb it.
If the men and women in Davos take this simple truth on board we can begin to build a new global economy that works for the many and not just the 62. – Rappler.com
Winnie Byanyima is the Executive Director of Oxfam International. Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organizations networked together in more than 90 countries, as part of a global movement for change, to build a future free from the injustice of poverty.
The 2015 UN Human Development Report (HDR), launched in Manila on January 18, calls our attention to the glaring disparities in growth and access to work in Asia and the Pacific.
And it’s not just having work but the quality of the work, including the conditions and pay.
As Selim Jahan, lead author of the HDR, points out, “Asia and the Pacific…has the largest numbers of people trapped in dangerous and demeaning work including forced labor, trafficking and child labor.”
Asia and the Pacific also accounts for the “largest number of forced laborers in the work.”
Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan reported during the launch that the proportion of the unemployed dropped to a “10-year record low of 5.6%,” mainly boosted by the services and industry sectors. Still, he acknowledged that providing decent work, achieving higher productivity rates and reducing the number of working poor are key challenges.
The HDR looks at work as central in human development, a means to reduce inequality. In this, the Philippines has a long road ahead.
Only a few own most of the wealth in the country. Academics have pointed out that “many of our billionaires led by top three taipans Henry Sy, John Gokongwei, Jr. and Enrique Razon find their wealth growing even faster than the entire economy.”
We are not an isolated case. In fact, inequality is a worldwide phenomenon with the “top 1 percent of the global population owning more than 50% of global wealth,” Jahan says, “and 80% of the world’s population owning only 6%.”
Reports such as the HDR put people as the focus of development and measure progress beyond the GDP: in health (life expectancy), knowledge, and income. The 2015 HDR shows a “slight improvement in human development” in the Philippines and at a “slow pace,” remarked Fernando Aldaba of the Philippine Human Development Network. Much more needs to be done.
The HDR comes at an important time in Philippine politics, as we prepare to vote for our new leaders. We expect the presidential candidates and their teams to use this report and consider its policy proposals for institutional reforms and more equitable access to services.
Each candidate may have his or her pet issue like criminality and corruption. But inequality is overarching and, while maybe difficult to reduce to catchy sound bites, it is a thread that runs through our problems.
We encourage voters to ask the candidates questions on these big, pressing issues. Let’s make these part of our campaign discourse. – Rappler.com
On January 20, Rappler and its media partners DZRH-MBC, Media ng Bayan-PTV4, road-blocked up to 3 hours of airtime on nearly 200 radio and television stations across the Philippines to help give candidates for the 2016 elections a chance to present their platforms.
After all, given the world’s challenges, we felt a need to move the public discourse away from the daily grind of controversial news clips and give the men and women running for the Philippines’ top posts a chance to face the public they want to serve.
Nearly 2,000 people filled the auditorium at De La Salle University, which had given their students the afternoon off so they could watch and participate. Before we began, I took the microphone and asked who were registered to vote, and it seemed nearly three-quarters of the audience I could see raised their hands.
Add to this the nearly 40 viewing parties across the Philippines with AMA schools, other DLSU campuses, Lyceum – as well as the reach of Facebook and Twitter. We felt we could get a thoughtful discussion going. As the moderator, my focus was getting to the substance and highlighting some of the key issues the next leaders would have to face.
I was involved in inviting the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. While initially, all but one tandem pencil-booked the event in their calendars, I was disappointed when the weekend before, we received 3 cancellations in 3 days – the last one the night before. All but one tandem, Duterte-Cayetano, decided this was worth their time, and they postponed a crucial scheduled signing to be there.
Why would the other candidates give up such an opportunity?
There are at least four reasons, each of which presents both a threat and an opportunity for them in the months leading to May 9.
1. Nothing is certain in the 2016 campaigns.
It’s hard to be a politician hitting the campaign trail in 2016.
Old campaign rules – hitting the road, pressing the flesh, getting as many political ads as you can afford on television, harnessing a party’s political machinery to deliver votes – well, these are no longer enough.
There’s a new generation, and that’s saying a lot in a country where the median age of our 100 million people is 23 years old.
There’s an added twist.
This generation is coming of age at a time when technology is disrupting every industry in the world, including governance and politics.
Will these elections become our equivalent of the 2008 US elections when technology and social media catapulted a little-known senator to the presidency?
Is any candidate poised to take advantage of this technology today?
What does this generation want? Comelec says at least 39% of the registered voters are youth, making that a coveted demographic, but they have notoriously been absent at the polls.
When I asked the students at La Salle whether they were going to vote, we heard a resounding “yes.”
Will that translate to action? Will they break the patterns of the past? And if they do, is that enough to overturn old power structures in our country?
So far, if we go by statistical surveys, the December surveys putting Vice President Jejomar Binay in first placereinforce the notion that the old tried-and-tested campaign methods may still be enough: press the flesh, solidify and pull together physical networks, etc.
That's a simplistic assumption though.
Scratch deeper, and you find that context and recent events explain this – not just campaign sorties. The recovery in Binay's ratings were also because of other factors: Grace Poe's disqualification cases which stopped her momentum in December; Mar Roxas' inability to sustain his momentum (even though he's been doing the rounds like Binay); and the aftermath of Duterte's cursing the Pope and his first real taste of how a presidential campaign is run at the national level.
Binay's strategy of silence, which began after corruption charges caused his ratings to decline, tackles just one aspect of the campaign, but he benefitted from the cases against Poe (which other pollsters predicted). Despite that, he hasn't fully recovered his base.
If you go by Rappler's informal surveys, the most engaged and active supporters in terms of evangelizing for their candidate on social media want to see Duterte for president.
2. No room for mistakes in a tight race.
The presidential race is too close to call. Anyone can win it, although some say this is Mar Roxas’ to lose. The vice-presidential race is as tight and perhaps even more exciting.
In races like these in the Philippines, forums and debates are difficult because one mistake can cost you the race.
Political handlers still remember the Harapan debates in 2010 which pitted the top two for vice president against each other: Senator Loren Legarda vs then survey leader Mar Roxas. Their performance ignited a storm on the then fledgling social media and effectively sidelined Legarda, who up to the debate was second to Roxas in the surveys. She was never able to recover.
That somehow helped dark horse Jejomar Binay, who had a relatively strong showing in the forum, to race up and ultimately overtake Roxas.
Seeing how much was at risk and the immediate impact of the debate, all presidential candidates subsequently declined invitations for similar formats.
The lesson, I had hoped, was that candidates needed to hone their platforms and debate skills, but the takeaway from that for our politicians seemed to be to avoid them at all costs.
There is just too much at stake.
Until today, political campaigns try to exercise tight control over format and questions.
It’s a disservice to both the politicians, who must develop these skills, and to the public, which could be guided by a discussion on issues and see how their candidates perform under pressure.
Real debates show us the candidate’s facts-on-file responses: unpolished and without aides and advisers. What’s the extent of their knowledge of issues and history? How do they react under pressure? What kind of values do they show? Ultimately, the crucible of a debate often shows character and shows us what kind of person we are electing into office.
3. Is social media a plus or a minus?
The 2013 elections for senator showed that social media could take a candidate down one or two positions in the case of now Senator Cynthia Villar, who faced a viral negative reaction on the issue of nurses.
Since 2013, Internet penetration moved from about 30% to 44% in 2015, plus smartphone penetration increased more than 200% in 2013 alone and is expected to hit 29.9% in 2016.
Given that the top demographic on social media are 18-35 years old, the exact same 39% of registered voters pinpointed by Comelec, will social media engagement translate to votes?
These elections may very well mark the tipping point for the Philippines, that so many candidates are investing in social media. Still inevitably, the easy investment is in trying to game systems – harnessing bots and other electronic tricks that could well turn the Internet into a wasteland.
So far, we haven’t seen any sophisticated systems that merge online and offline action like Barack Obama did in 2008.
Social media is a powerful tool, but it won’t mean anything if it’s not utilized in any meaningful way.
4. Upcoming Comelec debates
Comelec is helping sponsor 3 presidential and 1 vice presidential debates, although these are largely left in the hands of the media conglomerates.
So far, it seems all candidates have said they will attend, but the risks remain.
Each step, including topics of questions and access, are being carefully negotiated.
Having these ahead meant candidates felt they could mitigate the early risk of not attending last week’s forum.
So who won #TheLeaderIWant last week?
It wasn't the public – people like me, hoping to see all the candidates so I could make my choice. There was a palpable thirst for real information: platforms and clear answers to questions that matter.
During the 2 hours Duterte and Cayetano were onstage, I felt wave after wave wash through the audience as they answered questions in thoughtful ways. They had the time to convince, and they acted like a tandem.
If you have the ambition to run for the highest offices in the country, you've got to let go of controlled conditions. It comes with the job.
In order to win, you've got to show up. – Rappler.com
NEW YORK, United States – On the day Kelly Munro came to America from his tiny island in the Pacific, snow fell – his first snow. It was beautiful.
Home was Granada, in the Caribbean, where you maybe fish or maybe farm or maybe teach, but there wasn't much a future out there for his 3-year-old daughter. They were a family of two, and everything he did was for her. So he left, packed them up, both of them, to hunt down the American dream.
"The hardest shit" was getting the green card. When he did, he got a job washing windows, then opened his own business. Now he's a labor foreman, and has been for 7 years. He gave up a good job building bridges at home to give his girl a shot at the American dream.
At 9 in the morning after one of New York City’s biggest blizzards since the 1900s, Kelly is in front of his construction site along 77th and Broadway with his crew. It's New York law to clear 3 feet of sidewalk in front of every building. The snow flies up from shovels, slow and steady, the sand pellets are scattered, the sand spread out over the concrete. The men laugh and joke, someone raps about the cold.
Winter storm Jonas dumped more snow on the East Coast in a few hours than the entirety of the winter season, blanketing the city in white, grounding all flights and prompting a state of emergency, sledding, and impromptu snowball fights at the center of Times Square. There was 26.8 inches in Central Park, the second highest recorded by the National Weather Service since 1869. Three people died shoveling on Saturday, all men past 68.
Heart attacks, Kelly says. It happens. "You gotta take it slow."
He lives in Brooklyn now, spent all day in bed during the blizzard watching The Walking Dead on Netflix. It was a good break, now he’s back at work.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
It's been more than 20 years since Kelly looked up to see snowflakes for the first time. He's 50 years old, and his gamble paid off. His daughter is a contracts lawyer. It didn't really matter what she chose – she could have chosen to dance the ballet and Kelly wouldn't have minded – only that she had a chance at whatever she wanted. He has no regrets coming to America – it was all for her.
New Yorkers are good people, he says, good to immigrants, good to all kinds. "They're mean shit down in the south," but New Yorkers, they come from all over, he says, and they’re good folk. – Rappler.com
Given longtime US-Philippines ties, it would be understandable if Filipino and Fil-Am viewers were disappointed by the lack of any mention of the Philippines in US President Barack Obama's seventh and last State of the Union speech on January 12.
In what is likely to be his last major address to the US Congress, Obama asked Americans to ponder all that has been accomplished under his watch, as well as the economic and security challenges the United States is facing in the years ahead.
The US president was decidedly upbeat. Americans though may well have had reason to pause. The December shootings in San Bernardino, California, just weeks earlier became the worst terrorist attack to occur in the United States since September 11, 2001. And the latest Rasmussen Reports survey had 67% of Americans now saying their country is headed in the wrong direction.
Yet, the US president declared, “I stand here confident as I have ever been that the State of our Union is strong.” And relative to much of the world, the US economy remains so.
Unfortunately, an important message and geography lesson went missing amidst the rhetoric. It was an opportunity missed for an administration that has added the phrase “Asia pivot” to the geopolitical conversation. That's shorthand for a rebalance of US attention away from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
How about Southeast Asia?
Americans could well have benefited from Obama’s taking a moment to underscore how strengthened trade and security relations with the dynamic economies of Southeast Asia – including with the fast-growing Philippines – will help the United States meet economic and security challenges.
In his address to the US Congress, Obama mentioned China specifically and Asia broadly, as he has in past years. Yet, while Burma and the Philippines have been mentioned in prior addresses, Southeast Asia as a region has never caught the full attention of the presidential speechwriters’ final drafts.
The region may well have expected a shout-out from a president who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia – Southeast Asia’s most populous country and largest economy.
Obama did mention Vietnam in his final remarks, but it was to remind Americans of their nation’s difficult wartime legacy in that country. He looked to Southeast Asia’s past not its dynamic future. “We…can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis, even if it's done with the best of intentions,” Obama said.
“That’s not leadership; that’s a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately will weaken us. It’s the lesson of Vietnam.”
How many in the United States would be surprised to know that this one-time enemy is now a significant American trading partner – and one seeking closer U.S. ties amidst China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea. Few likely also know that Thailand is the oldest treaty ally of the United States in Asia, by virtue of a Treaty of Amity and Cooperation signed in 1833. Or of the recent Philippines Supreme Court decision that could help speed a greater US defense presence in the nation. Or that Singapore remains a strong security partner of the United States.
Americans would have benefited from knowing that Obama – described by some as America’s first “Pacific President” – had invited Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung along with leaders of nine other Southeast Asian nations, collectively known as ASEAN, to a summit in California later this February.
Americans would also benefit from learning more of how a recently upgraded, and largely welcomed U.S. “strategic partnership” with nations in the region can lead to greater cooperation on economic and security issues.
Already, there is more US investment in the 10 member nations of ASEAN than in all the “BRIC” nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China, according to the US-ASEAN Business Council.
The United States may well be striving to “remake” an international system to ensure greater economic and military security. That new system must engage and include the nations of Southeast Asia – described by Obama as being “critical to security, prosperity and human dignity around the world” last November at a US-ASEAN Meeting held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The mutual benefits and opportunities of US-Southeast Asian partnership will become even more apparent to individuals and businesses in the near future as the just launched ASEAN Economic Community gains momentum. This market of some 600 million people and combined gross domestic product of US$ 2.5 trillion deserved a mention by the US president.
Understandably, the president’s attention turned to the just concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks as an example of American leadership in Asia. That trade initiative, if implemented would increase U.S. exports by 9.2%, according to the World Bank. It does not, however, include all members of the Southeast Asia region.
“With TPP, China does not set the rules in that region; we do,” said Obama in calling on the US Congress to approve the landmark trade deal. “You want to show our strength in this new century? Approve this agreement.”
Overly cautious
The US president’s final State of the Union address captured an overly cautious approach to Asia amidst a rising China. Much of the region, including in Southeast Asia, hungers for a return of strong US leadership.
Our hope is that one year from now, the new president – whoever he or she might be – will make clear that America remains staunchly a Pacific economic and military power, and a force for democracy, human rights and good governance.
The 21st century may well be an Asia-Pacific Century. Yet, the State of the US Union is that the United States remains an Asian-Pacific power, and with attention, investment and involvement, it will remain so to the betterment of Southeast Asia, the broader region and world. That’s a tale worth telling. – Rappler.com
Curtis S. Chin, a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group, LLC. Jose B. Collazo, a Southeast Asian analyst, is an associate with RiverPeak Group. Follow them on Twitter at @CurtisSChin and @JoseBCollazo
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Japanese Emperor Akihito’s visit to the Philippines commemorates the 60th anniversary of normalizing ties between Japan and the Philippines. Usually, benchmarks are reserved for 50th anniversaries.
Yet in 2006, China was not yet building artificial islands in the Pacific and America was not yet “pivoting” to Asia, making this more momentous than a 50th anniversary visit.
Akihito’s trip comes at an interesting moment in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.
It is hard to ignore the fact that the trip comes at the wake of two significant developments: Japan’s passage of a set of security laws that throw away the state’s 70-year-old pacifist garb and the EDCA between the Philippines and the United States (US) that welcomes back American forces to Filipino shores.
The visit seems to bear good tidings from one American ally to another, both indispensable to American military presence in the region.
But the irony is that Akihito represents post-war pacifist Japan. The period of reign that began in January 1989 is called Hesei, which means “peace everywhere." He is increasingly at odds with Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s ahistorical, if not revisionist approach to foreign relations. (READ: Should Japan apologize for WWII?)
In Japan, the two stand on opposite poles: the politically powerless emperor represents Japan’s pacifist identity, while the country’s political leader appears set to destroy that identity.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The Emperor and Japan’s postwar pacifism
It may not be common knowledge that a country as economically powerful and technologically advanced as Japan does not have a full military. This is the reason why in the realm of international politics, the land of the rising sun is considered “abnormal."
For almost 70 years, Japan has relied on US for security. Thus far, it has not been seriously attacked nor threatened by other states, with the exception of the North Korea’s rogue nuclear and missile tests. Japan hosts instead the US military bases, mostly in Okinawa, as America’s forward base in the Asia Pacific.
The reason for Japan’s peculiar state behaviour dates back to its defeat in the Second World War in 1945 and the 7 years of American occupation thereafter. The Emperor’s Jewel Broadcast speech on August 15, 1945 to announce Japan’s defeat to its people was a pivotal event for Japan for two reasons.
First, it marked the end of Japan’s imperial adventurism in Asia since the Meiji Restoration (1868). If the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere symbolized Imperial Japan’s sense of noble mission to take Asia back from the “western imperialists," it failed disastrously as the Japan of the Showa Emperor, Hirohito, brought catastrophe across the region and upon Japan itself.
The Nanking massacre or the infamous Unit 731 were just tips of the iceberg. That the leaders of the Imperial Army were hell bent on fighting on to the last man than to suffer the humiliation of defeat prolonged war.
Japan was subsequently subjected to carpet bombing by the Americans which flattened nearly all of Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and other main cities except for Kyoto.
The war culminated with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing, the first atomic bombing in the history of the world. All in all, depending on the source, there were between 5 to 20 million foreign civilian casualties and over 3 million Japanese deaths.
Second, it ended the modern Emperor myth. It was the first time for the public to hear the Emperor’s voice as a fellow human rather than a divine figure. The leaders of the Meiji Restoration gave the imperial throne an infallible position both in the spiritual and political lives of the Japanese, as a kind of divine father of the nation.
Any state action was authorized in the name of the emperor, so much so that prominent Japanese thinker Maruyama Masao called him the “portable shrine." Such belief gave credence to the multiple atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army.
The surrender also marked the beginning of US Occupation in Japan. After the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General MacArthur left the Philippines, his next task was to democratize and demilitarize Japan.
The position of the Emperor was among the most crucial, hotly contested issue during the occupation. As ordered, Hirohito denounced his divinity in the new year’s eve of 1946. Upon the ratification of the new constitution in 1947, the Emperor was formally stripped of all his sovereign powers.
Article 1 of the constitution states that his position is derived from the will of the people. Ever since, Emperor Hirohito remained within this parameter.
But Hirohito was never tried as a war criminal, although foreigners for a time considered him as the “Hitler of Asia." The occupying Americans feared that an emperor on trial would wreak havoc among the Japanese.
MacArthur not only protected Hirohito from being indicted, but as historian Herbert Bix notes in his biography of the Showa Emperor, “MacArthur’s truly extraordinary measures to save Hirohito from trial… had a lasting and profoundly distorting impact on Japanese understanding of the lost war."
Until now, differentiating Hirohito as a mortal and Hirohito as the divine emperor remains a dilemma for those who want to understand the perplexity of Japan’s postwar transformation from a war-monger, militarist state to its present peace-loving, passive state. Akihito inherits the historical baggage left by his father.
What do you tell the dead when you lose?
This is the second time for Emperor Akihito to visit the countrythat Japan occupied and left deep, defining scars in the land and its people.
It would be naïve for Japanese, (leaders especially) to assume that the Filipinos – or any other Southeast Asians that suffered the brutalities committed by the Imperial Army – would wholeheartedly welcome him without remembering the past.
He is, after all, the son of Hirohito in whose name so many people needlessly lost lives before 1945. So, Akihito cannot avoid being associated with the "sins of his father," however unreasonable that may be. (READ: Emperor Akihito turns 82 urging Japan to remember war)
But it is his words and actions in the recent that kept him at a certain distance from his father. Akihito’s apparent commitment to peace makes it difficult to doubt that his conscientiousness to do his part in bringing about proper closure to the memory of the Second World War by remembering.
He does so by paying respect equally to all the victims of war, be them Japanese, Filipino, Chinese or Korean. While stripped of any political role in the constitutional sense, he is nevertheless an institution of political significance as the embodiment of Japanese history itself.
In his book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, historian John Dower posed quite a disturbing question: "What do you tell the dead when you lose?"
This question placed a heavy burden on the Japanese who, unlike the victors, cannot console the souls of the fallen through re-telling a story of heroism and triumph. Remembering, and not forgetting, is arguably the most important function of the Japanese emperor in a defeated country of ancestor worship.
Speaking to and for the spirits of the dead is the business of the emperor, not the priests of Yasukuni Shrine or political leaders who deny the past as it is to the dead.
Akihito, turning 83 this year, is committed to sowing the seeds for a vision of East Asia different from the Pan-Asianist vision his father Hirohito left behind, but today’s China and the US may inadvertently recreate.
It is such commitment that could console the souls of the dead, that indeed, they have not died in vain.– Rappler.com
Haruko Satoh is a professor at the Center for the Advancement of Research and Education Exchange, Osaka University, and lecturer at Osaka School of International Public Policy. She has published articles on Japan politics, and Japan-China relations.
Carmina Untalan is a graduate student of Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. She is working on democratization and postcolonialism in US-Japan and US-Philippine relations.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The campaigns for the 2016 national elections have begun, and once again we are faced with the very important task of choosing our elective officials.
There are pressing human rights issues that must be addressed, and electing officials who will embrace these issues as true representatives of the Filipino people is crucial in the struggle to end human rights violations.
As a human rights advocate, I enjoin voters to vote for candidates who will champion the rights to divorce, equality in marriage, gender identity recognition, access to modern contraception, and safe and legal abortion.
I was at a press conference yesterday sponsored by Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network (PINSAN) where the discussion revolved around demystification, destigmatization, and decriminalization of abortion.
The realities of abortion and the need to decriminalize abortion were discussed in light of the upcoming elections vis-à-vis the stance of candidates in decriminalizing abortion, the Department of Justice proposed criminal code that increases penalties for abortion which some candidates are supporting, candidates who are running for elective positions who have previously filed bills that increase penalties for abortion, the one billion budget cut of the Department of Health intended for contraceptives, and the upcoming review by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) of Philippine compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW).
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Preventable deaths
There are about 70 women who induce abortion every hour, 11 women who are hospitalized every hour due to complications from unsafe abortion, and at least three who women die every day due to complications from unsafe abortion.
No woman should die from abortion complications. Deaths due to unsafe abortion are preventable deaths. Most of the women who are hospitalized and die from these complications are poor, Catholic, married, with at least three children. (READ: A hard look at abortion in the PH)
The main reason why women are hospitalized and die from unsafe abortion simply the penalty imposed by the law on women and those assisting them by an archaic colonial Spanish law.
The Philippine penal law on abortion is only one of 6 countries in the world with the most restrictive prohibitions on abortion. This penal provision was directly translated into English from the old Spanish Penal Code of 1870 which was passed into law in 1930, way before many of us were born.
A time when the major international human rights treaties such as the Conventions on Civil and Political Rights, Economic and Socio-Cultural Rights, Torture and Women were not yet in place.
The Philippine law on abortion does not even allow express exceptions based on rape, risks to the life and health of the woman and fetal impairment. The Philippine law on abortion must be liberalized.
This change can happen through a specific law removing the penalties for the women inducing abortion and safe abortion providers assisting them. (READ: Isn't it time to legalize abortion in the PH?)
As long as abortion remains illegal, women will be hospitalized and die from unsafe abortion because they do not seek medical attention, they delay medical care, or they leave the health facilities when they are subjected by certain health care providers to humiliation and threats of prosecution and arrest. (READ: Death by stigma: Problems with post-abortion care)
These health care providers who deny access to post-abortion care can be made liable for violating the Reproductive Health Law requiring humane, compassionate, and non-judgmental post-abortion care, the Magna Carta of Women requiring management of pregnancy related complications and Republic Act 8344 requiring the stabilization of patients in emergency situations.
Contrary to the misconception of doctors, there is no law requiring doctors to report women who induce abortion.
PD 169 requires medical practitioners who treated serious or less serious physical injuries covered under articles 262-265 of the Revised Penal Code to report injury, diagnosis, and treatment. Articles 262-265 do not refer to abortion.
Discrimination
The one billion budget cut on contraceptives, the lack of access to sexuality education, the low usage of modern contraceptives at 38% contraceptive prevalence rate, and the high rate of adolescent pregnancies will surely raise the number of unwanted pregnancies ending in unsafe abortion.
I remember the former Health Secretary Dr. Alberto Romualdez who courageously said that abortion is a medical procedure, not a moral issue. It is outrageous that until now our country criminalizes women for a medical procedure that only women need. Certainly, this is discrimination against women.
In disbelief, a Japanese reporter came up to me after the press conference and said, “I cannot believe that abortion is illegal in the Philippines.” This is much like what I commonly face in international conferences when foreign human rights advocates would exclaim to me in surprise, “There’s no divorce in the Philippines?!”
Human rights advocates including myself have been successful in decriminalizing discriminatory laws such as certain provisions in the vagrancy law, the anti-squatting law.
I am confident that public officials will heed the needs of women and their families who are gravely affected by this urgent public health issue and the clamor to decriminalize abortion.
Increasing access to contraceptives, strengthening quality post-abortion care, providing safe and legal abortion, addressing gender-based violence such as rape, intimate partner violence and trafficking are ways to lower maternal mortality and morbidity related to unsafe abortion and meeting the state’s commitment to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 births under Target 3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Unsafe abortion has long been recognized globally as one of the causes of maternal mortality and morbidity. About 10% of all maternal deaths in the world are due to unsafe abortion (WHO Global causes of maternal death: a WHO systematic analysis), hence, the strong movement around to world to provide access to safe and legal abortion.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Liberalization of laws
Predominantly Catholic countries and former Spanish colonies have liberalized their laws on abortion with Spain with Prime Minister Zapatero at the helm of legalizing abortion on request during the first 14 weeks of the pregnancy in 2010 and other predominantly Catholic countries such as Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Costa Rica, and Ireland and former Spanish colonies such as Uruguay and Colombia allowing abortion on certain grounds leaving the Philippines to contend with its antiquated colonial Spanish law.
Mexico City, a predominantly Catholic city, even provides safe and legal abortion for free. Asian countries such as China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam have liberal abortion laws while Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand have recently liberalized their laws to allow abortion on certain grounds.
Some people mistakenly believe that the Philippine Constitution prohibits abortion because of the provision on equal protection of the life of the woman and the unborn from conception.
On the contrary, other countries with constitutions and laws explicitly protecting the life of the unborn or life from conception allow abortion under certain exceptions such as Ireland, Slovak Republic, Poland, Kenya, Hungary, and Costa Rica.
The right to safe and legal abortion is guaranteed under the constitutional rights to health, life, equality, privacy, equal protection of the law, and non-establishment of religion especially since it is recognized in comparative jurisprudence and international law that the fetus is not on equal footing with the right of a woman.
In the United States, decriminalization of abortion decreased deaths from unsafe abortion. Abortion rates did not increase in Canada and Turkey after abortion was legalized. Netherlands has a liberal abortion law providing free services and has widely accessible contraceptives yet it has one of the lowest abortion rates in the world.
Gender-based violence and unsafe abortion
Many Filipinos condemn Filipino women and girls who induce abortion not knowing that some of these women and girls are actually rape or incest victims or are abused women in intimate relationships.
A Filipino woman or girl is raped every 71 minutes. Last 2014, the PNP recorded 7,409 women reported they were raped. This is alarming. Yet this may just be the tip of the iceberg as these numbers only refer to the rape victims who reported to the police.
One of the glaring consequences of rape is unwanted pregnancy. Some women and girls who became pregnant resulting from rape were forced to resort to clandestine and unsafe abortions to end their unwanted pregnancies while others have tried to commit suicide.
The 2004 national survey on abortion showed 13% of women who had an abortion were rape victims (2004 national survey; Singh S et al., 2006). Emergency contraceptives can be used to prevent unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape, however, many rape survivors do not seek medical care within the five-day window period that emergency contraceptive pills are effective.
The 2013 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) estimates one-fourth of ever-married women age 15-49, have experienced emotional, physical, and/or sexual violence from their husbands.
The NDHS also found that the more children a woman has, the more likely she is to have experienced violence (NDHS 2013 and 2008) pointing to the unequal power dynamics where women suffering intimate partner violence are unable to negotiate safe sex and end up resorting to clandestine and unsafe abortion to terminate their pregnancies.
This is supported by findings in 2000 showing that nine in ten women who induced abortion are married or in a consensual union and more than half have at least 3 children (Singh S et al., 2006).
International obligations under the CEDAW Convention
The CEDAW Committee issued its 2006 Concluding Comments recommending for the Philippines to provide access to quality services for the management of complications arising from unsafe abortions to reduce maternal mortality rates.
In the 2014 CEDAW Committee report on the inquiry on reproductive rights violations in the Philippines, the Committee recommended for the Philippines to provide access to quality post abortion care to women including by reintroducing misoprostol to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity rates and ensure that women experiencing abortion-related complications are not reported to law enforcement authorities and are not threatened with arrest.
The CEDAW Committee also recommended to the Philippines to amend articles 256 to 259 of the Revised Penal Code to “legalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, threats to the life and/or health of the mother, or serious malformation of the foetus and decriminalize all other cases where women undergo abortion.”
I am confident that as taxpayers, we will be mindful that the very basic right to safe and legal abortion affecting the health and lives of women and their families will be in our hearts and minds on election day and that the elected public officials will truly acts as representatives of the Filipino people who clamor for changes in our laws to uphold human rights and that they will act based on reason, compassion, and conscience to respond to this public health and human rights issue. – Rappler.com
Clara Rita Padilla is the founder and executive director of EnGendeRights. She spearheaded the submission of the request for inquiry to the CEDAW Committee, a collaborative effort of the Philippine-based Task Force CEDAW Inquiry, the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Malaysia-based International Women's Rights Action Watch-Asia Pacific (IWRAW-AP).
I cannot believe that it has been a year since President Benigno Aquino III gave the go-ahead for units of the Philippine National Police’s Special Action Force to raid a sitio in Mamapasano village to take away a Malaysian terrorist and bomb expert.
Zulkifli Abdhir was killed, but they also came under heavy fire from a combined force of Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. The result was a bloodbath: 44 SAF soldiers were killed while the MILF lost 18 and the BIFF, 5 of their fighters, respectively.
The fallout was extensive: Aquino’s popularity plummeted to its lowest, he was forced to sacrifice one of his buddies, dismissed PNP chief Alan Purisima. His spin masters and apologists had a hell of a time going back and forth between arguing that Aquino showed leadership in salvaging the operation, alternating between blaming the police and then apologizing but stopping short of admitting command responsibility.
Media coverage and punditry, however, found a way to numb the pain, making Mamapasano look like yet another political fiasco that was “normal” of every presidential administration. Moreover, for much of the time, this objectification has done its work (note, for example, how very little public anger there is now over the Maguindanao massacre).
But the effort is there, and it is what it ought to be. So here go some of those stories that were told to me by friends, relatives, and sympathizers of those massacred.
Tears in Crame
A policeman’s wife who was there wrote that the Camp Crame community was all in tears when the bodies arrived. The band that played the taps in honor of the dead was so exhausted by the time the 44th body was brought into the hall. The band leader said one more body and they would just collapse, she wrote. I could imagine the tears streaming down her cheeks as she sent me her email.
Then there was the story that went around the hall that funeral parlors in Mamapasano, Datu Piang, and Sultan sa Barongis towns ran out of coffins so that some of the bodies were brought back to Manila in body bags, and then only placed in coffins after the plane landed at Villamor Air Force Base. The families and comrade-in-arms who were there at the airport were offended by just how sacrilegious the scene was to them.
These are just two of the stories I was able to get from friends and acquaintances who were there when the massacre and its aftermath happened.
However, I know there are more.
Social media as your tool
A historian once complained that even if we want to write a “people’s history,” we are often frustrated by the failure to give the people their voice. But social media has made it less difficult to access these tales. All one needs to do now is write a blog, send and email, pen a comment on Facebook or Twitter, and the stories become alive again. (Check out Rappler X, too)
Almost a year ago, I wrote a post that invited readers to give their opinions and vent their anger about the disorganized way the encounters were handled and the callousness of the President and his advisers when confronted by public protest. The comments also included fervent defense of the President.
Now, I am imploring readers to do something similar. But instead of their anger or disappointment, I would like them to share their stories about the massacre in this column.
I am especially calling on those directly involved and those directly affected to bring out their stories.
So bring them out and post them here.
Let us keep the memories of Mamapasano alive. – Rappler.com
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.As we get ready this year to start implementing the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), one item high on the agenda is universal health coverage (UHC) – ensuring that everyone can obtain the health services they need without suffering financial hardship to pay for care.
The UHC goal is enshrined in SDG3 Target 8, which calls to “achieve UHC, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.”
UHC expects that all people can access quality health services and are safeguarded from public health risks, and that countries assure financial protection for health services provided to all members of society. Although it is not a one-size-fits-all concept, UHC requires governments to remove inefficiencies on the health supply side while reducing out-of-pocket payments for health through prepayments primarily sourced from government allocation and mandatory payroll deductions from the formal sector. Several developing countries in Asia and the Pacific have already achieved UHC, while others are now actively pursuing this goal. Although there is no single path to success, a growing number of countries have enjoyed good results with social health insurance.
Traditionally, social health insurance was defined as a health financing scheme that mobilizes resources with mandatory payroll taxes or insurance contributions. However, what we are now seeing is countries using social health insurance more as a mechanism to blend government budgetary allocations, mandatory insurance contributions and voluntary insurance premiums into a health insurance fund that purchases health services efficiently and equitably while demanding quality from both public and private health care providers. With the expanding reliance on government budgetary allocations given large informal populations that are subsidized, this approach is increasing described as national health insurance systems rather than social health insurance schemes.
In the last few years, Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam have scaled up the implementation of their national health insurance systems with their respective single health insurer similar, to the Republic of Korea did before with its National Health Insurance Corporation, also funded by a combination of mandatory contributions, self- payments and government subsidies.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Indonesia began implementing its own national health insurance scheme in January 2014, in mid-2013 the Philippines amended its national health insurance law to strengthen its mandatory and universal nature, and Viet Nam enacted amendments calling for Universal Health Insurance last 2014. As they pursue UHC, these three developing Southeast Asian countries can learn many insights and guidance from the Korean experience.
All three have achieved population coverage of more than 60% of the population – with the Philippines nearing 90% – and now must figure out how to conduct strategic purchasing of health services to ensure coverage of both people and needed health services. Korea’s huge investments in information technology had enabled it to purchase strategically and monitor quality of health services, and similar necessary investments by these 3 countries can be guided by the Korean experience.
Strategic purchasing in Korea helped drove investments in increasing the supply of needed health services and as expanding population coverage demand the same increase in these three countries, lessons from Korea will guide them in ensuring appropriate and cost-effective investments in health professionals and facilities.
With pharmaceutical expenditures accounting for most of the out-of-pocket payments, the Korean experience shows how Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam can develop and implement their respective with comprehensive health insurance and pharmaceutical policies on drug benefits, pricing and reimbursement. For instance, since the private sector is a significant provider of health services with more than half of hospital beds in private hospitals in the Philippines and growing number of private primary care and hospital providers in Indonesia and Viet Nam, Korea’s efforts in in harnessing and aligning its private health sector would be helpful. And as we learned during two recent knowledge sharing sessions in Manila and Seoul, each of these three countries has their own unique context and challenges, but it’s clear that all of them see Korea’s National Health Insurance Corporation as one of their inspirations.
Getting their systems right as Korea did is the goal, and ADB will fully support Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam in their efforts to implement national health insurance systems including the application of an UHC monitoring and evaluation framework to guide the implementation and ensure the delivery of UHC in the soonest possible time. – Rappler.com
Eduardo P. Banzon is a Senior Health Specialist at the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department of the Asian Development Bank. Dr. Banzon champions UHC and has long provided technical support to countries in Asia and the Pacific in their pursuit of this goal. Before joining ADB, he was President and CEO of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, WHO regional adviser for health financing, World Bank senior health specialist, and a faculty member of the University of the Philippines’ College of Medicine and the Ateneo University Graduate School of Business.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Politics concerns itself with the crafting of national policy, and this, we entrust principally to the elected representatives of the people. The judicial, by the constitutional apportionment of governmental powers, is the sphere of the application of law (and consequently its interpretation) to the resolution of disputes and to the vindication of demandable rights.
There is more to this than an attempt at drawing neat distinctions. It has to do with what we reserve to the people’s elected representatives and the power bestowed on non-elected but distinctively schooled magistrates. The logics of politics and of the judicial are different, the language of one different from that of the other.
Traditionally, it has been taught – and not without good reason – that characterizations of “wise,” “expedient,” “necessary,” “helpful” – even “just,” are not juridical but political. Even under a charter that allows for a wide swath of judicial review, the distinction is maintained.
Are foundlings disadvantaged by the present state of law?
They most assuredly are and the remedy to that is legislation, perhaps, even constitutional amendment, not the crafting of jurisprudence that in effect rewrites the Constitution or usurps the legislature’s prerogatives.
It bears repetition: This is not a matter of power-tripping. It has to do with our concepts of popular sovereignty and democracy.
No basis at all
To create the presumption that a child of unknown parentage found in the Philippines is a Filipino, whether disputable or conclusive, cannot be a matter of judicial interpretation, because there is really nothing to interpret.
There is simply neither constitutional authority nor statutory basis for it. To confer on foundlings the nationality of the Philippines is similarly a political decision – one, unfortunately, that we have not made, but could very well make. We had the chance to: we rewrote our Constitution, we crafted a Family Code and we passed adoption laws.
Had our policymakers opted to better the lot of foundlings, they would have done so. It is not for the judiciary to get into policy-making, although there is indeed some degree of policy choosing that goes into adjudication!
Amend the law
The travails of Ms. Grace Poe should send legislators back to the session hall and committee chambers from which they have been known to stray quite frequently and without compunction to be able to pass the necessary laws of compassion.
As for our present adoption laws, I do not find anything in them that allows for the conclusion that a foundling is a Filipino citizen.
Setting aside, for now, the important rule on statutes that their effects are prospective rather than retroactive (for the straightforward reason that the conduct that can be reasonably regulated is that which is still to take place, rather than that which has entered the realm of fact!) all that these adoption laws make clear is that a foundling in the Philippines may be available for adoption, with the State (through its appropriate instrumentalities) standing in loco parentis.
It cannot be denied that for some time now there has been “judicial legislation,” but this was defensible in the face of the distinction between the political and the judicial because the text of the law did not stand in the way of the construal.
But where you have a constitutionally established definition of who a natural-born Filipino citizen is, then any attempt to rewrite that provision – especially when preceded by the avowal of concern for the lot of foundlings – dangerously trespasses the divide, admittedly tenuous in many places, but necessary nonetheless – between the political and the judicial.– Rappler.com
The author is Dean of the Graduate School of Law, San Beda College.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.After years of marginalization and government neglect, a son of Mindanao is finally gaining a foothold in Metro Manila.
In an earlier Pulse Asia survey, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte emerged as the most preferred candidate for president in the National Capital Region (NCR).
The poll, which was conducted on November 11 to 12, showed the tough-talking local official beating 4 other presidential hopefuls with 34%. It also showed Duterte overtaking former front-runner Senator Grace Poe, whose numbers had dropped to 26% from a high of 31% last September 2015. While the more recent surveys show his rating sliding down, Duterte remains a serious contender – a fact that is prompting a lot of people to wonder why.
Columnist Antonio Montalvan attributes the “Duterte phenomenon” to widespread public frustration over the “systematic thievery by government officials” and the “endless, divisive bickering among politicians.” For this reason, Duterte supporters see him as the only alternative candidate in 2016 – a “savior” whose tough stance on criminality can “overhaul the government and create a system that is hostile to corruption.”
But how accurate is this image of Mayor Duterte? How radically different is he from the other presidentiables? And what assurances can we have that change will indeed be forthcoming under a Digong presidency?
To answer these questions, we shall take a look at some of the major assertions that the Duterte campaign has been making, and analyze whether there is actual evidence to back up these claims.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Claim No. 1: Digong is not part of the elite
In her opinion column for a daily broadsheet, journalist Carmen Pedrosa described Duterte as “a poor man (who) had governed Davao well,” as opposed to Roxas who is “both a political and wealthy oligarch.” And this image of Digong as a political outsider has been cultivated, not only by his supporters but by Duterte himself, who has repeatedly blamed the elites of Manila for the country’s continued impoverishment.
Speaking with Rappler’s Maria Ressa last October, Duterte said that Philippine politics is largely “decided by two ruling elites,” particularly “the sugar block of the South and the sugar block of Central Luzon.”
And in keeping with his non-elite persona, Mayor Duterte leads a very modest lifestyle with hardly any hint of luxury, except for his personal collection of cheap spy novels and unbranded shoes. But to claim that the current Davao mayor was “poor” with no previous political connection simply has no basis in reality whatsoever.
In fact, the Duterte family is closely related to the Duranos and Almendrases, which are two of the most powerful political clans in Cebu province. Digong’s own father, Vicente Duterte, was even at one point mayor of Danao City, before moving to Davao where he served as governor from 1959 to 1965. The son eventually followed in the footsteps of the senior Duterte – becoming mayor of Davao City for more than two decades.
But while it is undeniable that Digong has done so much for Davao, the length of his stay has also allowed him to marginalize the opposition and solidify the Duterte dynasty.
His brother Benjamin, for example, was a one-time councilor of Davao City. The current vice mayor, on the other hand, is Duterte's son Paolo. And when Digong temporarily vacated the mayoralty post in 2010, he was succeeded by his eldest daughter Inday Sara, who is now eyeing a second term. It is no surprise, therefore, that Duterte is not in favor of the Anti-Political Dynasty bill, which he claims, could narrow the electorate’s choice and curtail freedom of expression.
Of course, Duterte deserves to be praised for his open criticism of the rulers in Manila. Unfortunately, he sees no reason for curbing dynastic power, which is one of the enduring hallmarks of elite rule in the Philippines.
Claim No. 2: Digong brought development to Davao City
In July 2014, the Facebook group Rodrigo Duterte for President posted a statement crediting Mayor Duterte’s leadership style for “transform(ing) Davao into an award winning city” and for its subsequent economic boom.
Former North Cotabato governor and Duterte supporter Manny Piñol made a similar pitch, by arguing that Digong’s leadership skill was pivotal in Davao’s transition from “one of the most violent places in the whole country” to a truly vibrant and progressive city.
While the importance of Duterte’s role should not be discounted, his supporters however are presenting a very simplistic explanation for Davao’s development. By focusing on Digong’s leadership qualities and personal attributes, other equally significant factors are either neglected or ignored. In fact, the specific geography of Davao is hardly mentioned in any of the discussions.
Most people, for instance, fail to realize that the said city has the busiest airport in Mindanao – the Francisco Bangoy International Airport – which began operations as early as the 1940s. It also has the Port of Davao, which has modern facilities capable of handling major cargo trans-shipment. Davao also happens to be the country’s largest city in terms of geographic size, with a total land area of 2,400 square kilometers – 67% of which is devoted to agricultural production.
Comparatively speaking, it is like having in one location Manila’s port area and Pasay’s NAIA terminals, in addition to fertile farmlands more than double the size of NCR. With these resources and facilities at its disposal, it is but natural for Davao to develop into the major commercial and cultural hub that it is now, regardless of who is City Hall’s actual occupant.
Secondly, while Davao’s calm and peaceful environment enable businesses to thrive, the city government itself is not yet fully self-reliant since it is still heavily dependent on its Internal Revenue Allocation (IRA).
According to the Department of Finance (DoF), from 2010 to 2012, approximately 60% of Davao City’s total budget was drawn from its IRA, which means that the local government has yet to maximize the available revenue sources of the city. And though most local government units (LGUs) remain heavily dependent on their IRA, they are nonetheless encouraged to become more self-sufficient since it is indicative of good planning and sound fiscal management.
Of course, such allegations do not negate the significant achievements that Davao has attained in the past 3 decades. It does, however, put things in proper perspective by also highlighting the difficulties that the city continues to face even up to this day.
Claim No. 3: In Davao, no one is above the law
When asked by Maria Ressa, “what made you so successful in Davao,” Duterte’s reply was both swift and straight-to-the-point: “(We) just follow the law, and if the policy is there, we honor it. And that’s it.”
At first glance, this statement seems to hold water, especially since Davao has enacted a number of progressive ordinances that are being implemented by the city government. Some of these local legislations include a total firecracker ban; a no-smoking policy in all public places; and a 30-kph speed limit to reduce vehicular accidents.
In addition, the city government has also passed the Women Development Code, which aims “to uphold the rights of women and the belief in their worth and dignity as human beings” and the Anti-Discrimination Ordinance (Ordinance No. 0417-12), which penalizes any form of discrimination “on the basis of national or ethnic origin, religious affiliation or belief, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, descent, (and) race, or color of the skin.”
So far, so good.
But central to the idea of rule of law is a related concept called due process, which is guaranteed in Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution. In fact, due process is so sacrosanct that any violation of it carries severe legal repercussions. Unfortunately, Mayor Duterte had admitted on several occasions liquidating alleged “criminals” without any legal formalities whatsoever.
During the same interview with Maria Ressa for instance, Digong openly declared that he had killed at 3 people in the last 3 months since October. He also downplayed a recent warning by Amnesty International regarding his human rights record, saying, “700 daw ang pinatay ko? Nagkulang ho sila sa kuwenta… Mga 1,700 (I killed 700? They underestimated the figures…It’s around 1,700)."
But in spite of these statements, no case has ever been filed against Duterte. This, as expected, has caused frustration among human rights groups, which lament the government’s inaction on the issue despite their repeated calls for a thorough investigation.
In response, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has announced it will soon create a special team that will investigate Mayor Duterte’s alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings. It is uncertain, however, if the probe will ever prosper since the CHR’s mandate is recommendatory in nature, having no prosecutory power of its own.
Claim No. 4: Digong brought peace and order to Davao City
Without doubt, Duterte’s growing attraction among voters is based on his tough stance on criminality. As one overseas Filipino worker told Rappler’s Pia Ranada, Digong’s brand of leadership is what the country needs, adding that, “he killed only criminals, drug lords, (and) the corrupt.”
It is also a sentiment that is shared by most Dabawenyos. For as any frequent visitor to Davao City would attest, residents are quick to stress how proud they are of their city and how safe they truly feel under Rodrigo Duterte. And such perception is not without basis.
In just one year alone, Davao was able to reduce its crime rate by 20%* – from 56.9 per 100,000 population in 2010 to 45.7 in 2011. During the same period, Metro Manila’s crime rate increased significantly from 28.15 in 2010 to 38.83 the following year.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
These numbers, however, also indicate that while Davao City’s peace and order campaign has been noteworthy, its actual crime rate is still higher than the national average of 28.2 in 2010 and 20.9 in 2011.
Davao City even exceeded the crime rate in Region XI where it is located. According to the Philippine National Police (PNP), Region XI recorded a crime rate of 38.3 in 2010 and 29.7 in 2011. Seen from a macro perspective, one could conclude that Davao City’s crime rate is significantly higher compared to other areas in the Philippines.
The Davao City Police Office (DCPO) has defended its performance by claiming that most of the incidents reported in Davao were non-index crimes. Late last year, for example, the DCPO reacted to Mar Roxas’ statement citing a Philippine National Police (PNP) report indicating that Davao had logged a crime volume of 18,119 in 2014, making it the city with the fourth highest number of crime incidents in the Philippines.
In a Facebook post, the Davao police tried to refute this claim by saying that, “out of the 18,119, only 6,548 (36%) were attributed to index crimes, or crimes against persons and properties,” while “the remaining 11,571 (64%) were attributed to non-index crimes.”
They then proceeded to define non-index crimes as “police-initiated operations that yielded positive results especially on anti-drugs and other special laws.”
So what is the Davao police actually saying? The implications are chilling.
Simply put, 64% of the crime incidents in Davao are actually “police operations” which, if interpreted in the light of reported human rights violations, may be understood as the killing or harassment of suspected criminals. If this is the case, then it also implies that the targets are typically poor with no property whatsoever.
By eliminating the city’s underclass, Davao remains safe. Visitors can walk around without any fear because out of the average 1,500 crime incidents per month, there is only a 36% chance (540 incidences in a month) of being a victim of petty crime. Meanwhile, we can comfortably ignore the street urchin and petty thief since their lack of property effectively deprives them of any voice in public discourse.
Yes, there’s a heavy price to pay for maintaining peace and order in Davao City. Fortunately, it’s not the middle class that is forced to carry that burden.
Claim No. 5: Digong can replicate what he has done in Davao nationwide
There is a shared assumption among Duterte supporters that he will replicate whatever he has done in Davao on a nationwide scale if ever he is elected president. This was clearly expressed by Manny Piñol when he described Duterte as “the only presidential candidate who could impose discipline and enforce the law as proven by his achievements in Davao City.”
Though powerful, this assumption however ignores the specific political context that allowed Duterte to come to power 3 decades earlier. Now known as a bustling and dynamic city of 1.4 million people, Davao was a totally different city during the 1980s.
At that time, the place was overrun by communist partisans who fought for control of the streets against government troops and civilian militias. This began in 1982 when armed communists belonging to the New People’s Army (NPA) began moving into Agdao – Davao City’s sprawling urban slum that was home to more than 120,000 residents.
With Agdao as their base of operations, the NPA began attacking military and police personnel, including suspected government informers. In just two years’ time, the communists were able to gain effective control of Agdao earning the monicker “Nicaragdao,” after the Latin American country of Nicaragua, where the radical leftist Sandinista movement took power in 1979.
To counter the NPA threat, Wilfredo “Baby” Aquino formed the infamous vigilante squad Alsa Masa (Masses Arise) in early 1984. After a brief hiatus, the group was later reorganized in April 1986 by former communist sympathizer Rolando “Boy Ponsa” Cagay.
Alsa Masa’s revival was triggered by the execution of Victorio Lamorena – a friend of Cagay who, the NPAs believed, was a government spy. What followed was a brutal fight for control over Agdao and the rest of Davao City that left more than 900 people dead by the end of 1986.
With no end to the killings in sight, Dabawenyos entered into a Hobbesian social contract with Duterte, which allowed him to rule with an iron-fist in exchange for social peace and personal security. In other words, Digong was the man that Davao precisely needed at a time of extreme political violence.
When he first assumed office in 1988, the new mayor had to deal, not only with petty thieves and criminal gangs, but with armed political groups who were ideologically motivated and fighting for power. Duterte, therefore, is a product of a specific historical context that may no longer sway for the rest of the country.
If we are then to elect Digong to the presidency, we must first ask ourselves the following: how different is present-day Philippines from Davao City of the 1980s? Are we facing unmitigated political violence on the streets? Is there a complete breakdown of law and order throughout the country? Are the NPAs at the outskirts of Manila, ready to pounce on the nation’s capital and launch their final assault on Malacañang?
We must thoroughly reflect on these questions before we decide, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, to “lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself.” – Rappler.com
*Editor's Note: A previous version of this story referred to Region "XI" as Region "IX." This has been corrected. Also, the writers previously indicated that Davao was able to reduce its crime rate by 80% when this was supposed to be 20%.
Francis Isaac is currently in Japan as a graduate exchange student in Osaka University. Joy Aceron is program director at the Ateneo School of Government directing Political Democracy and Reforms (PODER) and Government Watch (G-Watch).
The night Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko settled at the Sofitel upon arriving in the Philippines, a small group of Manila journalists and I talked over dinner in the same hotel with the imperial couple’s spokesman for the trip.
"Manila’s beautiful sunset," said Ambassador Hatsuhisa Takashima, was the "highlight" of their majesties’ first day in this country, which they first visited almost 54 years ago.
It was Tuesday, January 26. The next 4 days of their state visit would be, as the couple wished, "blessed by beautiful skies and the warm welcome from the people of the Philippines."
It wasn't purely diplomatic talk. If we go by the history of Philippine-Japan relations – specifically the darkest 3-year episode that was World War II – then we would know where the Emperor’s fixation with a warm welcome was coming from.
Emperor Akihito is the son of Emperor Hirohito, whose policy of extending Japan’s power through colonization was blamed for the destruction of other countries and their people.
At the time, Ambassador Takashima said, then Prince Akihito was a child and "didn’t go to the battlefield, but saw the hardships of wartime Japan." He imagined that the countries that Japan occupied in his father’s name were just as ravaged. (READ: Emperor Akihito: Not in his father’s shadow)
In November 1962, he and his wife were sent here to represent his father. At the time, Japan didn’t have a law yet that would allow government officials to represent the emperor in diplomatic visits, so it had to be the son.
Prince Akihito (then 29 years old) and Princess Michiko were "nervous." Although the relations between Manila and Tokyo had normalized 6 years before that, they felt that the "anti-Japanese sentiment was [still] high." They expected a cold treatment. They expected people hurling negative slogans at them.
"To their surprise – and they were deeply honored – your president and his wife were at the airport to welcome them," the ambassador said, referring to then president Diosdado Macapagal and his wife Eva. "That melted the tension and unease in the hearts of the young prince and princess."
Now, Akihito, 82, is referred to as an emperor of peace. On occasions that he spoke about the war, his message had always been one of remorse. About the Philippines, specifically, his message to his people is always: be grateful for the forgiveness, but don’t forget what pain we inflicted on them.
"Although the Filipino people have forgiven the Japanese for the atrocities, the emperor says, don’t forget," Ambassador Takashima said. "The Emperor and the Empress were talking between themselves, and they said the Filipinos are Christians so they were able to forgive."
But enough of the love fest of old. We have already read in the news about the official stuff, like how Japan is our biggest partner on 3 fronts: trade, investment, and official development assistance. Besides, strategic partnerships and policies toward allies like the Philippines (military assistance and sex slaves, as examples) are decided by the politicians in Tokyo, not by the monarchs. (READ: FAST FACTS: PH-Japan relations through good and bad times)
This was a visit of goodwill. It’s probably fitting to wrap it up (they flew back to Tokyo on Saturday, January 30) by sharing – diary style – little-known facts about the Emperor and Empress during this visit.
Tuesday, January 26
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The Emperor and Empress arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in the afternoon aboard a Boeing B747-400 of the Japan air force. They were on Flight JF001, while their entourage was on Flight JF002. The airport runway was closed an hour before their landing – SOP when dignitaries arrive.
President Benigno Aquino III, with his sister, welcomed the imperial couple at the airport. This is not just protocol or courtesy on the part of the President. The Emperor and Empress came because they were "touched" that Aquino invited them to come to the Philippines when he went on a state visit to Japan.
Note how quickly the trip was arranged: Aquino extended the invitation in June 2015, and their majesties were here in 7 months. In comparison, Prince and Princess Akihito’s visit in 1962 came 4 years after President Carlos Garcia’s state visit to Japan in December 1958.
Between the imperial couple’s visit in 1962 and now, there were 5 instances that leaders of the two countries visited:
November 1986 – President Corazon Aquino went on a state visit to Japan
February 1998 – Prince and Princess Akishino visited the Philippines
September 2011 – President Benigno Aquino III was on an official working visit to Japan
July 2013 – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s state visit to the Philippines
June 2015 – President Aquino’s state visit to Japan
Note that since Cory Aquino, no other Philippine president had gone to Japan – until her son Benigno III. A fondness for Japan must run in this family. If accounts by my sources are correct, some Japanese nationals even helped the family when Senator Benigno Aquino Jr – Cory's husband; Benigno III's father – was being persecuted for fighting the dictatorial government of Ferdinand Marcos. They were different from those known by the senator's brother-in-law, former journalist Ken Kashiwahara.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Their only activity on Tuesday was a meet-up with the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV). There are 48 young men and women currently doing development work in parts of Luzon and the Visayas. The program allows them to stay in communities for two years to help them in agriculture, automobile mechanics, and civil service.
Their majesties were encouraged by "the enthusiasm of our young people here," the ambassador said, especially when these youth expressed their wish to stay longer than two years to see the impact of their work on their host communities.
Turning 50 this year, the JOCV program is administered by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), one of the world’s largest bilateral aid agencies. Read the story of the first Japanese volunteer in the Philippines who came to Benguet in the 1950s.
Wednesday, January 27
The day of the Emperor and the Empress basically revolved around President Aquino. A welcome ceremony was held for them in Malacañang in the morning, and a state dinner in the evening.
During the 20-minute meeting between the President and Emperor Akihito, they talked about 3 things, according to Palace Communications Secretary Sonny Coloma:
The Emperor's previous visit to the Philippines, when he went outside Manila – to Tagaytay and Baguio
Heavier traffic volume in Metro Manila due to increased automobile sales– and these are mostly Japanese cars
The Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo and its Heattech technology
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
As reported before, the Japanese government is helping the Philippines with feasibility studies and loans to ease traffic not just in Metro Manila but in other key cities too. It was JICA that said that if we don't fix the national capital region’s traffic, our economic losses would amount to P6 billion a day by 2030. The Japanese aid agency has prepared a traffic roadmap for Metro Manila, as well as an urban plan for Metro Cebu.
As for Uniqlo, branches of the quality but affordable fashion line have sprouted in the Philippines since it partnered with the SM group here in 2012. During President Aquino's state visit to Japan in 2015, he met with Uniqlo CEO Tadashi Yanai, hoping to convince him to set up manufacturing operations in the Philippines.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Between the two events in Malacañang on Wednesday, the Emperor and Empress offered a wreath at the Rizal Park. Coincidentally, Jose Rizal stayed in Japan – in Yokohama and Tokyo, specifically – for almost two months in 1888.
According to the site joserizal.ph, our national hero "studied the habits and customs of the Japanese people, their language, theaters, and commerce" while he was there, and wrote a friend back home "about the honesty, courtesy, cleanliness and industry of the Japanese people." It said Rizal "envisioned that in the future the Philippines would have more contact and relations with Japan."
In the afternoon of Wednesday, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko offered a wreath at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, and reiterated the message that Japan "must never forget the Filipinos who died during World War II."
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
During the state dinner In the evening, Emperor Akihito spoke in Japanese, with an interpreter. He does speak English, however, said their spokesman. But because it was a formal, official affair, he spoke in his native language. (The English version of his speech was emailed to newsrooms immediately after.)
President Aquino, for his part, delivered his speech in English, but ended with "Domo arigato gozaimasu."
The imperial couple’s first meeting on Thursday was at the San Diego Gardens in Intramuros, Manila, with Filipinos who studied and trained in Japan. Their organization, called the Philippine Federation of Japan Alumni or PHILFEJA, has been active for 40 years, since it was founded by Ambassador Jose Laurel III. It has 8 member organizations so far.
On their way to the meeting, the Emperor was photographed with the window of his car rolled down, as he waved at cheering students along the walls of Intramuros.
This waving at a crowd was reminiscent of an episode during their 1962 visit. The imperial couple at the time visited former Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo, who by that time, had lost his sight. During that visit to Kawit, Cavite, south of Manila, the then-prince and princess remember helping Aguinaldo reach the balcony of the famous mansion.
"There were about a hundred people outside, shouting at them, ‘Mabuhay!’ (Long live!) They were overwhelmed," Takashima said.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Back at Sofitel, their majesties met with Japanese residing in the Philippines, as well as Filipinos of Japanese descent, some of whom have never been to Japan. There are only about 19,000 Japanese nationals living in the Philippines, as opposed to some 200,000 Filipinos in Japan, according to the Japanese embassy.
Among those in the group was Carlos Teraoka, a Japino who served as honorary consul of the Japanese embassy – the only one in Asia to be named to such position. He was the same guy whom then-Prince Akihito met in Baguio City in 1962. (Read Rappler’s story of how the life of this Filipino Japanese from Baguio City fits Emperor Akihito’s forgive-but-don’t-forget message about the war.)
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
In the afternoon, the imperial couple visited the language training center of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. The language training program is part of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement.
The Emperor and Empress then graced the reception prepared by Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines Kazuhide Ishikawa at his residence in Forbes Park, Makati. President Aquino was again present. Here are photos of their activities on Thursday.
Friday, January 29
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The Emperor and Empress spent Friday in Laguna. They were lifted by chopper, while their entourage travelled by land. Their most symbolic stop was at the Japanese Memorial Garden, in Caliraya town, where they offered flowers for both Japanese and Filipino soldiers who died in the war.
The royal couple couldn’t be grateful enough, Ambassador Takashima said. While there are a number of memorials for the casualties of war, they are mostly built by private organizations. The one in Caliraya was built by the government.
Until this dinner with the state visit spokesman, we only knew that about 100,000 Filipinos died during World War II. In fact, the largest number of Japanese who died during the war died in the Philippines, he said. There were 518,000 of them, and less than half of them are “still missing,” or their remains have yet to be identified.
The Japanese government acknowledges it would be difficult to trace the bones of those soldiers, since their troops moved a lot, but it deeply appreciates Philippine government efforts to resume excavation. (Takashima himself had an uncle who died in the Philippines, and his grandparents waited with futility for their son’s bones to be retrieved.)
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
After the 30-minute prayer ceremony at the war memorial – which was televised live by the government-run NHK in Japan – the imperial couple proceeded to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños.
According to IRRI's Bruce Tolentino, deputy director for communications and partnerships, "Their Majesties expressed special interest in IRRI's work on climate-ready rice, particularly submergence-tolerant rice."
He added, "They also seemed pleased about the long-term relationship IRRI has had with the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), and that the institute has always had a Japanese national on its board of trustees since its founding in 1960."
Emperor Akihito was excited about the tour for more than these official reasons, Takashima said. Aside from the fact that his majesty "personally knows some of the scientists" that the institute has had, the Emperor himself does some farming. "He is very interested in [growing] rice."
According to him, Emperor Akihito has a rice paddy, where he plants, grows, and harvests rice himself. He then prepares them for offering at one of the shrines in the imperial palace. "It is one of his most important rituals."
Saturday, January 30
While to some observers it was an honor for the imperial couple to spend as many as 5 days in the Philippines, it seemed our state guests could wish for more time here. Empress Michiko was reportedly talking about wanting to see a Filipina classmate from the Seishin (or Sacred Heart) High School in Minato, Tokyo, where she graduated in the early 1950s.
"It’s not in the itinerary, but they were considering it," Takashima said.
"They have very fond memories of your country," he continued. "They remember the names and the stories of the people they met here during their first visit, and they have kept themselves updated on news about them."
The Emperor is 82; the Empress, 81. Considering it took them 54 years to visit the Philippines a second time – and with government officials now doing the diplomatic work between the two countries – it may be long before somebody from the imperial family steps on Philippine soil again (although a friend of mine had the surprise of his life to bump into the Japanese prince jogging outside the imperial palace).
Certainly, however, the goodwill between the former warring countries has been strengthened further by this visit. "Friendly and future-oriented," was how their spokesman put it. And he was visibly pleased (if surprised) when some of the journalists told him that many Filipinos simply found their majesties "so cute."
