In a recent interview, Honeylet Avancena, the President’s partner, posed the question, “If, as they say, President Duterte is responsible for all those murders, how come Trillanes is still alive?”

The question intrigued me. So, employing my gift for extra-sensory perception (ESP), I was able to probe deep into Duterte’s stream of consciousness and found the answer, among other flotsam and jetsam. 

Duterte’s thoughts were in Bisaya, so I had to recruit the services of someone close to him for an accurate translation, though the passage of Duterte’s raw thoughts to me, and from my mind to my friend’s mind, and from his mind back to mine guaranteed that some things would be lost in translation. But probably not much. So here are Duterte’s unexpurgated ruminations on Senator Sonny Trillanes.

***

“That son of a bitch Trillanes…that puking ina…he’s really asking for it…. I can have him eliminated anytime, that lousy homosexual…. The only problem is he’s part of the military fraternity…. The officers may be full of rivalries and they may hate one another, but they’ll get together if you kill one of them because they’ll see it as an attack on the institution…. Killing that putang ina is the surest way to lose the military’s support, and I need that to push through with martial law…. And there’s a lot of these junior officers that admire this idiot for having led that mutiny as a way to get to the Senate and ultimately – but over my dead body – to the presidency, and if I did anything to their role model, that’ll just trigger a lot of plots to get me, and one might just succeed…

'Tang ina…. Maybe I could just order some guys from Davao to gang rape his wife and daughter.... Yup…I’d like to get a piece of their sweet asses, too…but, 'tang ina, that would be traceable to me…easily…. Maybe, I should get at somebody not as high-profile, like that son of a bitch Alejano or that shit Acedillo as a warning to Trillanes…. Maybe have it look like an accident…. Bato has guys that specialize in this, though some of those poses of addicts showing resistance were not convincing…. He should fire some of them…. Putang ina…. Maybe I could challenge Trillanes to a duel, but what if he accepts, and he’s said to be a good shot?… 'Tang ina…

No, maybe the solution might be to ruin his reputation, maybe get Dick Gordon to execute an affidavit that Trillanes tried to grab his dick in the Senate CR…. Gordon, that professional cocksucker, would do anything I say…. But, no, nobody believes Gordon anymore…. I wonder why…. Maybe it’s because of that Arrneow de Manila English which I find as annoying as Yasay’s 'tang inang English…. Haaay, there are days when I feel just like that guy in Las Vegas…. How liberating it would be to get my rifle, place a bump stock to make it a rapid fire machine, and go from one office to another, gunning down Trillanes, Hontiveros, Robredo, Gascon, Sereno, Morales, and the whole yellow crowd and the 'tang inang Reds too who’ve betrayed me after I was so good to them, giving them all those posts…. 'Tang ina 'nyong lahat…. Yes, that Las Vegas guy is my kind of guy...I would have given him a medal...”

***

That’s it. He dozed off and my ESP unfortunately can only catch stream of consciousness, not interpret dreams. You need Freud for that. And I trained under James Joyce, not Sigmund.– Rappler.com

Walden Bello is not normally a writer of fiction.

Conclusion

(Part 1: Ombudsman has power to probe Duterte for mass murders)

In a 6 -1 judgment, the UK House of Lords held that the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet did not enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for charges of torture (Regina v Bartle, March 24, 1999). In Regina, Lord Nicholls confronts what he describes as “the crucial question” of “whether the acts of torture and hostage-taking charged against Senator Pinochet were done in the exercise of his functions as head of state.” This, in light of Pinochet’s claim of immunity as a former head of state.

Lord Nicholls asserts:

And it hardly needs saying that torture of his own subjects, or of aliens, would not be regarded by international law as a function of a head of state. All states disavow the use of torture as abhorrent.... But international law has made plain that certain types of conduct, including torture and hostage-taking, are not acceptable conduct on the part of anyone. This applies as much to heads of state, or even more so, as it does to everyone else; the contrary conclusion would make a mockery of international law.

Lord Nicholls then cites the Nuremberg Charter and judgment:

Under the charter of the Nurnberg International Military Tribunal (8 August 1945) crimes against humanity, committed before as well as during the second world war, were declared to be within the jurisdiction of the tribunal, and the official position of defendants,"whether as heads of state or responsible officials in government," was not to free them from responsibility (articles 6 and 7). The judgment of the tribunal included the following passage:

“The principle of international law which, under certain circumstance, protects the representatives of a state cannot be applied to acts condemned as criminal by international law. The authors of these acts cannot shelter themselves behind their official position to be freed from punishment.”

Universal jurisdiction

Perpetrators of these horrendous crimes are considered enemies of humanity, and can be tried and punished anywhere in the world by virtue of the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Under the principle of universal jurisdiction, enemies of humankind, like those committing piracy, genocide, slavery, torture, and various forms of war crimes and crimes against humanity, can be investigated, prosecuted, arrested, and held for trial anywhere in the world. No safe harbor should be provided international outlaws. That is why they are held to be triable or extraditable from anywhere in the world. States anywhere in the world have the duty to either try or extradite them to other countries for prosecution and trial.

Neither is there prescription of their offenses. Despite the lapse of long periods of time, they can still be held criminally liable for their despicable deeds, whether as the mastermind, instigator, planner, coordinator, or direct perpetrator. Nor can those enemies of humanity be given amnesty. Such is the case. For their crimes shocks humanity’s conscience and strikes at the very heart of the international civilized order. Those international crimes are jus cogens in nature and therefore ipso facto non-derogable at all times under any and all circumstances anywhere in the world.

Immunity inconsistent with jus cogens

No head of state can claim immunity from suit for crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes. These most egregious crimes against the international order violate the non-derogable principle of jus cogens, which is compelling and binding law, at all times and in all places in the world. Immunity is irreconcilable with the customary international law principle of jus cogens. No head of state can deviate from this peremptory norm of customary international law.

Lord Millett expounds in Regina v Bartle:

My Lords, the Republic of Chile was a party to the Torture Convention, and must be taken to have assented to the imposition of an obligation on foreign national courts to take and exercise criminal jurisdiction in respect of the official use of torture. I do not regard it as having thereby waived its immunity. In my opinion there was no immunity to be waived…. The international community had created an offence for which immunity ratione materiae could not possibly be available. International law cannot be supposed to have established a crime having the character of a jus cogens and at the same time to have provided an immunity which is co-extensive with the obligation it seeks to impose. (My emphasis)

Nuremberg judgment

Article 7 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, established under the London Agreement of August 8, 1945, says that in prosecuting and punishing “major war criminals of the European Axis”:

The official position of Defendants, whether as heads of State, or responsible officials in Government departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility, or mitigating punishment.

In its judgment of October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg) explains the individual criminal responsibility of 19 out of 22 alleged war criminals convicted mostly for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity, thus:

… That international law imposes duties and liabilities upon individuals as well as upon States has long been recognized… Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.

The authors of these acts cannot shelter themselves behind their official position in order to be freed from punishment in appropriate proceedings.

The Nuremberg Tribunal stresses:

… the very essence of the Charter is that individuals have international  duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual State. He who violates the laws of war cannot obtain immunity while acting in pursuance of the authority of the State if the  State in authorizing action moves outside its competence under International Law.

During its 55^th plenary meeting on December 11, 1946, the United Nations General Assembly, in resolution 95/1, affirmed “the principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal.”

Shocking

With or without the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and other state functionaries can be held accountable as enemies of humankind for supposedly instigating and orchestrating the widescale murder of civilians. Such crimes violate a peremptory or compelling norm of international law, which permits of no exemption or justification at any time anywhere.

It means that despite, for instance, the declaration of a state of emergency, state actors cannot justify the commission of crimes against humanity, for such is considered to be a violation of this peremptory norm of customary international law, also known as the principle of jus cogens. In the hierarchy of international law, visualize jus cogens or peremptory norms of customary international law as occupying the highest rung of the ladder, whose violation permits no exception or justification whatsoever, at all times, anywhere in the world. Such violation stings humanity’s conscience, shocks our very core, and assaults the international public order. – Rappler.com

The author is a lifetime member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. He holds a Master of Laws (LLM) degree in American Law for Foreign Lawyers and an LLM in Human Rights (Honors). The views expressed here are exclusively his. He does not represent any group or institution.

Barely 3 weeks before the scheduled elections, and after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) had spent P700 million in its preparations, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Republic Act 10952 on October 2, postponing the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections originally slated for October 23, 2017.

Reacting to the announcement, the Comelec, through its spokesperson James Jimenez, oddly “welcomed” the news, rather than meeting it with indignation – not only for Congress’ belated action, but for practically throwing away P700 million of the taxpayer’s money. In doing so, Comelec missed that crucial opportunity to make a point by calling out Congress to be decisive on the issue of postponement the next time around. As in the past years, the cancellation came at the last few ticking minutes before the scheduled elections. 

What does Republic Act 10952 provide?

It postpones the scheduled October 23, 2017, barangay and SK elections to May 14, 2018. 

It must be noted that the last barangay election was held way back in October 28, 2013. Following the regular 3-year cycle, the next one was supposed to have been held in October 31, 2016, which would have been the first during President Duterte’s term of office. However, on October 15, 2016 – or barely two weeks before the scheduled election – Duterte signed Republic Act 10923, moving it to October 23, 2017. Like a déjà vu, a few weeks before October 23, 2017, Congress moved it a second time around to May 14, 2018.

Republic Act 10952 moves the scheduled elections by almost 7 months, effectively extending the term of office of barangay officials. It adopts a “hold-over” scheme as a mode of filling in vacancies, like in the previous postponement laws. This means that those who were elected during the October 28, 2013, barangay elections shall continue to hold their office until their successors are elected on May 14, 2018. This abandons the original versions of the bills in both the Senate and the House of Representatives giving President Duterte instead the power to appoint officers-in-charge (OICs).

It must be noted that the “hold-over” scheme only applies to incumbent barangay officials, excluding SK officials. This would mean that vacated positions in the youth councils will remain vacant until the next barangay and SK elections in 2018.  

While it is admittedly within the powers of the Congress to determine the term of barangay officials, it is unsettling to observe that postponing elections is becoming the norm rather than the exception. The 2016 barangay election, for example, had been postponed twice and there were many postponements before that. 

Is postponing an election constitutional?

Article X, Section 3, of the Constitution empowers Congress to enact a local government code, which shall provide for the “election” and the “term” of local officials, including those of the barangays.

Going a little further to Section 8, the Constitution provides that “[t]he term of office of elective local officials, except barangay officials, which shall be determined by law, shall be three years....” 

By expressly excluding barangay officials from the mandatory 3-year term, this means that Congress has the discretion to make their term of office of village officials longer or shorter than prescribed. This discretion by necessary implication includes the discretion to set the corresponding dates of election.

Postponement laws appear to have been anchored on these constitutional provisions. While they give Congress discretion, this does not mean that such discretion is unbridled or without limit. The plain reading of the text of Section 8 may seem to allow Congress to freely expand the term of barangay officials to as long as 50 years or as short as one week. However, this discretion cannot be taken in isolation, but definitely in consonance with other constitutional provisions. 

The most important of related provisions is the very first provision of the 1987 Constitution:

Section 1. The Philippines is a democratic and republican State. Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.

The core, indispensable, and defining feature of a democratic and a republican state is the conduct of elections held at regular, periodic, and predictable intervals. 

When barangay elections are regularly and periodically postponed, rather than held, democracy and republicanism are eroded, and the sovereignty of the people diminishes. When the original term is extended, it is no longer people who are the source of the authority of the barangay officials during their holdover period but Congress’ legislative power. When the source of elective officials’ mandate is not the people’s sovereignty expressed through elections, such political arrangement can hardly be characterized as democratic and republican, and therefore contrary to the Constitution.

In other words, it should be stressed that the power to postpone, which gives Congress the discretion to set the term office of barangay officials, must be exercized in strict conformity with the overriding principles of democracy and republicanism. 

While it is recognized that these principles operate in the realm of reality and that there are indeed instances where postponement is necessary, they cannot however be done at whim or arbitrarily. There has to be a reason for a postponement, a cause so compelling that it overrides the democratic principles of regularity of elections. To be compelling enough to justify the setting aside of our core democratic principles, these grounds have to be factual, real, and not merely imagined. Otherwise, what stops Congress from setting aside every election at whim and kill democracy at will? 

Section 5 of the Omnibus Election Code, for example, cites scenarios where elections can be postponed by Comelec: “violence, terrorism, loss or destruction of election paraphernalia or records, force majeure, and other analogous causes of such a nature that the holding of a free, orderly and honest election should become impossible in any political subdivisions.” 

The present postponement law and even that one passed in 2016 are both silent as to the reason or grounds for the postponement. There are admittedly public pronouncements from the proponents, stating that the postponement is part of the President’s controversial drug war, as this is his way of getting rid of barangay officials who are involved in drugs and replacing them by appointment. But with the final version actually reverting to a holdover scheme and abandoning the earlier plan to fill in the vacancies by appointment, what reason or justification is there left? 

Another consequence of the postponement which everyone seems to conveniently sweep under the carpet is its monetary cost. Postponing an election weeks before its schedule would mean that all preparations may have already been completed. While the Comelec has yet to come up with the full accounting of the public fund spent so far, its initial assessments peg the expense at P700 million. This primarily pertains to the ballots and other elections paraphernalia, hiring of additional manpower, paid employee overtimes, nationwide trainings of election workers, and voters’ education.

A very important question should be asked then: what is the practical value of moving the elections 7 months after at the cost of P700 million?

Now, considering the magnitude of the amount of the public funds unnecessarily wasted, who should take responsibility for it? There is surely a confluence of faults: Comelec, for not having strongly lobbied against it; election watchdogs and the public, for not opposing it; the President, for having signed it.

But I lay the greatest blame at the doors of Congress. Had it decided much earlier, the unnecessary and thoughtless wastage of P700 million could have been averted. A huge loss of public fund is unacceptable if it's due to lack of foresight. It's an enormous amount of money, which could have better spent elsewhere.

Should we seek and demand accountability over these wastage? We should. Should we all be outraged? We should. Unless we do, this is bound to happen again and again. – Rappler.com 

Emil Marañon III is an election lawyer who served as chief of staff of former Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. He completed his LLM in Human Rights, Conflict and Justice at SOAS, University of London, as a Chevening scholar.

Sa wakas, B’yernes na naman! 
Tatambay ako sa bahay.
Pero araw ay mabilis,
Baka weekend di masulit. 

Aatupagin ang hobbies,
Sa oras, magiging wais.
In the end, aking hangarin:
Mapagsabay tulog-kain. 

– Rappler.com

Artwork by Alejandro Edoria
Text by Stacy de Jesus

#FridayFeels is a cartoon series by the Rappler Creatives Team. Cathartic, light, but relevant, it's a welcome break from your heavy news feed! You can pitch illustration ideas by sending a message to the Rappler Facebook page. 

I boarded the owner-type jeep with the male tabloid reporters. The photographers were in another vehicle. We followed the policemen's car, also an owner-type jeep, with the male suspect seated in the middle. 

When we arrived in Bagong Silang in a vast talahiban (grassy field), the cops pulled out knives and started stabbing the suspect without letup. Then they asked him to get off. "Takbo (Run)!" they shouted. The suspect, bloodied from the stab wounds, ran fast. The cops pulled out their guns and shot at him. The suspect was able to get up and run, already limping. They shot him again until he could no longer be seen from the tall weeds.

I gasped. I thought the cops were going to turn their guns on us, having witnessed what they did. The reporters were quiet. The photographers didn't click their cameras. 

"'Lika na (Let's go)," the cops said. We boarded the vehicles again and drove back to the police station.

At the media lounge, everyone was quiet. "Whoa, that's one huge story," I said. But a senior reporter said no one should write about it. I asked why. "Pakiusap ni Cabo (It's the chief's request)," he said, referring to a police corporal who was part of the group. "Ikaw din, kung gusto mong magcover pa dito, or pa-assign ka na lang (It's up to you if you still want to cover, or be assigned to another beat)."

When I returned to our newspaper office, I told the editor about what happened and that I was forced into not writing about it. She asked why. I told I had the same question because I didn’t understand. "Okay, just let it go," she said. "Give me a better story tomorrow." 

This incident happened many years ago in Caloocan City. I was a rookie assigned to cover the police beat – the initiation-level, staging area for journalists of my generation and those ahead of us. I still remember how I felt not being able to write that story and to dig deeper into the whys. It would have been page one material; my supposed first break into the so-called big time. 

Police districts in Metro Manila were different then. The premier beat, because it covered the capital Manila, was the Western Police District. Under the Northern Police District were Quezon City, a separate beat for another reporter, and Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and Valenzuela, or what is called until today as CAMANAVA – my beat. I didn't appreciate being assigned there at first, as people called it the swamp, the northernmost end of Metro Manila with plenty of vacant, idle places and low-lying areas prone to flooding. 

But it was an interesting one, I learned later. Caloocan, the only urbanized city in this grouping then, had a volatile political situation ruled by the Asistio family. Malabon and Navotas had their share of bleak conditions. Valenzuela was a hotbed of labor unionism. Bagong Silang and Dagat-Dagatan were the dumping ground of persons who were "salvaged" or summarily executed, in police parlance. 

The whys to the unwritten story unraveled in the next days. The police blotter identified the suspect found dead in Bagong Silang, bearing multiple stab and gunshot wounds. Except for stating the funeral parlor his body was turned over to, it had no other details, so I asked the killer cops. He was a serial rapist of little girls, they said, often in and out of jail  – out if the police wanted him to do some work for them.

The cops grew tired of his court schedules where they were required to testify against him. "Nakakapagod na 'yung mga bista eh. Saka salot siya; patapon (We're getting tired of the court hearings. Besides, he's scum; garbage)."

Policemen had this hatred for rapists. Among all offenders, cops wanted them wiped out. One day, I followed the reporters to the firing range, thinking the cops were on goodwill mood to let us try again the .45 calibre. There was no firing practice. The cops were padding a sack hanging from a beam that, I thought, was their makeshift punching bag. But no, there was someone in it – I heard a whimper. It turned out they were torturing another rape suspect. Before I could ask questions, they told me to leave. The reporters said that after the suspect was tortured, he was executed somewhere.

But for all their apparent anger at rapists, the cops had mistresses and second and third families, an accepted practice probably to prove that they were as fearless as their guns. Another practice was to close an entire nightclub for an officer's exclusive birthday "big night" party, and to gift each other with female sex workers for the night. Also a few times, we reporters dropped to the ground as cops at odds with each other did their gun duels.

I thought from then on that guns affect their behavior, perhaps making them destructive to the point of misunderstanding the power and responsibility that go with handling the weapons and what they stand for in performing their duties to protect citizens. It is worsened when they are bound by orders from those more powerful than them, eventually pulling them into a culture of corruption and violence.

Summary executions and police abuse have been going on; they just take on different tacks. Torturing suspects, making them shooting targets, or covering them in masking tape is still in the tradition of disposing of someone suspected of wrongdoing, whether he was a rapist or a drug pusher. The saddest thing is, the police never look at the option to reform and emancipate an offender's remaining hopes for humanity. 

No wonder that the leftwing assassination squads staged their own dramatic kills to send their message across to protest law enforcers' abuse of power. On the day I rushed for an appointment to interview and meet for the first time a chief of police, the hit squads of either the Sparrow Units or the Alex Boncayao Brigade pulled ahead – they left the police chief dead in his car on his way to work, with a gunshot wound to his head. 

The urban-based liquidation squads of the New People's Army that targeted law enforcers during its heyday, in a way offset police domination. They did their signature hits casually, usually in broad daylight, and owned up to the responsibility through a statement detailing their target's sins against the people. 

I am not for resurrecting hit squads. We are already deadened by daily news of killings by rogue cops and riding-in-tandem assassins. The raw emotions we are subjected to are just too much. 

In this day and age of clean-cut cops and the Gwapulis beauty pageants, I wonder if the younger or aspiring police officers know what they're getting into. My bias against male cops earlier was because I never encountered a female police aggressor firing her gun or showing her female version of machismo. There were a few of them back then, unlike today when they handle the women and children's desks, traffic, investigation, or partnered with a male colleague on street duty, among other gender-neutral functions, I hope. 

But yes, again, when we give a gun to a person tasked to police and protect us, do we hope or do we worry?  – Rappler.com

Diana G. Mendoza is a freelance journalist.

Rodrigo Duterte obviously feels very insecure in his presidency. Enough evidence of that may have shown on just one occasion, a few days ago, at the Integrated Bar convention, after he chucked his written speech and proceeded to extemporize.

The president's problem is that, when he goes off unprompted, he’s unable to deliver a sustained thought, and, when he does that under provocation – a state that, on the other hand, he’s able to sustain on the power of some pathology – he completely loses it. And that was precisely what he did: once he opened his mouth, a digressive, fragmentary, incoherent waterfall of words began spraying forth on his audience.

His listeners should have known they had it coming; they had picked the wrong side and the wrong phrase. They upheld the ombudsman’s power and duty to investigate the president and at the same time counseled him (“counsel” happens to be one word absent in Duterte’s delusionary dictionary) to not be “onion-skinned” (he commands but refuses to take even mild counsel).

Thus, "onion-skinned” became the phrase of the night, the phrase on which the president mounted his every retaliatory salvo – “to the [audience’s]sorrow” (an apparently new favorite phrase of his). Never mind if no rational theme or thought could be gleaned from his speech, the amount of expletives interposed in it alone was medium enough to stand for the message. It must have broken the record for expletives in proportion to the total number of words mouthed. Watching the occasion on the Net, I did try to keep count, but it was easy to be lost; there were simply too many expletives, and in not a few cases the blip censoring an expletive – a practice observed for the prudence demanded for public listening and viewing – ran onto the next, and sometimes that, too, ran onto the next, so that a long blip was heard for more than one expletive.

At any rate, Duterte’s Integrated Bar performance was only one revealing occasion. There have been others, and one featured his own wife extolling his own virtues, tearfully. The performance is just too mushy to bear detailing; enough to say that she vouches for his kindness and gentleness.

Duterte’s sense of insecurity would seem more typically manifest in his attacks on Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, a former Supreme Court justice herself. He has threatened them both with impeachment.

In fact, in Sereno’s case, the process has begun in the Duterte Congress, on a complaint from a Duterte partisan. One would think impeachment an overkill against a chief justice who, going by the recent Supreme Court decisions on cases of partisan interest, voted with the minority. In a voting pattern that lumped together justices appointed by then President Gloria Arroyo, justices who by themselves constituted, and still constitute, a majority, the court voted to acquit her of plunder, allow bail for another plunder indictee, Juan Ponce Enrile, and approve a hero's burial for the plundering dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Arroyo, Enrile, and Marcos’ heirs are now principal allies of Duterte.

So, why go yet after a practically harmless chief justice? Insecurity, paranoia – the same reasons as in the case of the ombudsman, who will be out of Duterte's way when her term ends next midyear.

Even now Ombudsman Morales is already out of his way; being an aunt of Duterte's son-in-law, she has inhibited herself in a case filed with her office against Duterte, for hidden and likely unexplainable wealth. But she’s not entirely out of his hair; her office threatened with presidential investigation, she replied that it "shall not be intimidated." And serving notice that her office's inquiry into Duterte's case would go on, she threw back his own words at him, "[One who] has nothing to hide...has nothing to fear."

Duterte's troubles began precisely with allegations that he was hiding something big and smelly. Referring to records in its possession, the ombudsman's office calculates that a billion pesos passed through a network of Duterte family bank accounts. The ombudsman got on the case on the representation of Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, whose own estimate of Duterte's secret wealth is double.

Trillanes has been challenging Duterte to back his denial with a waiver allowing full revelation of his family's bank accounts, but Duterte has been dodging. At one point, he tried to get back at Trillanes by concocting a set of numbers and passing it off as corresponding to the bank account hiding Trillanes' own corruption-tainted wealth. Duterte was quickly revealed for his pathetic act of childish folly – the bank itself certified no such account existed– as well as for his inability to do something even mildly impressive to Trillanes.

But in that precise situation Duterte's wife finds a point to be made for her husband. "Trillanes has been hitting us since a week before the election," she says, singling out accusations that Duterte is a killer. "Eh bakit buhay pa siya?"

In other words, it's a testament to Duterte's good nature that Trillanes has all this time remained alive. – Rappler.com

(There was a time when our leaders were made of sterner stuff.  Given the current composition and actuations of members of the executive and of Congress, the traditional breeding ground of our country's national leaders, it is perhaps instructive to "return to basics," so to speak, by recalling how there was a time when truly great minds and hearts in the august chambers truly inspired the youth.  Among them was one who stood out for a lifetime of service to country and the example of unparalleled courage.)

"Men in public life are often faced with the disheartening task of making difficult decisions.  I have always tried, in my humble way to stand for principles, to base my actions on certain political ideals even at the risk of political annihilation."

– Lorenzo Tañada

Statesman Lorenzo M. Tañada is the only senator of the Philippine Republic to have served for nearly a quarter of a century – 24 years to be exact – successively and faithfully from the start of the Senate in 1948 to its dismantling in 1972 upon the declaration of martial law, when soldiers padlocked its doors and the dictatorship shut down Congress to silence voices like his.

He is also one of the few of his generation to have lived to see two of his aspirations fulfilled: the downfall of the dictatorship by means of the joined hands of a largely peaceful People Power resistance and the withdrawal of foreign military installations in national territory – which he not only witnessed within his lifetime but also helped bring about as an engaged and often enraged participant.  

In the pantheon of political leaders in the country, Tañada stands as a symbol of courage, integrity, love of country joined to love of family, loyalty to his principles, and the capacity to overcome adversity from his youth.  He strove mightily to advance nationalist politics, and in the process even suffered a number of political setbacks.  Even in his advanced age as the venerable "old man" of the "parliament of the streets," Tañada braved the dangers as he risked life and limb to bring people together to put an end to the Marcos dictatorship.

Memories of Tañada in my heart

There is an image etched in my heart of Lorenzo Tañada in his 80s emerging from a cloud of tear-gas smoke, striding bravely down the street propped up by his cane, and confronting soldiers carrying pointed guns while he intoned: "In God's name, stop shooting our people!"

It was an incident which ironically took place at the "Welcome Rotonda" between Quezon Boulevard and España one September afternoon in 1984 when soldiers assaulted protestors with tear-gas, water cannons, batons, stones and guns to prevent them from advancing towards Malacañang.

We were linked in arms ("kapit-bisig"), son Bobby on his left and I on the right, together with a number of brave souls such as Rene Saguisag, Butz Aquino, Tito Guingona, Behn Cervantes, Nonoy Sarabia, Noel Tolentino, and companions on the frontline whose names now escape me.  The police charged not once but thrice, and on all occasions, Tañada refused to budge, though his eyes dimmed by smoke emitted by tear-gas canisters hurled at the "frontline of fire."  And when the smoke finally cleared, he strode alone – unafraid, undaunted, fierce from rage – and commanded the men in uniform to put down their guns.  And, they did!  

A second image comes to mind.  Lorenzo Tañada in a wheelchair with fists clenched after his son, the senator Bobby Tañada, the act’s principal sponsor, gave an explanation of his vote on the US Bases Treaty: "Permit me, finally, to pay homage to a man under whose caring arms I grew up to learn love of country above self, a man who spent a lifetime of untiring struggle for nationalism and independence, a man whose dream of freedom for his people may soon be realized by the vote we are to take, a man whom I am deeply proud to call Tatay (Father)." 

The image is so clear as if it was yesterday of the grim man in tears while a broad smile threatened to break out any time as the Senate and the entire gallery stood in respect and in awe – here he was a front-row witness to history-in-the-making for a struggle that consumed almost his entire life.

A third image brings me back to his library in the ancestral home in New Manila one evening soon after the dictatorship had fallen where he was going over copious notes as we discussed a draft I was working on entitled, "The Sovereign Quest," dealing with an issue close to his heart: the dismantling of the foreign military bases.  With his magnifying lenses he was reading the footnotes and suggested further annotations.  He was a UP law grad and a Harvard scholar, trained in doing rigorous research and marshalling arguments in a most convincing fashion.  

He had known my father since together with a few others they were both co-founders of the Civil Liberties Union even before our country gained independence.  He fondly called my father Paulino, "Nino," and shared the story of how he accompanied my father's efforts to win the hand of my mother in marriage, and we talked about the note they wrote together in Spanish written to Lolo Pepe – the father of the young Rosalinda – attesting to Nino's character.  He combined scholarship with a kind and gentle heart; he could talk politics, family and friendship all in one breath.   

He then regaled me with the story of my mother who was waiting in his office during a busy day wanting to see him for advise since I was studying in Latin America during the early part of the martial law period: "To make sure I would see her, your mother slipped a note to me," and he continued by revealing what the note contained. "My son, Edmundo, is scheduled to be shot at dawn tomorrow in Mexico where he is studying.  I need to talk with you."  It was her "dramatic" way of saying to me – it is urgent and need your advice to write to my son.  Please dissuade him from returning home right away. And, so I did –  and wrote the letter. That was the "old man" Tañada I knew.   

Brave voice in Senate

Jose W Diokno who served in same Senate as he did and who was made from the same stern stuff, wrote about his colleague, "Tanny":

For half a century, Tanny has been in the forefront of the nationalist struggle.  He has sacrificed much, seeking no gain for himself, only to defend the patrimony of the Filipino people, to uphold their individual and collective rights and freedoms, to help them attain true independence, and to promote their well-being.  His integrity and courage have earned him the respect of our people, and his unselfish and unstinted efforts on their behalf have earned him their deep affection.

Tanny carries the scars of many battles.  As he says, he has won some and lost some.  But he rebounds from every defeat, moves onward after every victory – and always he keeps fighting.

Time has not cooled his ardor nor blurred his vision.  He refutes the saying that old soldiers fade away.  Tanny's star has risen with the passing years.

Jovito Salonga who became Senate president when the issue of the military bases was put to a vote recalled that for Tanny, it was not so much a case of my government, right or wrong, but rather "my government when right, to be kept right and when wrong, to be made right."

Voted consistently as an outstanding senator by both the Philippines Free Press and the Senate Press Club, he "distinguished himself as a fearless, hard-hitting and uncompromising fighter for civil liberties, labor rights, clean and honest government, and the protection of the national patrimony and sovereignty."  That was the way he was seen by those who closely observed his work in the legislature.

Never wavered vs dictatorship

Senators Pepe Diokno and Ninoy Aquino were imprisoned by the Marcos dictatorship at the onset of martial law, and Tañada who was abroad at that time rushed back and defended them with all the passion he could muster.  He visited Ninoy regularly and gave him fraternal advice as well as legal counsel.  He was not afraid to take risks to defend prisoners who were jailed for their political beliefs.

To Ninoy Aquino in his solace in jail, he gave solid advice: "Do not and never despair, because this could only be a time of testing.  Believe me, in God's own season, justice will ultimately triumph."

On 29 August 1973 from his cell in Fort Bonifacio, Ninoy Aquino wrote his colleague and counsel Tañada:

You never lost perspective of history's cold judgment and my instincts told me that you were fighting a greater cause, greater than my life or yours, and you were fired up by the obsession to right a terrible wrong.  It was Quixotic inclination with all its dangerous consequences but somehow I was also lured by the temptation to tilt the windmills especially at a time when so many of our national leaders would rather be cautious than courageous.  Your unshakeable conviction inspired me to gamble with my life.

I heard an inner voice tell me that your assessment that an oppressed people will not and cannot remain oppressed forever is not only accurate but realistic.  I was convinced that your one per cent would someday be one hundred per cent….

He then continued:

Like the Man from La Mancha you stormed the ramparts of the Supreme Court.  And, grudgingly, the knights of the Court yielded to your incessant assaults and ordered the fortress opened.  At a time when our hearts were dried up and parched, you came with your shower of mercy. The stakes are not mere fortunes.  My very life is on the line.  Prudence, we are told is the better part of valor, and there were very convincing arguments to take the road of compromise.

And when I was about "to lose the grace of my life," you came with your burst of song.  It was the song of freedom, older than Abraham.  We may be small in number but big in our commitment, you said.  Your idealism had the exuberance of youth, ironical for a man in the twilight of his years.  This I thought was the secret of your agelessness.  Hitching my life to yours, I knew I could not go wrong.  And so like Sancho Panza, I followed my Don Quixote.

Nurturing generations

Lorenzo Tañada inspired generations, not only his but also the next.  And, if this our generation has faltered and perhaps failed, now we must turn to successor generations so that they may listen and learn from his life’s testimony of courage under fire. In so doing, the quest continues "to right the wrongs" and, in a manner of speaking, to "do battle for what is right."

The constitutional scholar Joaquin Bernas, SJ, described his legacy in the following manner:  "Human rights, the rule of law, the right of the Filipino for his own sovereign state – this is the truth that he has proclaimed in season or out of season, as political leader or simple lawyer, honored, heralded or derided, from his earliest youth to his advanced age.  And the truth rings sharper and clearer for all those who have ears to hear."

In a period when our world confronts momentous challenges and our country grapples with major crises, it perhaps is time for more inspired and courageous leadership.  It is thus sad when some of our leaders – president and legislators have engaged in squabbles, when the leadership in the Houses built to represent our people are beholden and in disarray.  It is for this reason that it is timely to recall the courage, wisdom and the example of the Senate’s longest-serving Senator, Lorenzo Tañada.  He will be a beacon to others who aspire to lead and take on a life of public service.  Rare and unique is the path travelled by Lorenzo Tañada. To the successor generation, a final word: courage is contagious. Tañada indeed inspires! – Rappler.com 

The feeble stance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on the South China Sea in the past has been made even weaker by the sudden shift of Philippine foreign policy under the Duterte administration. As the chairman for this year’s summit, the Philippines could have used this opportunity to rally the Southeast Asian states to support and uphold the arbitration ruling that it won in July 2016, affirming the rights of littoral states under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Instead, President Duterte decided not to talk to China about the ruling for now – while he resets diplomatic ties and secures economic aid from China. 

Apparently, the Philippines (under Duterte) has elected to move on. Even with reports of Chinese presence and activity within the 12 nautical mile territorial sea of Pag-asa island, the current administration chooses to keep silent and is too mindful of how the Chinese would feel about any pushback the Duterte government might take with regards to the issue. The decision not to file a diplomatic protest or to hold  closed-door negotiations, despite the Chinese militarization activities and what Duterte acknowledged as the threat of war, brings into question whether Philippine national interest is indeed being prioritized by his administration. A diplomatic protest would at the very least signal to China, the international community and the Filipino people that the government is doing its part in protecting Philippine sovereignty.

This sudden change in Philippines-China relations shows that Chinese influence remains to be one of the greatest challenges to ASEAN centrality when it comes to the South China Sea disputes. This is evident in the statements of Philippine foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano and the outcome of the Joint Communiqué Of The 50th Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, which noticeably emphasized the benefits of ASEAN cooperation with China in the disputed area. If countries like Vietnam and Malaysia had not been more adamant in their position compared with the Philippines, the communique might not have mentioned the serious concern about reclamation and other alarming activities of China in the area.

Other ASEAN claimants do not share the same approach as the Philippines. Contrary to the Philippines’ softer stance, Indonesia has used the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration to its benefit by renaming the disputed area within its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea as the North Natuna Sea. Aside from continuously challenging China by pushing for tougher language in the joint communique and calling for a ‘legally binding’ Code of Conduct, Vietnam plans to strengthen its cooperation with a strategic partner– India – not only in procurement of military equipment but also in seeking a greater Indian role in exploring oil and gas in the disputed area.  Vietnam has also sought a deeper defense cooperation with the United States, and secured a promise of a visit from a US aircraft carrier by 2018.  Malaysia, which had always been cautious about its actions in the South China Sea due to its close economic ties with China, has been continuously increasing it naval defense capabilities and military spending. It stood up to violators of its maritime borders by setting fire to illegal fishing boats that had been confiscated in the disputed area. With his recent bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak discussed the South China Sea disputes and strengthened Malaysia’s comprehensive partnership with the US.

Duterte’s shift and the rejuvenation of Philippines-China ties has given China an opportunity to undermine ASEAN centrality when it comes to the disputes.  The major power is expected to take advantage of the weaker ASEAN stance and to fast track the affirmation of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) while it can still control and dictate the rules. However, what good would a non-legally binding code of conduct have for the claimant ASEAN countries? It would be like the 2002 Declaration of Conduct which failed to deter China from pursuing reclamation and aggressive behavior towards fishermen and citizens of other claimant states – a mere document that does not hold any aggressor liable. As Professor Carl Thayer argues,  a non-binding COC would be a disaster of the first order. It will leave the ASEAN claimant states no option but to eventually capitulate to China if the situation ever leads to the use of force.   

A legally binding COC would provide assurance to the smaller and weaker claimants that  might does not make right, and that all claimant states will be equally subject to international law. It would be a stable foundation of trust and proof of China’s benign intentions for Southeast Asia. While the COC was envisioned as “a set of norms to guide the conduct of parties and promote maritime cooperation in the South China Sea,” ASEAN and China should find a way to make violators accountable for various aggressive actions like harrassment of fishermen and causing irreparable environmental damage.

Other South China Sea claimants (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei) that have depended and benefitted from the actions of the Philippines in the past now need to take a more forward and stronger role not only by defending their respective interests but also by giving more importance to ASEAN centrality in managing the SCS disputes. Economic cooperation with China should not make the Philippines or any ASEAN country complacent when it comes to matters of national defense and security. It would be naïve to think that China will back down or halt improvements in its occupied islands just because of the positive development of its relations. ASEAN states, moreover,  cannot merely rely on any single member or its external partners in solving the disputes.  To play a more effective role, ASEAN should put forward the common interests of its member states and have a unified stance on the South China Sea. 

The COC may be the start of a lasting and peaceful resolution of the disputes between ASEAN claimant states and China, which will indeed be beneficial for the region. However, any realist would say that this depends on how fairly and firmly the agreement will be implemented, considering the complex disputes and power asymmetry in the South China Sea. – Rappler.com

Florence Principe is a researcher at Asia Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, Incorporated and a graduate student of International Studies at the University of the Philippines. The original version of this article is posted on the APPFI website.

The story of Asia today remains very much one driven by its largest nations and economies. An increasingly assertive China, a slow-growing Japan, a rising India, and a still emerging Indonesia are shaping the region.

Yet, all of "Asia rising" – including the Philippines – can take a lesson from some of the region's smallest countries. That was one of the messages I took away from the recent Milken Institute Asia Summit here in Singapore, which focused on a look back 20 years to 1997 – but more importantly also ahead 20 more to 2037.

From 3 small countries come 3 big lessons for a greener, more representative, and more transparent Asia. My hope for Asia 2037 is that these small nations – Bhutan, Timor-Leste, and Singapore – can inspire and show the way for an ever-changing Asia and Pacific region.

"Going green" is a phrase that has been thrown around for many years by both countries and companies. But despite the rhetoric, Asia is increasingly polluted, with manmade forest fires and smog-enveloped cities an annual occurrence. At least one Asia-Pacific nation, however, both "talks the talk" and "walks the walk."

The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan – 750,000 people in a nation of only 17,500 square kilometers (17,950 square miles) – offers an example that all of a rapidly developing Asia, including its much larger neighbors, China and India, can learn from.

Bhutan's leaders have put conservation at the heart of their environmental agenda, pledging to keep the country carbon neutral and writing into their constitution the requirement that 60% of the nation must remain forested. Other initiatives include bans on plastic bags, restrictions on private vehicles in the capital Thimpu, and a commitment to become the world's first 100% organic-farming nation.

All this is in line with the philosophy of "Gross National Happiness" advocated by the 4th King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. Known simply as GNH, this approach to development goes beyond traditional economic measures such as gross national product, which only captures the economic value of goods and services produced. In addition to environmental conservation, central GNH tenets advanced by a Gross National Happiness Commission include sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development, preservation and promotion of culture, and good governance.

Another of Asia's smallest countries, Timor-Leste, with 1.2 million people and 14,875 square kilometers (5,740 square miles), offers an example of how people can move forward post-conflict and take control of their own destinies, when given the chance.

I returned recently to this former Portuguese colony located on the eastern half of an island shared with Indonesia, just north of Australia. This trip was part of an international election observation mission from the Washington-based International Republican Institute. The Timor-Leste government had invited observers to monitor the first parliamentary elections administered without United Nations (UN) oversight since the country regained independence in 2002 from Indonesia.

The results were a peaceful and powerful example to many nations, big and small, still struggling to put the power of the vote in the hands of their citizens.

While significant economic challenges continue, the people of this newest of Asian nations deserve significant praise as they progress from decades of conflict and centuries of colonialism. Timor-Leste was ranked 1st in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2016 for Southeast Asia and 5th in Asia, behind the well-established democracies of Japan, South Korea, India, and Taiwan.

The densely-populated city-state of Singapore, 5.6 million people on an area of only 719 square kilometers (278 square miles), is perhaps the leading example in Asia of a small nation that thinks big – and succeeds big. With one of the highest GDP per capita in the world, Singapore showcases the economic benefits of transparency and the rule of law. Its neighbors would do well to adopt this nation's embrace of free markets and free trade in their own search for drivers of growth and foreign direct investment.

Understandably, the push-back was significant when Kishore Mahububani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, recently argued, "Small states must always behave like small states," in remarks perceived as a criticism of Singapore's recent foreign policy.

Singapore did not succeed by thinking small, nor has it reached global prosperity by conforming to "small-country guidelines." Having developed from fishing village to first world country in just a few generations, Singapore also has become the leading finance and trade hub in Southeast Asia and a role model for rule of law. This prosperous "Lion City" is now ranked the 2nd easiest place in the world to do business in the World Bank's Doing Business 2017 report, behind New Zealand, and the 7th least corrupt economy in the world according to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index 2016.

Being ambitious is not a bad thing. Small in geography need not mean "small-country mentality and policies."

Over the last 20 years, I have seen firsthand the accomplishments and continuing challenges of Bhutan, Singapore, and Timor-Leste. Still, as small fish in the big pond that is Asia, these 3 nations have futures that are by no means certain.

In the two decades ahead, Asia will continue to transform. According to UN estimates, India will have traded places with China 6 years before 2030 to become the world's most populous nation, en route to 1.66 billion people by 2050. Wealth and inequality will likely grow, as will the risk of military conflict amid competing demands for energy, water, and other resources. Paradoxically, a more populous Asia dominated by large nations might also prove "smaller" as trade and technology further link the region.

All share a vision for an Asia-Pacific that is both prosperous and at peace in 2037. Much though will depend on the world's biggest powers and the region's largest nations.

Here's a prediction. Large countries will seek in the years ahead to apply economic or military pressure to shape their smaller neighbors' behaviors and policies – no different than today. Asia and the Pacific, however, will be better off if all nations adopt some modern-day, "small-state ideas" offered up by Bhutan, Timor-Leste, and Singapore – namely the embrace of a greener, more representative, and more transparent future for all their citizens. – Rappler.com 

Curtis S. Chin, a former US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group, LLC. Follow him on Twitter at @CurtisSChin. He is the inaugural Asia Fellow of the Milken Institute.

We had wondered in the past several days how any more unpresidential President Rodrigo Duterte could get. And we are not talking about his potty mouth or his compulsion to tell lies. We seem to all agree he has so far done the worst on these fronts.

We refer to the extent to which he would abuse his position to have his way and protect his interests. 

On September 27, we reported that the Office of the Ombudsman had acquired copies of Duterte’s bank records that the Anti-Money Laundering Council was looking into. They showed transactions that amounted to around P1 billion over several years.

"More or less," according to Overall Deputy Ombudsman Arthur Carandang, the records that AMLC had were similar to what opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes IV submitted to the Ombudsman when he sought an investigation. In May 2016, the lawmaker filed a complaint, alleging that Duterte, as Davao City mayor, had P2.4-billion worth of deposits in his accounts, and they could have come from an alleged scheme of paying ghost employees. 

On the same day the report came out, Duterte taped an interview, where he vowed to have Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales investigated for her supposed "partiality.” He had long accused Morales of dispensing “selective justice,” although her office had probed and indicted government officials of various stripes. He also conveniently forgot that Morales had inhibited herself from cases involving the Dutertes. The Ombudsman is the aunt of Duterte’s son-in-law, lawyer Manases Carpio. 

On September 29, Morales had a message for Duterte: “Sorry, Mr President, but this office shall not be intimidated.” She’s standing by the documents that her office got regarding Duterte’s bank transactions. Using the familiar line that Duterte loved to invoke whenever he casually accused people of links to illegal drugs, Morales said: “If the President has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear.” 

Wait, Duterte thought he had a better idea. On October 1, he challenged Morales to resign with him. Oh, he said, since the Ombudsman's issue with me is my undeclared assets when I was mayor, let’s also ask for the resignation of that Chief Justice, whom a committee in my rubber-stamp House of Representative believes should be impeached for some taxes she reportedly didn’t declare as a private lawyer.

No, thanks, the Ombudsman said, I’d rather finish my fixed term and do my duty, under the Constitution and the Ombudsman Act, to act promptly on complaints filed against any government official. 

But you don’t ignore a grandstanding man in power, do you? On October 4, the President announced that “we” – referring to his government – would file an impeachment case against Morales for practicing “selective justice” and for using “falsified documents” instead of letting the investigation run its course and providing proof that those bank documents are indeed falsified.  

Then on October 5, the President announced the creation of an anti-corruption commission that could, on its own, investigate presidential appointees, "including those outside the Executive Branch of government.”

Just as quickly, opposition Senator Franklin Drilon, a former justice secretary, reminded the President that there’s such as thing as independence of the 3 branches of government from each other. The Constitution clearly says that. So, no, the Ombudsman is beyond the reach of Malacañang's arm. 

Why can’t the President resort now to his usual dare of firing any official over even a whiff of corruption, or of himself resigning if there’s any proof of him or his children being corrupt?

Because, maybe, he knows by now that fewer Filipinos believe him. 

On Sunday, October 8, the Social Weather Stations released the results of its latest survey. Duterte’s approval and trust ratings had dropped by double digits in just 3 months. The Class D and E respondents, who make up the bulk of those 16 million whom Duterte’s defenders love to invoke every time he is criticized, expressed the most disappointment. 

We were told that Malacañang or some other supporter had commissioned a survey around the same time as the SWS poll. And it reportedly captured the same sentiment: the public’s approval of, and trust in, the President have hit record lows by his own standards.

Now we understand why President Duterte is being a bigger bully than he ever was, seemingly intent on destroying institutions that check abuses and excesses in the executive. His buttons are being pushed from several directions. He is in panic.

He realizes that losing public approval and trust means lesser leeway and maneuvering room to push his agenda. He wakes up to the reality that he is running an entire country – not a mere city – where processes are much more complex. 

And the best he can do is act like an entitled child, throwing tantrums in the hope he appears brave and still in control. – Rappler.com

People have been asking me recently about this personality disorder. So I thought this might be a good opportunity to explain about one type of mental illness.

A personality disorder is a mental disorder. There are different types of personality disorders. So before we delve into a particular personality disorder, we need to talk about mental disorders and personality disorders first.

To make life simple, I will refer to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual  V of the American Psychiatric Association. This is the “bible” of mental health professionals in many parts of the world including the Philippines. It is also used by insurance companies and in courts to identify mental illness. It is a guide to diagnosis, treatment and research. The DSM V is a thick book that presents various criteria that need to be met in order to make a diagnosis of a specific mental illness. In short, if you’re in that book, then you have a mental disorder, and if you are not, then you don’t have one.

Personality disorders

A big section of the DSM V describes personality disorders. A personality disorder is characterized by a rigid and unhealthy pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving toward others. The pattern is long-standing, beginning in adolescence or young adulthood, and it holds across a broad range of personal and social situations. Because it is long-standing and pervasive, personality disorders are not easily “cured”.

While the patterns of thinking, feeling and behavior are very different from what the culture requires for them to function well with others, those with a personality disorder may not be aware of their illness because their patterns appear normal to them.

People ask me, “Are these people crazy”? Well, “crazy” is not a term mental health professionals use. But people with personality disorders are sufficiently in touch with reality in the sense that they don’t have the delusions, hallucinations and bizarre actions that are obvious signs of mental illness.

Unfortunately for their families and society, those with personality disorder may go through life as not overtly ill or “crazy”. The problem can be hidden for decades and only those who are close suffer the consequences of the illness. Those suffering from narcissistic personality disorder for example, can become charismatic leaders who can fool large numbers of people.

Narcissistic personality disorder

Those who may wish to read the “official” definition of narcissistic personality disorder of the DSM may read it here.

But for the layperson, we can refer to the well-renowned Mayo Clinic that describes it as: “Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultraconfidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”

Mayo Clinic goes on to say that if you have this disorder “you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious. You often monopolize conversations. You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior. At the same time, you have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation. To feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make yourself appear superior.”

In my own experience, women are very often the target of narcissists because our society allows the person with narcissistic personality disorder to see them as inferior. Male narcissists also are more enraged by women who criticize them because women are expected to show subservience and admiration for men.

Many clinicians also note that these people lie without compunction because it helps them control or manipulate others. When caught in a lie, narcissists will counter-attack and add counter-allegations. They will never admit or apologize for the lies. Their public persona matters to them so that anything that can be seen as diminishing this will be met with rage and intimidation.

On the other hand, narcissists can act very nicely to people in a utilitarian sort of way, such as to their fans or admirers, when they want people to like them more and work to meet their needs and goals.

How to spot a narcissist

In his book “Dangerous Personalities” Joe Navarro, a former FBI profiler, talks of his interviews with people who were victims of someone with narcissistic personality disorder. He talks about how a narcissist thinks. Here are a few highlights that add to our picture of the narcissist:

1. I have no need to apologize. You, however, must understand, accept, and tolerate me no matter what I do or say.

2. Most people don’t measure up. Without me to lead, others would flounder.

3. I appreciate that there are rules and obligations, but those apply mostly to you because I don’t have the time or the inclination to abide by them. Besides, rules are for the average person, and I am far above average.

4. I may seem arrogant and haughty, and that’s OK with me.

5. I expect you to be loyal to me at all times, no matter what I do; however, don’t expect me to be loyal to you in any way.

6. I will criticize you and I expect you to accept it, but if you criticize me, especially in public, I will come at you with rage. One more thing: I will never forget or forgive, and I will pay you back one way or another because I am a “wound collector.”

7. If you would just do what I say and obey, things would be better.

Navarro notes that narcissists will associate with “the power-hungry, the unscrupulous, profiteers, opportunists, and social predators.” People whom, Navarro notes, “you would not trust to park your car.”

Have you met anyone with narcissistic personality disorder? Are they your boss or your loved one?

If so, seek help for yourself and for that person as soon as possible.– Rappler.com

Sylvia Estrada Claudio is a Doctor of Medicine and has a PhD in Psychology.

Religious education is in a conundrum. While teachers might take it seriously, students most of the time have a different opinion.

Part of the problem has to do with emphasis. Relative to mathematics, science, and other main subjects, religious education does not enjoy significant amount of time and weight in the basic curriculum. The weak emphasis gives the impression that it is not important, even if offered by sectarian schools. If one thinks about it, even Values Education might suffer from the same problem.

To complicate the picture, religious education, often offered as Christian Living and the like, typically adopts a pedagogical model that still relies on simply "knowing" doctrine, morals, and worship. The implicit expectation is for students to accept religious ideas as cold facts.

What is the problem for religious education these days? That it is boring does not even begin to unravel the real issue.

Defending the faith

This point became clear to me during the midyear conference of the Philippine Association of Catholic Religious Education (PACRE) last September. Hosted by the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos, the event gathered Catholic teachers from different parts of the region.

During my talk, fellow teachers eagerly shared their concerns about young people today. Particularly revealing was when they shared their anxieties about teaching the "timeless truths" of the Christian faith. To some of them the task of defending religion is more indispensable these days. They want to address the problem of moral relativism which, based on their observation, has become the preferred worldview.

The anxieties are understandable given their conviction that religious education has the ultimate calling of transmitting the faith. When he addressed Catholic educators in the US, John Paul II declared that the work of religious education "includes transmitting clearly and in full the message of salvation, which elicits the response of faith."

Hence, without intending it, religious education could become more preoccupied with religious truth than with the actual issues of its intended audience – the youth. The problem it engenders is this: truth proclamations might fall on deaf ears if students do not recognize their relevance to the world they inhabit.

It is not surprising therefore that for some, religious education has failed to redeem religion.

This is how the militancy of religious education can backfire.

Daily realities

I am not a religious educator but the sociologist that I am recognizes the situation of young people these days. Some of them carry on with the faith, while others have simply lapsed into nominalism. Regardless, many young people are asking difficult questions about the religion into which they were born.

The questions are endless. Some are already familiar.

Isn't truth just a matter of choice? Isn't God beyond religion? What then do we make of other religious groups?

Is religion really necessary for a person to be good? And how can I trust religious leaders when they don't live out their faith in the first place?

Admittedly, quick-fix answers may not be available. But religious educators should not be afraid.

At the very least, religious education can be a safe space where these questions may be discussed freely and thoroughly. This means that students must not feel that they are judged for expressing their disagreement or doubt.

For theologians Rito Baring and Rebecca Cacho, "the classical way of teaching the faith through catechism requires a shift to adult education where people are able to think critically and decide more wisely for themselves on issues affecting their lives. Instead of servile obedience, personal commitment to the faith may be strengthened or sustained among the youth."

In other words, young people are not simply born into a belief system. Religion is no longer an ascribed identity. It is not a given.

It is instead an achievement. Young people need to be convinced about truth, faith, morality, and commitment.

All of these are big words, but not necessarily impossible. – Rappler.com

Jayeel Cornelio, PhD is one of the 2017 Outstanding Young Scientists of the Philippines. He is the author of Being Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines: Young People Reinterpreting Religion (Routledge, 2016). With Manuel Sapitula and Mark Calano, he wrote the Senior High School worktext Introduction to World Religions and Belief Systems (published by Rex). You can find him on Twitter @jayeel_cornelio. 

Cracks are beginning to show in President Duterte’s image as a “populist” strongman.

The latest quarterly survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) revealed a precipitous 18 percentage-point drop in President Duterte’s net satisfaction rating from June to September 2017. By SWS’ own metric, this demotes the President from a “very good” net satisfaction rating to “good.” Meanwhile, his net trust rating fell by 15 points. 

Following 4 consecutive survey rounds of “very good” ratings, this big dip seems to suggest that, indeed, the year-long “honeymoon” has finally ended.

But this is such a conspicuous dip that that even President Noynoy Aquino – who had a much shorter honeymoon period – scored a higher net satisfaction rating during the same time in his presidency.

Figure 1 shows that in September 2011 President Aquino got a +56% net satisfaction rating, while in September 2017 President Duterte got just +48%.

Figure 1.  With a ±3% margin of error for the September 2011 figure, and a ±2.5% margin for the September 2017 figure, this gap is statistically significant. Note, however, that comparing trendlines may be more meaningful than comparing individual data points.

Breaking down the data

What could explain the big September drop in President Duterte’s ratings?

For starters, the latest SWS survey – conducted from September 23 to 27, 2017 – was no doubt influenced by a string of preceding controversies that rocked the nation.

First was the highly-publicized killing of teenagers Kian delos Santos, Carl Arnaiz, and Reynaldo de Guzman in the Philippine National Police’s “One-Time-Big-Time” operations mid-August. Second was the House of Representatives’ unpopular move to slash the Commission on Human Rights’ budget to a paltry P1,000. Third was the “National Day of Protest” where thousands went to the streets on the occasion of the 45^th anniversary of Marcos’ martial law declaration.

But more striking than the dip itself is how broad-based it is: the President’s ratings dropped across nearly all regions and socio-economic groups.

Figure 2 shows this across-the-board decline. Instead of the usual quarter-on-quarter changes (June 2017 to September 2017), I graphed the year-on-year changes (September 2016 to September 2017) which I think are more relevant.

Figure 2.Note: for national percentages, the sampling error margin is ±2.5%; for balance Luzon it’s ±4%; for Metro Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao, it’s ±6% each.

Given the survey’s small sample size, it’s really hard to deduce anything conclusive from these numbers. Still, the patterns are telling.

First, the regional declines are all statistically significant. The biggest came from Luzon sans NCR (21 points), followed by Visayas (19 points), NCR (14 points), and Mindanao (9 points).

Yes, even in Mindanao – the President’s stronghold – there was a sizeable decline. This may reflect some degree of dissatisfaction over the protracted Marawi conflict (4 months and counting) or the Mindanao-wide declaration of martial law.

Second, by far the biggest decline in any group came from Class E (30 points). This is unsurprising: it’s common knowledge now that Duterte’s war on drugs is overwhelmingly anti-poor, as corroborated by groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile, the sole group that turned up with any positive change from last year is Class ABC (1 point increase). Although not statistically significant, ABC’s failure to register a statistically negative change – in line with the national trend – already speaks volumes. This seeming class divide shakes the notion that President Duterte is serving the interests of the masses more than those of the well-to-do.

Third, more men have been turned off by Duterte than women (22 versus 12 points, respectively). As one friend suggests, this may be partly due to the fact that those killed in the drug war are overwhelmingly males.

Fourth, those aged 35-44 registered the biggest decline (26 points), followed by those aged 25-34 (20 points) and 18-24 (15 points). Note that these groups comprise the working, tech-savvy, and millennial segments of the population. Older people seem harder to sway, but even they registered nontrivial declines.

Fifth, across educational attainment, those with some high school education and college graduates showed the biggest declines (19 and 17 points, respectively).

In all, it’s difficult to deduce from this graph the exact reasons behind the President’s declining popularity. The survey results also say nothing of the impact of recent economic phenomena, like rising inflation, widening deficits, shrinking reserves, and falling investments.

But at least one thing is for certain: the decline in President Duterte’s net satisfaction rating is not a fluke, it is evident across all major geographic and social divides across the country.

Unraveling discontent?

In the past – especially when the odds are against them – high-ranking officials of the Duterte government were wont to justify their bad actions and policies by trumpeting very favorable public opinion survey results.

But the latest SWS survey seems to signal the end of that era. Will future surveys continue to unravel the people’s discontent? If so, the Duterte government can no longer hide behind the veil of “excellent” or “very good” ratings, nor can they mask the foul smell of their blunders with fragrant, flowery numbers.

Instead, they must get their act together – and stop their bad policies – lest they soon exhaust their most precious resource, and so far, their only saving grace: the people’s confidence and trust.

It may have taken long, but now it seems that Filipinos are finally waking up, resisting Duterte’s charm, and breaking free from his spell. – Rappler.com

The author is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the UP School of Economics. His views are independent of the views of his affiliations. Follow JC on Twitter: @jcpunongbayan.

I have spent most of the last decade working with and among inspiring leaders from urban poor communities on various issues like housing, health, and gender-based violence. I have also spent the last 15 months witnessing the devastation that has resulted directly from the government’s out-of-control, violent obsession with drugs. I have had the honor of knowing just a drop of the real people and families who have been victimized. Their stories play on loop in my mind. Their faces burn behind my eyes when I try to sleep.

On September 21, I attended the rallies marking the 45th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law with a sign on my chest that said: “I am drug user. Papatayin mo ba ako? #BreakTheStigma.” (Will you kill me?)

There were three reasons why this was the message I chose: First, to challenge the stereotypical image of a drug user. Second, to humanize drug users. Third, to inspire others to stand in solidarity with the overwhelming majority of drug users who are not violent threats to society.

On the evening of September 21, I started receiving worried messages from friends. A pro-Duterte Facebook page had shared my photo with the hashtag #ManlabanParaSaKarapatanNgMgaDurugista. By the next evening it had been shared by other pages and collectively garnered tens of thousands of reactions.

Given the nature of the pages, I expected many reactions to be full of violence and vitriol. Preparing for the worst, I dove into the comments sections. What I found helped enlighten my understanding of the way the most zealous drug war-defenders think.

The following are some common reactions and my observations:

“Magpa-rehab ka”

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While I expected the comments that blatantly said, “Yes, you should die,” I was surprised at the numerous people who believed non-violent drug users and even dependents should be rehabilitated and not killed. There were also those who, while taking a less nurturing tone, emphasized that I would only be killed if I fought back or posed a threat to others.

This was a revelation to me. In this highly polarized political climate, I had often assumed that government supporters also support the killings – that they morally believe the state should wipe out current and former drug users and addicts. Thus, I had given up trying to reach out to supporters because I thought we held diametrically opposite values.

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It turns out, however, that most drug war supporters and opponents hold the same values. Both believe that drug addicts should be arrested and given a chance at rehabilitation. Both also believe that police officers have the right to defend themselves if their lives are in immediate danger.

Where we differ is in what we accept as fact. Supporters believe the state’s claim that deaths only happen when victims fight back. Opponents, on the other hand, point to the communities who report name after name of those who surrendered and quit, but were killed anyway. (READ: Half of Filipinos don't believe cops' 'nanlaban' line – SWS survey)

We point to hard cases like those of Kian, Carl, Jefferson Bunuan, Efren Morillo, Michael Siaron, and countless others who were shot in the back, while on their knees, while handcuffed, or while sleeping. They did not fight back.

While fake news is a real problem, it is always possible to reconcile facts but it is nearly impossible to come to a mutual understanding when you have diametrically opposed moral ideologies. It appears Filipinos have not totally lost their moral compass.

Analytical capacity, however, is something we desperately need to work on.

"User = addict = murderer/rapist" "Drugs = shabu"

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I was careful to put on my sign “Drug user ako.” (I am a drug user.)

Yet, so many netizens were quick to blast me for my drug addiction. Even those who nurturingly urged me to go to rehab belied their lack of understanding of the difference between a casual drug user and an addict.

The vast majority of illegal drug users are not, and will never become addicts. According to a 2016 Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) report, of those who tried shabu or marijuana once, 72% and 75%, respectively, will never do it again. Worldwide data shows that 85-90% of drug users do not become addicts.

The vast majority of people who use or have used drugs, to paraphrase Dr Carl Hart, go to work, take care of their families, contribute to society, and overall live normal lives.

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My sign also did not indicate what kind of drug I use. Many commenters assumed specifically that I was a shabu addict.

However, police operations have also been cracking down on marijuana. In the Congressional investigation about the secret Manila jail, the station chief stated testified that detainees had been arrested for “pot session.”

Raymart Siapo, the club-footed victim whom police told to run before shooting him, was placed on his barangay watch list when a neighbor claimed he used marijuana. As the world and even our own laws move toward legalizing marijuana use, marijuana remains a justification for state-sponsored violence and killing.

'Papatayin kita…sa sarap'

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As expected, the comments also included threats of violence, and especially sexual violence. Hundreds thought they were witty by saying “papatayin kita sa sarap.” Others said they would rape me before cutting off my head. A former DILG secretary, with whom I have had many friendly personal interactions, instructed my parents to “beat the stupidity out” of me.

The violence that characterizes both police operations and zealots’ defenses presents a paradox. Those who defend the killings say they are necessary in order to prevent rapes and murders. Yet, they condone and strive to normalize exactly that: rape and murder. As the President has done on multiple occasions, these zealots are justifying and encouraging the very thing they claim to hate.

If we really care about stopping rape and murder then we are doing a disservice by focusing on drug use instead of focusing directly on rape and murder. If we are serious about preventing rape, let’s invest in massive street-lighting and gender sensitivity campaigns. If we are serious about preventing murder, let’s invest more in the PNP’s campaign against loose firearms.

Instead of mobilizing barangays to identify past and current drug users, let’s mobilize them to identify and monitor those who have displayed violent tendencies. After all, who is more likely to commit rape or murder: A student who takes a few puffs of marijuana while watching a movie? A worker who occasionally takes a hit of shabu to pull an all-night shift? Or, a person who sees a picture of a girl and says “I will rape you. I will murder you.”

'Hindi adik. Bayaran lang.'

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Popular images of drug users are strongly related to class. Say “adik” and the image that appears is usually one of a poor, thin, dark-skinned person in tattered clothes. Unfortunately, the contempt with which society treats the poor has extended to apathy or even joy when the poor are killed. If I received comments like “hindi ka mukhang adik (you don't look like an addict),” photos of real victims in slippers and shorts receive comments like “eh mukhang adik talaga (but you really look like an addict).” In neither case do the commenters know which one of us, if either, has actually used drugs, but the assumption is that the poor person deserved to die because he was probably guilty.

As someone who looks very stereotypically middle class, I have privilege. The point was to use my privilege to stand up for those who can’t. It is not lost on me that my appearance provides me some protection. But, for millions of Filipinos who were not lucky enough to be born with light skin and chubby cheeks, a sign like that, or an unsubstantiated whisper from a neighbor, or prior drug use that they have long stopped, is enough to get them killed.

We must stop treating drug users, especially those who have no tendencies toward violence, as “others.” They are not some underclass living on the fringes of society. They are not salot sa bayan (plague to the country). They are our neighbors, relatives and friends. They are potentially me. They are potentially you.

In summary

I suppose I haven’t addressed the elephant in the room: am I really an illegal drug user? It would be so easy for me to say that I am clean, that the sign was just a political statement, but alas, that would defeat the purpose. What I can say is that I do not hurt people.

I am a responsible person who makes positive contributions to my family, community, and country. Drug use in no way adversely affects my personal or professional lives.

No one has ever become a drug dependent because of me. There are thousands of people just like me who have been killed. There are millions more just like me. Maybe you’re one of us.

Do we deserve to die? – Rappler.com 

Cecilia Lero has a B.A. in Politics from New York University and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame, where she is also a Ph.D. candidate. She has been working with grassroots communities for research, organizing, and advocacy for a decade. She thanks all the commenters who thought she looked young enough to be called "ineng." 

Jazmine and Toto were sleeping with their month-old daughter, Hazel, between them when the masked men kicked in the flimsy door of their patchwork home. Two men pulled Toto by the hair and dragged him outside. The other two held a gun to Jazmine’s head. If she wanted to live, she would stay out of it. There was a petty theft at the fishport earlier that day and the men claimed Toto did it. Now, they said menancingly, he was going to pay. The last thing Jazmine heard before the gunshots was Toto scream.

Jocelyn knew Alan was peddling drugs. The whole neighborhood knew. But he took her in when she was pregnant with another man’s child. He said it didn’t matter. He promised to love both her and her child. They were planning to leave, there had been too many killings in the neighborhood. It was getting dangerous. They needed to lie low for a while. They had just finished packing when Alan said he was going to go out for a beer. It was the neighbors who told her Alan had been shot.

Hide’s mom and her boyfriend rented out their tiny shanty to shooters and users for a few minutes at a time; just so they could get a quick high. Since Duterte’s crackdown on drugs, the P10 or so they got for rent didn’t seem worth it, but “it was still something”. Hide and his wife Michel weren’t supposed to spend the night there that evening. But Michel had barely begun to show and she had just turned 5 months. They could get an ultrasound and know the gender of their baby. Hide’s mom, was excited at the prospect of being a grandmother and asked to go with them.

When the men came banging their door, threatening to break it down, Hide’s mom stalled so her boyfriend could escape. It enraged the men when they couldn’t find him. It messed up their nightly target. But Hide was there. The men lunged for him and tried to kick Michel. He stood protectively between them and Michel. “Wag po yan, asawa ko yan. Buntis sya!” (Not her, sir. That’s my wife. She is pregnant.)

His mom didn’t think that the men would hurt Hide. She shoved his school ID in their faces, scooped up his school uniform to prove he was a student and like a mad woman begged them to spare the life of an innocent student. It didn’t matter. Someone had to die that night. That night it was Hide.

Jazmine, Jocelyn, and Michel are among the thousands widowed by Duterte’s Drug War.

They did not ask for Duterte’s drug war. They didn’t even vote for him.

Jazmine is 16. Jocelyn is 14. Michel is 17. They aren’t even old enough to vote.

Teen pregnancy collides with the war on drugs

Soaring teen pregnancy, most common in urban poor communities, is colliding with drug-related killings that target mostly poor young men.

Every day more than 500 Filipino teenaged girls become mothers. The country has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the region.

Young women like Jazmine, Jocelyn, and Michel barely who don't know how to be mothers, now have to contend with being widows.

Their lack of education limits them in trying to get jobs. Even if they could find a job, it is hard to find employers willing to hire a minor.

A new relationship becomes a way to survive. Jocelyn went back to sex work and found a new boyfriend. Jazmine got back together with the biological father of her daughter, Hazel. When she and Toto started living together, the biological father was in jail and had only recently gotten out.

Michel is evasive about the relationship she had after Hide.

Though they are already mothers, the current Reproductive Health Law, prohibits them from getting birth control from public health clinics without parental consent.

An already difficult life as a teen mother is further complicated by being a teen widow and living with the stigma of a deceased husband labelled as someone who deserved to die.

No case for justice

Toto’s family does not know who to bring charges against and till now, they live in fear. The masked men know where they live. They even came back to Toto’s wake, revving their bikes taunting mourners. “They were like vultures. Making sure my son was dead,” Toto’s mother, Dolores, told me.

Angsty, feisty and now a very bitter Jocelyn does not get much support from her parents. Alan was much older than her at 32 and she doesn’t consider his friends people she can go to.

Only Michel and Mitos, Hide’s mother, have filed charges against 13 Caloocan police officers who directly or indirectly had a hand in Hide’s death.

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) released a resolution last June 2017 finding 13 Caloocan police officers guilty of human rights violations that included: arbitrary deprivation of life, violation of the right to life, murder and planting of evidence.

An excerpt in the resolution reads: “The police officers who conducted the operation also deliberately violated the constitutional right to life of the accused when they, without due process of law, killed victim Hideyoshi Kawata which resulted in instantaneous death. Respondents' counter affidavit show no evidence of violent resistance on the part of the victim during the operation which would at least justify his killing.”

The 13 Caloocan police officers include:

1. PS 1 Waldo Bontogon
2. SPO4 Bernardo Bautista
3. PO3 Adrian Magbalot
4. PO3 Harold Natividad
5. PO3 Carlo Hernandez
6. PO3 Pepito Agabin
7. PO3 Cesar Tolentino
8. PO2 Fernando Usita
9. PO1 Jollie Tacanay
10. PO1 Michael Borja
11. PO1 Muktar Muhamad
12. PO1 Zosimo Cortez
13. PO1 Mary Rosie Orasa

The resolution is set to be forwarded to the Ombudsman for filing of criminal and administrative charges against the 13 Caloocan police. Financial assistance is ordered to be paid out to Hide’s surviving heirs.

There are no statistics or studies on how many young teen mothers have been made into widows by the Duterte administration’s drug war. But as interventions for both teen pregnancy and extrajudicial killings are slow to come by, it is certain that there will be many more young women like Jazmine, Jocelyn, and Michel. – Rappler.com

Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

MANILA, Philippines – In this episode of "Basagan ng Trip," historian and professor Lisandro "Leloy" Claudio invites sociologist Nicole Curato, whose book The Duterte Reader: Critical Essays on Duterte's Early Presidency recently hit the shelves.

Claudio and Curato discuss the 14 essays in the book coming from different voices and perspectives in the academe. The discussion contextualizes the events that transpired during the first few months of the Duterte presidency. 

These essays look at Duterte through many lenses – is Duterte a fascist? A populist? The unifier of the fragmented South? Watch Claudio and Curato's discussion here.– Rappler.com

This past week, the country lost 3 great leaders: businessman Washington Sycip, 96 years old; activist and educator Henedina Abad, 62 years with us; and Jesuit priest and revolutionary Fr Archie Intengan, SJ, a week away from celebrating 75 years in this earth.

All 3 were: patriots of the highest order, who loved this country intensely; committed to combat poverty using all means available; educators or supporters of education, who mentored and supported between them thousands of leaders who were inspired by their own example of servant leadership.

Sycip, Abad, and Intengan changed the country for the better and their work continues through the people and institutions they left behind.

The story of Washington Sycip is well-known. A certified public accountant at 18 years old, he obtained a PhD from Columbia University in New York City. He was founder of SyCip, Gorres, Velayo & Co. (SGV). That itself is a major achievement, as SGV today continues to stand out as a global powerhouse in providing assurance, tax, advisory, transaction advisory, and other services.

But it is his life after retirement from SGV that is more interesting. As quoted in Rappler, Sycip’s profile describes this: “After retiring from SGV in 1996, he continues to be active in business and civic endeavors, and sits on the board of many Philippine and international companies and foundations. His advocacies include the improvement of public education, micro finance and entrepreneurship, and public health. He is relentless in his pursuit to help alleviate poverty. A staunch believer in Filipino talent, SyCip is also an avatar of economic freedom.”

In 2008, when given a PhD honoris causa by the University of the Philippines, Washington Sycip asked hard questions. They signify to me the kind of person this businessman was – he loved this country intensely, spoke truth to power and always frankly, expected both excellence and commitment to give back from everyone by those privileged with wealth and education, and believed in our capacity to be the best in the world. Some of the questions he asked:

• If UP has accurately claimed that during the past 62 years, after we left the US umbrella, UP graduates have occupied the presidential chair for 46 years, then I may ask you, “Why are we in such a mess?"
• Can we blame the religion Spain brought to our shores 5 centuries ago for our limitations or the US for the failure of our democracy? Shouldn’t our decades of freedom be long enough for us to correct any inherited disadvantages?
• With all the talented people we have, why have we not been able to produce a Lee Kwan Yew, who in one generation brought his people in Singapore to income levels of the US or Germany?
• Will UP be able to produce other leaders like (Rafael) Salas and can they succeed on the Philippine political soil?
• We all agree on the need of national unity. Can we point to the politics of fraternities as the root of the excessive time spent on national politics? Or is the lack of unity a basic disadvantage of an island nations?
• Is the sluggish pace of economic development the result of blind acceptance of Western thinking that political freedom or democracy comes ahead of economic freedom?
• Doesn’t democracy assume that there must be the “rule of law” which implies an independent judiciary with well trained and well paid honest lawyers? Where judges may be poorly paid and subject to political pressures is it possible to have an independent judiciary, let alone a working democracy?

Henedina Abad, Representative of Batanes and founding Dean of the Ateneo School of Government, asked similar questions throughout her life as an activist, social development leader, educator, and legislator. Like Washington Sycip, she went beyond asking questions but actually grappled with them, seeking answers on the ground, unafraid of the consequences to her personal safety and well-being.

With her husband Butch, former budget secretary in the Aquino administration, Dina took on the burdens and faced the risks of leadership. In their younger days, they were both arrested by the Marcos dictatorship and confined to the Ateneo de Manila campus. More recently, they have been vilified by their political enemies for imagined crimes when all they are guilty of is the pursuit of governance reforms that this country needs. But fortunately, those of us who know the Abads for decades have not wavered in our faith in Dina and Butch.

Ed Garcia, member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, in a tribute to Dina addressed to Butch last Tuesday describes our experience of the Abad couple:

“As far as I can remember, Dina was always reluctant to engage in partisan politics. It somehow went against her grain. Though she was the founding director the School of Government, there was something in the rough and tumble ways we do politics in our country that felt strange to her. She set the bar high, and compromise was not her cup of tea. 

Dina told it the way she saw it – her principles were her northern star, her manner at times professorial, her approach unrelenting. She felt more at home in the classroom or while working to improve the lives of others, rather than engage in endless debates in the halls of Congress. 

But there she was, taking it all as part of the territory, a modern-day female version of a gender-sensitive Don Quixote de la Mancha tilting at the windmills of Batasan Hills. It is thus fitting that the last vote she took in the House of Representatives was to say no to the death penalty and in the process, gave up her choice committee chairmanship. She was willing to pay the price, and in a sense her untimely passing was part of her ultimate sacrifice in a life full of giving.

It is one of the heartbreaking and unintended outcomes of the efforts that we are engaged in that oftentimes we are led to travel paths that put premium on service to others at the cost of time spent with family, and our normal quest for personal happiness. If there are occasions when indeed doubts cross my mind it is during periods like this when we mourn the passing away of people we have learned to love, knowing that precious time has been taken away from them which they could have better enjoyed in the embrace of their loved ones. . .

We will miss Dina, more than we can imagine. She was one among the few in our legislature who practiced a 'brave brand of politics'. She was principled, and a woman of courage – allowing us to recall what we once said of another woman who broke ground. “Sometimes, the majority is one woman with courage.”

As for me, I am proud to claim Dina Abad as a friend of 4 decades, a giant in our community of practice of good governance, social justice, and political reforms, a leader who was in part responsible for my returning to the Philippine in 2006, rescuing me from a life of exile. In the 10 years I was at the helm of the Ateneo School of Government, she was supportive, giving counsel, nudging me sometimes on political issues, but always encouraging. In 2014, when the school became big enough to separate our ceremony from the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, I made sure it was Dina, the visionary behind the school that would do the honor to deliver the commencement speech. This passage from that speech lingers on with me as her legacy to our students:

"I’d like to believe that you are here now – that you have completed your courses with passion and excellence – not out of caprice or coincidence but because you want to help create a better Philippines through public service. I trust that all of us here today desire pretty much the same thing: a government that truly works for the benefit of the people. What is before us is an unprecedented opportunity to learn, to inspire, and to lead. My dear graduates, go forth now and be the true public servants, the inspiring leaders that events today have made it possible for you to be.”

Before I went to pay my respects to Dina earlier this week, I decided to drop by the place where I first met her sometime in 1979 – the basement of Eliazo Hall (then a conference/retreat center and now a dormitory) in the Katipunan campus of the Ateneo de Manila University, during a post-immersion seminar. I closed my eyes and saw Dina so young again, so beautiful, newly or about to be married to Butch, already tough though unfailingly kind, definitely a visionary even in those years. Forty years later, we say goodbye to the same yet different person, still a leader and a friend but much wiser. 

It's not the same world Dina leaves behind; it's better in some respects among others because of the work that she did as an activist, educator, politician, mother, and wife; in some ways, its worse but that's not because of her, it is so despite all her efforts. We will have to carry on the work for authentic change. She might not be with us physically but I really believe her spirit – and not just her ideas or values – will continue to be with us.

Finally, Fr Romeo Intengan SJ. Fr Archie was a medical doctor, theologian and professor, democratic socialist, revolutionary, former Jesuit provincial, and above all a priest. Fr Danny Huang, also a former Jesuit Provincial, describes their “Manong”: “An utterly sincere, zealous, humble, respectful, kind-hearted man, whose positions I did not always agree with, but whom I always regarded with respect and affection, because of his passion for justice, his acute analytical mind, the sheer goodness of his heart, and his profound faith.”

Fr Danny’s words captures also my experience of Fr Archie whom I first met in 1977 when he gave a retreat to a group that I was part of. I am not sure if that was ACIL or something else. This was also in Eliazo Hall where I also met Dina Abad the first time two years later. 

From then on, I was an admirer of and benefited from Fr Archie’s brilliance, courage, discipline, and personal compassion. Like many, I have had political differences with Fr Archie in recent years, in my case particularly on his perspectives on the Left to whom I have been more reconciled. But we kept our friendship.

To the end, I continued to reach out to him for advice on solving difficult issues. He always helped, no questions asked. And in all the 40 years I knew him, there was one constant advice that Fr Archie gave and I have tried to follow – be faithful to the Church as that is what will save all of us. 

Dina Abad and Fr Archie Intengan were good friends. In his infinite wisdom and mercy, God must have decided that it would be good for them to travel together to the heavens. They will be witness to each other's lives when St Peter meets them at the pearly gates: their love for the poor and our country; their commitment to young professionals and education; their basic goodness and compassion; their kindness and loyalty to family, friends, comrades, colleagues, the Jesuits; the hope with which they lived in this world; and above all, their faith in the Lord whom they are now about to meet.

Washington Sycip, Dina Abad, and Archie Intengan – a trio of leaders and patriots have left us but their spirit lives on in the people they mentored and institutions they built. Surely those of us who are still here can rise to the occasion, inspired by their examples, to build a country this trio can be proud of from where they sit now. – Rappler.com

"The only sure thing about luck is that it will change." – Bret Harte

– Rappler.com

Artwork by Janina Malinis

#FridayFeels is a cartoon series by the Rappler Creatives Team. Cathartic, light, but relevant, it's a welcome break from your heavy news feed! You can pitch illustration ideas by sending a message to the Rappler Facebook page.

The case against Senator Leila de Lima is an abnormal one – abnormal in the way it was put together, abnormal in the way it's been proceeding: It was initiated by President Rodrigo Duterte, it was cooked in his Congress, and it's now being prosecuted by his solicitor general in an ordinary court, not by the tenured, thus presumed more independent, Ombudsman in the court precisely designated to try state officials – the Sandiganbayan.

Thus, the case assumes political color, and makes De Lima a political detainee, although, again, not in the normal sense of one fighting for an opposite ideology but, rather, in the simple and expedient sense of one from a rival political camp. Duterte himself shows no ideological conviction. He seems more like a floating ideologue, if there's such an insect: he flies around a whole garden of ideologies clueless.

Ideology is a system of political and economic thought that chooses a particular character in a particular environment in whom to incubate, and conviction is well-informed steadfastness. Simpleminded, impulsive, and stubborn, Rodrigo Duterte is just all wrong for both.

Before becoming president, Duterte had been a provincial-city mayor for more than two decades. If that length of time afforded him sufficient experience in leadership, it was in leadership by authoritarianism, which is no ideology; it is, in fact, a crime – a crime against a whole democratic constituency. Indeed, he has carried over his authoritarian habits into the presidency, and now threatens a whole nation.

There's little doubt he strong-armed De Lima into jail. She went in, without the benefit of bail, on a charge of conspiracy to sell illegal drugs on the 8th month of his presidency. The supposedly solid evidence presented against her consisted mostly of testimonies of life-term convicts herded by Duterte's justice secretary, himself the penitentiary's chief bastonero; there was no money, no drugs, nothing concrete, let alone solid.

State lawyers quibble that the charge is not selling illegal drugs per se, but conspiracy to sell them, as if, in that case, the standards of judicial appreciation change as to what constitutes prima facie evidence. Certain antecedents should contribute to a more complete and credible picture than the state presents.

When De Lima was chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights and Duterte was mayor, she began to investigate him for death-squad murders in his city, and he threatened to get back at her. They both won in the national elections of May 2016 and assumed office the following July, she as senator, he as president, and the conflict went on.

At a hearing of De Lima's Senate committee on justice and human rights in September last year, a confessed assassin for Duterte, Edgar Matobato, admitted taking part in some 50 summary executions and testified that Duterte himself had 8 kills by his own hand (Duterte would later own to 3). Matobato also told of a plot on De Lima's life when she came to Davao City for her commission’s inquiry; a change of route frustrated it.

Matobato's testimony cost De Lima the chairmanship of the committee in a vote forced by the majority. It also provoked, in both houses of Duterte's sycophantic Congress, public hearings featuring a choir of convicts chanting against De Lima. She was hauled to jail 5 months later. 

In the meantime, despite all efforts at damage control for Duterte, another confessed hitman for Duterte, Arturo Lascañas, managed to get his own story out, first in a press conference, then in a single appearance conceded by the Senate. Lascañas, a newly retired police officer, corroborated Matobato's testimony, then followed him into hiding.

Desperate hopes for De Lima were pinned on the Supreme Court. This week it dashed them, rejecting, 9 votes to 6, De Lima’s petition for the case to be quashed and for her to be set free. The ruling was no surprise, really. Again, antecedents are instructive.

Previous significant Supreme Court decisions in Duterte's presidency also pleased him: exempting Juan Ponce Enrile from the rule denying bail to anyone accused of plunder; acquitting former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, also of plunder; and approving a hero's burial for Duterte's professed idol, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Enrile, Arroyo, and Marcos' heirs are all Duterte allies now.

Each case betrayed a voting pattern that lumped together Arroyo-appointed justices who constituted the majority. In De Lima's case, the 9 consisted of holdovers from that majority and new Duterte appointees.

Such is the abnormal evolution of justice in the Duterte presidency. (READ: De Lima ruling 'one of the grossest injustices' – Carpio) – Rappler.com

Senator Frank Drilon shocked the nation by claiming, during one of the budget hearings last week, that new foreign direct investments (FDI) plunged by 90.3% in the first half of 2017, compared to the same period last year.

This revelation drew a variety of reactions, ranging from curiosity to outrage. One Manila Times columnist, in a viral Facebook post, even implied that people who make such claims “want to destroy this nation.”

But where does Senator Drilon’s figure come from? Is it accurate? Need we worry?

The concept

FDI generally refers to cross-border investments where foreigners have some degree of control or influence on the management of a business in another country.

Inflows of FDI are important for economic development because they promote domestic production, technology transfers, and long-run growth.

The Bangko Sentral, following the international definition, breaks FDI down into 3 components:

1. Equity capital
2. Reinvestment of earnings
3. Transactions in debt instruments

The second and third categories simply refer to FDI generated by previous FDI. They comprise reinvestments of existing capital and intercompany borrowing and lending used, say, to expand operations.

But the first category – equity capital – is especially interesting because it comprises the influx of new FDI. It’s the difference between new funds entering the country (“placements”) and funds exiting the country (“withdrawals”).

Think of water in a bathtub. With an open drain, the only way to accumulate water in it is if the flow of water coming from the faucet is stronger than the flow of water exiting the drain.

The same principle applies to an economy: when inflows of FDI exceed outflows, the stock of new capital increases, and this signals that foreign investors are confident about the economy’s future. Otherwise, they are skeptical of its prospects.

The data

Figure 1 below shows that, in the past two years, new FDI grew by 104% and 81%, respectively.

But in the first 7 months of 2017, new FDI shrank by 81.5% (Senator Drilon’s 90.3% figure doesn’t yet include the July data).

New FDI shrank simply because more investments fled the country than entered: Figure 1 also shows that, in the same period, placements (inflows) contracted by 61.4% while withdrawals (outflows) grew by 94.7%.

Figure 1. Source: BSP. Note: The graph compares January to July data over the years. Senator Drilon’s 90.3% figure doesn’t yet include the July 2017 data.

Looking at the monthly figures, Figure 2 shows that, ever since President Duterte took office, investment outflows (orange line) almost always exceeded the growth of investment inflows (blue line).

Figure 2. Source: BSP.

Of course, equity capital is but one part of total FDI. (Senator Drilon’s fixation over new equity was called by Secretary Ernie Pernia as a “narrow” appraisal of the FDI data.)

But even when you add the other two components – reinvestments and debt transactions – total FDI still shrank by 16.5% year-on-year.

We’ve focused on actual FDI, but the data on FDI pledges or commitments tell the same story. For the first half of 2017, there’s been a 38.4% drop in total approved FDI by the Investment Promotion Agency. The biggest drops were registered by SBMA (91.1% drop) and the Board of Investments (81.7% drop).

The confirmation

The sizeable declines of both actual and pledged FDI seem to signal investors’ increasing apprehensions about the economy. This observation is corroborated by many other indicators.

In August, for instance, business confidence dropped to a 3-year low, partly due to rising inflation, the protracted Marawi conflict, and the Mindanao-wide state of martial law.

This month, the World Bank cut its 2017 growth forecast for the Philippines for the second time in a row: from 6.9% in April, 6.8% in July, to 6.6% in October. This is on account of the slower-than-expected implementation of the government’s “Build, Build, Build” program. Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez merely shrugged off these estimates and said they’re “wrong.”

The country’s competitiveness ranking may have improved by one notch this year, but this reflects not so much our progress (we actually scored lower), but instead, other countries’ fast improvements. Vietnam and Brunei overtook us this year, bringing us down the ASEAN ranking by two notches.

Figure 3 below shows the issues investors are most wary about: the Philippines’ inefficient bureaucracy, inadequate infrastructure, rife corruption, problematic tax system, and unstable policies. 

Figure 3. Source: Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018.

In light of these concerns, investors are reportedly fleeing (or considering to flee) to more attractive neighbors. Members of the South Korean Chamber of Commerce, for example, are moving to Vietnam because doing business there is around two-thirds less costly than in the Philippines.

But this Korean investment flight reveals larger problems. Remember Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo? He was kidnapped for ransom and murdered within the premises of the national police headquarters at the height of the President’s drug war last year. Now who can blame the Korean investors for seeking safer investment destinations?

In spite of all the negative headlines, Duterte’s economic managers are hard at work to attract investors into the country. The finance secretary likes to boast that the President’s trips abroad – costing P501 million so far – have generated $37 billion worth of “investment pledges.” But giving equal weight to pledges and actual investments is inaccurate at best, misleading at worst.

It’s bad enough that investors are witnessing the government’s systemic failure to uphold the rule of law and protect human rights.

But if the government can’t even ensure the physical safety of foreign investors and their businesses, more of them will be spooked and no number of trips and roadshows abroad will boost much-needed FDI inflows.

The reckoning

Perceptions matter a lot in investment. And the latest FDI figures – alongside signs of weaker business confidence, lower growth forecasts, and declining competitiveness – seem to presage a brewing storm in the Philippine business climate.

More importantly, all these could indicate that President Duterte’s style of leadership – characterized by rashness, volatility, violence, and impunity – is turning off new investors and damaging the investment scene.

The last thing we need now is a sustained exit of FDI. Not only could this raise interest rates and accelerate the peso’s weakening in the short run, but more importantly, it could also harm our growth prospects in the long run.

In this choppy sea of Dutertian change, perhaps our best anchor is the economy’s “robust” macroeconomic fundamentals. But if the status quo persists, even this anchor might not prove as sturdy as we think. – Rappler.com

The author is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the UP School of Economics. His views are independent of the views of his affiliations. Follow JC on Twitter: @jcpunongbayan.