As we recall how Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan flattened entire barangays and reconfigured our living spaces exactly two years ago, we are reminded of our daunting duty to those who lost their lives to the typhoon: to ensure we learned from that experience by protecting our lives, families, and properties better from similar extreme events.

That protection can come in various forms, but the clearest sign of a government steadfastly fulfilling its duty is by, first, institutionalizing needed reforms through effective lawmaking and, second, ensuring these improved laws are fully implemented.

Our current disaster law, the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010 (Republic Act 10121), paved the way for reforms by shifting our disaster framework from one of relief and response to one of risk reduction and management. This created a proactive, as opposed to a reactive, approach to disasters.

RA 10121 created the National DRRM Council (NDRRMC) to address the needs its predecessor, the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC), was ill equipped to meet. Moreover, recognizing the changing face of disasters and the way they must be managed, RA 10121 provided a mechanism of self-review.

The law calls for an evaluation of its provisions every 5 years to gauge its effectivity and identify areas that could be improved through amendment. Towards this end, the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), as administrator of the country’s DRRM program, has led consultations with various groups to identify key areas for improvement. With the assistance of the United Nations Development Programme, the OCD has been conducting policy writeshops with representatives of various government agencies, CSOs, and the private sector.

The Ateneo School of Government, as the representative of academe and independent research institutes, is one of 4 CSO members of the NDRRMC. We have been engaging with policymakers in the ongoing sunset review of RA 10121.

We summarize the most critical issues that we, and other stakeholders engaged in the review process, believe the amendment should cover:

1. The creation of an independent DRRM organization with sufficient powers to fulfill its mandate
2. The promulgation of clear guidelines on the use of the country’s national and local DRRM funds
3. The establishment of comprehensive risk insurance and risk transfer mechanisms
4. The full implementation of the law at the local levels. We focus on the first, as it is the foundation of reform, and briefly discuss the rest.

Creating an independent DRRM Authority

A truly effective system requires clear leadership and accountability mechanisms. We have repeatedly advocated the creation of an independent, standalone disaster management organization charged with overseeing a unified strategy to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural and human-induced disasters. We need a single organization (whether an agency or authority) with whom the proverbial buck stops. More importantly, this organization should have access to sufficient funds, manpower, and resources to allow it to fulfill its mandate.

The current structure under RA10121, with the OCD – an office under the Department of National Defense – as administrator of the country’s DRRM program, and the NDRRMC as a policy-making and coordinating body, has been ineffective. Processes have been stalled due to thick bureaucratic layers, leaving disaster managers unable to respond effectively, particularly during the critical 24 to 48 hours immediately following a hazard.

Recognizing this gap, policymakers have, in recent discussions, welcomed the creation of a new DRRM Authority, which will be the primary government body responsible for overseeing, coordinating, and implementing a comprehensive DRRM program. It is to be attached to the Office of the President in recognition of the importance of its function and the multi-disciplinary nature of DRRM tasks.

The NDRRMC will continue to exist as a policy-making and advisory body; however, its chairmanship will be transferred to the President. The DND Secretary, who currently chairs the NDRRMC, will become one of the Council members. The head of the proposed Authority, with the rank of a Cabinet Secretary, will replace the OCD Administrator as Council member, in addition to becoming a fifth vice-chairperson of the Council.

Under the proposal, the Council’s membership will be increased from 44 to 51, with the addition of the following: the Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights; the Executive Director of the Council for the Welfare of Children; the Chairperson of the National Council for Disability Affairs; the Chairperson of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples; the Secretary of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos; and the Chairperson of the National Youth Commission. This augmentation is to ensure that the new DRRM system is inclusive and comprehensive.

Establishing clear guidelines on use of DRRM funds

Consultations with various local government units (LGUs) have revealed great confusion with regard to the generation and use of DRRM funds.

Many LGU officials are unclear on how they can access these funds, and when. The Commission on Audit has found a huge divergence in the understanding of what initiatives constitute acceptable programs within the various thematic areas (prevention and mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery and rehabilitation). This misunderstanding is a critical gap, since LGUs are the first responders during disasters, and their inability to use funds before the occurrence of hazards increases the risk that disasters will ensue.

To address this gap, the proposed bill mandates the establishment of clear guidelines on the sources and use of DRRM funds, both national and local. Improved fiscal management will enable disaster managers and, equally important, the public, to understand what happens to DRRM funds allocated from the national budget, as well as from donations of other governments, international and intergovernmental organizations, CSOs, and the private sector.

In line with the proposed structural reorganization, the Authority should have the power to monitor and manage the funds allocated for DRRM, whether from the government or from external sources. Appointing the Authority to manage these DRRM funds also establishes a clear line of accountability for their proper disbursement and expenditure.

Insuring livelihood and property against hazards

With billions lost from each disaster, one pillar of an effective DRRM program is the creation of a risk insurance and risk transfer mechanism.

This mechanism will allow micro, small and medium enterprises to get back on their feet after the occurrence of hazards, despite the loss of resources required to continue their business operations. This, coupled with the creation of business continuity plans, will increase the resiliency of community members and reduce their dependence on external aid after a hazard disrupts their livelihood.

Fully localizing the law

Another key issue plaguing the current DRRM system has been its inability to create functional DRRM offices at the levels of provinces, cities, municipalities, and barangays. A strategic area for intervention is thus the full implementation of the law at every local level.

This includes fully staffing DRRM offices at the regional and all local levels through the creation of sufficient plantilla positions. Institutionalizing these positions will insulate local disaster managers from partisan politics and ensure the continuity of DRRM programs at the local level, despite frequent changes of local chief executives following their terms of office. Having permanent staff will also guarantee that the pool of personnel trained in DRRM will not be replaced with less able people with every change in local administration.

A promising innovation in the proposed bill is the imposition of penal provisions for the failure to implement the law, and the creation of a Public Assistance and Complaints Office to help citizens aggrieved by the inaction or mismanagement of local officials during disasters. These measures should provide the impetus to implement the law fully. However, we note that this full localization should be supported by the provision of necessary resources by the national government.

Involving the whole of society in DRRM

Throughout the entire process of improving our country’s DRRM system, it is important that all sectors of society are included. The increasing frequency and intensity of hazard events require a comprehensive and inclusive approach to disaster management.

Aspects of this approach include the provision of DRR training in school curricula at all levels of education, whether public or private, as well as the continued engagement of various sectors of society in developing the DRRM system.

We recognize substantial successes in this particular area. We have seen how the OCD continually engages with various government agencies, CSOs, and LGUs, soliciting stakeholder feedback.

Significantly, we have seen our policymakers’ openness to implement the 4 key intervention areas described above, recognizing them as credible ways to improve our DRRM system.

Looking ahead

While much more remains to be done, we have come a long way from the old bumbling system unable to respond to disasters to one with the potential to manage potential hazards proactively to prevent disasters. We are on the right track to achieving the vision of an effective Philippine DRRM system. Our policymakers, CSOs, and other stakeholders are tirelessly working to improve the system so that, despite the predicted increase in the intensity and frequency of hazards, disasters can become things of the past.

Two years after Yolanda, we have moved forward. But we need to adopt and implement these reforms faster. After the sunset review, it is our hope that Congress will act decisively and prioritize particularly the institutional reforms recommended and create a new, independent DRRM authority. Otherwise, Yolanda will be repeated and we will only have ourselves to blame. – Rappler.com

Typhoon Yolanda, otherwise known internationally as Haiyan, was the strongest typhoon to make landfall in recorded history; and we, Leyteños and Samareñyos, had the courage to face head-on its mighty winds and the water surge that went with it.

The United States of America is no longer the only land and home of the brave. There are now three, including the islands of Leyte and Samar. 

Lately, I have been hearing some discussions on how we the survivors should celebrate meaningfully the second anniversary of typhoon Haiyan. I saw two extreme positions: one, to focus only on remembering how we all suffered; two, to forget what happened and focus only on the celebration for having been given a new lease on life.

I personally believe they are compatible. We remember the tragedy as we also celebrate having made it through the fury of Haiyan.

Life is a process; but what is a process? To process is to convert what is raw, useless, even harmful, and make it useful – for example, iron ore. It’s a raw material, but, once processed, the ore can become metal out of which we can make spoons, forks and many other useful tools. So what is raw and useless, once processed, could be become useful.

We are now commemorating exactly two years after we have experienced the indescribable individual and collective tragedies brought by Haiyan, but we are also celebrating.

What we celebrate are two years of God’s blessings. Look at our mountains and the trees. They are green again. Our streets are again heavy with traffic. That means there are lots of activities – and activities are signs of life.

We may have been left behind by six to eight thousand fellow Leyteños and Samarareños who died but we were not left alone by millions all over the world who did their best to keep us alive.

Therefore I should not allow Yolanda to destroy us. Let Yolanda create a better you, a better me. Let not Yolanda be destructive. Let it be creative. I learned three lessons from my Yolanda experience which hopefully will help create a better me.

First, I should treasure what’s essential in life. Just like most, if not all, of our people here, I almost died as I lost practically everything due to Yolanda. I lost my clothes, shoes, cellphone, laptop, lecture notes, books, personal files, and my car; but I realized they are not really important.

They are not essential to life. What really matters in life is our family, our friends, and our God. They are more than enough. One author said: “The most important things in life are not things. They are people.” Your parents, my brother and sisters and our God.

Unfortunately they are the ones we oftentimes neglect and forget. Many foreigners wondered how come we could still smile even in the midst of death and tragedy. They want to know our secret; but our secret to resiliency even after such a disaster of biblical proportion is our faith in God. God was here with us before, during, and after Yolanda and will continue to remain with us. 

Today people speak of building typhoon resistant structures, houses, and buildings. They also speak of financial resiliency, by encouraging us to save money so that we will not be dependent on external help. Others also speak of disaster-resilient businesses, or businesses that are not dependent on changes of climate. But what we have is the best of all these – our faith in God.

Faith is the best resiliency factor that we have, and that is what we all saw before, during and after Yolanda. No wind and water, no matter how strong, can wash our faith away.

Second, I should value only the things that last. Today many things catch our attention: new gadgets, new clothes and pants. They are all fads and fashion; and all these have one thing in common: they do not last. Like anything fashionable, there will come a time, they will be out of “uso”.

St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:13 wrote: “And now there remain faith, hope, and love, these three: but the greatest of these is love.” Focus on things that last: love in the family, love of parents, love of friends, and love of God.

Third, and last, lesson: I should tell myself again and again that where there is love, pain, trial, and sufferings become beautiful. Look at the cross of Christ. It has 2 bars: one horizontal and another vertical. One symbolizes love; the other symbolizes suffering.

Did not our Lord say: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend”? When there is love in the family and when there is love for God somehow they make the pains caused by Yolanda easy to carry.

The umbrella does not stop the rain, but it helps us walk under the rain. Love in the family and love of God do not solve all human problems but they make our sufferings easy to bear. Fill your hearts with love. That’s the secret to happiness even in the midst of heat, recurring brownouts and scarcity of food on the table. As one line of a familiar song goes: “When we're hungry, love can make us alive.” Love supplants whatever we may be lacking materially.

So for us who survived, the best way to honor those who have died is by being a better person. The best way to remember the dead is by being better sons and daughters of our parents, better husbands and wives, better mothers and fathers, and better citizens of this country and of the whole world for we are actually only one people of this earth.

Their best memories are us who survived. We have to show those who died that our having survived the wrath of such a monstrous storm is a blessing to mankind, and not a curse.

Finally, what we all saw in the morning of November 8, 2013, at the height of the typhoon were white tongues of air and water. This reminds me of the Creation story. According to Genesis 1:1-2 “In the beginning, the spirit of God, like a dove, hovered over the waters.” And God said, let there be light. It was the beginning of creation.

There is life after Yolanda, but let us start our new life right. Value the things that are essential, the things that last, and always put love in your hearts. Only then will Yolanda create a truly better me, a better you, a better us. – Rappler.com

Fr. Lito Maraya is the rector of St John the Evangelist School of Theology in Palo, Leyte. He was wounded during Super Typhoon Yolanda and had to have 21 injections and surgery on his right foot. 

The apparent surge of travelers in the past few months “found” with bullets in their luggage only to be victims of extortion has cast another black eye on NAIA, already sagging in its reputation as one of Asia’s worst airports.

Reports about this scam have traveled fast, far and wide through news and social media. Yet this has not deterred the perpetrators.

What is enraging is that the crime – planting bullets in unsuspecting passengers’ luggage – happens in the window to our country. This says much about the extent of impunity here: when a visitor or resident arrives and leaves, he or she is chased by this unsettling reality.

The law is loose, the system doesn’t go after criminals, and is not reassuring to hapless victims.

Here’s the surprising thing: this has been happening for 3 years. But law-enforcement authorities have not put a stop to it.

In 2012, a “BritPaul Northants” from the UK posted in Trip Advisor that a “security agent”  tried to extort $1,000 from his daughter who was leaving the country after a holiday. A “bullet casing” was supposedly found in her luggage.

This was not an isolated case. Data from the Office for Transportation Security show that, in 2012 alone, there were 1,214 incidents of “ammunition interception” in various airports. It is unclear, however, how many of these involved extortion.

This rose in 2013 (2,184) and slightly decreased in 2014 (1,813). So far this year, 1,394  such incidents have been recorded. Most of these took place in Terminal 3 of NAIA.

A retired law enforcement officer in the US, who learned about it through Twitter, has detailed a few steps to deal with this nefarious scheme. The crime can be solved by technology and simple protocols. Are these so hard to do? (READ: IMHO on laglag-bala)

The bullet scam, really, is symptomatic of a larger problem: weak rule of law in the country, where people are not protected from injustices.

In the 2015 World Justice Project which ranks countries in terms of rule of law, the Philippines placed 51 among 102 countries. While this shows an improvement from 2014, when we placed 60, the series of “tanim-bala” incidents remind us that a lot more has to be done to fix the system. 

We can’t resist saying this: there is no silver bullet. The measures to strengthen rule of law range from rigorous enforcement to an efficient and fair justice system. – Rappler.com

In his widely publicized article, “The Conscience of a Progressive," that explains his resignation as Akbayan representative, Prof. Walden Bello asks, “How does a progressive party behave when it is part of a coalition in power?"

In this thought piece I seek to provide my own answers to Prof. Bello’s questions in the spirit also of the above-mentioned article where he states, “This essay is an attempt to bring together my thoughts on the matter, mainly in the hope of sparking a constructive discussion on the challenges and, yes, difficult choices that progressives confront when they cease to be in the opposition and become part of the administration. For being in administration is, for a party that cares about its principles, a hundred times more difficult than being in opposition.”

Ethical disclosures

Before I begin, however, some ethical disclosures. 

Those who follow my articles know that I am a member of Akbayan, because on the rare occasions when there is a clear conflict of interest between what I am saying as a Rappler Thought Leader and my membership in Akbayan, I disclose this fact. This is only ethical as most people who understand journalistic practice and progressive politics are aware. For this article I will add that I am part of Akbayan’s leadership, namely its Executive Committee.

Having said this, unlike Prof. Bello who was saddled with representing Akbayan’s stands, opinions and analysis when he was party representative, I am not similarly constrained to represent the opinions of the party.

Indeed, I and the Akbayan leadership, have upheld the freedom of academics and public intellectuals of the party to express their views regardless of party positions. In my case for example, when I called for the resignation of Budget Secretary Butch Abad this was not the Akbayan position.

But my decision to stay with the party leadership despite my differences is not merely because I am in a position of relative freedom. Rather I have real ideological differences with Prof. Bello about what the term “progressive” means and how progressives accomplish objectives.

What progressives fight for

In the case of the Philippines, certain objectives are commonly held by those who label themselves progressives and even many who do not. There is broad consensus among activists, technocrats and policy makers that rural development is necessary to reduce the unacceptable levels of poverty in the country. Land reform lies at the heart of this effort, along with other important measures that would ensure the economic and environmental sustainability of farms.

Progressives stand against graft and corruption. Naturally one would also be politically naive to believe in the lip service paid to anti-corruption efforts by many in government. Corruption is systemic, and as long as severe maldistribution of wealth is part of the Philippine landscape, the Philippine state is prone to capture by the wealthy. Even leaders who are personally honest cannot be relied upon to be all-knowing supermen who will put in place the right policies or find it easy to do so.

Progressives also have a critique of the current world economic order, and how this system also affects national policies that result in large inequalities of wealth. Most progressives agree that the state is the only mechanism that can control the logic of materialism and accumulation that drives markets. Such control must protect workers from severe forms of capitalist profit-making in order to ensure that workers get a just wage, proper benefits and job security.

Apart from this, progressives also agree that the state is the main mechanism of redistribution towards social justice. In the Philippines this would mean that the government must complete land reform and put in place a progressive system of taxation that would fund common goods like public education, health and social security systems. I personally would go further and include managing natural monopolies in the energy and transportation sectors.

Prof. Bello and I agree on these objectives. Prof. Bello’s article states these, too, and he also notes what actions and legislative proposals Akbayan has put forward to achieve these goals.

I agree with Prof. Bello that the Aquino administration has indeed failed to deliver significantly on land reform, equitable growth, labor protection and has shown an uneven record on graft and corruption particularly around the issues of PDAF (or the legislative pork barrel) and the bigger DAP (or, what I would call the presidential pork barrel).

The luxury of a clear conscience

As one would note, I have so far been in agreement even with Prof. Bello’s assessment of the Aquino administration. And yet I supported and continue to support Akbayan’s decision to stay in coalition with LP and President Aquino.

Perhaps it is the way we look at how we get from a dysfunctional and corrupt political system to a pro-people one that allows Prof. Bello the luxury of a conscience which he implies most of us in Akbayan have lost to compromise and the comfort of government positions.

To illustrate our differences therefore, I need to delve into Prof. Bello’s narratives of certain events.

In his article Prof. Bello states that, “The Napoles scandal made it clear to me that it was time for the party not only to call for PDAF’s abolition in principle but to put its principles on the line by refusing to avail of the sums allocated for the party. To my consternation, my proposal was roundly trounced during a leadership meeting that was held a few days before the surprise presidential decision to abolish the pork barrel.”

My understanding was that the first meeting resulted in a request that the party base be consulted because some of our mass members had come to depend on the medical, educational and assistance programs funded by our PDAF. Some of these programs meant giving out small amounts of support on a monthly basis and beneficiaries needed to be told of the implication of the refusal to take PDAF. I am proud that the members in general accepted the need to give up these programs no matter how much these were needed, because my conscience would have been broken by feedback that those who needed such assistance demanded that we continue to take the PDAF. 

Whatever the decision and the reasons for hesitation, whether it was from the ones who needed the support programs most or the people whose hearts and minds became burdened by being unable to give anything to the neediest, my vote to end the PDAF, was never one taken with a clear conscience. I am still bothered to this day by the denial of the help we could have given to others. In the end, Akbayan refused to take its PDAF allotment though we had indeed lost the opportunity to appear pure by refusing it with alacrity.

I also was at a meeting where we discussed Prof. Bello’s proposal that we withdraw from the ruling coalition in light of the reasons he cogently describes in his article. I remember that there were several arguments made against our leaving. 

One of these was that there were still some hope of passing important legislation such as the Freedom of Information Bill. 

The heavier arguments came from people who had always complained about their new jobs when Akbayan had become a very small part of the patronage that is the mode of doing business in traditional politics.

These people had always complained about how Akbayan members, allies and non-members were making requests through Akbayan such that whatever power we had within government could be used so that their appointments could be confirmed or their local budgets approved or some OFW’s case be given attention, etc.

Naturally this is not the best job for people who consider themselves progressives. They are especially riled because some of the very progressives who sought facilitation were those who criticized Akbayan’s muted criticisms of the Aquino administration as proof of our cooptation.

Yet, it was these very people who believed that somehow the party was managing to use patronage and influence-peddling to get government to respond to some of its ordinary citizens or put more worthy people into office.

Our biggest sacrifice is our purity

It was in small but significant struggles like the victory for the families of Sicogon, that I saw the best of what a party could do for little people. The indigenous families of the island of Sicogon have experienced a long process of losing their homes to development. The last few families who had refused to take resettlement packages provided by a corporation meaning to develop the island into a resort where hit by typhoon Haiyan. They were not allowed to return to their homes by the security force of the developers and were also refused any move into the more undeveloped parts of the island by the government which had declared these areas as natural preserves. The struggle of these families, typical of these stories, is one that has lasted decades with the exhaustion of court procedures wherein their original claims to land had been both upheld and derogated. As a last desperate effort, the families came to Metro Manila to camp in in front of the DENR in order to protest their de facto eviction.

I visited the protest site and sat with the people there. I talked to the women and watched the children as we sweltered in the hot sun under difficult conditions.

The situation, however, was quickly resolved as Akbayan members worked with other social movement actors, its allies in government, and even the land developers, towards a settlement. Part of that settlement was an agreement that none of the parties concerned was to gain any publicity points on the issue. Unlike other political parties Akbayan has kept its promise to keep the story out of the news. (I am ready to take party censure now that I have broken this agreement.) 

I do not now whether it would have suited my conscience better to insist on the original land rights of the people of Sicogon, to make strong anti-development statements against against capitalist corporations and make it an issue against government’s continuing inability to protect the poor. I am certain this would have prolonged the conflict and kept the mothers and their children on the sidewalks of the DENR. Again, I think the compromise is a victory, though my conscience remains unclear to this day.

Still, had the negotiations come at a time when Akbayan was in the dog house with our coalition partners because of some clash with President Aquino being carried out in the papers, I doubt whether our members in government could have worked out a solution with such efficiency. 

Cooptation

Oh, but we are indeed coopted! Our silence is bought indeed by our proximity to power and our satisfaction with the small crumbs that fall from the table! Yet, an Akbayan flag flies in Sicogon and those children are back in school.

In his article Prof. Bello lists also the successes of the Aquino administration in its early years before he chronicles what he believes was a turn towards the betrayal of the people’s interests.

I will not repeat that story except to add that flawed as it seems, Aquino’s appointments to the Supreme Court, the Ombudsman, the COA and the Department of Justice have proved to be the beginnings of restoring faith in some of the badly damaged institutions that bind people to the state. As I write, the admirable Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales is wielding her powers mightily, letting her ax fall on all regardless of whether they are allies of the President or not. President Aquino’s appointment of the Ombudsman will outlive his term and seems to push forward the momentum of anti-corruption efforts which Prof. Bello deemed to have been spent.

I will attest to the many meetings I have attended where Akbayan worked for appointments of those we deemed worthy whether this be to higher positions or small ones. No, this is not a claim to having wielded any real influence in the appointment of the Ombudsman! Those appointments redound to the legacy of President Aquino and the LP. Our influence in bringing about better appointments is minuscule. Crumbs.

We are indeed a small party living with the crumbs. Yet we are like the small mammal in the Mesozoic ecosystem where dinosaurs rule. Later the mammal will become the precursor of many new and wonderful things once the dinosaurs are extinguished. But it could not have seized the opportunities ushered in by new ecosystem if it could not survive within the old one. Indeed the new ecosystem, made possible by a catastrophic event, would not have arisen as such if that small mammal had not lived with the crumbs. Hegemonies are like ecosystems. There is no stepping outside them. There are only different places to be within a hegemony, such as the place where Prof. Bello finds himself and the place where I stand apart from him.  And as we both stand within it, we are all implicated in its sins though our progressive desires make us strive always to newer yet unachieved and perpetually open horizons.

Differing political philosophies

In his book, “Achieving our Country” Richard Rorty talks about the work that socialists and liberals accomplished in bootstrapping the USA from a colony to one of the most successful liberal democracies. He proposes that the current crisis in Left alternatives, the breakdown of the progressive consensus that led to progressive gains in the US, comes from socialists embracing dialectics, whether Hegelian or Marxist.

To make Rorty accessible, I would call the politics of dialectics “the politics of either/or”. Either you are with us or against us. Either you are a socialist or not. Either you have the conscience of the coopted or the conscience of a progressive. But there are other political philosophies for progressives. Rorty speaks of a return to earlier traditions of democratic philosophers like Walt Whitman and John Dewey. I would add though that this tradition continues in the politics of Michel Foucault and other postmodern political thinkers.

Again, to make this accessible, I would call these political philosophies, “the politics of and-also, plus, and by-the-way”. Unlike “the politics of either/or”, of a dialectics that demands conflict-laden syntheses or resolutions, “the politics of and-also” speaks of evolution. Foucault calls this replacing dialectical logic with strategic logic. “A strategy of logic does not stress contradictory terms within a homogeneity that promises their resolution in unity. The function of strategic logic is to establish the possible connections between between disparate terms which remain disparate.”

In practice, such a philosophy has guided early American socialists who worked with disparate individuals from intellectuals, to communists, and the elite like Eleanor Roosevelt for example, help establish an international norm of human rights. Rorty argues that the biggest gains were achieved not by people who measured their actions against some future vision of socialist utopias but by pragmatic considerations of what was merely better than what existed.

In the long weeks of the build-up of Prof. Bello’s open criticism of the party leading to his resignation as representative, I advised only that we try to give our different views hoping that at least Prof. Bello and the rest of the Philippine left would take our statements within the “politics of and also” rather than the “politics of either/or.”

But it would seem that modern political culture has a default to dialectical logic. Articles talking of a conflict between Akbayan were common in the local news. Speculations about the breaking off of an Aquino ally flew. And the party received tremendous criticism from other Left forces seeing our differences with Prof. Bello as a disavowal of him.

It is this logic that I believe will continue to trap us in games of division. Games that the decaying and corrupt political system has played to the hilt, to the detriment of solidarity.

At the time, any response to his call for discussion would have added fuel to a fire that I felt would burn down only progressive houses. This is why I have chosen this late moment of relative peace to respond. Perhaps with this lengthy explanation, people may understand that I wish him well despite our severe differences. – Rappler.com

The Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) is slated to decide next week, on November 17 to be exact, the disqualification case filed by Rizalito David against Senator Grace Poe.

As decision day approaches, there is a debate whether the justices and the senators should be deciding this case on the basis of law, politics or ethics. Among others, for example, Senator Cynthia Villar said she would use fairness as the basis of her vote. She is quoted as saying: “Not all of us are lawyers. So some of us will vote for what we think is fair. It’s not purely legal.” She is also reported by politiko (quoting what she said in an interview with DWIZ) as pointing out: “Maybe we could consult with our lawyers, but in the end it’s your decision. We just need to get their point of view. It can be a political decision, it can be a legal decision, it can be both.” 

So is this a legal, political or moral decision?

My answer is that it is all of the above. And even when it goes to the Comelec and Supreme Court, the case will continue to have legal, political and ethical dimensions. 

Legal considerations

Since the grounds of the petition for disqualification is based on who, under our Constitution, is qualified to be senator of the republic, questions of law must be addressed in the Poe case. Indeed, a decision requires an interpretation of two provisions of the 1987 Constitution – Article 4, Sections 1 and 2. 

Section 1 provides that the following are citizens of the Philippines:  ”[1] Those who are citizens of the Philippines at the time of the adoption of this Constitution; [2] Those whose fathers or mothers are citizens of the Philippines; [3] Those born before January 17, 1973, of Filipino mothers, who elect Philippine citizenship upon reaching the age of majority; and [4] Those who are naturalized in accordance with law."

Section 2 defines natural-born citizens as those “citizens of the Philippines from birth without having to perform any act to acquire or perfect their Philippine citizenship.”

In a simple case, it would not take rocket science to determine who a natural-born citizen is, that being a requirement to be a senator. To answer that, one simply needs to ask who the parents of the senator/senatorial candidate are. If one of them is a Filipino citizen at the time of the birth of that person, then that senator or candidate is a natural-born citizen. If neither parent was a citizen or only the mother was Filipino and the senator or candidate was born before January 17, 1973 (the day the 1973 Constitution took effect), then said senator or candidate is not natural-born.

A naturalized citizen, the procedure of which is established by law, is not natural-born and not qualified to be senator. This is an important consideration because it has been proposed that foundlings like Grace Poe are not natural-born citizens but naturalized citizens. How one can conclude this, requires legal interpretation that naturalization can happen automatically and without overt acts as required by our current naturalization law. I will discuss this point later in the article. 

The fact that she is a foundling is, of course, what has complicated the legal issues. Since by definition, we do not know who her parents are, the straightforward text of the Constitution cannot be interpreted without assistance of legal presumptions and the tool of statutory construction. 

First, who has the burden of proving their case – is it David who alleges she is disqualified or is it Poe who has always been treated as a natural-born citizen by our immigration authorities and previously by the Comelec who allowed her to run in 2013? If it is David, he must positively prove with evidence that both of Poe’s parents were/are foreigners. If Poe has the burden of proof, she must show proof who her parents were and that one of them Filipino. 

Notably, in the case involving Poe’s father, Fernando Poe Jr, the Supreme Court ruled that the presumption is in favor of the person who has always had the status of citizen and whose citizenship has been questioned. SET is bound by that precedent although I recognize that the Supreme Court can decide to vacate that in favor of a narrower interpretation based on the argument that natural-born citizenship for top national elective officials is a constitutional requirement that must be strictly followed.

Second, related to burden of proof, what is the standard of evidence that the SET should use in the case? For sure, it cannot be proof beyond reasonable doubt as that applies solely to criminal cases. In my view, it should be substantial evidence – any evidence that supports a conclusion – which is the standard required of administrative cases of which this is one. But some would argue that preponderance of evidence is more appropriate, given that constitutional requirements are at stake.

In that case, both Poe and David should have presented evidence of their respective cases and whoever had the better (in quality and quantity) of evidence should prevail. Since neither have done that (if there was a match, Poe would have submitted DNA evidence), the only option would be to use substantial evidence as the standard of proof.

Third, how will the SET decide, given the facts we do know? Is the fact that Poe was found in Iloilo City in a church indicative of her citizenship? Would it have been any different if she were found in a foreign ship or in a place where many foreigners live? Is it less or more likely that her parents were both foreigners? Is there anything in her features which can make us conclude that she is a foreigner? 

I believe that using basic logic, deduction and common sense, the SET can make a conclusion about Poe’s parentage. When I see an infant or a child in a hospital or in the streets for that matter, I can make a conclusion, without resorting to legal presumptions, that this infant or child is a Filipino. 

Fourth and finally, how will international law be taken into account in the Poe case? Should the international law on statelessness, which is now considered a customary international legal norm, be applicable to the Poe case? Doesn’t the Convention on the Rights of the Child obligate us to recognize that foundlings are citizens in the fullest sense, and therefore natural-born citizens? Will the Philippines breach any international human rights principle if it rules that foundlings are not citizens? 

In sum, the SET must consider all these legal issues. In my view, there is no dispute about the facts anymore (in that a decision can be made with what we know) or the applicable law. It’s how to interpret the facts and the law. And because the debate is about interpretation, there is no choice but to resort to ethical and political thinking.

Ethical dimensions of disqualifying Poe

What is at stake in the Poe case now pending before the SET is the status of millions of other Filipinos who were born with parents unknown and those foundlings who will be born in the future.

It is not tenable to say that a SET decision that says foundlings are not natural-born citizens affects only Grace Poe since she is the only foundling running for president and the chances of another one doing so is unlikely. The truth is that natural-born citizenship is a requirement for many elective and appointive positions. Declaring that they are not natural-born citizens will result in depriving these foundlings an opportunity to serve as president, senator, representative, justices of the Supreme Court and other justices of collegiate courts, ombudsman and deputy ombudsmen, and commissioners.

Moreover, in my view, there is no middle ground between the SET declaring Poe to be a natural-born citizen or their classifying her and all foundlings as stateless citizens. If they are considered citizens – because the facts of their finding necessitates such a conclusion or because of international agreement or customary international law – they should be considered natural-born citizens. If not, they cannot be considered naturalized citizens as naturalization requires an explicit procedure required by law.

The 1987 Constitution recognizes only two kinds of citizens – those who are natural-born and those who are naturalized. If a foundling is neither, then he or she can only be considered stateless.

In my view, considering foundlings as naturalized citizens would require even more sophisticated legal reasoning than what is required for the alternative outcome, the more natural (pun intended) result of recognizing natural-born citizenship. Naturalization is a procedure specifically provided by law based on an application process. Naturalization can happen through administrative, judicial, and legislative means. It is not and never has been automatically conferred.

A result in the Poe case that is based on the conclusion that foundlings are stateless is unfathomable. We are not talking here of a right to a high office but of basic human rights which require citizenship for them to be bestowed and exercised. A stateless person has only the barest of human rights; many civil and political rights are denied such person. 

A decision that results in tens of thousands, maybe even more than a million, of Filipinos to be suddenly stateless and stripped of their rights as citizens is surely an ethical question. Not only foundlings will be affected but their families, too, including their adoptive parents and relatives when they have, in fact, been adopted. And for sure, such a decision would have a chilling effect on adoption as foreign or stateless children cannot be adopted under present law. Adoptive parents also would be deterred from adopting foundlings because of the complications involved with respect to their legal status. That’s what is at stake in the Poe case.

To be fair, the counter-argument, ethically speaking, is that the Constitution intended such exclusion when it required natural-born citizenship as a qualification for many high government positions. This is true if there is no alternative way the qualification can be interpreted to avoid the unfair and unjust outcome that affects millions of Filipinos. “Dura lex sed lex” is a good principle but one should resort to it only if it is the only way to apply a law. 

SET is a political tribunal

By its very nature and its composition of 3 Supreme Court Justices and 6 senators, the SET is a political body. The fact that its members are not all lawyers means that, from the very beginning, the 1987 Constitution intended its decisions to be political.

By political, I do not mean that the members of SET must follow their political interests or align their decisions to what is expected of them by their political parties. To be political certainly does not mean that the members of SET should vote for what is popular or should consider the electoral consequences to their own career of their vote. 

To make a political decision in a disqualification case like this is to uphold the public interest, to produce an outcome that is fair and just, not only for the candidate or the one questioning his or her qualifications for the office. That outcome must be fair and just to the Filipino people. Certainly, it must not prejudice other people, especially innocent ones.

I would even argue that the ethical and political dimensions I raise in this article apply not only to the SET but also to the Comelec and to the Supreme Court. The Comelec, too, will decide whether Poe is qualified to run for president. They could revisit the foundling/natural-born citizenship issue. They would have to rule on the residence issue, whether Poe has fulfilled the residency requirement given the circumstances of her coming back, with her family, to the country.

The Supreme Court, reviewing the SET and Comelec decisions, and on its own when a case is filed with the Presidential Electoral Tribunal if Poe wins, will also have to rule on these two issues.

I will write about the residence issue in another article. In that case, it is not the rights of foundlings but of global diaspora Filipinos – OFWs and migrants for example – that are at stake. Suffice it to say that like the natural-born/foundling issue, this is also not a dispute about facts but about the interpretation of law.

Should we have a restrictive, strict constructionist approach to citizenship, or should we be more open and liberal about how we define who we are in this republic that can exercise all rights of citizens? But definitely, as I have argued here, law is not enough to resolve the question, as there will also be in such a case both ethical and political dimensions. – Rappler.com

This is his to lose, and Mar Roxas knows it. 

While he said in a Rappler interview that he’s not scared of losing in 2016 – a lesson from his 2010 defeat, he said – he also made a candid admission: he will be his own enemy in this campaign.

Asked during a roundtable discussion with Rappler on October 29 if he’s afraid of losing again, the standard-bearer of the ruling Liberal Party said: “No. That's the difference in Mar today and in 2010….It's not about me, it's not about my ambition. It's about continuing this fight. This fight is a worthwhile fight….this is not tactical, this is not calculated. I mean, remember that when I did this, I was 3%.”

Roxas was referring to his dismal survey numbers early this year that made many Aquino allies panic and prompted them to persuade the President to junk him and endorse Senator Grace Poe instead. For a time, Roxas was unsure whether Aquino would cave in to the pressure to choose the more popular candidate. The meetings in Malacañang between Aquino and Poe didn’t help assuage his and his aides’ fears. 

He wouldn’t admit that he lost sleep over it, but conceded that “PNoy could have easily said…. [the numbers are on Poe’s side].” 

In the end, the President chose him. Had Aquino endorsed Poe, “I wouldn’t have run,” Roxas admitted.

Taste of defeat

That’s one umbilical cord that ties Roxas to a formidable machinery and immense political capital, but also ropes him in to a situation where he has to constantly defend the past, explain it in great detail, and stay in the shadows of the man whose fate made him abandon his presidential ambitions in 2010.

2016 is a fascinating 3-way race among rivals (minus the flip-flopping Rodrigo Duterte, who said he will make a final decision in December) with each unique storylines.

Of the 3, it’s only Roxas who has tasted electoral defeat. That’s why of the 3, I can believe that he will have the toughest stomach for this campaign. He will treat every single day as election eve. And he’s not some pushover administration candidate like Joe de Venecia or Gilbert Teodoro was. He topped one senatorial race. He almost became vice president. He has baggage, yes, but nothing that he and a campaign team – assuming it’s a smart one – can’t overcome.

“I’d given my all and I would have been very happy not being, not being called to [it] again, you know? There's an old, old poem about being called back to the fray or back to the fight. It was a real alternate, alternative for me,” Roxas told Rappler when asked about his 2010 loss.

Thus after Aquino endorsed him on July 31, it seemed there was no turning back for Roxas: he’s blazed the campaign trail, he’s attended all public events he could muster, he’s pressed thousands of hands, he’s courted countless politicians, he’s sat down in endless meetings, he’s granted all sorts of interviews. 

He’s running like he’s still at 3% (Pulse Asia put him at 20% in September). He’s running like he could lose tomorrow.

This, again, is on account of the lessons from 2010, which he himself captured in one sentence: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Who is his toughest rival in the race, we asked him. 

“I, myself.”

What did he mean? 

“[For me] to make a mistake, right?”

Roxas doesn’t have to stay alert for any mistakes. What he needs to do is to take a step back and see where he is now – which is still far from victory.

Four points for the presidential candidate with the most formidable war chest in town: 

1. Talk presidential, give us the big picture. In his campaign sorties, in his media interviews, in public forums, Roxas dives into depths where no voter would dare go. That’s his comfort zone: dissecting a problem down to its minutest details. I asked him: What decisions have you made based largely on your instincts? He paused for what seemed like eternity before saying: “I will have to give that a good think, but basically instinct is always what's straight out, what's common sense, what's effective, that's basically my instinct whenever I'm confronted with a decision. Zamboanga, I was in Malolos Bulacan, I received a sketchy report in my cellphone that a number of these Muslims were caught with guns and with uniforms, with patches inside Zamboanga City. Two on two together there was a report of a fire fight out in Zamboanga Bay with the navy. Instinct, there is something brewing here, this is all within the context that Misuari was making his caravans around Mindanao. Instinct, I called up Sec Volts, we don't know 2 + 2 = 5 ba ito or ano ba ito, puntahan natin (is this 2 + 2 = 5 or what is this, let's go there), let's go with the front line. True enough, when we got there putukan na, barilan na, bombahan, mortaran (there were explosions, shooting, bombing, mortars). So it's really instinct to be there, that got us there. Yolanda, just go back to Yolanda, it was instinct, we were at Aquinaldo, NDRRMC… So it's really the instincts to get something done to be there. Just to continue with this thread, we were in Borongan Samar, the landfall was in a town north of Borongan, instinct puntahan natin (to go there) because there was communication, nobody could tell the police, nobody could tell what was happening there….So my instinct is to take action, my instinct is to go and find out what can be done and actually do it."

Whew!

This isn’t entirely bad. Fidel Ramos was the same: he’d bore you with pieces of information in a monotonous, lecturing voice. As defense secretary he’d even walked out on reporters who asked questions that piqued him. But when he hit the campaign trail, Ramos changed one thing: he took the long view. He dished out information, yes, but he always connected the dots, situated them in the region and the world. Always. That was his charm despite the dry slogans (unity, solidarity, teamwork) that paled in comparison to Miriam Defensor-Santiago's brilliant prose. He opened our eyes to the rest of the world.

Roxas talks and leaves you with data, information and jargon, not nuggets of wisdom. He leaves you with a specific solution to a specific problem, but doesn’t help you understand what’s at stake. The millennial voter is not a bureaucrat. She wants – and needs – perspective. 

2. Campaigning is connecting. Mar Roxas off-cam is different from Mar Roxas on-cam. This much we’ve witnessed first-hand. In an off-the-record dinner that the Rappler team had with him last June, Roxas talked off-the-cuff, recalled anecdotes that were either funny or sad, cited statistics but just enough for us to chew on, and actually shared certain things that we mulled over long after dinner. In our October 29 interview, Roxas  also provided more insights during the informal chat we had with him than during the live interview. At one point, we complained that his answer to the traffic question during the live interview was too long. He quipped: “But otherwise I'm just giving you two-second sound bites. What's the point?”

But campaigns are basically passionate, emotional endeavors. Brave and admirable is the man who decides not to dumb down and merely entertain his audience. But woe to the man who will defy the wisdom of the crowd: it’s all about connection – in words and in gestures. To put it simply, Roxas has yet to connect.

3. Daang Matuwid can be a trap. This is the core of the campaign of Mar Roxas. It is also its weakness. Liberal Party ideologues have walked us through this path – why Daang Matuwid is the correct strategic foundation of the Roxas campaign, why it strikes at the heart of what this nation deserves, why Aquino’s continuing popularity is the best proof that Daang Matuwid – both as the fuel of the campaign and as its key message – will work for Roxas. 

It will, but only to a certain extent. And only when Roxas will play it smart. 

For now, he allows himself to fall into the trap and get drowned in it – sounding at times defensive, at times self-righteous, at times repetitive, at times like the President. But Daang Matuwid is only the plane to his destination and – I hope he’s aware of this – he is the pilot of that plane. Daang Matuwid is the past, not the future. The future is something that he, as Mar Roxas, should help create with the voters. He can redefine Daang Matuwid for himself and for what he wants to be.

But can he, really? Does he know what he wants to be? It doesn’t show so far, given his failure to give a fresh take on existing policies and his inability to step back, look at issues in a new light, and connect these to our future.

4. Courage takes many forms. Roxas said he’s not for the sound bites. He’s not the bombastic type. That’s true, and for that he's liked by certain sectors. But courting votes also requires one thing: courage. The courage to make a clear stand even on things that have not been clearly thought out, the courage to differ with an Aquino policy and spell out why, the courage to spill words that don’t necessarily follow the Daang Matuwid script.

Roxas has mastered his responses to criticism of the Aquino administration. He has ready statistics and data to disprove accusations here and there. He can spend precious minutes defending an Aquino policy. But he winces at controversies and suddenly is sparse with details when confronted with hard truths and criticism. 

What did his instinct tell him when he learned about Mamasapano, clearly a tragedy that caused a gap between him and Aquino? He said his instinct was to find out what happened. And gives a rundown of the steps he took, sidestepping the core issue: What does he, as a leader, think about the Mamasapano fiasco?

I asked him about what is common knowledge in the Philippine National Police: that the Iglesia ni Cristo is well-entrenched in the Quezon City Police District. He dodged the question. “Wala naman. There are always these rumors.” And went on to talk about his pet project, Lambat-Sibat.

It’s still 6 months away from election day. Roxas himself said it’s too close to call. But in reality he knows what he wants: to run ahead and get to the tipping point.

Defending, detailing, and deflecting won’t get him there. He now has to be his own man – assuming the Daang Matuwid strategy to victory has room for that. – Rappler.com

For entrepreneurs, no matter how hardworking you are and how much potential your business has, one thing is for sure: you need starting capital.

Access to credit, with reasonable terms and interest rates, is a critical piece in the business development pie, whether for start-ups and micro-enterprises, small and medium enterprises, or large businesses.

When it comes to bigger, established businesses, banks often compete to offer them loans. Their solid track record for success together with assets they can sign off as collateral decreases the risk of lending to them.

But what about our micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which comprise over 900,000 registered businesses in the Philippines?

The MSME sector, a sector fundamental to our country’s inclusive growth and development, is lacking in financial support.

According to a recent study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on SMEs in Asia, the Philippines was ranked one of the lowest in terms of share of SME loans to total bank loans in 2014.

The average share of SME loans to bank loans in lower-middle income Asian countries is considered quite low, at 14.6%. But the Philippines falls shorter than this average at only 10.3%, which is just enough to meet the mandatory compliance requirement for banks provided by law.

What’s more, a closer look at the data reveals that lending to micro and small enterpise by banks was only at 5.6% in 2013 and 4.6% in 2014, both below the legally mandated 8%, which tells us that banks would rather pay penalties than take on the risk of lending to our smaller businesses.

Bridging the gap

Given the situation, the government must take a more proactive stance in bridging the gap between MSMEs and their capital needs.

With policy-mandated quotas unable to encourage banks to lend to our entrepreneurs, we must look for other ways to complete the financing spectrum for this sector.

For micro-entrepreneurs, a growing microfinance industry is a great sign. In 2013, a study released by the ADB showed that there were 2,000 microfinance institutions and 200 banks servicing over 7 million microfinance clients.

Some of them even go beyond offering loans at reasonable terms and work closely with their clients in building their businesses through training and market linkage. These are the microfinance NGOs that will benefit from our recently ratified Microfinance NGOs Act.

However, MFIs are limited to loans between P5,000 and P150,000. The largest gap in access to credit lies in loan requirements from P200,000 to P5 million, which are primarily for our small enterprises.

This break in the chain of financial inclusion hinders the growth of local enterprises and, therefore, must be addressed.

One technique to bridge this gap is to provide them the collateral that banks require – hence our Credit Surety Fund (CSF) Cooperative Act that was just finalized at a recent bicameral conference.

What this legislation does is bring the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), Department of Finance, Cooperative Development Authority, and Local Government Units (LGUs) together with various cooperatives and NGOs to create funds that will serve as a guarantee or a form of collateral for members of these cooperatives.

The CSF Cooperative Act will give entrepreneurs access to loans from financing institutions by quelling the risk with a “guarantee fund.”

What not many may know is that credit surety funds are already in existence in the Philippines thanks to the 7-year program run by the BSP. There are already 40 CSFs involving 548 cooperatives across 50 LGUs.

With the ratification and signing of the CSF Cooperatives Act within the year, these guarantee funds become accessible and available to more entrepreneurs around the country.

We can hope that more Filipino entrepreneurs will get the financing they need to grow successful businesses, generate more jobs, and spread wealth and opportunities throughout the Philippines.

We can also hope to continue strengthening support for entrepreneurs and complete the range of financing products for MSMEs through policy and inclusive and innovative financing. – Rappler.com

Senator Bam Aquino is the youngest Senator in the 16th Congress of the Philippines. In his two years as legislator, he has passed 5 laws with 3 more awaiting the President’s signature. Connect with Sen. Bam on Facebook (www.facebook.com/BenignoBamAquino), Twitter/Instagram (@bamaquino) and through e-mail (team.bamaquino@senado.ph).

When US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton launched her campaign this past April, she did it with a video featuring two same-sex couples, cementing her candidacy as one that supports LGBT rights and marriage equality. 

Barring unforeseen upheavals, it will be Clinton who will win the presidency next year, and part of that will be because her campaign managers know the importance of recognizing the demographic of the American electorate, honing in on her minority constituents, and making the gay community a priority in her platform.

Obviously she is doing this because 60% of Americans now favor same-sex marriage and 46% know at least one same-sex couple who has gotten married. This is a long way from the time the Clintons supported the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 when 68% of Americans were still against same-sex marriage. Along with President Obama, Hillary Clinton's political stand on this issue has evolved with the attitudes of the rest of the country about its LGBTQI citizens.

Is the Philippines the 'most tolerant' Asian country?

While 70% of the Philippine population is against same-sex marriage, according to Pew Global Research 73% of Filipinos also believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society. 

It can't be denied that LGBTQI citizens carry their weight and play major roles our workforce, government and in media. The booming BPO industry employs a large number of LGBT employees because they are good workers who are able to work atypical hours and are not as hindered by family or childcare issues.

Project Pink, a survey in the Philippines conducted by the Philippine Survey and Research Center in 2011, concluded that 70% of transgender (female) respondents and 70% of gay male respondents are the main financial decision-makers in their families. This study also found that LGBT consumers are high earners who enjoy a significant degree of financial independence.

One in 20 Metro Manila residents openly identifies themselves as LGBT. This means that there are at least 600,000 LGBT people in Metro Manila alone, not counting those who are not "out" or do not identify as LGBT but are in same-sex relationships or encounters. Following this math, there are at least a few million LGBTQI citizens and their families whose votes any savvy politician could easily obtain should they make even the smallest effort to reach out to this demographic. 

Current LGBT issues 

1 in 10 Filipino gay youth have been assaulted in their own homes, a number that is underrepresented due to lack of reporting. The reality of bullying, discrimination and hate crimes has become the norm for LGBT Filipinos. 

The anti-discrimination bill that would protect LGBT citizens from discrimination in schools, companies, organizations and medical facilities is still stuck in congress. Thousands of children growing up in homes with same-sex parents remain at risk without legal protection.

The government continues to ignore the fact that the Philippines has the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the world, with 22 new cases per day this year.  It is spreading in uncontrollable rates in major cities, with Quezon City having 6.6% prevalence in males who have sex with other males (MSMs).

We all know or are related to at least one LGBT individual or same-sex couple. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are in all levels of society, in every workplace or educational institution, in hospitals, in the military, and in every industry. One would be naive to believe they don't interact with a member of the LGBTQI community on a regular basis. 

Pretending we don't exist

Our current batch of presidential candidates are completely ignoring the existence of the gay community in their platforms, unless it's to host a partythat vaguely acknowledges the entertainment value of gay men and trans women in the hopes that it will be enough for a minority that is so hungry for validation. 

We have yet to hear a single candidate even mention the LGBT community as part of the Philippine population. 

The first candidate to mention his or her support of equal rights for LGBT community will be the wisest one. It means that he or she supports minorities and believes in equality for all Filipino citizens. Supporting equality doesn't equate to an approval of same-sex marriage or a defiance of one's religious beliefs, just that one has the maturity and compassion to want for others what is readily available to everyone else. 

Even the abrasive Duterte supports same-sex marriage and rejects the oppression of the LGBT community. Despite his other leadership flaws, it is enough for an educated voter to see that this candidate sees things differently if he supports the most oppressed minorities. 

Risa Hontiveros has always openly supported the LGBT community and women's rights. It has not harmed her political career and has only put her in a positive light as a progressive leader who strives to fight inequality in Philippine society.

Many of the nation's entertainers, shakers and movers, corporate and media leaders are gay. LGBT groups have educated and eloquent leaders as well as significant social media presence. The gay community and its allies are even able to dictate which establishments and products to boycott or support based on their anti-discrimination policies. The purchasing power of the LGBT community in the Philippines remains to be a significant force. 

The smart candidate

A candidate that openly supports equality and is against the discrimination of LGBT people can easily get the votes of the community as well as those of their family members and friends. He or she will only appear to be on the side of progress and open to modern ideas on how to advance a society into one that embraces tolerance, inclusiveness, and equality. 

As for the rest of the presidential candidates who believe that ignoring the millions of LGBTQI citizens and their families is acceptable, it might be time for them to recognize that pretending we don't exist doesn't mean we'll disappear. Gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender Filipinos are coming out, educating and organizing themselves so that our concerns are also addressed. Many of us are financially independent with disposable incomes and are able to exert significant influence in our respective industries, as well as advise our associates and subordinates on which candidates truly believe that every Filipino should be have equal rights.

In a recent campaign stop, Hillary Clinton laid out her clear plan for the LGBT community of the US, putting emphasis on hate crimes and bullying in her speech as well as clearly stating that "LGBT folks deserve the same rights and opportunities as any other American."  

Yesterday, President Obama became the first sitting president to appear on the cover of a gay magazine when Out Magazine named him Ally of the Year. Supporting the LGBT community has obviously become the norm in the US and homophobia is fast becoming a pre-occupation of obsolete and ignorant Americans. 

Is the Philippines so far behind? 

Maybe we are just more vocal about traffic and the laglag bala scam, but conveniently sit in silence when faced with the gross inequality between social classes and the oppression of our minorities. Maybe we are silent because we only support those who address issues that directly affect us.

But LGBT Filipinos live and work alongside us daily. We are raising children, supporting families, and face challenges just like the rest of the population. We are your bosses, co-workers, subordinates, brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, friends and your children. Don't say you are our friends or that you accept us if you don't believe we should have exactly what you have. 

Ignoring the HIV/AIDS epidemic will have far-reaching effects on the rest of the population in a few years' time, with a growing number of current infections being women and children. Refusing to protect minorities from discrimination allows the oppression of all minorities, including the ones to which you might belong. Failing to recognize same-sex parents affects the children in these unions when they don't have the legal protections afforded to typical families. Failing to protect minorities institutionalizes discrimination, bullying, violence and hate crimes. 

Our current crop of presidential candidates seems to have this great fear of acknowledging that the LGBT community exists. Either that or they believe that acknowledging us as fellow tax-paying Filipinos means they'll alienate the rest of the population.

Perhaps politicians don't feel we make enough difference in our communities or make any impact on whether they'll be elected or not. It might be up to us to show how influential we actually are. Maybe they believe that it is only a certain portion of the population that they need to woo in order to be elected, and that the rest of us will just sit by and once again let yet another administration be elected into office and fail its people in the most fundamental ways. 

Unfortunately, they are probably right. – Rappler.com

There are six serious aspirants for the second highest post in the land while there are only 4 for the top post.

Santiago, Binay, Poe and Roxas have all declared while Duterte is now showing a glimmer of interest. As of this writing, PDP Laban has picked Duterte as its standard-bearer. The stage-managed “Digong clamor” is fizzling out. And the script is getting tiresome. The public wants to know: Are you in or out?

The job of the vice president is disdainfully described as essentially ribbon cutting, and VIP-guesting at weddings and funerals. The position is likened to a spare tire, the 1st runner-up in a beauty pageant, gentleman/lady-in-waiting – yet it’s hotly contested. What is going on? 

Let’s scrutinize the vice-presidential field:

Chiz Escudero: The current front runner has become a controversy-magnet since he broke ties with NPC and his former benefactor Danding Cojuangco in 2009, supposedly due to campaign funds. 

He has since reportedly found another “angel” in Roberto Ongpin, Chairman and CEO of Alphaland who was implicated in the Boy Scouts’ exposé of VP Binay’s alleged anomalies. Balesin Island Club is the flagship project of Alphaland. It was the posh venue of the much-publicized wedding of Chiz and Heart.

The parents of actress Heart Evangelista did not spare their punches. They called Chiz a drunk, an opportunist, a Jekyll and Hyde among others. Thankfully that fence seems to be slowly mending.

Bongbong Marcos: The son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos is moist-eyed for the vice presidency but not for the suffering of the Martial Law victims.

FIND (Families of victims of Involuntary Disappearance) condemned Bongbong for repudiating the Martial Law carnage. They expressed their wrath in their statement "Today, these poignant memories are mocked and dishonored by Bongbong who insists that the best administration was that of his father as he glosses over the existence of some 100,000 victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime."

There are also nebulous claims of economic progress during the 21-year Marcos reign. But the record shows that when Marcos started his extended tenancy, the Philippines was 2nd only to Japan. By the time he stepped down, the country was known as the “Sick Man of Asia.” 

The scariest part is his mother Imelda makes no bones about craving a Bongbong presidency. The specter of a possible second Marcos tyranny sends jitters down the spine.  

Alan Cayetano: His Senate term does not end until 2019, but he has set his sights on the vice presidency in 2016. The one thing he cannot be faulted for is lack of ambition.  

In fact it seems like the entire family is into politics. There has been a Cayetano in Congress since 1998, counting 21 years when Alan’s term ends. His father Renato was Senator from 1998-2003, followed by Pia ( 2004- 2016) and Alan (2007-2019). 

Both Alan (1998-2007) and his wife Lani (2007-2010) became representatives of Taguig, Pateros. The younger brother Lino is currently the congressman of the 2nd district of Taguig, while Lani serves as Taguig Mayor. His lesser-known older brother Ren was a former Muntinlupa councilor. So it’s not an exaggeration to say that indeed politics is a family business.

Gringo Honasan, Sonny Trillanes: Their claim to fame is launching botched coup attempts. Honasan was poster boy of the coup against dictator Ferdinand Marcos instigated by Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos. The coup bug must have bitten Honasan because he launched at least 7 more failed coup attempts during Cory Aquino’s 6-year term. His almost canine devotion to his patron and mentor  JPE is well-established. Enrile’s recent endorsement of Bongbong for VP raised a few eyebrows but by now no one expects principled consistency from trapos.

Honasan initially refused the Bi-hon offer, but was eventually persuaded, like a good “soldier," as VP Binay said.

Trillanes, on the other hand, tried to end Gloria Arroyo’s 9-year reign citing the extreme corruption of her government. Filipinos voted him into the Senate in support of his protest against GMA. Poe has endorsed Trillanes. Is he an alternate VP to Chiz?

Leni Robredo: She’s the one who didn’t raise her hand for the job. The one who didn’t desire and connive to run as VP. The one who prayed for guidance, consulted her constituents, and waited until her children gave their blessings. The one who genuinely wants to serve the people as she had been doing all these years. 

The widow of former DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo, the icon of good governance, Leni was already in the nation’s service long before the political spotlight shone on her. 

As a lawyer in the Public Attorney’s Office, she gave free legal assistance to the poor. She was deeply immersed in organizing fisher folk, farmers, urban poor, women and youth sectors, persons with disability and Indigenous peoples. She has championed and empowered women and youth – all without fanfare. 

Leni Robredo believes that real progress can only happen if every Filipino, especially the voiceless at the fringe of society, lives with dignity and rises above abject poverty. She has dedicated herself to the ordinary Filipino. In her own words – sa mga naka-tsinelas, nasa labas, nasa ibaba at nasa laylayan ng lipunan.

The reason she is so credible, is because she walks the talk. And rides the bus to be with her constituents every weekend. Goes on habal-habal scouring the farthest barangays to find out how she can improve their lot. She believes that leaders must empathize and experience the pain of the underprivileged in order to serve better. She’s not power-hungry and lives by her husband’s mantra that public service is a privilege. She’s got my vote.

There’s one question left unanswered. Why is there so much interest in the VP post? 

Another description of the vice presidency is that it could be the “launch pad” to the presidency. The VP post is at a striking distance to the top office that they are really slavering for. And this is probably the real appeal for ruthless aspirants. 

Among many vices, there’s only one virtue. – Rappler.com

It isn't really just about the special traffic lanes or even the reorganizing of the life of the nation's capital for a few days because of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Although they do make visible the real problem with APEC – it's an exclusive organization that for the last 26 years has been promoting the most exclusionary economic policies the world has ever seen. The people of the Asia Pacific region, including the Philippines, are the worse off for this.

The clearing of Metro Manila's streets around the time of the APEC summit is a minor feat of social engineering. The government declared a 4-day holiday, asked those with money to spare to go out of town on vacation, obliged those on "no work, no pay" schemes to stay home, and removed homeless and others apparently deemed unsightly.

The reorganization of entire economies through free market policies of the kind APEC has promoted since its inception, on the other hand, is a massive feat of social engineering. Decades of countless globalization-oriented international trade deals, domestic economic laws and policies, and business practices have shaped industries, commerce, public utilities, social services, governance, and even the way people think and interact with each other.

The problem is that APEC is very much an elite club. The highest ranking heads of state or otherwise economic leaders that give APEC its unique political prominence in the region very much come from elite political classes. APEC institutionalized how these political elites work with economic elites. Chief executive officers (CEOs) and the business elite do not just hobnob with officials during the annual summits but are an essential part of the APEC organizational structure and are involved in its work program throughout the year.

This is in stark contrast to how the farmers, fisherfolk, workers, vendors, small-scale traders, and others in the informal sector who compose the majority of citizens in APEC member countries are conspicuously absent in APEC processes. If anything, as we will doubtless see during the APEC year-capping summit itself on Roxas Boulevard, they will be forcibly kept as far away and as out of sight of APEC leaders as possible.

APEC's globalization

APEC's considerable economic work is consistent with its character as an elite club. APEC was created in post-Cold War 1989 to give even greater momentum to the neoliberal free market economic policy offensive which picked up as the Berlin Wall and the Soviet bloc came down. But so-called free market policies have never been democratic and have ever since benefited primarily those who have the economic power to dominate markets to begin with. In the current world economic order they particularly benefit the biggest capitalist powers US, Europe, Japan, and of course the newest challenger, China.

APEC's first-ever Joint Ministerial Statement on its creation talked about advancing "global trade liberalization" and "regional cooperation" and supporting the Uruguay Round talks of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The United States (US) convened the first APEC leaders' summit in 1993. While the leaders' declaration loftily declared the vision of "prosperity for people" it also gave the critical final high-level political push for the conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994. 

The leaders' declaration from the last APEC summit in the Philippines in 1996 reflected the globalization hype of the time. It "reaffirmed the primacy of an open, multilateral trading system based on the WTO" and "launched the implementation phase of [the] free and open trade and investment agenda". It also formed the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) as a key, high-level body in APEC to "[engage] the business sector as a full partner in the APEC process". This institutionalized the belief in the benefits of the invisible hand and profit-seeking.

Amid criticisms from the mainstream Philippine Left, which launched the People's Campaign Against Imperialist Globalization (PCAIG), including a kilometers-long protest caravan to the summit site in Subic, the 1996 leaders' declaration from the Philippines "affirmed [the] commitment to sustainable growth and equitable development" and boldly expressed "full confidence that the APEC process will produce substantial, concrete, measurable and sustainable results which will tangibly improve the lives of all our citizens by the turn of the century."

Globalization, free trade, and investment liberalization have since moved forward in the Asia-Pacific on the back, not just of the high-level summit, but also hundreds of APEC technical committees, working groups and task force meetings annually. These support and complement the binding deals made at the multilateral WTO, as well as in regional and bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). They also influence market-based policies implemented through domestic legislation and economic programs. 

Philippine outcomes

Today, 19 years later, the criticisms from the mainstream Left in 1996 have proved prescient. Notwithstanding considerable growth hype and prosperity for a very few, the majority of Filipino people and the national economy are actually much worse off than before.

The Aquino administration has made much of rapid economic growth under its watch. The 6.3% average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the period 2010-2014 is certainly markedly faster than the 3.5% rate in 1992-1996. As might be expected upon opening up the economy, trade and foreign investment have also increased since the 1990s.

Trade measured as imports and exports combined increased from being equivalent to 90% of GDP in 1996 – by which time trade liberalization measures since the early 1980s were already in full effect – to 95% in 2014. Annual foreign investment flows are 4 times larger now and increased from US$1.5 billion in 1996 to $6.2 billion in 2014. The stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country has correspondingly grown seven-fold from $8.3 billion (9% of GDP) in 1996 to $57.1 billion (20% of GDP) in 2014.

However all this growth, foreign trade and FDI have not produced real development. For instance, producing goods using available natural and human resources is critical for national development and needs to be given priority over being a merely service economy. But the Philippine has fared very poorly here over the last decades of globalization. We are now more of a low value-added service and trading economy than a producing economy.

What has shrunk?

The agricultural sector has shrunk since the last APEC summit in the Philippines 19 years ago. Its share in the economy has fallen from 21.1% of GDP in 1996 to 10% in 2014 and its share in total employment has also fallen from 42.8% to 26.9% over that same period. Some 1.4 million agricultural jobs have been lost since 1996.

Likewise, the manufacturing sector has shrunk since the last APEC summit in the Philippines 19 years ago. It fell from 25.3% of GDP in 1996 to 23.3% in 2014, and its share in total employment, from 9.9% to 8.3% over that same period. Around 72,777 manufacturing firms – largely micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) – closed between 1996 and 2012 or some 4,549 annually. The 97,841 manufacturing enterprises employing 1.25 million workers in 1995 fell to just 25,064 enterprises employing 1.19 million in 2012. The most closures were in garments, textiles and footwear, food and beverage, furniture and fixtures, metal, and machinery.

The shrinking of the country's most important job-creating sectors explains why the number of unemployed and underemployed Filipinos has kept growing since the last APEC summit in the Philippines. The economy today is only creating half the number of jobs it did 19 years ago – the 766,967 jobs created in 2014 is almost exactly half the 1.5 million jobs created in 1996. IBON estimates of 12.2 million unemployed (4.3 million) and underemployed (7.9 million) Filipinos in 2014 is 3.9 million more than during the last APEC summit in the Philippines in 1996.

This is the worst jobs crisis in the country's history and drives increasing numbers of Filipinos overseas. The number of Filipinos still forced to find work abroad every day has tripled. The 1,809 overseas Filipino workers leaving every day in 1997 increased 278% to 5,021 daily in 2014. To put this figure in perspective, this number of Filipinos deployed last year is nearly double the only 2,800 jobs created domestically per day. The number of overseas Filipinos increased by 3.3 million, from 7 million in 1997 to 10.2 million in 2013.

These are why the number of poor Filipinos has kept growing since the last APEC summit in the Philippines 19 years ago. IBON estimates of 66 million poor Filipinos struggling to survive on just P125 or less per day is the most number of poor Filipinos in the country's history and almost as much as the country's 72 million population in 1996. The government's official estimate of just 24 million poor is only those in extreme poverty. 

But these are not even all that the market forces unleashed by globalization have wrought. Real wages are stagnant and work made contractual for the sake of "competitiveness"; farmers without market power are kept landless by market-based land reform; agricultural land has been converted to more profitable commercial, residential and industrial use; water, power and rail transport rates are driven inexorably upward; schooling and health are becoming unduly expensive, and more.

There is also no doubt where the benefits of growth, foreign trade and FDI have mainly gone. The net income of the country's top 1,000 corporations, including foreign transnational corporations and domestic oligarchs' conglomerates, increased four-fold from P251 billion in 1996 to P1 trillion in 2013. This corporate bloat underpins the staggering record wealth of the richest 25 Filipinos at $65.4 billion in 2015 – which is equivalent to what the poorest 76 million Filipinos would earn and struggle to live on in an entire year.

More than a few of the 25 richest Filipinos will probably be attending the summit, while any from the poorest will be kept at bay at the boundaries of the security zone or, at best, working for an honest day's low wage inside.

Philippines forward

All this of course makes the "Building Inclusive Economies, Building a Better World" theme of the Philippine hosting even more ironic. The sub-themes of supporting SMEs, developing human resources, and resiliency sound appealing, but should be interpreted in the context of the deeper exclusionary underdevelopment model that APEC is pushing.

The APEC economic leaders summit and its famous family picture wraps up the year-long APEC process of some 240 APEC-related meetings including at least 166 in the Philippines costing the country P7.9 billion just in 2015 (aside from another P2.1 billion in the 2014 budget). As before, the leaders' statement will uphold "regional economic integration" and the long discredited globalization policies needed for this. These will keep the Philippines and the rest of the region on a dangerous path of underdevelopment for the many, and indeed, also ecological catastrophe for the planet.

None of which is to say that nothing can be done to change the situation and genuinely improve the conditions of the many. There was a time before APEC and before the era of globalization that people's lives got better, even if slowly and sometimes haltingly, and economic policy was not so methodical in supporting corporate profits and swelling oligarchic wealth. 

Economic policies were about the national economy producing goods, creating jobs, raising incomes, and providing public education, health and housing. At that time promoting capitalist enterprise and private profit was just one among many means to development and even then known to have serious limits. The need for the State to ensure purposeful, responsible, and democratic national action was widely acknowledged.

Today capitalist profit-seeking such as pushed by APEC is glorified as the main mechanism for development where improving social conditions are merely a side-effect or a matter of charitable dole-outs. But economics can be rational again and the severe imbalances in wealth and power that fetter human development and stifle economies can be dismantled.

The social and economic inequities in the country are exploding. Fortunately, in a larger sense and far beyond the likely forgettable episode of the 2016 elections, the political upheavals we sorely need to correct these cannot be far behind. This won't be taking the special lane. – Rappler.com

Sonny Africa is Executive Director of IBON Foundation. He was taking his undergraduate and graduate studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science when the Berlin Wall was taken down and the neoliberal economic offensive picked up.

Chris Dalisay Luis last rode his bicycle on September 23, 2015. He used to bike to work everyday from Parañaque to Pasay to beat the terrible traffic.

September 23, though, was a special day for Chris. It was supposed to have been his last day at work. The call center manager was reportedly retiring.

But Chris never made it to the despedida prepared by his coworkers. At around 7 am, someone driving an SUV crashed into him while he was biking along Magsaysay Boulevard. Chris reportedly suffered severe head injuries, and he died on the spot.

Chris was 38 years old. At a time when he and his family should have been celebrating his retirement, his life was cut short in a road crash. He left behind a wife and a 5-year-old son.

Shattered lives

In a matter of seconds, a road crash can dramatically change lives.

When the crash results in death, shattered families must cope with the pain of losing a family member. And, if the road crash victim is a breadwinner, the family must also tighten its belt. Dreams of getting an education or investing in a home may be put on hold.

If the crash results in injuries, family members must pay for the costs of prolonged medical care. They also need to take time off from work or from school to care for the injured.

Road crashes are a devastating events. Every hour, one person dies on our nation’s roads. Every day, 28 people don’t make it home alive to have dinner with their families. In a year, that adds up to 10,379 people – or about 188 busloads of people. (READ: Road deaths in PH: Most are motorcycle riders, pedestrians)

Shared suffering

Sadly, road crashes have become “routine” events. Many of us have grown immune to the almost daily headlines about a serious road crash somewhere in our country. We may, at first, beat our breasts or sigh out of despair; but, in time, the names of the injured or the dead may fade from our memory.

Let’s not allow that to happen. On Sunday, November 15, let us pause to remember Chris Luis and all those who are killed and seriously injured on the world’s roads. It’s not just another Sunday. That date marks World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.

Why do we need to remember road crash victims? “Public reflection is the
act of recognition. It states to the victims and their families that their humanity is valued, that their loss is our loss and that their suffering is shared, if only through recognising the tragedy and error of its occurrence.” (The preceding, an excerpt from the Holocaust Memorial Day Booklet 2007, is quoted in World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims: a guide for organizers.)

Here are some ways we can honor the memory of all road victims:

Pledge to say “road crash” and not “accident.” The two words are often used to describe the same event, but in reality each word conjures up a very different image.

A road crash results from “choices made and risks disregarded.” On the other hand, an accident is something that cannot be reasonably foreseen and cannot be avoided.”

Observe a minute of silence before we set out on the day’s journey. Whichever our preferred mode of transport, let’s all be responsible road users.

Those who are driving motor vehicles, please drive sober, observe the speed limits, and respect pedestrian crossings and sidewalks. The people who are on motorcycles and bicycles, please wear helmets. Pedal pushers should also be visible by wearing light-colored clothes or blinking lights. Those who are walking would do well to use blinkers, too.

Watch and share a road safety video. Luc Besson’s 3-minute film, “Save Kids’ Lives,” is riveting.

Read the Child Declaration for Road Safety. Then sign it, and share it with friends.

Finally, let’s pressure our government to take the proven measures highlighted in the World Health Organization Global status report on road safety 2015:

• Improve laws and enforcement on risks such as speeding, drinking and driving, and failing to use seat-belts, motorcycle helmets and child restraints;
• Update roads with protective infrastructure such as sidewalks and dedicated lanes for pedestrians and cyclists; 

• Ensure that vehicles everywhere are equipped with life-saving technologies including seat-belts and air bags; and 

• Enhance emergency trauma care systems for victims. 

– Rappler.com

Dinna Louise C. Dayao (dinnadayao@gmail.com) is an experienced writer and editor. She organized the Metro Manila Transit Riders’ Union and the Change.org petition calling on President Aquino to require all public officials to ride public transit at least once a month.

(I normally desist from commenting on the politics of my place of work but was drawn by the stories below because of how much they remind me of extremism back home. So here goes my two centavos worth of observations)

The stories are all over traditional and social media: American students “of color” in various universities launching successful protests to unseat administrators and shame faculty for their alleged racism.

The students’ cause have generated much support from different sectors and personalities and hence has the strong possibility of becoming a rallying issue for many who have taken local governments, private institutions, and the federal state to task for having failed to eliminate racism (especially against African-Americans) in the supposed democratic country.

Well and good… until two incidents led to the movement’s unraveling. The first was of a Yale student yelling at a professor whose wife wrote a perfectly reasonable email proposing a discussion on why people – students – have all the right to wear anything they wish to don during Halloween. In that encounter, Nicholas Christakis tried to explain to students the reason behind his wife’s message, which he argued was a part of free speech. Students responded by yelling at him, with one senior accusing him of being “disgusting” for turning Yale into an “unsafe space” for students. She then angrily asked the professor: “Who the fuck hired you?” 

The second incident concerned a student photographer at the University of Missouri who was trying to do his job – cover the protest camp – but was met by a wall of hostile protestors demanding he respect “their space” they had occupied and not aid to the “hurt” that the protestors had already endured. The photographer calmly explained that not only was he trying to do his job, arguing that the First Amendment (the freedom of the press) gives him the right to do so. The activist response was to prevent him from taking photos and then pushing him out of their “space.” A fellow student journalist managed to get through the “wall,” but then encountered a faculty member who told him to stop and called “some muscle” to kick the student out.

The professor had published a lame apology for her behavior (another staff also did the same thing) and resigned her “special appointment” at the journalism school. Her colleagues and the media had however taken her to task for not only for her boorishness but also in failing to respect the freedom of the press. In the Yale case, the student who called the professor “disgusting” turned out to be not such as a good spokesperson of the oppressed when it was revealed that she came from a privileged background.  It turned out also that she was a member of the committee that hired the professor to be head of the college.

Since then, supporters of the movement had to scramble to defend it, appealing to readers that they understand the “hurt” and the “trauma” that these students were going through and returning the discussion to the issue at hand: racism on American campuses.

However, the damage has been done, especially regarding trying to broaden the base of this nascent social movement. The “extremism” of a few had overshadowed the efforts of the many to reach out to other groups and expand the bases of support. It has turned off many of the faculty who are almost always sympathetic to students’ concerns (most are liberal or left-wing) and the media – two social institutions that put the premium on collegiality and the freedom to debate and discuss. The community may be divided over what the students are doing, but a majority of families from all ethnic groups will express concern over their children’s education. And like it or not, many a father or mother will be aghast at watching their children muzzle the press or curse at a teacher. This was not they moiled and saved education money for: turning the kids into thugs (as a side note, not a few have pointed out that the photographer who was coerced out of the Missouri “wall” was Asian-American).

Community alienation may also reflect a more fundamental fissure here that goes beyond the generational divide. Class. Despite evidence of an economic turnaround under President Obama a majority of American families still believe they have fallen on hard times. Forty-five million Americans (economists stay 15.1 percent of the general population) are officially poor and a large section of them come from minority families (African-Americans, 27.4%; Hispanics, 26.6%).

Decline in government social and increasing income inequalities have nurtured this general anxiety. It is a fear that, in recent times, has expressed itself politically in growing middle and working class support for leaders who anchor their campaigns on economic – and yes – class issues. Trump on the Right; Sanders on the Left. Many of them are found in organized into unions, teachers’ associations, and small-business groups to fight and defend their interests. They are also the ones most ignored by campus progressives who ironically privileges “hurt,” “trauma” and other touchy-feely issues and treat with little interest the stomach and the politics of economic trench warfare.

The “masses,” as local leftists would call these folks, are, in short,  the least of these new radicals’ concerns. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of protests and rebellions would know how the latter’s fate would end. – Rappler.com

Patricio N. Abinales is an OFW toiling in the United States.

When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declared Tuesday night that as US president he would fly Air Force One over disputed islands in the South China Sea, his intent might well have been to win over American voters and viewers. Politicians and business leaders know there is power in powerful communications. 

Relegated to the “undercard” in the most recent Republican presidential debate, the governor’s tough talk certainly won him some attention in the US and in Asia, including in the Philippines. Manila will host US President Barack Obama and other economic leaders at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, forum this November 18-19. The Philippines is also in a bitter dispute with China over vast areas of what it calls the West Philippines Sea. 

Christie may never have the chance to direct the US presidential plane if his present poll ratings are any guide. “I’ll fly Air Force One over those islands,” Christie had declared.  “They’ll know we mean business.” The “they,” of course, being the Chinese – but he could well have been referring to anyone looking for a leader perceived as being able to stand up to China today. 

Indeed, while trip details are likely now set and the work of advance teams done, Obama could well benefit from a few added, strategic stops in the Philippines beyond APEC. His journey could be used to signal strength and determination to Asian allies and to supporters of the just concluded Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal that his signature “pivot to Asia” is very much alive.

The powerful symbolism of a leader’s visit and itinerary – whom one talks to, where one visits – cannot be underestimated, particularly in Asia. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent state visits to the United States and the United Kingdom are examples. A glittering White House state dinner helped underscore China’s importance to his fellow Chinese back home. Xi also spent time with America’s business titans, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. The clear message being communicated? America’s most famous business leaders cannot ignore China’s economic stature and market size. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was reported to have asked Xi to name the young billionaire’s unborn child – a request that it was also reported that Xi snubbed. The word “kowtow” comes to mind. 

And in London, Xi spent a night at Buckingham Palace and was guest of honor at a state dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth. The tables had clearly turned since the mid-1800s, when China was forced to cede Hong Kong island to the British and later saw an Anglo-French force sack Beijing’s old Summer Palace amidst the humiliating so-called Opium Wars.

So, beyond the talkfest and side meetings that are at the heart of every annual APEC economic leaders summit, what might Obama do to underscore through his travels that the Asia pivot, or “rebalance,” continues?

US and the ADB

First and foremost, a visit by Obama to the Asian Development Bank – “Asia’s World Bank” – is very much warranted. Such a move would also be very much welcomed by two key US allies: Japan – the ADB president has always been Japanese – and the ADB’s host country, the Philippines. Established amidst the postwar reconstruction efforts of the early 1960s with strong US support, the Manila-based ADB is, for now, the largest Asia-based international financial institution focused on economic growth and poverty reduction in the region. 

Why for now?  China has won the support of almost every US ally in Europe and Asia – except Japan – to establish a major new multilateral financial organization, known as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The AIIB – “China’s World Bank – is expected to be up and running by year’s end with its first projects coming in second quarter of 2016.  With capital of US$100 billion – much of it provided by China – the institution at its creation will already be nearly two-thirds the size of the ADB.

A US presidential visit to the ADB would help underscore that indeed the United States, in Christie’s words, “means business” when it comes to standing by old friends and the institutions that it had helped create and foster in the postwar world.

Subic or Clark?

So too would the United States and the US rebalance to Asia benefit from the powerful symbolism of a presidential visit to two one-time US military bases not far from Manila. That is the former US Naval Base in Subic Bay and the former Clark US Air Force Base. Once the largest US bases of their kind in Asia – the base at Subic Bay was by some measures roughly the size of the nation of Singapore – they were both ultimately closed. 

The two bases were converted to economic, trade and other uses following the 1991 eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo and the rejection by the Philippines Senate of a treaty that would have extended the lease of the American bases in the Philippines. The nation’s post-Ferdinand Marcos era Constitution bars permanent US bases. Amidst China’s rise, however, many Filipinos may well welcome stronger US-Filipino defense ties even as the Philippines has stuck to diplomacy and taken its dispute with China to an international tribunal. A Philippine Supreme Court ruling is expected soon on the constitutionality of an “enhanced defense cooperation" agreement between the US and the Philippines.

A visit by Obama to Subic, Clark or both could be used to underscore America’s long-term commitment to the Philippines and other Asian allies amidst China’s maritime expansion and its building of artificial islands in the South China Sea. 

Now a “freeport,” Subic would also provide the venue for Obama to further emphasize the value of freedom of navigation to trade and economic growth.  A visit to the former Clark Air Base would provide the US president the chance to visit – just days after U.S. Veterans Day – one of the few cemeteries operated by the American Battle Monuments Commission around the world for America’s war dead.  In January 2013, Obama had signed into law the Dignified Burial and other Veterans’ Benefits Improvement Act, directing ABMC to operate and maintain the cemetery, which had been damaged in the Mount Pinatubo eruptions and fallen into disrepair.

In April 2014 in Manila, my successor as US Ambassador to the ADB, Robert M. Orr, presented Obama with a book commemorating the work of Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham, with the ADB. Dunham had worked as an ADB consultant on projects involving Pakistan and Indonesia. 

How fitting and powerful it would be if Obama on this latest trip to the Philippines were to signal through stops at the ADB, and at Clark and Subic Bay, that America’s commitment to Asia – whether its development or defense – extends through generations. 

And in doing so, he need not direct Air Force One to fly anywhere it was not already scheduled to go. Asia will remind him though that even the best symbolism must be followed by substance. – 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.

Since the start of the third regular session, the Freedom of Information (FOI) Committee Report has been pending the second reading since the Appropriations Committee approved its appropriation provision on March 4, 2015. In other words, the bill has had no significant progress for the past seven months, and its future prospects seem even grimmer, given the upcoming elections.

Imagine, then, how disturbing it was to have read that, on October 26, 2015, Liberal Party (LP) standard bearer Mar Roxas defended the Aquino administration from criticism that it has failed to deliver on its promise to enact an FOI law within its term. He specifically mentioned that “The point here is the president is not pushing a piece of legislation to take into consideration your view against right of reply. If the president wanted it passed to please you, this will pass – but there will be a right to reply.”

Is Mr. Roxas saying that the President is not pushing for the FOI bill as we thought he was and that the passage of the bill is conditional on the inclusion of a right of reply provision?

Correct me if I’m wrong Mr. Roxas, because I don’t understand why you’d insinuate that the President has such leanings, when from what I know, in my limited capacity as an FOI Advocate, Malacañang actually forwarded its own version of the Freedom of Information Bill to the House of Representatives back in 2012. (READ: Aquino pushes for FOI bill a day after SONA)

This version was a by-product of a consultative process conducted by an administration study group – composed of Communications Undersecretary Manuel L. Quezon III, Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda, Secretary Florencio B. Abad, and Deputy Presidential Spokesperson Abigail Valte, in coordination with stakeholders – to balance legitimate grounds for confidentiality with the public’s right to know.

Nowhere in this version was there a provision for the Right of Reply, and rightfully so given its unconstitutionality.

A right of reply in the FOI bill would be unconstitutional on two levels—first, there cannot be two subjects for a single bill passed by Congress (Art. VI, Sec.26.1); second, Art. III, Sec. 4 expressly states that Congress cannot pass a law that tramples on the right to press freedom.

Needless to say, however ‘legitimate’ you perceive coercing journalists to publish material against their will to be, it is still an infringement of their right.

The administration also publicly campaigned that the FOI bill is an integral element of laying out reforms and initiatives that pursue greater transparency, accountability, and citizen participation in governance as part of the Aquino Good Governance and Anti-Corruption Plan of 2012-2016.

Furthermore, on October 28, 2013, the administration committed to "support the passage of legislations [sic] on access to information and protection of whistleblowers" as part of their 2013-2015 Country Action Plan to the Open Government Partnership. The President also declared that he was confident the FOI bill would become law by the time he steps down in 2016 in a Daylight Dialogue last July 15, 2014.

More recently, in President Aquino’s message on the National Budget for Fiscal Year 2016, he reiterated that “greater fiscal transparency leads to a more responsive government” and urged Congress to pass the Freedom of Information Act to “ensure the permanency of transparency policies.”

Do you see now where my confusion lies, Mr. Roxas? Are you telling us that all this very public support that the Aquino administration has shown for the FOI bill was all for show? Are you insulting the President by suggesting that he and his administration is not pushing for the FOI bill and is allowing it to languish in the House of Representatives?

Or is this slip of the tongue due to a failure on your part to communicate with your running mate – who happens to be an author and staunch advocate of FOI? Or are you in disagreement with Representative Leni Robredo on the FOI?

Whatever the case, believe me when I say that I still give you the benefit of the doubt on FOI; a law that many believe can be the cement to the Daang Matuwid that this administration has supposedly tilled to curb corruption and to promote greater transparency in government. Without the FOI law, how can you say that you are for transparency and accountability? How can the public trust a government that cannot provide clear procedures for citizens to know what their government is up to?

Mr. Roxas, if you really do support FOI, perhaps you would care to know more about it and make it an important election issue. Instruct your LP representatives to show up in Congress when session resumes, do their job as lawmakers, and finally vote on it.

Instruct your campaign manager, Speaker Sonny Belmonte– who agreed to be hanged if FOI does not pass within the 16th Congress – to finally move this measure forward as he assured the advocates for the past six years.

So much of your campaign is hinged on the idea of continuing this administration’s reforms, Mr. Roxas. You, of all candidates, are in the best position to prove that you can by championing the passage of the FOI bill.

The time is now, now is your time. – Rappler.com

Karla Michelle Yu graduated from De La Salle University with a degree in Political Science and currently works at Action for Economic Reforms.

Twenty-one heads of state, 2 of whom will send representatives, will convene in Manila this week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. They will formally approve agreements earlier hammered out by lower-level officials. The world leaders include Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, and Shinzo Abe – whose economies are among the biggest in APEC.

It’s easy to dismiss the APEC summit as just one big glittering show. The 2-day event will be rich in ceremony, including the traditional photo op, the part where the leaders will don the finely crafted barong and pose for a multitude of photographers.

But beyond this, the APEC summit’s theme of “building inclusive economies” addresses a global concern, that of growing inequality. In 2014, the Credit Suisse’s “Global Wealth Report” found that “48% of the world’s $263 trillion in net household wealth is in the hands of the richest 1% of its citizens.”

This hits close to home: our country, after all, is a living microcosm of this problem. Cielito Habito, former economic planning secretary, wrote in 2012: “With our 40 richest families apparently accounting for the bulk of the growth in our national income, the Philippines has become a poster case for the now common call among development institutions for ‘inclusive growth.’”

One major indicator of the gap between the haves and have-nots is the prevalence of hunger in the poorest provinces. A 2015 survey sponsored by the World Food Programme (WFP) shows that the main causes are inadequate income and lack of a regular job.

For example, Sulu (58%), North Cotabato (50%), and Bukidnon (47%) were the areas where a prevalence of households suffered hunger due to lack of income.

The idea that propels “inclusive growth” is for the poor not just to be passive recipients of trickle-down wealth so that they could have food on the table. More importantly, the social and economic conditions should enable them to create wealth themselves. This means that they are able to start micro-enterprises and access jobs.

Good governance, of course, is vital here.

In the private sector, a number of businesses, influenced by international best practices, have made strides in this direction. Companies like Jollibee work with small farmers, sourcing some of their supplies such as chicken from them.

On a smaller scale, some restaurants do the same, buying vegetables, meat, dairy, and coffee from individual farmers or cooperatives. This business practice, if multiplied many times over, will help make “inclusive growth” a reality.

The APEC is a vehicle that can further push this momentum. As Jaime Zobel de Ayala of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) has said, APEC and ABAC are “setting the tone for inclusive growth wherein an average entrepreneur will have the confidence to compete in a bigger market” beyond local boundaries. – Rappler.com

Pitting Leni Robredo against Grace Poe may be a match any political analyst would love to see, or having one as president and another as vice president may be a dream to those for whom being “run by women” is enough.

It behooves me, however, to flag a sense of righteousness that might actually cover insidious shortsightedness, shared among many of us.  

It is November 2015, past the filing of certificates of candidacy, past the announcement of candidacy and past political courting. Presidential candidate Grace Poe’s choice over her citizenship is still being interpreted as a matter of nationalism by no less than the Liberal Party’s (LP) vice-presidential candidate Leni Robredo.

The woman who once hoped that Grace would be LP’s VP candidate and who is actually LP’s “Plan B” for the post has been consistent in criticising Poe’s disloyalty to the flag the moment she turned her back to the country to live in the United States. It is an act that she considers a “moral issue.”   

As the lawyers address the legal question, there seems to be a need to unpack nationalism in our in the election and why it only serves a particular class interest, another card that is woefully played out by those who pretend to had risen up from the gutters.

As we turn to Marxist intellectual Benedict Anderson’s definition of nation in Imagined Communities as an “artifact”, nationalism then becomes a ritualised idea and its perpetuation of a particular nation. In the context of the elections, the nation becomes far more than an imagined community as it becomes a commodity that is marketed aggressively.

The particularity thus comes with the territory, literally. As Robredo said, “The issue of renunciation (of her Filipino citizenship) is a bigger issue for me because … at one point in (Poe’s) life, (she) turned (her) back on us.”

Indeed Robredo makes a distinction on where this “moral issue” applies. It is for a certain class or that which consists of herself, Poe and others who are running for higher office to consider but not for overseas Filipino workers and Filipinos who have settled in foreign lands, because “they are not running for president.”

Of course the majority of them would not bother because, more than the moral and legal issues, they have financial issues, owing to the lack of more rewarding opportunities within the Philippines, among many others.

In an age when multiculturalism and internationalism beckon in light of fundamentalisms which are reflected in harassment of the Lumad and other indigenous peoples because of mainstream politics and development, bloodbaths in Syria, Iraq, Beirut, Paris and elsewhere in the name of religion, discriminatory border controls and merciless refoulment especially among the Rohingyas, Syrians and Afghans, not to mention honour killings and forced marriages for women and girls in South Asia, a cacique-laden notion of nationalism is being peddled.

It is bad enough that some media agencies almost automatically attribute the triumphant moments of individuals of Filipino descent to their Filipino-ness even when they grew up elsewhere. It is worse when a supposed progressive mind plays such nationalism card or agrees to play it, as part of a party’s media machinery. 

Perhaps multiculturalism and internationalism may be far from the minds of political and media strategists. Still, it begs the question: how has nationalism been a duty and recourse to the majority, who have benefitted from or slaving as OFWs and immigrants? Or even women, whose bodies have often been an embodiment of a nation’s realities? More women, comparatively younger than men, still comprise much of the OFWs, usually in the service sector.

Their agenda is to earn money for their families and themselves because perhaps they dream of living like individuals with less wagons of obligations, or at least wagons of their choice.

How many of them are workhorses of families, share small spaces with so many siblings? How many are married to philandering and lazy spouses? How many are living for their children? How many experience displacement without necessarily migrating, but because of the countless negotiations one has to put up with in order to survive even at the expense of one’s dignity? 

At this point, there is nothing transformative in the leadership that both women are promising, beyond the damage-control reactions to incidents like the skimpily clad dancers in a birthday party or the tanim-bala episodes at the airport or the photos of the low-key commuters of the MRT or long-haul buses.

Rather than belabouring over a few’s sense of nationalism, why not discuss the more substantive ideas, which many theories of nationalism have ignored? The dichotomy that nation-building processes have produced, particularly between the public and the private spheres, men and women, consists of contradictory tendencies, resulting in ruptures and silences around the woman question or, more inclusively, the gender question.  

But these ruptures and silences must be surfaced in a politically defining period such as the elections. This is the time to exact substance and commitment on issues on bodies, gender, sexuality, human rights and well-being — divorce, abortion especially in cases of rape and incest, non-discrimination, adoption by LGBT persons, redefinition of households, same-sex marriage, medical marijuana and many others.

Confining ourselves to debates around nationalism is quite denigrating in light of the pressing and felt challenges — superficially conceived but powerfully practiced — from which our bodies, identities, desires and lives must be liberated. – Rappler.com

Nina Somera has been working for the development sector in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Her post graduate studies focused on re-thinking the ideas of home and nation in the immigrant fiction, produced by Philippine women writers in Australia.

“Evaluation” – the word may not be punchy or attract attention.

Yet it is arguably the key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a blueprint for prosperity for people across the world, and for the well-being of our planet.

Those goals also dubbed the Global Goals were adopted by all countries at the UN General Assembly last month. The SDGs comprise 17 goals and 169 targets to be met by 2030. They provide a transformational vision for the world and spell out how we work together to create decent jobs, promote dignity, equality, and justice for all, while sustaining our environment.

But how can we ensure that the policies and programmes we undertake help us attain the goals? Here is where evaluation plays a pivotal role. To bring about change on a large scale, it is vital to measure what works and does not work, and to recalibrate to achieve success.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that preceded the SDGs, were strong on monitoring and tracking, but did not build in an evaluation function. The SDGs have an explicit follow-up and review mechanism that is clearly stated in the 2030 agenda.

So 192 states have committed to having a national evaluation system in their countries. This puts evaluation front and centre, as the agent of change for the world we seek.

Last week nearly 450 delegates from 100 countries convened in Bangkok to examine the role of evaluation. They reviewed challenges and opportunities, and explored how professionals with expertise in evaluation can help countries improve their capacity to implement the SDGs agenda.

The meeting convened by the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Independent Evaluation Office and Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, along with the International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS) put forth a range of ideas, which will take root across the world over the next few years. Those plans were enshrined in what is called the Bangkok Declaration, a roadmap for evaluating the SDGs.

Following consultations between members of governments, international organizations, professional evaluators from the private and non-profit sector, four priorities emerged.

First, evaluations should be country-owned and country-led and be used to influence policy. Evaluations have been used successfully to not only inform policy but to promote mindset changes in organizations and governments, as evaluations help foster improvement in people’s lives.

Second, evaluation processes need to be defined and strengthened to assess critical development outcomes, such as social cohesion, governance, and equitability for marginalized populations. In the Asia-Pacific region, we need to build on the increasing interest from governments that seek innovative techniques to get better feedback from citizens on the effectiveness of their policies and programmes, and to improve transparency and accountability.

Third, we must engage existing and new stakeholders in exchange and collaboration, to increase the awareness and use of evaluations. To harness the power of partnerships with the private sector, governments, civil society, and parliaments it is important to create networks and platforms for information and knowledge sharing, which engage all of them.

Finally, institutions and government departments should integrate the evaluation of the SDGs, in all policies. People involved in evaluation, both producers and users, agree that we need to start thinking of evaluation of the SDGs and related national policies now, so that this important process is not an afterthought.

Several of the SDGs and their targets need to be further deliberated on, in order to provide high-quality data that is reliable, easily accessible, and can be broken down into different data sets. This will help with being more inclusive, aid the measurement of progress, and promote better decision-making to help attain SDG targets.

So-called ‘big data’ and technological innovation will bring new voices, volume and validity to the collection of development data, records management, and quality control, but to ensure that this happens, we will require the global partnership that the SDGs call for.

It will take international support to help build the capacity of governments to mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, and technology and financial resources. The professional evaluation community has made a commitment to help in that process, we now have to take action. – Rappler.com

Indran Naidoo is the Director of UNDP’s Independent Evaluation Office, and Nicholas Rosellini is UNDP’s Deputy Regional Director for Asia & the Pacific and Director of the Bangkok Regional Hub.

On Monday, November 16, when 17 world leaders began to arrive for the APEC Summit in Manila, a video of men in masks with ISIS’ black flag behind them is posted on Facebook, claiming "ISIS in Mindanao" will attack the summit.

Authorities dismissed it, but by evening, it had reached nearly 2 million views.

Col Resty Padilla, spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Philippines, asked the public to ignore it and avoid sharing it.

“There’s no threat,” he told journalists. “So far, the monitoring indicates that there are no serious threats that will hamper the conduct – successful, peaceful and secure conduct of this summit.”

Still, authorities are on high alert, and intelligence sources say they are investigating the video, released just a little more than 2 days after 3 teams of suicide bombers and gunmen across 6 locations in Paris killed at least 129 people and injured at least 329 more.

The near simultaneous attacks, reminiscent of Mumbai in 2008 when 10 armed gunmen attacked 7 different locations, shocked the world.  Much like 9/11, it seems to signal an escalation in jihadist terrorism that has its roots in the virulent ideology that powers al-Qaeda and its latest incarnation, ISIS.

An al-Qaeda offshoot that has overtaken its parent, ISIS, also known as the Islamic State or IS, ISIL, and Da’esch, a loose Arabic acronym, seems bent on taking the world back to the 12^th century. It has a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran that includes savage beheadings, rapes, and public executions designed to eliminate “unbelievers” in a process it calls takfir, or excommunication.

Key to its power is something al-Qaeda was never able to do: it captured and governs land roughly the size of Great Britain. That is the capital of the global caliphate it says it is creating – acting like a beacon and bringing in at least 30,000 foreign fighters in a little more than 3-and-a-half years, according to latest US and UN estimates.

Despite its economic focus, terrorism and security issues are among the main topics to be tackled at APEC this week in Manila.

There are 4 lessons Paris teaches us, which Philippine authorities should keep in mind as it hosts 17 world leaders this week.

1.  It’s war. And it’s global.

Within hours of the Friday attacks, France’s President Francois Hollande called them “an act of war waged by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, by Da’esch, against France.”

Except war began decades ago. And it’s escalating.

The US, leading a coalition of 65 countries, jumped in more than a year ago to try to defeat ISIS and its offshoots.

On the sidelines of APEC, US Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken told me ISIS now controls "30-35% less territory than a year ago" but that action comes with risks. (Watch the Blinken interview here)

"We saw that if this problem was not arrested as quickly as possible, it was likely to spread," said Blinken. "And indeed ISIL had ambitions to attack not just in the region but in Europe and the United States and places beyond.  We understood from the beginning that it was part of their larger objective." 

Paris brings the war to coalition countries where they live, a logical extension of an ideology that matured in the conflict in Afghanistan in the late 80s. 

That gave rise to al-Qaeda, and ISIS is its latest incarnation.

“Al-Qaeda is a kindergarten group compared to ISIS,” Rohan Gunaratna, the author of Inside Al-Qaeda and the head of Singapore’s International Centre for Political Violence & Terrorism, told Rappler. “ISIS presents an unprecedented global threat. ISIS is a hyper-powered organization. We have not seen a group of the scale and magnitude of ISIS.”

ISIS began its march to capture Baghdad on June 9, 2014, and it has grown tremendously since then: capturing oil fields for resources; creating and implementing laws it implements for the land under its control; and harnessing affiliates for global attacks.

Shortly after the Paris attacks, former FBI agent and author Ali Soufan summarized the escalating death toll and pace. He tweeted that in the last 36 hours, there were 18 victims in Baghdad, 43 dead in Beirut, and 153 in Paris – “all murdered by the same narrative of takfir and terror.” (Takfir, which sanctions violence against Muslim leaders who are kafir or are unbelievers).

In the past 36 hours: #Baghdad: 18 victims #Beirut: 43 victims #Paris: 153 victims All murdered by the same narrative of takfir & terror.

— Ali H. Soufan (@Ali_H_Soufan) November 14, 2015

On November 13, a suicide bomber killed himself and at least 17 others at a Baghdad memorial service for a Shiite militia member who died fighting ISIS.

In Beirut, Lebanon, two suicide bombers killed at least 43 people during rush hour at a busy shopping district in a mostly Shiite residential area. The body of a third suicide bomber was found near one of the blast sites with a largely intact explosives belt. ISIS claimed responsibility for that fiery attack.

This is the second time in two weeks that ISIS claimed attacks against civilians, its effort to get back at the countries fighting it in Syria and Iraq.

ISIS’ Egyptian affiliate said it was responsible for the Oct. 31 destruction of a plane full of Russians coming home from vacation at the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Why Russians? Because Moscow intervened in Syria. 

On Tuesday, Nov. 17, Russia announced for the first time that a bomb destroyed the plane.  

Now add Paris.

France is one of the founding members of the US-led coalition that began airstrikes against ISIS. These attacks come after the brutal Charlie Hebdo murders early this year carried out by gunmen claiming allegiance to ISIS and an al-Qaeda affiliate.

Still, it isn’t just ISIS attacking. This war is in full swing and escalating.

Last week, the United States and its allies announced it had sharply increased airstrikes against ISIS’ oil fields in Syria, making it perhaps the wealthiest terrorist organization globally. The US Treasury Department estimates the oil fields ISIS controls generates about $40 million a month or nearly $500,000 a year.

A day before the Paris attacks, Kurdish and Yazidi forces, backed by US special forces and airstrikes, liberated the strategic Iraqi city of Sinjar - cutting a supply route between its Iraqi stronghold in Mosul and its capital, Raqqa, Syria. 

At nearly the same time, the US announced a drone strike seemed to have killed one of ISIS’ best-known militants, Mohammed Emwazi, the British executioner better known as Jihadi John.

That same Friday, President Barack Obama told ABC News that “we have contained them” referring to ISIS. 

That symbolic victory lasted only a few hours.  

Yet as the Paris attacks were happening, the US was broadening its fight against ISIS in Libya, targeting and allegedly killing its senior leader Abu Nabil. He was an Iraqi national who led al-Qaeda operations from 2004 to 2010.

By Tuesday, France and Russia had intensified bombing operations against ISIS.

2.  Southeast Asia is a key recruitment center for ISIS.

As of mid-2015, more than 500 Indonesians and more than 50 from Malaysia have joined ISIS, according to regional intelligence officials. There are enough Indonesian and Malaysian fighters that they are in an ISIS unit by themselves, the Katibah Nusantara (Malay Archipelago Combat Unity).

“ISIS posted a propaganda and recruitment video showing Malay-speaking children training with weapons in ISIS-held territory,” Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said mid-year.

“Two Malaysians, including a 20 year old, were identified in another ISIS video of a beheading of a Syrian man. The Malaysian police have arrested more people who were planning to go, including armed forces personnel, plus groups which were plotting attacks in Malaysia,” added Lee. These individuals were going to Syria and Iraq not just to fight, but to bring their families there, including young children, to live in what they imagine, delusionally, is an ideal Islamic state under a caliph of the faithful.”

Indonesian Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, which in the late 90’s to mid-2000s acted as al-Qaeda’s arm in Southeast Asia, pledged allegiance to ISIS last year. 

ISIS said it wants to establish a wilayat – a province under its caliphate – in Southeast Asia. While some will dismiss it as far-fetched, that’s its stated goal. (READ: Q&A: ISIS in Southeast Asia)

3.  ISIS' ideology is in the Philippines.

Be careful of names. Follow the ideology. 

Follow the virus. Because like a virus, the ideology creeps in beneath the surface and takes over the system until it hits a tipping point. Lessons from epidemiology give us a paradigm for ISIS’ strategy: infect until it takes over the system.

Filipino and US security forces and authorities say ISIS doesn’t exist in the Philippines because they look for direct operational links to Syria and Iraq.  Still, as early as 2011 al-Qaeda’s black flag, appeared in the Philippines behind a Filipino speaking fluent Arabic asking to bring the jihad to Mindanao. 

That flag has become ISIS’ banner, originally brought to Syria and Iraq by foreign fighters, but over the last year and a half, it has become a rallying symbol.  (READ: 14 years after 9/11 in Southeast Asia)

As early as 2012, I reported that authorities found the black flag in an Abu Sayyaf camp in Zamboanga. Interestingly, the man arrested then, Khair Mundos, who links the Abu Sayyaf to a global network, was sentenced to prison Monday, November 16, 2015. 

The flag is only a symbol of groups of Filipinos who believe in the ideology that powers al-Qaeda and ISIS. In my latest book published at the 10^th anniversary of the Bali bombings, I talked about a jihadi virus that uses religion as a vehicle for political power. That goal of setting up a caliphate hasn’t changed, and based on their own statements, they want to expand it beyond Syria and Iraq.

Last year, a senior leader of the Abu Sayyaf as well as another charismatic leader of an offshoot, the Rajah Solaiman Movement (RSM), pledged an oath to ISIS, something dismissed by most Filipino security officers.  

US and western authorities have long talked about attacks by lone wolves, where all it takes is one man to turn his gun on a crowd.  These attacks have happened in the US, Europe and other parts of the world. 

Now Paris brings the spectre of potential central coordination from ISIS.

While the attacks were still playing out in Paris, President Hollande said, “This act of war was prepared and planned from the outside, with accomplices inside.”

It’s a new development that shouldn’t have been unexpected, turning what analysts called “lone wolves” into satellite forces capable of being synchronized for larger attacks.

“The emphasis on lone wolves was all part of the wishful thinking that ISIS was purely a local phenomena that could be contained to Syria and Iraq,” said Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown.

That threat of small yet effective terror cells loosely directed by ISIS blasts through many existing counter-terrorism measures.

With this, we can look at the Facebook video released in the Philippines Monday, November 17, as intent. The next question is do they have the capability? Security forces say no, but what exactly does capability mean now in the age of ISIS?

4.  ISIS is a master at social media.

ISIS posts more than 200,000 pieces of content on social media every day, and it’s been successful in radicalizing marginalized and disenfranchised youth around the world. 

"Social media is a critical front in this because the narrative that ISIL projects, it uses social media to project that narrative," Blinken told Rappler.

A study released early this year said there are a minimum of 46,000 Twitter accounts used by ISIS, according to Intelwire’s J.M. Berger, who did the study commissioned by Google and published by the Bookings Institute.

ISIS aims to disrupt, carve out young minds and voices and offer a paradise that doesn’t exist.  It has enticed young women, some as young as 15 years old, to join the jihad in Syria. (READ: How to fight ISIS on social media)

One of ISIS’ key supporters and propagandists, Melbourne-born Musa Cerantonio, lived in Manila, Cebu and Zamboanga for more than a year and was tweeting incitement and support to help ISIS. 

A study mid-year said Cerantonio was one of the two most influential voices giving ‘inspiration and guidance” to foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq.  It added that one in 4 foreign fighters followed Cerantonio’s Twitter, account and that more than 92% of his tweets involved interaction. His Facebook page was the 3rd most popular among foreign jihadists. 

To fight the pull of the ideology amplified and given wider reach by social media, countries and civic society must work together. (READ: How to fight ISIS? Build communities)

This war, as it always has, goes beyond armies, police and security forces. This war demands greater transparency and cooperation between communities at a global scale with these key goals: to reject sectarian strife; separate terrorists from Islam; address grievances, including political and economic ones, that lead to marginalization; give the youth opportunities; and, avoid “us” and “them” by building inclusive communities.

That is the challenge ahead. – Rappler.com

Various heads of state will be gracing the Economic Leaders’ Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum on November 18 in Manila; and it just might seal the fate of the worsening global climate crisis long before the COP 21 climate talks begin.

No exaggerations there. The APEC, after all, is an economic forum of 21 Asia-Pacific economies that represent 70% of global mining production and consumption, 60% of world energy demand, and 60% of the world’s gross domestic product.

Clearly, the economic, social, and environmental thrusts of the APEC are pivotal to the entire world.

Let’s put that into perspective: what if 70% of all mining operations in the world cleared away old-growth forests, strip away fertile agricultural lands, and militarize indigenous communities in the process? What if they indiscriminately dump their waste into adjoining rivers, where people get their water for drinking, irrigation, and fishing? (READ: Mining in Surigao del Sur: Soil of life, soil of death)

What if 60% of the world’s power producers poured the majority of its investments into dirt-cheap but climate-disruptive coal energy? What if the token clean and renewable energy projects they financed actually cut into forest parks, depleted or monopolized water reserves, and are used to grab disputed peasant lands?

What if 60% of the global GDP did not actually trickle down to the destitute majority of the 3 billion people living in the APEC states? Would they be able to withstand the worsening increasingly frequent, powerful, and unpredictable typhoons and other climate change impacts amid the landlessness, poverty, and human rights violations?

Plunder and pollution

These are no mere speculations. These are facets of Philippine reality after decades of adopting various "APEC-branded" globalization policies.

At the start of the new millennium, there were 282 approved mining applications in the country. This has increased three times over by 2014, covering a vast 869,292 hectares of mineralized land in the country.

Through the Mining Act, large-scale mining companies are given various investment incentives such as tax holidays, full capital repatriation, and auxiliary rights such as full discretion over timber, water bodies, and even communities found within their tenements. (READ: TIMELINE: Philippine mining laws and policies)

Meanwhile, the energy industry has seen a 348% surge in the generating capacity of thermal coal projects in the same time period. With the state prohibited by the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) from constructing its own power projects, private power firms have prioritized coal power for profitability despite its environmental and health costs.

Alarmingly, coal is the biggest chunk of our current power with a generating capacity of 32%, and an even larger chunk of power projects in the pipeline at 62%.

Big dam projects in Ifugao, Tarlac, Rizal-Quezon, Iloilo, and Bukidnon-North Cotabato are threatening to massively divert river systems and submerge forests and communities. Solar farms in Cebu and Ilocos Norte will cut over a thousand trees.

In a clear act of greenwashing, solar plants will rise over land-grabbed peasant areas in the Clark Green City in Pampanga, and in the infamous Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac.

Are APEC solutions sustainable, resilient?

How do you reconcile such realities to APEC’s particular pillar theme of ‘building sustainable and resilient communities’?

Consider this: 4 of the 5 most destructive typhoons recorded in Philippine history occurred in the past 7 years, leaving over P185 billion of damage.

On one hand, it speaks of a clearly changed climate. On the other, it reveals how the Filipino people are left vastly unprepared, their government criminally negligent.

The 2012 Philex mining disaster in Padcal, Benguet, the worst in the country’s history with 20 million metric tons of waste spilling into a long stretch of rivers, had the company simply paying measly fines to government. Philex has done little or nothing to compensate for the ecological destruction and the affected livelihoods of various downstream communities.

The 2013 Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan) resulted in at least 6,000 deaths and displaced about 4 million people. Injustices such as corruption over emergency shelter assistance funds, and displacement through no-dwelling zones, and profit-oriented ‘rehabilitation’ infrastructure, continue to be inflicted upon the survivors two years after.

A world in crisis, a world to win

The running consensus in the APEC, however, is that we need ‘more business as usual.’ A new APEC fund to promote mining liberalization policies across its 21 member economies has already been opened prior to the leaders’ summit.

The prescription to the energy crisis is the further removal of tariffs on ‘green’ technologies, not even touching the core problem of lacking state regulation.

The worst to expect is actually on the sidelines of the APEC summit. The agenda within the agenda, after all, is to clinch the Trans-Pacific Partnership— the world’s largest corporate power grab that you have never heard of. (READ: APEC 2015: Where PH stands in the Trans-Pacific Partnership)

Secretly negotiated by 12 countries including APEC members such as the United States, the TPP aims to establish a globalization corridor in the Asia-Pacific, where environmental, social, and economic safeguards are eroded, and where trade tribunals allow corporations to sue governments that get in the way of their profits. The Philippines is dead set to join the TPP.

If TPP and the APEC agenda at large will push through, we will see more forest fires causing haze in Indonesia to create room for more palm oil plantations. We will see unabated transboundary waste from Canada and Japan to third world dump sites. We will see destructive fracking operations and open-pit mines pushing through across the entire Asia-Pacific region.

The APEC will clearly put the world in further crisis. This is why 700 indigenous Lumad people and their supporters took the Manilakbayan journey northwards. This is why about 800 farmers, indigenous peoples, and activists will travel southwards to meet the Lumad in a march dubbed 'Martsa Amianan'.  

This is why the North and South will converge with more than 10,000 protesters, including 350 international delegates from the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), and will march under the banner of the People’s Campaign against APEC and Imperialist Globalization.

We will speak truth to power outside the halls of the APEC. They have set upon us barricades, barbed wire, and thousands of police forces, but we will not be deterred. Our future is at stake. We won’t wait for the COP 21. We have a world to win. – Rappler.com

Leon Dulce is the campaign coordinator of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, a member of the People’s Campaign against the APEC and Imperialist Globalization (PCAIG).

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,

First, let me congratulate you and your cabinet on your historic win. The values you stand for are a glimmer of hope in this bleak and dreary world.

Some 103 container vans containing garbage from Canada arrived on Philippine shores between 2013 to early 2014, under the guise of recycling. The container vans, in reality, were filled with unrecyclable mixed wastes.

More than two years later, these wastes are still in our ports. Some have already been dumped in our landfills, while others are left rotting for Filipinos to deal with. Unfortunately, the Canadian government has literally done nothing to resolve this mess!

For many months, the Filipino people banged on the walls of the Canadian government hoping for answers, hoping for your country to respect ours. We rallied, wrote countless letters, and even set up numerous meetings, but not a bale of your country’s trash left our shores to return to Canada. (READ: DFA to send diplomatic protest to Canada over illegal trash)

Your predecessor, Stephen Harper was blind and deaf to the plea of Filipinos. Now, all eyes are on you as we look for a leader who will take a stand and have the heart to make a decision on this ugly issue of petrifying waste that has been festering in the Philippines for so long now.

Under Mr Harper, the Canadian reputation of a green nation has been seriously tarnished. We have said this before, and we are saying this again: Prime Minister, the Philippines is not Canada’s dumping ground. (READ: Netizens, Canadians to PM Harper: PH not a garbage dump)

We want a strong Canadian leader who will finally take the moral high ground to right a wrong. You are actively pursuing an open, honest government. But more importantly, you aim to restore Canadian leadership in the world.

If Canada wants to restore its leadership, it must make a real, valuable, and credible contribution to a more peaceful world. That need has never been greater than it is today.

Your platform aptly said it: responsible governments do not walk away from challenges, or pretend they do not exist. The Canadian government cannot sweep this issue under the rug anymore. The Canadian waste issue needs a problem solver, not a politician who could cannot decide what is moral and right.

Your election is a welcome change. The global community is happy to see a forward-thinking leader like you. You say you have formed a diverse and gender-balanced cabinet because it is 2015. I am hoping that Canada takes back its waste because, to borrow your famous words, it is 2015.

The Philippines and Canada have, on many occasions, stood shoulder to shoulder on many issues. Your government said we are a valuable economic partner, and we thank you for that.

The Canadian waste issue is a test on how you treat your allies. It is a test of how you honor your international obligations, as this waste dumping issue violates the tenets of the Basel Convention, which both our countries have signed.

Household wastes, especially those that entered poorer countries maliciously, must be returned, without question and without delay. We urge you, Prime Minister Trudeau, to honor the Basel Convention. Hear the pleas of countless Filipinos whose national dignity has been maligned.

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau, do the right thing and take your country’s waste back home to Canada where it belongs.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy your stay here in Manila.

Sincerely,

Abigail Aguilar

– Rappler.com

Abigail Aguilar is the Detox Campaigner for Greenpeace Philippines. She may be reached at abigail.aguilar@greenpeace.org.