Given how haphazardly – intentionally or unintentionally – President Rodrigo Duterte has sailed through almost half of his term, it can be said now: optics may be the least of his problems presently, but it’s still on the list. And it’s a pretty heavy baggage.

In recent months, many have called him either an autocrat, a budding dictator, or a macho-fascist. (READ: 2018: Democracy in decline)

This may be precisely the reason why his administration has again embarked in an apparently desperate bid to burnish his image.

As 2019 entered, Duterte’s spinmeisters have apparently orchestrated the painting of a new veneer using a slapdash script.

Follow the script

The story begins with a drug buy-bust operation in a community in Navotas City last January 16, where agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) – accompanied by no less than its chief, Director General Aaron Aquino, nabbed 16 people suspected of selling drugs and “rescued” 12 minors aged 4 to 15 years old.

Many members of the media asked to cover the operation attested how the PDEA brazenly paraded the children – who they supposedly rescued – in front of cameras, to be photographed and made to appear as convicted criminals.

As if on cue, the following day – on January 17 – House Committee on Justice chair and Oriental Mindoro Representative Doy Leachon released a statement revealing that his committee is set to finalize a consolidated bill that will basically amend the current provisions of Republic Act 9344 or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 (JJWA) to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) from the current 15 to 9 years old. This will basically allow the state to criminally prosecute children. (READ: Lower criminal age of responsibility? Fully implement Juvenile Justice law first)

This announcement lit the legislative grapevine on fire. Congress insiders who are privy to the workings of the House Justice Committee even noted that former president and now House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo sent out a discrete memo to all members of the Justice Committee to be present on January 21 to facilitate the railroading of the proposed bill.

Those in the know say that the former president, who ironically was the one who signed RA 9344 into law in 2006, is confident that the law will be passed, as the House leadership has totally revamped the composition of the Justice Committee, weeding out any potential member who will dare question the directive.

Buzz from the Senate reveal a similar situation, with senators aiming to also pass a similar bill before session adjourns.

All these behind-the-scenes, House of Cards-style vote whipping begs the question: Why? What’s the sense in all this? Pundits point to a simple truth: because the order emanated nowhere else but from Malacañang itself – in an apparent bid to use children as cannon fodder to refuel the illusion of the drug war’s conquests and victories.

Toying with children’s rights

The railroading of this proposed law is akin to treating legislation as mere child’s play. No less than the United Nations Children’s Fund pointed out that lowering the MACR will do nothing to stop drug syndicates from using children as drug mules or runners. (READ: How Duterte’s drug war targets the youth)

“By lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility, syndicate groups who exploit children into committing crimes for them, will instead use and abuse even younger children to commit their wrongdoings,” the UNICEF has earlier asserted.

There is no dearth of studies and policy reviews which all point to the dangers that lowering MACR will provoke. (READ: Children in conflict with the law: Cracks in Juvenile Justice Act)

Child Rights Network, the largest alliance of organizations and agencies pushing for children’s rights legislation in the Philippines, has summarized the basic reasons why the MACR should not be lowered, in an online petition that has now reached over 4,000 signatures.

These reasons include how children are still biologically developing the decision-making portions of their brains; that lowering the MACR will not result in lower crime rates; that lowering the MACR will not stop syndicates from using children; that the JJWA does not need to be amended but rather, it needs to be fully implemented; and that jail is no place for a child. In sum, not only is lowering the MACR uncalled for – it will undoubtedly provoke an unprecedented catastrophe.

Pushing for a bill that no rational legislator will bother to even pay attention to – just because it is politically expedient for him or her to do so (remember, it’s election season) – is tantamount to bartering the future of Filipino children for personal, political goals. If and when Congress passes this law, legislators cannot claim to be simply naive, for they are brazenly complicit in risking the welfare of Filipino children in exchange for a seat in the table. — Rappler.com

Marjohara Tucay is an independent public governance consultant and a children’s rights advocate.

Dear Bangsamoro youth,

For decades now we have been saying that we are all tired of the conflicts, bloodshed, and the cycle of violence that left some of us battered and broken. We have said for so long that the cost in lives lost and families broken by violence is too high.

These conflicts were also part of the reason why some of us do not live in our homeland, Mindanao. Many of our Bangsamoro people have had to flee their communities. We have since become the products of this exodus. We have had to choose between staying in our homes or surviving elsewhere because of these conflicts.

Many of us have had to choose dispossession and diaspora in order to stay alive.

There was a time when “Moro” was considered a derogatory word. We are changing that. We believe that the discourse on the Bangsamoro narrative is one that should include the whole nation and all Filipino citizens, not just us Moros. This has evolved out of the ongoing conversation on our narrative among the Moro youth and within our communities. (READ: Why the Bangsamoro plebiscite matters to you)

In the last few years, we have seen a lot of Bangsamoro youths directly and indirectly engaged in this process they call peace negotiations. I say that this a refreshing change. In the past, the discussions on Moros’ right to self-determination  did not see as much participation from the youth. I have seen the future of the Bangsamoro step up to the challenge of making peace amid all the conflict.  

We are making the choice of peace for our future. We have been working to make this happen, and we are still at work. That choice and all your efforts are worthy of respect, and you have our deep and abiding respect. (READ: Bangsamoro Vote 2019)

To all the youth who are giving their time and efforts, and whose work has brought us to the stage where we are now – the stage where peace is now visible and very much within reach – you are the movers and shakers for this process.

Many of us will walk to our polling precincts on Monday, January 21, for the plebiscite.

Remember that this is not just the fruit of our forefathers’ struggle. It is also the fruit of our work for and dedication to peace in our homeland. 

This Bangsamoro we are building is owned by all of us, not just our forefathers. This is our future, and it is but right that we be the driving force that will make it happen. – Rappler.com

Amir Mawallil, youth leader, is a proud Moro Tausug writer. He has worked as a journalist, and now works in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao as the director of the region’s public information office. He is the author of the book, "A Constant Retelling: Exploring the Bangsamoro Narratives," published in 2018 by Balangiga Press.

Editor's Note: The original version of this piece was commissioned and first published online by Time Magazine on January 17, 2019, as part of its series on Facebook and its global impact. This is reposted with permission. 

For a time, my reputation – and peace of mind – was demolished by information operations on Facebook. It's a cautionary tale for the United States.

I run Rappler, an online news site in the Philippines. In my country, Facebook essentially is the internet, thanks to subsidies from telecommunications companies that let people avoid data charges while on the site. But it has also made the Philippines a showcase for the destruction Facebook can enable.

The attacks against me and Rappler began appearing on Facebook in the summer of 2016. A year later President Rodrigo Duterte was repeating them in his State of the Nation Address. I have since been indicted on politically-motivated criminal charges, faced my first arrest warrant, and posted bail. Not just once, but 5 times in two separate courts. I need permission to travel outside the Philippines.

If I lose these tax evasion cases and others filed by the Philippine government, I could go to jail for 10 to 15 years.

All because I – and Rappler, the startup I helped create, 7 years old this month – continue to hold power to account, to do our jobs as journalists, and to #HoldTheLine against impunity in a drug war that has killed tens of thousands of people, according to human rights groups.

We know first-hand how social media and the law has been weaponized against perceived critics of the Duterte administration. We've been reporting on it from the start. 

In early October 2016, Rappler published a 3-part series on social media propaganda. It analyzed the emerging information ecosystem using what researchers later called "patriotic trolling" – online, state-sponsored hate meant to silence or intimidate specific targets. After the exposé appeared, I received an average of 90 hate messages per hour for the next month. 

The attacks on Facebook are insidious and extremely personal, from the way I look and sound to threats of rape and murder. As a former war zone correspondent, I have been in the line of fire, but nothing prepared me for this.

After all, a lie repeated a million times becomes the truth, shaping and conditioning public opinion, seeding the messages that would be repeated by President Duterte himself: that Rappler is CIA, fake news, owned by Americans, many more. It hits me every time I look back because these lies form the basis of some of the legal cases against us.

This is our daily pressure cooker: attacked from below by cheap armies on social media, and from above by President Duterte and the government.

The effort was extremely well organized. Each of the government propaganda machine's 3 main content creators addressed a different slice of society: Sass Sasot created pseudo-intellectual content for the top 1%; Thinking Pinoy (RJ Nieto) targeted the middle class; and singer-dancer turned government official now congressional candidate Mocha Uson riled up the mass base.

As early as 2016, an #UnfollowRappler campaign activated at least 52,000 accounts. That was about 1% of our followers at that time – but consider that an earlier investigation showed us that 26 fake accounts on Facebook could reach up to 3 million others.

What mayhem could more than 50,000 Facebook accounts create?

They can reverse perceptions, splitting the real world from the social media world.

We saw it happen. In January 2018, the Pew Global Attitudes Survey found 86% of Filipinos out in the physical world said they trusted traditional news media. If you live on social media, though, your perception was nearly the complete opposite: 83% distrusted it, according to the Philippine Trust Index released that same month.

It happened from systematic and exponentially growing attacks on traditional media, which clearly escalated after Duterte took office in June 2016. In the year before the election campaign, the language Duterte used to attack the media – bias(ed) and corrupt or "bayaran" – barely registered in Facebook comments or posts. Afterward, bias came up 2,000 times a day, and bayaran one day approached 4,000. (For example in one day, bias had an unnaturally high, boosted peak of 30,000 comments.)

The attacks pounded fracture lines in society repeatedly until perception was made reality. 

These attacks fuel anger and hate to tear down trust in truth-tellers: journalists, human rights advocates; to maintain high approval ratings for President Duterte; and to change the values of a significant chunk of our society who now say it's okay to kill drug users or to let China have portions of Philippine territory in the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea). The attacks wage war against opposition politicians, manipulate the Filipino public, and weaken our democracy.

Rappler knows the best and the worst of what Facebook can do. As the world's largest distributor of news, its refusal to act as a true gatekeeper allows lies to spread faster than truth. For that, I'm among Facebook's worst critics. Yet Rappler's exponential growth would not have happened without the social media giant.

I know its immense potential for good. That is why we continue to work with Facebook, as one of 3 fact-checking partners in our country, defining facts and looking at networks that spread lies.

I don't think we have a choice. This is transformative technology, and we can use it to push Facebook to understand its true impact – good and evil – in the world. I'm cautiously optimistic that the good can prevail. On January 11, in its second takedown of "inauthentic" sites and accounts in the Philippines, Facebook banned a significant chunk of the disinformation ecosystem manipulating Filipinos with a link to the Internet Research Agency and the Russian disinformation ecosystem.

Rappler had identified the network, and written about it, nearly 13 months earlier. – Rappler.com

Nagbabadya raw ang pagbabago sa Kamindanawan. Maaari itong ihambing sa pagpapatalsik ng isang diktador, o pagpanalo ng isang dark horse sa eleksyong dating kinokopo ng mayayaman at lumang apelyido. Mas higit pa nga.

Dahil ito’y pagbabagong magtutuwid sa “historical injustice” na kasintanda ng kolonisasyon ng España sa Pilipinas. Simula’t sapul, nanindigan ang Bangsamoro laban sa mga banyagang mananakop ngunit ‘di nila nakamit ang karapatang itakda ang sariling tadhana.

Lagi na lang, ang Mindanao ay lupain ng nabigong pangakong kapayapaan at pag-unlad.

Sa halip, naging realidad nito ang giyera. Sa loob ng 4 na dekada, tinatantiyang umabot sa 150,000 ang nasawi, P640 bilyon ang nasayang sa ekonomiya, at 3.5 milyong tao ang naging bakwit sa lupang tinubuan. (PANOORIN: War came to Mindanao)

Tadtad ng sigalot ang kasaysayan ng Mindanao: mula sa pagdagsa ng mga dayong Kristiyano na humantong sa pagiging minorya ng mga Muslim, hanggang sa pulitikal na karahasang kumitil ng buhay ng mga Muslim tulad ng Jabidah massacre, hanggang sa pag-usbong ng rebelyong nakaugat sa ilang siglong pang-aapi at maling pamumuno.

Sa inaasahang pag-iral ng BOL, dala nito ang pag-asang bibitawan na ng mga rebelde ang armas kapalit ng bolpen upang magpatakbo ng gobyerno, magbigay serbisyo publiko, at mamahala ng kabang yaman.

Dati nang nabigo ang pinunong rebelde na si Nur Misuari sa higanteng responsibilidad na ito. Napag-iwanan ang ARMM na ngayon ay isa sa pinakamahirap na rehiyon sa Mindanao. 

Ang hamon sa Moro Islamic Liberation Front at sa mga tumatanda nitong mga combatant ay itransporma ang sarili mula sa isang puwersang rebelde sa isang puwersang pangkabuhayan at pamunuan. 

Ang hamon naman sa mga Kristiyano at Muslim na stakeholders sa BARMM, pati na rin ang mga bumoto ng “no”: kalingain ang kapayapaan at huwag hayaang agawin ng makasariling interes ang bagong bukang-liwayway. 

Ngayong Lunes, ika-21 ng Enero, bumoboto sa isang plebesito ang mga taga-Bangsamoro region. Ito ang inaasahang papalit sa nabigong eksperimento ng Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Bumoboto sila kung sang-ayon sila sa pagbubuo ng Bangsamoro Organic Law na magtataguyod sa Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao o BARMM. 

Higit pa rito, bumoboto sila para sa kanilang kinabukasan. Bumoboto sila para sa kapayapaan.

Dahil mananahimik na ang mga baril, wala nang lalayas sa sariling tahanan upang umiwas sa bala. Wala nang baryong maglalagablab sa apoy. Walang nang barilang pupunit sa katahimikan, araw, at gabi. 

Kapag nanahimik ang mga baril, maitatayo na ang mas maraming paaralan at palaruan; mailalatag na ang mas maraming kalyeng magbibigay daan sa mas maraming negosyong lilikha ng mas maraming trabaho. Matutupad na ang pangako ng paraiso. – Rappler.com

When I was 9 years old, I was about to finish 4th grade but had to fight my way through bureaucratic and social judgments just to make sure I advanced to the next grade. My teachers felt I was too young to appreciate fractions and decimals, changes in matter and energy, and conjunctions in the English language.

Looking back, I did have a hard time keeping up with our lessons. But curiosity and imagination always thrived at the young age of 9 so I came through. After all, children and the ones in awe of the workings of nature and the social environment should always be given space and opportunity to grow and understand their own setting.

But what if they are robbed of these?

'Anti-poor and elitist'

Today, the House committee on justice approved an unnamed bill ammending Republic Act 10630, which will lower the minimum age of criminal liability from 15 to 9 years old.

According to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Philippines, the usual profile of children in conflict with the law includes: being neglected by parents, living in poverty, residing in high crime areas, not having the means to go to school, sporting low educational attainment, and being exploited both by adults and syndicates.

This information makes lowering the age of criminal liability anti-poor and outright elitist. These children are victims of socio-economic inequality—victims who are penalized too much simply by being born into an oppressed class.

However, instead of protecting them, this State chooses to oppress them further.

These children have suffered enough from consequences not of their own choosing. We must therefore not fall prey to the blunder of projecting the role of an actor, whatever age, to such a large extent that we fail to acknowledge the interplay of social structures that shape the conditions of these actors.

They are in a pit and this administration is digging the pit deeper. The aforementioned amendment may actually encourage syndicates to abuse younger children, since the capture of these children would mean that a criminal has already been apprehended. Worse, this might even be used to justify the already horrendous treatment children experience under the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.

While officials maintain that children will be convicted not to punish but to reform them, and that they will be called “children in conflict with the law” (CICL) instead of criminals, the proposed amendment still begs to be challenged.

Youth and justice 

The fact that children as young as 9 can be arrested for a committing a crime is labeling them as criminals in all but name. It is unacceptable to tag a child as a criminal as if we adults and this society have no accountability for their actions. Moreover, it is cruel to look at them as failures when we are the very ones failing our children. If we find it okay for them to undergo trial, a situation not at all child-friendly, this says a lot more about us than about their behavior.

We are robbing them of their right to grow in a nurturing environment. We are killing their potential to actualize their greatest abilities. We are taking them away from contributing to nation-building.

It is offensive that this move is backed by the likes of House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who has been charged and then cleared for electoral sabotage and plunder. This is moreso because juvenile crimes, which mainly consist of theft, only take a little part of the total crimes in the country. These children did not commit murder nor corruption that many officials and high-ranking people do but get off scot-free. (READ: Child rights group to Congress on age of criminal liability: Why the turnaround?)

Our social lives are riddled with double standards that are doubly problematic when they target our children. We say that they are too young to vote, too young to drive, too young to drink alcohol, too young to know what is good for them, and so the list goes on. It does not make sense, then, to claim that they are old enough to go to jail. 

When I was 9, there were a lot of things I did not understand—not only within the prescribed curriculum for my grade, but also concepts even adults find difficult to grasp.

Given all these, how can we expect our children to navigate their way into the complexities of justice? How can we see them as able to traverse the gray areas of right and wrong? How can we believe that they know what and what not to do when their everyday reality includes the normalization of crime among the officials who are supposed to be their role models? (READ: Change.org petition: ‘No to lowering age of criminal responsibility’)

In her opening statement during the Miss Universe 2018 pageant, Catriona gray said, “We owe it to our children to believe in them.”

We owe it to them to make sure they get the chance to realize the potential that we know they have. This means looking into the wider realities that beset their lives, not zeroing the blame on them. This  means addressing the social structures that maintain inequalities among them and force some of them into deviance. – Rappler.com 

Athena Charanne “Ash” R. Presto graduated summa cum laude and teaches at the Sociology Department of the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is currently taking her MA Sociology at the same institution. She tweets at @sosyolohiya.

Believe it or not, our lawmakers have managed to reach a new low. 

The latest appalling policy proposal to emanate from Congress is a set of bills seeking to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) from 15 to 12. Until yesterday, they were actually pushing for as low as 9.

This is nothing new. First put forward by former speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, the House bill is now being shepherded in by current Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the behest of President Duterte himself.

In the Senate, meanwhile, a counterpart bill is being pushed by Senate President Tito Sotto.

It almost needs no explaining, but this policy is not just inhumane but also grossly inefficient and inequitable. In other words, it’s both cruel and stupid.

Inhumane

A surprising number of countries worldwide allow children below 15 to be charged with and convicted of criminal offenses. Many – including 35 states in the US as of 2017 – even do not impose any minimum age at all.

Despite this, children are not small adults. They cannot in good conscience be considered fully aware of (and responsible for) their actions since they’re not yet mature intellectually, emotionally, and psychosocially.

Exactly for this reason, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child declared that an MACR below 12 is “not to be internationally acceptable.” In fact, they encourage governments to raise such minimum age.

But in the Philippines we seem poised to go the other way. Unicef even went on to brand the recent proposals in Congress as an “act of violence against children.”

Aside from being inhumane, the current bills are also fraught with ambiguities. For instance, in the latest version of the House bill, and presumably in response to public furor, lawmakers swapped the term “criminal responsibility” with a euphemistic but no less detestable term: “social responsibility.”

What on earth does that mean?

Inefficient

As a way to combat crime, lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility is also terribly inefficient.

First, Congress has so far failed to produce any empirical basis suggesting that a lower MACR could significantly deter or reduce crime.

Indeed, you’ll be hard put to find any. A 2017 paper showed that when the MACR was lowered in Denmark from 15 to 14, this did not deter 14-year-olds from committing crime. Children in conflict with the law were also likelier to recidivate, less likely to be enrolled in school, and likelier to have lower grades.

Though no similar study yet exists for the Philippines, one would expect lawmakers to cite at least some evidence to back their proposals. But as admitted by Arroyo herself, they’re just acting on Duterte’s wishes. “My agenda is the President’s agenda,” said Arroyo.

Just as disquietingly, another lawmaker displayed open disdain for “science” when asked to cite any supporting study during a TV interview.

Second, children commit but a very small portion of all reported crimes in the Philippines (1.72% as of 2015), and these often involve petty offenses like snatching.

Third, isn’t the Philippine National Police boasting that crime rates have plummeted since Duterte came into office? Or is this still a pipe dream that can only be fulfilled by arresting children too?

Fourth, even if it’s true that children are routinely employed by syndicates to commit crimes and escape criminal liability, why take it out on the children?

Why not go after the syndicates who enslave and expose them to harm’s way? Also, won’t the proposed policy encourage syndicates to exploit kids who are even younger (those aged below 9 or 12)?

A far superior policy would be to improve our legal infrastructure for juvenile justice, and further promote prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation programs tailored for children in conflict with the law.

Social workers in close contact with these children will be the first to attest that the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 is “not yet fully implemented, not fully enforced, not yet periodically monitored.”

Sadly, amid the din of public outrage, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has remained deafeningly silent. Why?

Inequitable

Jailing children is also deeply unfair to them on many levels.

First, a great many adults are ripe for arrest and trial out there, so why obsess on kids?

One need only think of plunderers and other corrupt officials who were recently set free or granted bail by the courts, such as Imelda Marcos, Juan Ponce Enrile, Bong Revilla, and Gloria Arroyo herself.

Second, and much more importantly, the proposed bills are blind to the socioeconomic realities—like poverty and hunger—that drive children into doing criminal acts.

Time and again studies have shown that poverty and crime form a two-way street, feeding into one another.

But getting caught and punished for petty crimes can leave indelible marks on the lives of children, making it even harder for them to reform and break free from the cycle of poverty.

In a collective statement, Filipino psychologists warned of numerous studies showing that “encounters with the justice system do not deter but rather result in greater subsequent crime for the young person.”

Is it not enough that thousands of minors today end up as collateral victims of Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, whether as orphans of EJK victims or EJK victims themselves (just like the hapless Kian delos Santos)?

No votes for the proponents

By now Duterte’s capacity to promulgate cruel and stupid policies no longer comes as a surprise.

Yet the bills seeking to jail kids as young as 9 or 12 still feel unnaturally harsh, even by Duterte’s standards. Needless to say, such proposals are inhumane, inequitable, and inefficient.

The policy is also highly hypocritical of former president Arroyo who signed into law the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, which originally raised the MACR to 15 from the 9-year minimum set in the Revised Penal Code. Hence, this is actually a reversal of Arroyo’s prior stance.

Even if the House seems to be relenting somehow to public pressure, keep in mind that until yesterday they were willing to jail kids as young as 9. 

Are Filipinos really comfortable with this? Is this a true sentiment of our people that lawmakers are only faithfully expressing and executing?

If not, our system of representation is broken and perhaps the best way to respond is to punish the bill’s proponents by giving them zero votes on May 13 (if they are going for reelection) and even beyond.

But if so – if the Filipino people really want this policy to happen – what does this say of our society’s values? – Rappler.com

The author is a PhD candidate at the UP School of Economics. His views are independent of the views of his affiliations. Follow JC on Twitter (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ (usapangecon.com).

Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Fred Serrano has thrown his support behind groups urging President Rodrigo Duterte to veto the rice tariffication law.

Blaming the senators for their version of tariffication (Senate Bill 1998), Serrano maintains that rice tariffication, which converts the quantity restriction (QR) on imported rice into tariff protection rates, is not about removing the “regulatory power of the NFA (National Food Authority) to control the entry of imported rice in the country.”

That is not entirely correct.Rice tariffication should remove the power of NFA to regulate rice imports. Article 4.2 of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture prohibits the use of restrictions on agricultural imports other than tariffs – and that includes non-tariff measures maintained through state-trading enterprises such as the NFA.

The enrolled rice bill sent to Malacañang hits the bull’s eye on rice tariffication. The rice import monopoly of NFA is removed by the proposed law, and is replaced with tariff protection. Congress approved 35% tariff rate on imported rice from ASEAN (and at least 5% higher if imported outside of ASEAN) to protect the local rice industry.

Putting aside the topic of complying with our World Trade Organization obligation, is the law now on the President’s desk good for our farmers? Opponents (for example, founding chairman Robert Hernandez of Alyansa ng Industriya ng Bigas) disagree. He contends that “deregulating the NFA would mean unregulated entry of imported rice, which would flood the market and depress palay prices.”  

Let us check the data. Once the President enacts rice tariffication, we should expect that private sector importers would import rice from ASEAN member states, particularly Vietnam or Thailand, since the import tariff and freight cost are lowest. The tariff on imported rice from ASEAN would raise the price that rice consumers in our country pay by 35%. This is called the implicit tariff (IT).

If the implicit tariff is entirely passed on to farmers, a 35% IT will result in a 35% nominal protection rate (NPR). But under current trading restrictions implemented by the NFA, this is not the case. In 2017, for example, only 23% of the potential protection was passed on to farmers (see table) – that is, roughly three-fourths of what consumers pay above free trade price for rice does not go to rice farmers. Instead it goes to rice traders and to inefficiencies in the domestic rice marketing system (Dawe et al. , 2008; Mataia, et al., 2018).

Rice consumers in Metro Manila in 2017 paid on average 41% more than the landed price of rice imported freely from Vietnam or Thailand. But our rice farmers sold their rice at only 9% above this free trade price. The difference or 32% went to rice traders, millers, or were simply lost to market inefficiencies in the rice value chain.

NFA and trade restrictions, especially in rice distribution, “displace private transportation, storage, and handling, rendering marketing less competitive and efficient” (Jandoc and Roumasset 2018).

A compelling argument why President Duterte should sign this bill into law is that in doing so he kicks off the process of substantially reducing the inefficiencies and collusion in the rice market system, which for nearly half a century has made rice farmers poor. Farmers become better off as they capture more of the intended trade protection of the law from rice traders in collusion with corrupt NFA agents.  

If farmers obtained 10% NPR in 2017, rice tariffication, coupled with investments in infrastructure under the government’s “build, build, build” program, could potentially raise NPR from 10% to 35%.  

The tariff rate on imported rice could be lowered in the future without harming the vast majority of farmers. The current proposed tariff level of 35% is a maximum rate. If it is lowered, most of the rice farmers who are rice consumers during most part of the year can be made better off, along with non-rice farmers in rural areas, fisherfolk, workers, and residents in urban areas. – Rappler.com 

Dr Ramon Clarete is a professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics, where he served as dean from 2012 until 2015. Prior to joining UP, he was an assistant professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and was a research fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He obtained a PhD in Economics from the University of Hawaii in 1984. His research interests are in agricultural economics, development economics, multilateral trade policy, international economics, and public economics. Dr Clarete is also a fellow at the Foundation for Economic Freedom.

Ten years ago, I had an amusing experience at the Philippine embassy in Yangon, Myanmar.

I was registering for the 2010 elections and the officer in charge of the task asked me to go behind the booth so I can find my hometown myself. I told him I was from Cotabato City, a chartered city listed under Region XII. He said he tried every option for the province (Cotabato, South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani) but he could find Cotabato City on their Municipalities and Cities line. I took the mouse and changed the Region to ARMM (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao), clicked Maguindanao as a province, and right there at the top of the list goes Cotabato City.

I gave him a sheepish smile and said that this usually happens.

When the ARMM government was put in place in 1989, Cotabato City voted "no" to its inclusion. Ten years after, the ARMM conducted another plebiscite for the amended ARMM law. Again, Cotabato City said no.

It is thus understandable that Cotabato City’s "yes" vote  for the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) is considered monumental and historic.

But what is it about Cotabato City that makes it contentious and so desired? (READ: Why Cotabato 'yes' vote matters)

Heart of Central Mindanao

Before it was even proclaimed a chartered city under RA 2364 in 1959, Cotabato City’s history stretches back centuries ago – even before the arrival of the Spaniards in the archipelago of what is now Philippines.

The city traces its name to the indigenous word Kuta Wato, which means "fort of stone," in reference to a limestone hill that was the highest elevation overlooking the swampy area around its proximity and the great Pulangi river at a distance.

The hill, which was originally named Tantawan, is now called Pedro Colina Hill (PC Hill). And the Pulangi river is now listed on maps as the Rio Grande de Mindanao. Kutawato had also made its way in  cartographers and historians' documents under its hispanized name Cotabato.

Modern-day Cotabato was built during the reign of Sultan Makakwa (1857-1884), when the Spanish-Politico Military Government of Mindanao declared it as a Central District along with Polloc in 1860. The Sultanate of Maguindanao’s centuries-old resistance against the Spanish simmered in the late 1880s, when the ruling Sultans at the time decided to enter into peace agreements with the Spanish government.

Upon the defeat of the Spanish in the hands of the Americans during the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Spanish colonialization of the Philippines ended. Consequently, the Spanish Politico-Military Government evacuated Cotabato in 1899 and left a triumvirate in charge of the town: these 3 figures are Roman Vilo, a native soldier, Celestino Alonzo, a Chinese convert, and Datu Piang as the Moro representative.

In the early years of the Republic of the Philippines, Cotabato expanded from a town into a municipality. Later on, the province of Cotabato was also established.

As such, there were two political entities called Cotabato in the early 20th century: the province of Cotabato stretching from Buldon in the North to Upi in the Southwest, to as far as Polomolok in the Southeast and Makilala in the West, and the capital of the province, the municipality of Cotabato.

Cotabato province would later on be divided into 4 provinces (South Cotabato, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, and Maguindanao) and the municipality of Cotabato will become what is now Cotabato City.

Economic powerhouse

By 1960s, Cotabato City was an economic powerhouse in Central Mindanao.

History took a dark turn in the 1970s with the ubiquitous hostilities done under the Martial Law regime of Ferdinand Marcos and the advent of the Moro separatist movement. Mindanao was in turmoil.

Despite the spread of violence, Cotabato City was spared from the atrocities of war. This can be attributed to the fact that the city is protected by large military detachments in its fluvial borders: Tamontaka in the South and Matampay in the North.

Nonetheless, the city was not immune to violence. Crimes and violent clashes between feuding political families marred the city’s streets. Furthermore, the city felt the tremors of the war in the places surrounding it.

The city suffered through numerous IED explosions and consistent threats of violence. Furthermore, the economy was on a standstill. The insecurity in the area prompted entrepreneurs and potential investors to leave.

One of the immediate results of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement is the stabilization of the security situation in the area. Investments flooded along with the hope of a secure environment. The empty marshland in Governor Gutierrez was converted into a compound for the Regional Commissioner of the ARMM.

Erap's war

The city enjoyed a period of relative peace until it was disrupted again during then-president Joseph Estrada’s all-out war in 2000.

As it was before, security and investment climate changed for the better following the implementation of the peace process. The ARMM regional Board of Investment based in Cotabato City cites an accumulated P20 billion worth of investments following the peace process between the MILF and the Government of the Philippines in 2012.

Suffice to say, Cotabato City has reaped the fruits of the peace processes in Mindanao.

Despite its independent stature, Cotabato City is highly affected by the instability of its neighboring areas. As such, the city cannot divorce itself from the concerns of areas that surround it. 

With a difference of 11,698 votes, Cotabateños had voted "yes" to the BOL. The BOL is but a framework and the regional laws that will define the region are yet to be made. Despite this, the seat of the regional government will most likely be in Cotabato City.

A lot will be expected from this city of 299,438 people. What does this mean for Cotabateños?

At most, it will be the face of the BARMM. Uncertainties abound and fear seems a logical response.

Lead the way

This is the chance for Cotabateños to rise up. We have long enjoyed the privilege of good education, decent health and welfare, and a stable economy compared to our neighbors. This is an opportunity for us to rise to the challenge, to be an example, and to lead the way.

There will be overwhelming changes, and Cotabato City needs to stick to its essence of what made the city as it is: the home of Muslims and Christians. Every person who was born and raised in Cotabato City refers to themselves first as a Cotabateño, regardless of indigenous and settler origins.

The city is an anthropological goldmine and its rich multicultural history is apparent on the name of its streets; the use of “Tagalog” as the primary language so as to provide a common medium in response to the many regional languages that thrive in the area; the harmonious coexistence between people of different faiths where you hear the bell tolls of the Cathedral along with the azan (call to prayer) of the neighborhood mosques; and the absence of ghettoization as indicated by the nonexistence of a Chinatown despite the significant Chinese population in the area.

Cotabato City will not degenerate. It is not in the nature of this city to do so. Like its persistent nature, Cotabato City will rise to the challenge. The torch is lit, and we now hold the responsibility to carry it.

As a Cotabateño, I am optimistic and excited for what lies ahead. Like the tagline we so proudly say, “Sigay ka, Cotabato City.” We shall lead the way so that no one will be left behind. 

As eternally embodied in the lines of the city’s hymn, Awit ng Cotabato:

Kristiano’t Muslim ang nagsikap

Na ito ay mapaunlad

Kotabato buhay ka’t lakas

Nitong bansang nagliliyag 

It is about time we give back. – Rappler.com

The author has been a peace and conflict resolution practitioner in Mindanao since 2010.

Mental health is too important to be left entirely in the hands of academics or professionals. But our growing worship of self-styled psychology gurus is alarming.

In our wish to understand and explain difficult feelings and thoughts – in a culture that largely prefers to silence them – we look to popular Western labels and powerful metaphors for relief and validation. It is not enough to feel sad. Let’s call it depression. It is not enough to worry. Anxiety is sexier. Thinking of death or dying? You must be suicidal.

Transient indigenous experiences are commodified into Western permanence. Instead of genuine empowerment – transferring the power from professionals and resolutely placing it onto patients and their families – we retain the status quo in the guise of “improved services” and the “human rights approach.”

Pop psychology

Psychology then becomes the tool. It dramatizes our life stories – and thus can be more personally recognizable and accessible than other sciences. The advice of local professionals might reveal aspects of our inner lives that feel true. It is fundamentally a science – a systematic way of exploring and discovering our feelings, thoughts and behavior. (READ: [OPINION] A psychiatrist's view: Common misconceptions about mental health)

Pop psychology is a different species. What sets it apart from psychological science is that it lends an air of being vaguely academic but is more consistent with self-help ideology.

“Positive thinking” and “self-care” are elevated into incomprehension and are repackaged as wellness. This is as helpful as Efficascent oil for every ailment. The pop psychology guru is a modern albularyo. (READ: Is the Philippines ready to address mental health?) 

Take toxic. “Toxic relationship,” “toxic masculinity,” “toxic work” – is everything toxic? We showed virtually no search interest in “toxic Filipino culture” since 2004, according to local data from Google Trends. However, between July and December 2018, the term gained peak popularity. The word “toxic” oversimplifies our experience whilst simultaneously complicating it. This is the hallmark of pop psychology. The word is not well defined, but it is uttered with such confidence as to be the singular blame for our malcontent. It is clickable, it is searchable, it must be true.

Pop psychology feels true, but truth and fact are not the same. It is a false antidote.

Exposure to social media does not help. Filipinos are among the savviest in the churn of likes, posts, and tweets. But the sheer volume of information – and blatantly fabricated misinformation – makes us vulnerable to the illusory truth effect. The more we see the information, the more we tend to believe it to be true. It is then wildly flung around on social media and claimed as fact. Pop psychology incubates this believability. 

Nonsense is its backbone. This underscores our limited skills as well as discomfort –  academics and professionals alike – to prioritize and apply indigenous psychology because it is easier to use Western concepts – the basis of much of our academic and clinical training – albeit distorted. This is further complicated by professionals’ uncanny ability to maintain the moral high ground and by academia’s equally laughable inability to get off the ivory tower. This breeds resentment and distrust against the so-called elite. Psychology is a science for the privilege.

Risks 

The guru fills this gap. So-called influencers, people with the conceit to call themselves “public figures,” and anyone with sufficient self-regard to claim their “issues” as credentials to dole out advise high-jack the narrative – at a time when we want Filipinos to regain their trust in science. They are no better than the wellness-industrial complex peddling vitamins and other products of dubious value with the audacity to still say “no therapeutic claims.”

We should not mistake sharing our own personal struggles from the nonsense of pop psychology. Sharing stories builds empathy. And in fact, we need more Filipino writers like you – and we need you now. And our rich oral tradition means that we can re-story mental health as the protagonist against stigma. But personal struggles of depression, anxiety, or other mental health problems can complement but should not substitute for evidence-informed comment.

The challenge for psychology is that its jargon does not easily fit into the world of sound bites and opinions valued by posts, shares, and links. Yet Gestalt Therapy or “holistic care” rolls off the tongues of local professionals as easily as “healing” and “closure.” These are as empty in their promises as “person-centered” in primary care. 

The dangers are real. It can lead us to postpone effective care. It can invalidate our genuine feelings  and thoughts. You cannot positively think your way out of a suicide attempt. This ought to be an exciting time for mental health specific to our worldview and way of life.

This ought to be a time when sikolohiyang Pilipino leaps forward. Instead, indigenous psychology is being pushed further back. We are losing a chance to self-correct decades of missed opportunities and to avoid the mistakes of the past.

You can bet pop psychology will exploit that. – Rappler.com

Dr Ronald Del Castillo is professor of psychology, public health, and health policy at the University of the Philippines Manila. The views here are his own.

Ilang araw pa lang ang nakalilipas mula nang bumigay ang mga mambabatas sa harap ng masigabong pagtutol sa pagbaba ng edad ng criminal liablity sa 9 anyos mula 15 anyos. 

Umatras ang mga mambabatas sa posisyon nilang ikulong ang mga 9 na taong gulang. Pero sa tingin ba talaga nila mas nasa wastong pag-iisip ang 12 anyos para maging criminally responsible? 

Tinawag ito ng UNICEF Philippines na “act of violence" laban sa mga bata.

Maraming kahinaaan ang umiiral na Republic Act (RA) 10630, pero implementasyon ang problema at hindi ang diwa ng rehabilitasyon na siyang buod nito.

Ayon sa mga psychologist, wala sa mga teenager ang ganap na kakayanang makapagdesisyon nang tuwid, 'di pa nila kayang kontrolin ang pagiging padalos-dalos at mapusok, at 'di nila kayang arukin ang masamang epekto ng kanilang mga ginagawa.

Ayon sa mga pag-aaral, nagma-mature ang mga adolescents pag sapit ng 16 na taon. Kaya nga hindi hinahayaang magmaneho ang mga batang 15 taon pababa sa ibang bansa. Pero sa Pilipinas, puwede na silang ikalaboso.

Isang bagay pang nagpapakumplika ng sitwasyon ng bata: ang kultura ng kahirapan. (BASAHIN: Part 1 Beyond juvenile delinquency: Why children break the law; Part 2 When 'Houses of Hope' fail children in conflict with the law; Part 3 Children in conflict with the law: Cracks in Juvenile Justice Act)

Ano ba ang profile ng batang kriminal sa Pilipinas? Una, siya ay mahirap, pangalawa, maaga siyang nasadlak sa mapapait na mga karanasan, at pangatlo, exposed siya sa kriminalidad.

Nakapanlulumo na dalawang beses magiging biktima ang mga bata: Hindi na nga sila sinagip ng sistema mula sa kahirapan, pero ngayon, ituturing pa silang kriminal kahit pinagsamantalahan o pinabayaan ng matatanda. (BASAHIN: Criminalization is not what we owe our children)

Kumplikado ang problema ng kriminalidad sa hanay ng kabataan. Kailangan nito ng malawak, malalim, sensitibo at matalinong pag-atake sa problema – hindi sinturong lalatay sa balat o martilyong babasag sa bungo ng mga musmos.  (BASAHIN: Why jailing kids is not just cruel, it’s stupid too)

Tunay na may mga batang nakagawa ng karumaldumal na mga krimen, pero solusyon ba rito ang panukalang batas ng mga galamay ni Pangulong Rodrigo Duterte na lantarang nagsasabing "sumusunod lamang sila sa gusto ng Pangulo"?

Tulad ng tugon ng administrasyong Duterte sa iligal na droga, kamay na bakal din ang sagot nito sa mga batang napariwara. Tulad ni Kian delos Santos, ang kabataan na naman ang biktima ng pagpapapogi ng isang pinunong walang amor sa karapatang pantao.

Bakit pinupuntirya ang kabataang walang boses sa lipunan? Bakit hindi unahin ang kurap at tiwali at mga nagmamanipula sa mga batang maging kriminal?

Ito ang paninindigan ng Rappler sa pagbababa ng age of criminal responsibility:

• Hindi "little adult" ang mga musmos. 
• Hindi bababa ang crime rate kapag ikinulong ang mga bata.
• Hindi nito mapipigilan ang paggamit sa mga bata sa krimen.
• Higit sa lahat, ang bilangguan ay hindi para sa mga bata.

Malupit, marahas, ’di makatarungan at ‘di makatao ang panukalang ibaba sa 12 anyos ang criminal liability. 

Muli na namang pinatunayan ni Duterte, sampu ng mga kampon niya sa Kongreso, na ang pamumuno nila'y walang puso. – Rappler.com

January 23 was my first time to attend a plenary hearing in Congress. We, the representatives of the Child Rights Network, entered the big hall, feeling like we were bringing our white towels, sort of prepared for a lost battle, for now. (READ: Highlights of House bill lowering criminal liability age to 12)

 The first to interpellate was the Honorable Lito Atienza, and I was very pleased to listen to his passionate speech against the lowering of the minimum age of criminal responsibility. But I was appalled that most of the representatives were not listening to the discussion but just doing their own thing. Parang nasa palengke lang sila (It was like they were at the market).

During the interpellation, I heard from Representative Salvador Leachon, the sponsor of the bill, that the reason for the lowering was based on two premises. (READ: Gov’t lacks support staff, youth centers to rehab children – lawmakers)

First, he said that the rate of crimes committed by children had gone up significantly. I found it hard to agree with this after having been given the official data from the Juvenile Justice Welfare Council that children below 15 years of age commit only 1.7% of all crimes in the Philippines. Of these, most are property offenses (theft) committed by poor children who are out of school and from families experiencing domestic violence or separation. (READ: Beyond juvenile delinquency: Why children break the law)

One of the viral videos being used to “prove” this skyrocketing crime rate is of some children physically assaulting a man on a jeepney, pushing him to the road. Those who bothered to listen to the story behind this incident (not just take it at face value) would know that the “victim” had attempted to molest the 16-year old girl on the jeepney just before the video was taken. She was brave enough to fight back and, luckily, had friends to help her. Those who bothered to fact-check would know that the “victim” never came forward to file charges against these children, presumably because he knew that he was the real criminal.

Moreover, with the killings of more than 30,000 people over the past two years, we are constantly being told to believe that crime rate has already gone down and it is now safe to wander around.

The second reason given for lowering the age is that young children are being used by syndicates, that is why we need to punish them. I had heard this argument so many times and I could not believe that this was cited as an official reason. Even the mami vendor selling in front of our office would know how to rebut this. It is clearly the adults exploiting the children who need to be punished, not the children themselves. (READ: Children in conflict with the law: Cracks in Juvenile Justice Act)

After the second speaker, the “honorable” men ganged up to cut the interpellations and moved to vote. It happened so quickly, we could not catch up. The whole process was just railroaded. It was just appalling and outrageous to see honorable men without honor. (READ: When 'Houses of Hope' fail children in conflict with the law)

It dawned on me how our poor children are suffering from two kinds of syndicates: the first is the syndicate on the streets that use them; the other is the well-organized syndicate in Congress that criminalizes them in the guise of “protecting them,” all for their political convenience.

Impunity is the culture, so syndicates are rewarded and victims are either jailed or killed.

And why the haste? I forgot. Elections are just around the corner. – Rappler.com

Lily Flordelis is the executive director of Bahay Tuluyan. She is also a children's rights advocate with 19 years of experience working with children at the grassroots. 

Sometimes, it pays to watch TV Patrol. Sometimes, the show’s usual fodder of cops and robbers and utterly boring Manny Pacquiao workouts is punctuated by  coverage that reveals in its full glory the seamy side of Philippine politics. The evening news last January 22 was one such event. 

The segment covering the proposed bill to lower the age of criminal liability started off with the head of the House of Representatives justice committee Salvador Leachon, a key ally of Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, proudly announcing that his panel had approved a bill bringing down the age from 15 to 9. Then it cut to the hubbub in the Senate, where Senator Richard Gordon unctuously declared that 9 was too low and that 12 was just the right age.  The segment ended with Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo washing his hands off the debate, saying the executive respected the independence of the legislative branch.  

Perhaps unknown to its producers, that 4-minute  segment captured one of the oldest tricks in the legislative book, one that as a member of Congress from 2009 to 2015, I had witnessed innumerable times. I went on to post the following on Facebook:

“How do you get a bill bringing down the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 12 passed in the Senate?

“By proposing another bill to have it lowered to age 9, and making those who hold the line at 12 feel like they won a great victory for human rights and allowing guys like Senator Gordon, who probably thought up the strategy in the first place, to pose as advocates of children's rights.”

Predictably, the House on second reading late last week revised the original bill to lower the criminal liability age to 12, which will also be the outcome in the Senate, as Senator Gordon, Duterte’s point man in the upper house, all but revealed in the TV Patrol story. (Editor's note: On Monday, January 28, the House passed that bill on final reading.)

Save Congress' face

From the very beginning, the Palace had set its sights on lowering the age of criminal liability to 12. So what was the point of proposing the bill to lower it to 9? 

It was to save face, Congress’ face. Both houses of Congress have been smarting from the image that they have become purely rubberstamps for Malacanang. So the Palace and Congress agreed to carry out this game of pretend, one that would give Malacanang the 12 year figure it wanted but also provide the legislators with the opportunity to display some “independence” from President Duterte.

To a jaded observer of Congress’ shenanigans like me, however, the minuet that the President and Congress put on was not, however, the most disturbing thing about this whole episode. Many people have been justly outraged at what they consider the administration’s extension of war on the poor to the war on the children of the poor. That was expected. 

What was unexpected was that the proposed lowering of the age of criminal liability to 9 – not just to 12 but to 9! – appeared to have significant support, as evidenced by the responses to the original House bill in social media. And unlike those making outrageous comments in the Upsilonian chat scandal a few months ago, many of those who backed the measure did not even bother to hide their identities. 

Here are samples of their comments:

• Sa wakas mauubos na din mga rugby boys sa daan
• Ok yan para madeceplina lahat hnd pwd ung maging magmatigas at una nating deceplinahin 
• Pwede na rin.
• Para sa akin tama yan para hindi sila magamit ng masasamang tao sa kalukuhan na gawaiin.
• Yes na yes❤️❤️❤️❤️
• Dapat fetus pa lang. Matatakot na yang mga yan.
• Stupid 'why have an age limit on it?, any age that breaks the law should go to jail period!!
• Pakisuyo tingnan nyo Singapore 7 ang 7. Tama.
• Tama yan. Life imprisonment dapat sa mga yan para dina dumami!
• Ilang taon na yung ateneo bully? 
• Tama lng yn ...para matakot mga mgulang ng pasaway

The age of criminal liability issue, in short, has witnessed an outpouring of the venomous hatred that the better off have for the children of the poor, who are forced to eke out an existence by watching your car for a few pesos, washing your windshield, begging, or serving as drug runners in Southeast Asia’s most poverty-ridden society, where the absence of social reform has condemned close to 30% of the population to life under the poverty line.  

By initially framing the issue as a fight against drugs and crime, Duterte was able to ride on anti-poor sentiments that were lurking just below the surface. With the age of criminal liability debate, however, those feelings are now expressed with less concern about appearing politically correct on the part of those uttering them.  

It has exposed the war on drugs and crime for what it essentially is: not so much a strategy to contain drugs and crime than a draconian effort to control and repress the poor that is backed by our society’s upper and middle classes, which have given up all pretense of supporting social reform. 

Much of the rise in crime stems from growing desperation that cannot be channeled to progressive politics in the absence of a effective progressive leader or movement championing the causes of the poor. And much as in other countries where elites and middle class no longer feel confident in containing social discontent via liberal democratic methods, they are actively backing a strongman who promises to keep the “dangerous classes” in line, some of whose methods may be personally distasteful but, in their heart of hearts, feel are “necessary.” – Rappler.com

Rappler commentator Walden Bello teaches sociology and served as a member of the House of Representatives from 2009 to 2015.  He is the author of many books, including "Counterrevoution: The Global Rise of the Far Right" (2019).

I want to let you know what most people my age think and feel.

These are opinions, fears, and doubts from our collective experiences of having lived in the Muslim Mindanao area. I apologize if I have to be really frank. It's the only way to get the message across.

So here are our few but unadulterated, unfiltered  thoughts about you – whoever you will be.

You fight so hard for the positions to the point of death for nothing but your own personal interests. These consist of two main things: power and money. Public interest is but secondary, if not tertiary, of your priorities.

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) will not be any different from the ARMM because you are all the same people. You have undermined the vital role that our collective values play in our societal development.

I don't have to explain why or how we thought of these. We know that you know where they are coming from.

To paint a clearer picture, here are our collective aspirations: what we need, what we want, and what we could get rid of for holistic and sustainable development, peace, and progress to be achieved:

1. Organize the bureaucracy and organize it well. This means people should wait outside the walls of your halls until you get it all together to feel the change from where we stand.
2. We need a really good investment in our education system. That means we hire only competent teachers. More importantly, let us pay our teachers fully and on time. Let us invest on books, tables, chairs, classrooms and the health of our children.
3. We need a good healthcare system. Aside from what PhilHealth already gives, we need another subsidy for BARMM residents. Make it accessible; don't make us beg for it. We shouldn’t have to go to your individual houses or offices to ask for medical assistance like beggars. Good healthcare must be a right, not a mere privilege.
4. We need sustainable livelihood economic programs that must go to the rightful beneficiaries and not to your relatives or your local community leaders. Honestly, we can do away with the hundreds of thousands we spend on pretentious promotional videos of our towns, and the millions more we spend for celebrities just so they can give the people shallow 3-hour entertainment. We don't need those. Spend the money instead to give heads of families something that they can use to start up even just a small sari-sari store, buy a tricycle or raise animals. That would be a better gift than a one-night event in our townhall gyms. If these investments are actually sustained, you wouldn't even have to give them 500 pesos just so they would vote for you in the next elections. They will remember you because they have something that is a part of you inside their homes.
5. We need to hear it from you that you are solving our problem down to its root. We took out the "n" in "morons" but a lot of us still to cling to it. It's not just poverty or the lack of peace that make us the most conflict-affected and vulnerable land in the country. It is also our values or the lack thereof. A lot of the people here is a "Bai" or "Datu" in their own right, yet they don't even know how to properly fall in line, clean up after themselves, even spit or pee in the right places, or have a just little sense of decency and humility to acknowledge that they too can make mistakes.

We don't know much about how to lead. Yes, we are idealistic visionaries but we know, too, that these changes are not going to happen overnight. While we are not there yet, show us at least that we are on the right track. (READ: [OPINION] Bangsamoro hopes)

I know it's easier said than done. It's going to be a long and winding road. But if I learned one thing in this life, it is that it doesn't matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop. We will get there only if you lead us there.

Lead us by faith and with true Islamic values. Prove to us that we made the right decision. Do not, even, for one second, let us regret our decisions. Prove to us that you are worthy because you have to. Prove to those who said no to you that they were wrong. It is the greatest gift you can give to us, and even more so, to yourselves.

May Allah guide you in the right direction, put your heart in the right place, and protect you always in your service to the Bangsamoro. – Rappler.com

Saima Mamalo is studying law at the Ateneo de Davao University. She worked closely with the Bangsamoro Transition Commission during the drafting of the Bangsamoro Organic Law. She was also a writer for the ARMM Bureau of Public Information, and a program officer for the PAMANA Programs in the region.

Puwede ring ka-Facebook or ka-Twitter, kung doon mo lang sa espasyong birtwal na iyon nakakaugnayan ang iyong ka-social media. At marami ito. Laganap. Napakadaling magkaroon. Napakadaling magparami. Friend request lang, send or accept. Sa iba, ang modus ay bilang ng common friends. Kapag na-meet ang numero ng common friends, accept or send friend request. Puwede ring sa hitsura ng profile picture. O, sa dami ng lamang status ng wall, meaning organic at hindi paid troll. Basta maraming parameters ng pagtanggap sa ka-social media.  

Matapos ang birtwal na pagtanggap bilang ka-social media, nakaka-like mo na siya o nagse-share na ng status mo. Makikita mo na rin siya at kung anumang status niya sa news feed. Minsan, kung medyo pangahas, nagko-comment siya sa iyo. Nagbibigay ng opinyon sa post o status mo kahit hindi hingin. Nakikipagtalo. Nakikipag-away. Kung sablay ang pangangatuwiran, o hindi tuwid (dahil “tuwid” ang salitang-ugat ng pangangatuwiran), ia-unfollow o ia-unfriend mo. Kung tahasan, blocked. Natatapos nang ganoon ang life cycle ng ka-social media. Mabilis. Mapanghusga.

Pero pambihira ang ganitong judgmental attention lalo’t libo-libo na ang ka-social media mo. Lalo kung naka-public ang status, gaya ng madalas kong gawin, at nakabukas ang comment option kahit kaninong kakilala mo talaga, o ka-social media lang, o worse, troll. Hindi na mapapansin. Hindi na matatandaaan. Hindi na – at ito ang parikala ng virtual friendship – hindi na makikilala pa nang lubusan. Naglaho sa virtual thin air.

Ka-social media. Sa wika at kulturang Filipino, ang pagdaragdag ng unlapi o prefix na “ka–” ay nangangahulugan ng ugnayan. Kapatid, katrabaho, kakilala, kaibigan, kasama. Siyempre, bago lang ang ka-social media. At marami akong ka-Facebook. 

Nakikita ko ang ilan sa kanila nang personal. Pumupunta sa mga events na may kinalaman sa isinulat kong aklat, book launching, o public lecture. Gagawa ako o ang publisher ko o ang mismong mag-oorganisa ng event ng public event page. Ia-announce ko sa mismong account ko. Magkikita kami doon. Makikipag-apiran, makikipagkumustahan hinggil buhay ko. O buhay niya, kung natatandaan ko. 

Tungkol sa virtual existence ko, halimbawa, mainit na topic nitong huling dalawang linggo sa aking Facebook account ang tungkol sa ingrown ko na inopera noong isang araw sa isang ospital. Bago ang operasyon, naroon ang aking rant. Totoong rant dahil totoo ang sakit na akala ng iba ay biruan lang. Kaya ito ang kinukumusta ng mga ka-Facebook ko, in jest, siyempre. At may kaunting habag. 

Maraming pagkakataong nakakasalubong ko ang ilang ka-Facebook ko sa mall. Matapos ang ilang palitan ng awkward na ngiti, magpapakilala sila (dahil mahina akong tumanda sa hitsura at pangalan).  

Meron ding isang pagkakataon, habang hinihintay kong umandar ang bus na sinasakyan ko patungong Lucena. May tumabi sa akin at nagpakilala. Ka-Facebook ko raw siya. Masaya, pero hindi ako nakatulog sa biyahe dahil sa pagkukuwento niya.  

May ka-Facebook akong nakatagpo ko sa Bangkok. Nagsilbing potograpo at tour guide ko roon. May mga naging ka-Facebook na Indon nang minsan akong naanyayahan bilang tagapagsalita sa dalawang unibersidad doon. Kapag may international conference, mistulang pagpapalalim sa ugnayan ang matatanggap at ipapadalang friend request. May ka-Facebook akong Thai, Burmese, at Nepalese. Mabuti na lang at mayroong translate option ang social media.

May mga nagbabalik-bayang nakikipag-eyeball. Ka-Facebook ko pala sila habang binabaka ang lamig at lungkot ng buhay sa abroad. Lahat na yata ng saray ng lipunan ay may representasyon sa ka-social media ko. Lahat ng propesyon o kawalang propesyon. 

Ang totoo, wala sanang ganitong column kung hindi ko ka-Facebook ang editor! Oo, pa-comment-comment lang ako sa status ng isang common friend. May comment siya sa comment ko. Ini-add ko. In-accept naman. Biniro ko. Tanong ko, kailan ako pasusulatin sa Rappler? Nag-PM, seryoso raw ba ako sa aking offer. Heto, mag-iisang taon na akong nagko-contribute sa online diyaryong ito. May magbasa man sa isinusulat ko o wala. (May mga nagbabasa! Otherwise, pinatigil ka na naming magsulat! :P – Editor) 

Marami akong naging personal at tunay na kaibigang mula sa birtwal na ugnayan. Mas marami siyempre ang hindi ko pa nakikilala ni nakikita nang personal. Maraming itinatangi sa galing at kabutihan kahit pa hindi ko nami-meet nang personal. May ilang kinamumuhian, sa birtwal man o personal.  

May mga ka-social media akong matatapang at pangahas. Maiingay magpahayag. Lahat inaaway, pero hindi makapagsalita, umiiwas pa nga, kapag nakatagpo na sa personal ang inaaway. 

Ang lakas makapagpalakas ng loob ang sanitized confines kapag nagso-social media ka. Mistulang free from harm lalo’t dumudutdot at nag-i-scroll ka lang naman. Pero madaling makasakit, sa totoo lang. Madali rin namang makaakit at makahikayat. Madaling hingan ng opinyon at gawing hingahan ng problema. Minsan nga, kumpisalan pa. <isa munang malalim at birtwal na buntong-hininga>  

Kung bakit ko tinatalakay itong paksa ay dahil talaga sa isang babaeng ka-social media ko na itatago ko sa pangalang Jennifer. Sa isang lungsod sa bahagi ng Camanava nakatira si Jennifer. Matagal na kaming magka-Facebook, since 2013. Nagkita at nagkakuwentuhan na kami nang makailang ulit sa mga book launch at event ko. Masugid siyang mambabasa. Naging magkaibigan kami pati na rin ang kaniyang asawa.

Balitaan, biruan, kumustahan, standard na palitan ng mensahe kapag Pasko at Bagong Taon kung may pagkakataon, sa personal man o virtual platform. Mukhang pangkaraniwang uganayang lumago palabas sa birtwal hanggang sa personal. 

Kahapon (isinusulat ko ang artikulong ito ngayong January 28), nang pumutok ang balita hinggil sa pambobomba sa katedral sa Jolo, Sulu, kagyat kong kinondena bilang status sa aking social media account ang pangyayari.  

Nakikidalamhati ’ka ko ako sa mga biktima at lubos na kinokondena ang karahasan. Nag-private message si Jennifer sa akin kinagabihan. Nasabugan at namatay ang kaniyang kapatid na lalaki sa pangyayari. (BASAHIN: What we know so far: Jolo Cathedral bombing) 

Doon ko naramdaman ang kahungkagan ng status ko. Oo, sa sarili ko, umaapaw ang sinseridad sa pakikidalamhati sa inaakala kong mga estrangherong biktima. Totoong nagagalit ako sa karahasang kumitil at sumugat sa marami. Puwera pa ang itinanim na galit, pagkamuhi ng mga nakasaksi at tumatanggap ng balita.  

Pero, gayunman, malayo ang lugar sa akin. Ni hindi ko alam kung may ka-social media akong taga-Jolo. Kaya hindi ko akalain na may isa akong kaibigang lumagpas na sa birtwal na ugnayan namin ang direktang naulila.  

Nag-iwan siya ng mensahe ng galit. Lubos na pagkalungkot. Hindi ko tiyak kung ano ang sasabihin ko kay Jennifer. Hindi na lamang ito status, platform ng kawalan. 

Paano pa nga ba ipahahayag? Paano ko ba dapat tugunan ang paghinga niya sa akin ng nararamdaman? Ang totoo, hindi ko alam. Dahil namuni ko, pagkatapos ng kaniyang pagtatapat, walang gaanong taglay na init ang birtwal na yakap, pakikidalamhati, lalo na ang pagdamay. 

May damdamin at pagkilos na hindi talaga kayang ipadama kung ipadadaan sa social media. Iba pa rin kung naroon ka. Nakikinig, hinihingahan ng sama ng loob at lungkot. Handang ibigay ang tapik at yakap ng pagdamay. 

Gayunman, muli, ang aking pakikidalamhati sa mga biktima ng karahasan sa Jolo, Sulu. Gaano man kasalat sa damdamin ang pahayag kong ito. Lalong-lalo na sa kaibigan kong naulila. – Rappler.com 

Bukod sa pagtuturo ng creative writing, pop culture, and research sa Unibersidad ng Santo Tomas, writing fellow din si Joselito D. De Los Reyes, PhD, sa UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies at research fellow sa UST Research Center for Culture, Arts and Humanities. Board Member siya ng Philippine Center of International PEN. Siya ang kasalukuyang tagapangulo ng Departamento ng Literatura ng UST. 

Tears flow incessantly down my face as I try to write this past midnight in my small apartment room in New York. I am thoroughly wrecked with emotion for this country, the US, and for the Philippines, my home country. 

As a third year conservatory student at the Stella Adler Studio in New York, we are given the opportunity to put up a show that will go on tour around New York City. We don’t only go to schools; part of our tour is going to prisons. 

We brought “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare to the prisoners at Riker’s Island in New York City’s main jail complex. Before heading there, I was filled with much anxiety. I was so scared to perform in front of “lawbreakers.” A part of me questioned why my conservatory would allow us to perform in such a place. I thought to myself, “How would they understand Shakespeare? They’re in prison. They likely had other things on their minds. How can they enjoy a performance from us?” 

A big part of me was resisting what we came to do until we reached the jail.

Our cast was ushered into a small room and on the way there, different prisoners were talking among themselves. I could hear the excitement in their voices when they said things like “ooh! Those are the people that are gonna put up a show for us!”

As we waited, they trickled in slowly and greeted us with big smiles and happy pleasantries. I was totally taken aback. The happiness and excitement that they all expressed for the show we were about to present made me ease into the facility, and I found myself starting to relax. 

We started the show with the line, “I have had a dream.” In an instant, we created a magical world for them. For the entire show, our audience was right with us with bright eyes and held breath. There was a lot of laughter during the jokes, a lot of snide remarks during times of mischief, and there was a lot of empathy for all the experiences each character was going through. 

I had so much fun performing in front of them because I could feel the focus and the energy that our audience was giving to me and the rest of the cast. 

‘Nothing but time’

After the show, we had a talk back with our audience. We laughed about some scenes, we anguished over the loss of love that some of the characters went through, and we even connected a lot of what happened in the story to our own lives – and we shared that with each other. 

As I talked to them and performed for them, I realized that any one of them can just be my friend, my family member, my neighbor, my classmate. These people aren’t “scary people,” they’re all real people who found themselves in bad circumstances. I could easily see myself in them. We’re all human. We’re all made to deal with life and the world around us. 

It broke my heart when one of them said, “We have nothing but time. So we are grateful that you took the time to come here and perform for us.” 

Even if we had a beautiful moment in that room together, leaving the facility only made me realize what they face in their day-to-day lives. They are disconnected from a normal life, they are subjected to aggression from their peers and from the authorities, they are treated like pariahs by society. People do not go to prison to have a good life, they go to prison to be punished 24/7. 

Jailing 12-year-olds

I went home from that performance with a heavy heart. Because I've met them, I couldn’t help but put myself in their shoes. I thought, if I were subjected to their circumstances, I may have also ended up in the same situation.

And tonight, I read the news that the Philippine House of Representatives approved a bill to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 12 years old.

I cannot count the times I’ve held my head tonight to try to stop my tears from flowing. How can our leaders allow kids to enter government-run centers that for all intents and purposes are prisons? (LIST: How the House voted in lowering age of criminal liability)

I was already unhappy with the state of the prisons in New York, but to compare those with the jails or state centers in the Philippines, my brain simply cannot comprehend it. I have cousins who are at that age, and I imagine them and I think about how young and how innocent and how guileless they are. 

My mind cannot wrap around the thought of 12-year-olds outside the comfort of their family or friends or mentors, where they are subjected to harsh and aggressive conditions.

We cannot just allow this to happen. We have to stand up for the children of our country. I will not accept the action of just me crying in my room about this. This is why I write. I write in hopes that we bring this injustice to a bigger stage with brighter lights. This injustice needs to be at center stage. 

We have to raise our voices. We cannot allow our children to be called criminals. I beg you. Don’t just sit there and read this. Do something about it, please. – Rappler.com

(A stage actress from the Philippines with a theater arts degree from Assumption College in Makati, Gloria is on her final year at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York.)

The simple dreams of children in Tondo, Manila can make a difference for the Philippines and the world someday.

Do you still remember what Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray said when she was asked about the most important lesson she learned in her life?

Gray said she had worked a lot in the slums of Tondo, where she witnessed how life was difficult for some. While she sympathized with some Filipinos living in tough conditions, Gray said that she would always "look for the beauty in it."

“I’ve always taught myself to look for the beauty in it, to look for the beauty in the faces of the children, and to be grateful,” Gray said.

But while most Filipinos rejoiced with her answer, some were displeased, saying that she just “romanticized” poverty. To be honest, I came to a point of somehow sharing that thought until a friend of mine invited me to join an advocacy project, and it was there where I realized that Gray’s words were true.

Project Pinta

It was a gloomy morning when I walked the streets of Metro Manila to reach Tondo with youth volunteers who offered their time for the third wave of Project Pinta (paint). It began when its founder, Rhussell Famy, met street kids while riding a jeep to school.

“Every day, I would commute from home to school. I witnessed how kids would ride the jeep to ask for coins. I have seen them looking at my uniform as if imagining themselves as students as well, and that hit me,” he said.

Every child would want to study, of course, but because of circumstances in life, they can't. And we can’t blame them for not having enough. Though they may not have the means to at least realize their dreams like us, we should extend what we can to them.

This is what Project Pinta is doing – to pave the way for children to realize their aspirations in life by having them paint these on clean white shirts.

Simple yet meaningful dreams

On Saturday, January 26, in Barangay 121, I met 30 kids who woke up early to meet the group. As they arrived at the community center, I immediately saw the silver lining.

I met Fritz, a kid who just wants to become a policeman some day. He aspires to follow in the footsteps of the famous character of Ang Probinsyano, Cardo Dalisay – a selfless cop who puts primacy on the welfare of others.

Lord wrote his name on a shirt together with the words, Pilipino and ina (mother). According to him, he just wants to live a simple life with his mother and to contribute something to the nation as its citizen.

Meanwhile, a girl named Lourelyn wrote that her dream is to swim. It seemed to be so simple but for her, it was a big deal.

In the future, we can finally have a police chief in the person of Fritz, who will champion the afflicted.

Lord can become a founder of a non-governmental organization that will help the poorest of the poor. We can have an internationally-acclaimed swimmer in the person of Lourelyn who will bring honor and pride to the country.

'Stop seeing our kids as potential criminals'

Yes, Tondo may seem to be a place for those who have less in life, but kids there have dreams too.

Sadly, because not all of us see the good in our youth, there’s a possibility they will no longer realize their aspirations. Among those who fail to see the good are our lawmakers in Congress who are determined to make children responsible for crimes they commit.

On Monday, January 28, with a vote of 146-34-0, lawmakers approved on 3rd and final reading House Bill 8858. This was less than a week after the measure's second reading approval at the plenary. 

Under the bill, children aged 12-18 years old who commit a serious crime would be held inside youth rehabilitation centers that don't have adequate facilities. What’s worse is that years of their lives will be wasted because of a law that our nation is unprepared for. (READ: Highlights of House bill lowering criminal liability age to 12)

Let’s stop seeing our kids as potential criminals. Let’s help them instead to discover their potential to make the world better. It’s good that we still have people willing to conquer challenges to pursue their advocacies in helping the marginalized. – Rappler.com

The United States has gained a forward base for its Pacific Air Force in the Philippines despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s rhetoric against the country’s oldest security ally and former colonial master and his pivot to China.

In mid-January, US Air Force F-16 “Fighting Falcon” fighter planes deployed from a base in South Korea landed at the Cesar Basa Air Base in Pampanga in a little-known military exercise known as the Bilateral Air Contingent Exchange-Philippines. This was meant to test the planes' interoperability with the Philippine Air Force’s newly acquired FA-50s trainer jets.

Following that exercise, Washington can now rotate its air assets – fighters, transport, surveillance and refueling planes and perhaps bombers – in a strategic air base in northern Philippines, just minutes away from a potential flashpoint in the region: the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea.

The forward deployment of US air assets in the Philippines is important in light of the increasing tension between Washington and Beijing in the disputed South China Sea, a strategic waterway where about $3 trillion of seaborne goods pass every year and where China has constructed man-made islands and begun installing military structures, including possible missile sites.

The United States Air Force has long been preparing for a return to Southeast Asia nearly 2 decades ago after the Pentagon noticed an uptick in Chinese activities in the region in the mid-1990s. 

Chinese incursions increased after Washington abandoned one of its largest overseas air bases in the Philippines.

The US 13th Air Force used to be based in Clark Air Base in Pampanga, just a spitting distance from where it has rebuilt a logistics hub for its forward operations in Basa Air Base, but a Philippine Senate vote in September 1991 kicked them out of the base and nearby Subic Naval Base in Olongapo City.

The Americans left Clark Air Base in a big mess, buried by lahar from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991. But they returned to their former home in early 2000, when the Philippines and the US agreed to sign the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which allows American troops to come back for training and exercises in the country. (READ: Duterte wants VFA scrapped, but will 'wait' for Trump)

War on terror

The need for a forward base in the Philippines was further reinforced after the US launched a war on terror following the deadly September 11 attack in New York and Washington in 2001.

US planes needed to refuel in several airfields in the Philippines from their bases in Okinawa and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Butch Abad, a former congressman and budget secretary in the Aquino administration, used to tell stories about people in the Philippines' northernmost tip of Batanes waking up to US fighter planes landing at Basco airport in the dead of the night. Noisy helicopters would hover above villages to provide light and guide the fighters landing and taking off after refuelling.

Clark, as well as the airports in Mactan in the central island province of Cebu, were also used as refuelling posts despite the absence of a clear military agreement allowing such activities at the time. The VFA was vague on these pit stops by US planes during that period,

A study by the Rand Corporation in 2002 further argued for the need for US Air Force presence in Southeast Asia. Although the US has access to Singapore, the place is so small that when a military aircraft takes off, it would in no moment already be flying over Malaysian airspace.

Thus, the Philippines was chosen as a potential host and the Rand study even proposed a “rent-a-rock” arrangement – leasing under-utilized airfields in the country. 

But US-Philippines relations soured after then-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo pulled out a 50-member Filipino peacekeeping force in Iraq in 2004 following the kidnapping of a Filipino truck driver in Fallujah. It was a complete turnaround from when former US president George Bush designated the Philippines as a major non-NATO ally in 2003 during a visit to Manila. 

After the Iraq fallout, Arroyo began flirting with Beijing, which rewarded her with more than $8 billion in investment pledges.

Aquino’s time

The election of Benigno Aquino III in 2010 gave the Americans an opportunity to fulfil what it failed to do during the Arroyo administration: seek a foothold in the Philippines.

China’s aggressive activities in the Reed Bank and later in Scarborough Shoal provided the Americans a big push to strengthen its alliance with Filipinos.

In 2014, both countries signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that allows US forces access to Philippine military bases and build logistics hub for humanitarian assistance as well as other forms of military cooperation.

Even before EDCA was signed, US surveillance planes – P3C Orion and P8 Poseidon – were already deployed from time to time in Clark to patrol the South China Sea. Years later, at the height of the Marawi siege in 2017, the planes would fly from Cebu to monitor and provide technical intelligence to the Philippine military.

A year later, 5 local bases were identified as initial areas where the US forces are allowed access. At least 4 of these locations are air force bases – Cesar Basa Air Base in Pampanga; Benito Ebuen Air Base in Mactan, Cebu; Antonio Bautista Air Base in Palawan; and the old Lumbia airport in Cagayan de Oro, which is now a military base. 

The 5th location is an army training base in Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija.

Duterte’s rhetoric

Indeed, even before Duterte was elected into office, the US Pacific Air Force organized in April 2016 the Bilateral Air Continent – Philippines, using Clark Air Base as a temporary base, to “help build the capacity of the Philippine Air Force in order to address local and regional security concerns.”

In addition to promoting interoperability and increasing joint training, the small contingent would also boost “air and maritime situational awareness to ensure safety for military and civilian activities in international waters and airspace,” according to the US Air Force.

And so barely a year after the US began construction of its logistics hub in April 2018 and other facilities inside Base Air Base and the Philippines completed repairs of its dilapidated airstrip in Basa, US fighter planes landed at its new home, a clear signal that Washington will remain in the region, and in the Philippines, for a long time – despite rhetoric from China-loving Duterte. – Rappler.com

A veteran defense reporter who won the Pulitzer last year for his reporting on the Philippines' war on drugs, the author is a former Reuters journalist.

If the jobs figures look bad, it’s because they are.

Palace Spokesperson Salvador Panelo recently chastised IBON Foundation, an economic think tank, for claiming that the Duterte administration was only able to create 81,000 jobs every year from 2016 to 2018.

Not only did Panelo say IBON’s numbers were “mathematically impossible,” he also suggested that IBON is being “inept or just maliciously reckless to degrade the achievements of the President.”

The thing is, IBON’s numbers are quite right. They actually came from the government.

In this article we discuss the slow pace of job creation in the time of Duterte. A close look at the statistics shows that the Palace is painting an excessively rosy picture of the jobs market. 

Dismal jobs numbers

In response to IBON’s numbers, Panelo retorted that “the government generated 826,000 jobs for the country in 2018 alone.” 

Sure, this is correct. But let’s be clear: it’s not government that creates jobs by and large, it’s the private sector.

Panelo’s statement hides the fact that the economy actually shed a whopping 664,000 jobs in 2017 alone, based on official survey data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). 

Because of this, there were only 162,000 more Filipinos employed in 2018 than in 2016. Dividing this increment by two years, we get a rate of job creation of 81,000 per year (which is precisely IBON’s claim). 

Therefore, far from being a “mathematical impossibility,” as Panelo put it, this is simple arithmetic. 

Just how dismal are these figures? 

First, remember that the Duterte government launched its Jobs, Jobs, Jobs program to complement the P8-trillion Build, Build, Build infrastructure program. 

Despite a promised cornucopia of jobs, only about 18,000 jobs are currently available according to its website – puny compared to the 2.2 million jobless Filipinos recorded as of October 2018.

Second, we were coming from a time of impressive job creation before Duterte came into office.

Between 2010 and 2016 there were an additional 4.95 million employed Filipinos. Spreading this over a period of 6 years, this translates to 825,000 per year, which is more than 10 times the going rate of the Duterte administration. 

In other words, the previous Aquino administration created jobs at an annual rate more than 10 times faster than Duterte government’s current performance. 

When it comes to jobs, therefore, Duterte’s economic managers clearly have their work cut out for them.

Where are the workers?

Aside from poor job creation, more than half a million workers have disappeared from the labor force in 2017. 

As such, the country’s labor force in 2018 was just about as large as it was in 2016. This, despite the continued growth of the country’s working-age population (comprising Filipinos aged 15 to 64).

Perhaps the reason is the smaller proportion of the working-age population working or seeking work. Figure 1 shows that the so-called “labor force participation rate” has reached a record low in 2018.

In other words, otherwise capable workers are dropping out of the labor market. But why?

Figure 1

Some point to the implementation of the K-12 program, particularly its Senior High School component. A sizeable number of the 1.5 million students who first entered the program in 2016 deferred work and underwent 2 more years of basic education, thus moving themselves out of the labor force.

But this can’t be the entire explanation. In 2016 the labor force still grew by about 2 million workers. It was only in 2017 that the labor force shed about 586,000 workers. 

The exact reason behind the plummeting labor force participation rate still escapes most analysts, and this issue merits deeper study. But government itself must look into its possible causes and consequences.

For one, this might affect our country’s ability to reap the so-called “demographic dividend.” In the coming years our country’s labor force is set to be at its most productive phase, which could boost growth and prosperity for decades to come. 

For us to reap this dividend, we cannot allow labor force participation to be in the doldrums for too long. 

Jobs for the Chinese

As many will attest to, some jobs out there have recently been filled by Chinese workers – whether in Build, Build, Build projects or the country’s booming online gambling operations. (READ: How China’s online gambling addiction is reshaping Manila)

Figure 2 below shows the swelling number of alien employment permits (AEPs) granted by the Bureau of Immigration to Chinese nationals. Note that these numbers still exclude the Chinese nationals who enter the country as tourists but stay on illegally to find work.

 Figure 2

There is of course nothing inherently wrong about Chinese nationals (or foreigners in general) working in the Philippines, especially if we can learn a thing or two from them about new technologies or processes. 

But the Chinese government has routinely required borrower countries to exclusively hire Chinese workers for projects they are funding or supporting under the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. (READ: Is Duterte selling out the Philippines to China?)

Hence, it would appear that Build, Build, Build is a reliable generator of jobs – at least for Chinese workers facing economic slowdown back at home.

Asked about the influx of Chinese construction workers, Panelo said, “We no longer have construction workers now because they’ve gone abroad.” 

How could this be? Does the Palace want us to believe that none of the 2.2 million jobless Filipinos (as of October) could fill the thousands of vacant jobs under Build, Build, Build, few as they are? And that only Chinese workers could hope to fill such vacancies?  

Wrong priorities

To be fair, recent data show a silver lining in the country’s labor market: the underemployment rate – comprising workers with jobs but not enough pay – has reached a record low in October. Unemployment also continues to follow its long-term decline.

Despite these seeming successes, the Duterte administration has yet to deliver on the job creation front. 

This is unfortunate since job creation continues to be top of mind among Filipinos. Last September Pulse Asia showed that 30% of Filipinos cared the most about “creating more jobs”—more than the 23% who pointed to “fighting criminality” or the 3% who cited “changing the constitution.” 

We’re nearing the halfway mark of the Duterte administration. It’s high time they got their priorities right. – Rappler.com

The author is a PhD candidate at the UP School of Economics. His views are independent of the views of his affiliations. Follow JC on Twitter (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ (usapangecon.com). 

I've been thinking a lot about House Bill (HB) 8858 these past few days. Specifically, why did it make sense to lawmakers?

It's usually easy to pinpoint the rationale behind earlier policies of the administration. The War on Drugs is pretty self-explanatory, the Train Law to increase government revenue, Build Build Build for more jobs and infrastructure (also, to give contracts to Chinese companies and contractors). These are all insidious policies but the logic behind them is simple. But it isn't the case in passing the bill that lowers the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 12 years old with such swiftness and certainty. It doesn't make sense at all.

This leads me to think that maybe it's not that I can't figure out the logic, but that this whole move is not at all motivated by reason. 

I think at the heart of it all is unadulterated anger. It's a seething anger that trumps the nation that disallows abortion to protect the future lives of hapless infants, the nation whose favorite movie is literally One More Chance, the nation that believes forgiveness is the greatest exercise of spiritual love. And this – this anger, I can understand. Because it's not wrong to be angry if you're a victim of a petty theft, or at the mules that proliferate the drug market. I can understand this anger.

I once witnessed a child snatcher fighting for an old woman's bag just as she got on the FX. His eyes were wild with malicious intent. Between this helpless senior and this wayward child, it's hard not to paint a solid picture of what good and evil means in this world. 

But I think the question we should be asking ourselves isn't whether anger against children in conflict with the law is right or wrong, but whether our anger merits the state punishment.

I was recording grades a few months ago and I was ranting about how students didn't have records because they weren't passing their homeworks. Someone asked me, "Bakit, sino ba 'yung matanda (Why, who's the adult)?" It's tough to hear when you're just trying your best, but it was my wake-up call that it's always up to adults to understand the failings of children. The child loses more than adults ever will when this bill gets passed into law. It's up to the adults to understand. (READ: [OPINION] 'We have to stand up for the children')

It's true that children already know right from wrong, even at 9 years old. Without reviewing, they could easily get good scores in Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao (Values Education). They can always tell us what we want to hear. But what we often forget is that behavior is not a purely cerebral activity. You can't be good at basketball just by knowing all the rules. You need a good coach, a court, and a proper diet. Behavior, much like any activity, is a skill trained in the right environment. And it's this environment that these children lack.

Who will guide you if your parents are so busy fighting that teaching you is the least of their concerns? How can you test your ideas of morality if just outside your doorstep, gamblers fill the streets? How will you not be forced to commit petty theft if you're hungry and homeless – being the minor that you are – with no respectable workplace to employ your labor?

All of these point to a structural failure of government to address these children's needs. And I guess a larger part of my outrage is the hand-washing HB 8858 implies. "Hindi naman namin sila matulungan, so para mas madali, ikukulong na lang namin sila (We can't help them, so to make it easier, we will just jail them)." 

It is wrong and immoral to give children inadequate services and blame them if they don't work. Parents often tell children that until they're adults, they will have to follow their orders. We always decide for children, and the choices they have are, essentially, our choices.

Only children will be affected if HB 8858 becomes a law, but can they vote to remove the lawmakers who passed it? We're setting them up to fail, punishing them when they do, and leaving them no recourse in a world that's already leaving them voiceless.

The few years the bill removes is not an arbitrary period of time. These years indicate the time we give children to test out and practice their social behavior. In these important formative years, they're bound to either do good or make mistakes, but we cannot truly say that a crime is clearly a child's own if we do not give them the time to discover that – either on their own or by revamping the social services we already have in place.

If there's any hope to be found, it's the certainty that they have an idea of good. Even the crimes that motivate children are fueled by some good: feeding their siblings by a theft or creating a sense of security by joining a gang. They're just trying to survive in this inadequate society we threw them in.

So, is the anger valid? Yup. Is the anger justified? Absolutely. But is it enough to let them live their lives as enemies of the law? No. 

Bakit, sino ba 'yung matanda? – Rappler.com

Kyle Geroche is a Math teacher at a public school in Metro Manila. He graduated with a degree in BS Electronics Engineering at the University of Santo Tomas.

MANILA, Philippines – Voters are often blamed for election results. But the perfect candidate does not exist. How do we then choose among imperfect candidates?

In this episode of Basagan ng Trip, Leloy Claudio sits down with sociologist Nicole Curato to discuss candidates' imperfections and how to vote intelligently. – Rappler.com