The Empire Strikes Back

414 thoughts on “The Empire Strikes Back”

1. pero simple lang naman yung sa akin. Tuloy lang kayo.

2. tdc, possible, maybe she did hold silent on zte because of that. but then, she’s been pretty silent on everything except microfinance since 2006.

   i’ll give you an example of how these things work. even at my most critical of estrada, if dona mary had died at any point during edsa dos, i would have gone to her wake. she went to my father’s wake, i would go to hers. every other consideration, including her son’s political status, would be immaterial to me.

   now before he became known as abalos the comelec chief, once upon a time abalos was an anti-marcos fighter and cory’s duty-bound to remember that.

   just as if gma suddenly died, i would go pay my respects at her coffin because once upon a time, she’d been my boss.

3. Why is GMA going on this junket when by all intents and purposes she needs to stay put and face these issues head on as any sensible leader would do? This make it worse for her as it will give everybody an impression that she is avoiding something. I believe this will definitely weaken her hold on some important allies most especially the military where “machismo” dictates that you follow a leader braver, smarter, and stronger than you. If this happens not even the chain-of-command will be able to save her.

4. Ramrod I’m not that well versed with your Industry. What I know is that INDONESIA has one of the cheapest if not the cheapest paper (which is cheaper nowadays in terms of Paper – China or Indonesia?).

   In the Philippines, you get a lot of trees somewhere in Northeast Luzon and of course the Forests in Northern Mindanao.

   They say in Indonesia, as long as you have money, you can pretty much do a lot if not all the things that you want. Don’t know if same is true in Myanmar which by way recently have a very RESTIVE citizenry. It might burst anytime. The citizens are angry, the military are abusive. It might lead to a Civil War but I hope this would be resolved in a peaceful manner. By the looks of it, the Military Juntas does not have any plans to give up power. Even the Special UN Envoy does not have access to POWERS THAT BE.

   So how’s the Forestry, Paper, and Board Industry these days? With all the noise on ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION and the ever restless GREENPEACE and other NGO’s. They are all blabber but I don’t think it’s that easy to eradicate ILLEGAL LOGGING (for paper purposes that is).

5. Sayang,We really don’t have national leaders who are heroic,selfless and worthy of emulation by the young.We don’t have a Nelson Mandela who is truly a great MORAL and political leader.

6. MLQ3 Employing DRACONIAN MEASURES sure would be met not only with strong opposition, even violent opposition. I don’t think these things can be done under a DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM.

   Come to think of it, the “root of the problem(s)” cannot be addressed by one, two, three, four, but maybe hundreds of measures (that might include yours though impractical they may seem).

   As a start, a PUBLIC OFFICIAL should not have any other RELATIVE in Government up to the THIRD DEGREE of CONSANGUINITY. But this measure would in turn be replaced by CRONIES of Politicians – Friends, yes, Godchilren. Wow, there seems to be a lot of loopholes that should be covered.

7. Ramrod GMA will go to China because she likes to eat Authentic SHAOMAI, BAOZI (siopao), and Noodles there. 😀

8. MLQ3:I can understand the idea of going to the wake of even your worst enemy.I would do that too.A Christian duty.

   But Abalos resigned simply to avoid impeachement!

   Cory should have considered the feelings of millions of Filipinos who hold Abalos responsible for the electoral frauds in 2004 and 2007.

   I consider Abalos’role in the electoral frauds his most serious crime against the Filipino people.Worse than his role in the NBN ZTE deal.

9. I think eradicating (or at least minimizing) corruption in government involves increasing salaries to keep pace with market rates as well as cutting off public officials from the economy. I posted this suggestion last year:

   1. Remove CDF from the legislators, this fund properly belongs to the Executive.
   2. Increase the salaries of the legislators, governors and mayors to the level of a Board of Directors of a private company. This should be indexed to the CPI.
   3. Upon taking office, politicians and their families should turn over all their assets and liabilities to a trust fund to be independently managed.
   4. While in office, politicians and their families cannot spend anything beyond the salary. For tracking purposes, they are not allowed to use cash or personal credit cards. Issue them with tokens and a government debit card for all their disbursements. Treating a politician out or any other gifts would be considered a bribe.
   5. Upon leaving office, a politician will not be allowed to receive employment for 5 or more years. He will instead continue receiving his salary and keep on paying using tokens and the government issued debit-card.
   6. At the end of the 5 years, the trust fund will be given back to them as long as no one in their family is holding office.

10. Karah,

    You said it, greenpeace was on our backs for months, especially in Sweden and Russia where we source a lot of pulp (stuff paper is made of). The company allowed them to live with the forestry team, they went to work with them to witness firsthand, allowed them access to the mills, everything was open even the kitchen sink. The company has Forest Management Systems in place, plus so many certifications, mill emissions, energy savings, including sustainability. Bottomline, greenpeace gave us a clean bill of health. Of course, all these programs were quite expensive but worth it. Indonesia is another story, 50% of their pulp are illegally sourced, no sustainability programs whatsoever, never mind the pollution, etc. but their days of cheap prices are numbered as their government is clamping fast on these illegal loggers and they’re running out of trees. The Chinese mills on the other hand seemingly have it good because their government is rich enough to subsidize them, hence even if they buy the pulp from Europe (we sell to them) they can still afford to sell cheap, but again this bubble will soon burst.

11. ramrod,

    she’s going to china for two reasons: one is to put distance between her and the ZTE controversy; two to reassure the Chinese they will get their advances back, somehow.

    Realize that ZTE is a government-owned corporation. In other words, it’s owned by the communist party, So when GMA talks to Hu she is also talking to a beneficiary of ZTE deals.

    Do you know that her trip to NYC was unplanned? My sources at the DFA tell me there was a flurry over briefing papers and all that when she decided to go to NYC at the last minute.

    She ran away to avoid ambush interviews on ZTE. She left on the eve of Neri’s testimony,

12. tdc, there, she displayed her famous hard-headedness and a lack of recognition of the consequences a leader’s acts can have.

13. tdc,

    I say let Cory be human. As she said, she was there as a friend. She’s done her time in the public scrutiny, lets allow her the freedom enjoyed by a pedestrian, its bad enough her husband’s death is until now a big mystery, her daughter insists on being scandalous, and Noynoy is still a mama’s boy.

14. cvj Well intentioned ideas but somebody ought to do the “number-crunching” to really gauge how much is how much if we talk about ACROSS THE BOARD “salary increase” for Public Officials. Some questions:

    (a) Would a bigger salary be correlated to lesser intent and motivations on “kleptocracy?”

    (b) Under what form of Government would the suggestions be done? This is quite impossible in the present set-up knowing that the very beneficiaries of this CDF are the Lawmakers themselves.

    (c) The idea of a TRUST FUND might seem alien or foreign to most Filipinos. This is a practice in Western Nations and practice by some families in the Philippines which we might say wealthy. How would you introduce the TRUST FUND idea?

    Under the present circumstances of your suggetions, the form of Government might be DICTATORIAL or AUTHORITARIAN ot institute all of these changes. Other than that, I don’t know how these measures can be pushed if we will rely on Democratic Processes.

15. Mrs.Cory Aquino:Unsolicited advice po.Sana po next time,please consider the feelings of the Filipino people when you show VERY PUBLIC support to your loyal friends.We have great respect for you as awidow of Ninoy and as a President who helped restore our democratic institutions.

    Abalos may have been anti-Marcos fighter (just like the millions who supported the “people power” revolution)BUT
    made election a farce in this country (remember “Hello Garci,” Maguindanao” results).

    I am not accusing him of the ZTE bribery.But I hold accountable as Comelec chief for all the electoral frauds
    during his stewardship of the poll body.

    Perceptions are more important than reality particularly in this country.

    Ok po ba and mga ginawang kalokohan ni abalos poque nanalo naman si Noynoy?

    I’m not a Marcos fanatic.

    Just a an ordinary Filipino with feelings po.

16. Re Miriam

    1. She will not get the seat in ICJ because Jordan decided to run for reelection, That was the vacancy she was hoping to fill. Now all the pledges she got from Arab countries are gone. But of course the DFA is still under orders to concentrate on Miriam’s election. The DFA is not campaigning for any other Filipino candidate in any international body until the ICJ thing is finished.

    2, Mirian actually knows a thing or two about Chinese corruption, She was, after all, head of the Bureau of Immigration.

    3. Some enterprising reporter should take pictures of her properties to see if they match her SAL.

17. cvj, what country are you talking about?

18. karah, i usually hate to post my entire column, particularly in a comment, but the original’s vanished from the interweb. re: salaries, you might find my march 15, 2004 column relevant:

    Paying for honesty

    THIS Wednesday, it will be forty seven years since President Ramon Magsaysay died in a plane crash. Since his death, time and again, candidates have been compared to Magsaysay, But what Magsaysay is most remembered for, among the dwindling number of Filipinos who still remember him, is his fanatical honesty. I have read articles concerning his insistence on separating expenses incurred during his presidency which were of an official nature, and expenses incurred for his family while living in Malacanang. Newspaper and magazine accounts at the time detailed how the president instructed that meals for his children’s friends were to be paid for from his salary, and that gasoline for his son’s car was to be funded by deductions from the president’s salary as well.

    In the present day, when the President of the Philippines earns 300,000 pesos a year, or 25,000 pesos a month, this seems inconceivable. This made me wonder if this was even conceivable in Magsaysay’s time. Or any previous president’s time.

    I will leave it to Solita Monsod to embark on a more scientific study of what I am about to reveal, but I think the figures I’ve arrived at are as good a rule of thumb as any to arrive at what presidents actually used to earn.

    Under the 1935 Constitution, the salary of the president was 30,000 pesos an annum. To figure out what, say, this amount circa 1937, would be worth in terms of today’s pesos, I asked the help of Jeremy Morales Barns, who is an economist and historian. Since we couldn’t find tables that calculate, say, the equivalent of a peso in the year 1937 if you received a commensurate amount today, we resorted to first, figuring out what pesos were worth then, in dollars, figuring out what those dollars would be worth in today’s dollars, and then converting those dollars to today’s pesos. If course this doesn’t take things such as the cost of living, both then and now, into account, but it’s a start.

    From the time of the Commonwealth until the administration of Diosdado Macapagal, the peso-dollar exchange rate was fixed at 2 to 1. So whether in 1937 or 1957, the president’s salary of 30,000 pesos was equivalent to 15,000 dollars. To find out what 15,000 dollars earned per year in 1937 would be equivalent to, in terms of what the dollar can purchase today, economists apparently refer to a table of “purchasing power conversion factors” prepared by the U.S. government. For example, you take 15,000 dollars circa 1937, multiply it by 12.814 (the factor according to the table), and the amount you get is what those 1937 dollars would be worth in the year 2004. You then multiply that amount by the current exchange rate and you get an idea of what a certain amount in 1937 could buy you in 2004.

    To cut a long story short, in today’s peso terms, the president of the Philippines circa 1937 was earning an annual salary of 12.814 million pesos! A cool million pesos a month in today’s peso terms. Based on the 1937 appropriations act, among the lowest paid people in the government, janitors, were earning 18,000 pesos a month in terms of 2004 peso equivalents. Still a decent salary.

    Based on the different rates in that table, the following deductions are possible: in 1946, Manuel Roxas was earning as president, the equivalent of 9.43 million pesos a year; in 1957, President Magsaysay was earning the equivalent of 6.54 million pesos a year! At that salary, it is certainly believable that President Magsaysay could honestly instruct Palace accountants to deduct the expenses of his children for food and entertainment, gas and sundries, from his salary, and send them to good private schools (it also explains how his predecessor, President Quirino, and successor, President Garcia, could afford to retire to comfortable but far from flashy homes, located on fairly large but not enormous lots, after they left office).

    President Ramon Magsaysay could afford to be honest and do what he did –be strict about spending for personal, and official, purposes- without it being improbable. His predecessors and succesors, who were less stringent about separating Palace expenses for their families, could certainly have achieved the amount of savings required to retire with a modicum of style and comfort.

    This indicates, to me, the problem with relying on the sweeping assertions made about some of our leaders of the past. Magsaysay’s memory, in particular, has been used to justify all sorts of sweeping assumptions. Among these assumptions was that he was an American stooge, a charismatic moron, a fluke representing a break with the past.

    Magsaysay was many things but he was neither an American stooge nor a clean break with political traditions before him. He was unabashedly pro American, yes, but he was that as a member of a generation that was pro American and he was not the creature of America that people like to assume (including the Americans themselves). A new generation of American historians are pointing this out. What is closer to the truth is that he represents the most successful case of the Americans appropriating someone else’s success and passing it off as their own accomplishment.

    After all, it was under him that the retail trade nationalization act was passed, which the Americans positively disliked; he was the President under whom the Laurel-Langley Agreement was negotiated, which advanced the date for the end of the concessions granted to Americans under the Parity Amendment. Magsaysay was the President who insisted that the Philippine flag had to fly over the U.S. bases and threatened to send the Philippine Army to break down barriers that he felt were insulting to Filipinos traveling to and from those bases. While his rhetoric was pro American, he accommodated officials who were critical of American policies. This points to another sweeping assumption which isn’t true: that there was no difference between the Liberals and the Nacionalistas. The Liberals were more for unabashed free trade; the Nacionalistas were, indeed, as we understand nationalism, more nationalistic in their policies.

    There is a concrete reason why Magsaysay was so admired, even loved, in his time, and it little to do with a marvelous success of American advertising or the gullible nature of the electorate. It had to do with who he was, and the people seeing this as something genuine, and not manufactured.

19. “I think eradicating (or at least minimizing) corruption in government involves increasing salaries to keep pace with market rates”

    If we look at MLQ3’s account of Magsaysay, this makes sense and is actually practiced already by our neighbor asian country.

    The trust funds I’m not sure would be acceptable.

    All other reforms any political newbie will be able to think of will be shot down by powerful officials already in position especially if it affects their interests like businesses, lands, and dynasties.

20. Karah, thanks for your questions:

    (a) As Manolo explained in his column about Magsaysay(posted above) a big enough salary is needed to make honesty affordable. It would also encourage people from the private sector to consider public sector work as a career path. I agree that number crunching must be done to arrive at the optimal salary structure that prevents losses through corruption.

    On the other hand, i think we need to put a leash on the political class by tracking their expenses using stored value cards. The technology is available to implement this and may even have a higher EIRR than the Broadband deal if it reduces losses due to corruption.

    (b) As to the form of government into which this can be implemented, i think this would depend on how active the public sphere is. (The public sphere consists of the portion of the citizenry that is engaged and concerned with issues involving the government and governance.) If the public is sufficiently engaged, then we can arrive at a set of actions democratically.

    (c) I think Filipinos are smart enough to understand the concept of a Trust Fund.

    Democracy vs. dictatorship deals with questions of how to, not with questions of what to do. Although they are interrelated, i try not to mix up the two. I believe that arriving at actions in a democratic manner has value in itself which is why as a people, we need to learn to achieve things via open and genuine discourse, not via force or deception as Gloria Arroyo and her elite support-base have done. For genuine dialogue to happen, the ABC classes must first get off their high horse of condecension towards the rest of the Filipino people.

21. To assure Independence and Impartiality of any governmental body, two things are necessary, Security of Tenure and a very reasonable remuneration. But that could be only possible if the country can afford and not depriving the rest of the society. But looking at the per Capita Income in the country of equivalent to $1300 and the Gap between the Income of the percentage Few and the Masses is as wide as the Pacific Ocean, then the only possible solution to the rampant corruptions is the very strict enforcement of the law and the collective desire of all to improve the overall economy.

    Also the cultures of Superiority that encourage one to amass wealth and power by any means to achieve that superiority complex over the large segment of society other than what the wealth can bring in regards to material and physical enjoyment. and this is still the legacy of the “Colonial Mentality” left by the more than 300 years of Spanish rule..

22. MLQ3: I have heard a lot of stories about the late President Ramon Magsaysay not only from literature but from relatives as well. He was a simple yet great man. Nowadays, Public Officials find ways and means to include their personal expenses to “official expenses” from the office funds. Sick, right?

    I was looking at the Internet on how to compute “relative value of a US Dollar” and I chanced upon one (Measuringworth). It presented Five Ways thru CPI (Consumer Price Index), GDP Deflator, Unskilled Wage, Nominal GDP Per Capita, and Relative Share of GDP.

    With your information of USD 15,000, the site came up with these computations:

    Initial Year: 1953
    Initial Amount: 15,000
    Desired Year: 2006

    Here are the results

    CPI = USD 113,046.73
    GDP Deflator = 95,863.49
    Unskilled Wage = 165,289.66
    Nominal GDP Per Capita = 275, 718.76
    Relative Share of GDP = 521,667.11

    Converthing these figures into peso. The Value of USD 15,000 in todays terms (IN PESO@46/dollar) would have a low of Php 4,409,720.54 (GDP Deflator) to a high of Php 23,996,687.10. Although these are mere approximations, we can deduce that at that time, the SALARY of Magsaysay was more than decent, even quite a hefty amount vis a vis price of Goods and Services.

    It’s hard to come by LEADERS these days that would be comparable to Ramon Magsaysay. Yes there are some but they don’t stay long in Government Office or Politics. Along the way, a lot of mistakes was committed by our Politicians. From a No.2 next to Japan in Economic prowess to a mere “sick man of Asia.”

    I still believe the Philippines have great untapped potentials. Only if people start working together rather than bickering at each other. It’s something to HOPE against HOPE. Thanks for that nice Article of yours.

23. Justice in Waiting, you bring up a good observation about inequality which ties into the matter of industrial policy. In Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other countries which actively pursued home-grown industrialization, it was government policy to allow concentration of wealth on a few business leaders (of Zaibatsus or Chaebols). The reason why this was politically acceptable was because these societies had a greater amount of income equality (because of previous Land Reform). Countries such as the Philippines and Latin America which have highly unequal social structures find it harder to implement such policies which leads to a perpetuation of anemic and uneven growth.

    Nevertheless, i think our people have to realize that the best investment we could have is on the official renumeration of our public officials. As Manolo explained in a previous comment above, Laws that go against human nature tend to result in to more corruption. We cannot go the distance with ‘desire’ alone since needs and habits tend to take over.

24. cvj (a) More than all the good intentions for SALARY INCREASE (across the board) is a “metanoia” (Change of Heart) so to speak. Granting this happens, there’s always the possibility that even though Salary is High, people want to have more – the GREEDY side of Human Nature is hard to overcome. Be as it may, it’s a well-intentioned endeavor. The problem on who and how is another matter to take into consideration.

    (b) The Public Sphere can take a better role only if and only when the the wide gap in the SOCIAL STRATA would be narrower. The RICH-POOR remains to be a very daunting and Herculean obstacle in making your suggestions “implementable.” Doable, yes but implementable, you need COOPERATION ang lots of it. Not discounting that there’s a possibility in might lead into violence (some people would kill and die for money and possessions, you know).

    (c) To around 40%-50% or so of Filipinos, they might understand the concept of a TRUST FUND but I don’t think they could afford one. There are still a lot of Filipinos under “hand-to-mouth” existence. It’s really frustrating at times to talk about good ideas but impeded with near to insurmountable obstacles.

    Do you think of some CLASSES in the Social Strata would push for this and some of the classes abhor the idea, there’s a possibility of a Class war, well, Civil War?

25. Ramrod, i saw your moderated comment (at 7:34 pm) only now. Industrial Policy involves government participation in economic activities with the purpose of preventing market failure that discourages industries from developing. As i told JIW above, a distinctive element is the reliance on home-grown firms (instead of multinationals).

    In this scheme, the ideal relationship between government and the private sector is what Dani Rodrik calls ’embedded autonomy’, i.e. the happy medium between crony capitalism (with Neri’s regulatory capture leading to government failure) and leaving business completely to the private sector (which may lead to market failure and prevent industries from developing resulting in to anemic growth). Here’s an example using Japan’s history from a paper by Morck and Nakamura (posted in a blog entry by economist Dani Rodrik):

    Japan’s economic history suggests a big push can succeed under certain circumstances despite gloomy evidence to the contrary. Specifically,

    1. The state gives an initial shove, marginalizing traditional elites, reforming basic institutions, perhaps even subsidizing technology imports, and then withdraws its hand. This withdrawal checks government failure problems.
    2. Pyramidal business groups emerge to propel the big push. An undisputed controlling shareholder focusing on the apex firm’s value, prevents hold up problems and coordinates cross-industry subsidies, as group member firms tap public equity markets to capitalize cascades of subsidiaries spanning all relevant industries. At least to some extent, this echoes what a selfless central planner coordinating a big push would do
    3. The controlling shareholders are marginalized as the big push nears completion. This prevents entrenched oligarchy problems from reversing the big push.
    4. All this is done with limited trade barriers and no barriers against foreign investment.

    I’ll post the links in a separate comment.

26. Corporal work of mercy…that’s what I view it…Cory work of mercy.

    She’s in blue not in yellow. Just an act of mercy. She’s not one with abalos (re: bribe attempt) much the same way when you visit a convicted felon. Only being a friend. They even viewed some nostalgic pictures.

    She didn’t pass judgment on abalos’ wrongdoing. She asked for prayers…the truth will come out.

    For all these, I still admire her.

    —–

    resignation was long overdue, so no brownie points for that.
    – mlq3

    Spot-on!

27. …that’s how i view it…

28. abalos quits, impeachment’s a no-go, house deflates. meanwhile, abalos sues neri and jdv3, so now sub judice can be invoked in the senate. meanwhile, as for abalos himself, the ombudsman will go through the motions. and then, shocked, shocked, i tell you, by abalos’s suit, palace mobilizes house to topple the speaker. the best defense is indeed, a good offense.
    – mlq3

    A likely scenario.

    —–

    Headings:

    Abalos resigns. (Should’ve been mega-pacific ages ago.)

    Abalos sings. (That’s more like it…but I doubt it.)

29. “regarding gov’t broadcast facilities: i joined a committee that was formed by media people upon a (very good) initiative of the government, to create a version of the pbs system in america. it bogged down on questions of regional vs. national programming, and then, eventually, on the demand for autonomy from presidential control but the legal reality that the board would have to be appointed by the president anyway; then the priorities of the government changed.”

    —————————————————–

    Sayang to. I ve been wondering some time if PBS programming is possible in the Phil…

    Kunsabagay andami talagang marami ng mangagandang projects at ideas na lumabas na. At hindi lang naisakatuparan kadalasan dahil sa problemang politikal o corruption. Kahit nga yung NBN talgang napakagandang project sana. O kaya yung Bataan nuclear power plant o kaya yung Cyber Ed…

30. Karah, i sort of agree with your point (a) above which is why i don’t think a politician’s being a billionaire is necessarily a guarantee against corruption. However, a higher salary also helps eliminate the need for public officials to resort to other income generating activities that may lead to greed once they get the hang of these activities. I accept that there will be those who will choose to be corrupt no matter what their salary is, but in this salary-adjusted situation, they will hopefully be outnumbered by the professionals as is the case in the private sector. In this case, the task of enforcing the law becomes more manageable which sustains the virtuous cycle.

    On your point (b), the wide gap between rich and poor is all the more reason for a dialogue between the classes. Dialogue can only be sustained in an atmosphere of mutual respect. That’s why the legitimacy issue needs to be resolved as this involves respecting the right of the majority to choose their leaders. Failing that dialogue, then a dictatorship might become necessary, in which case, the only useful dictatorship would be one that eliminates inequality (i.e. and makes possible ‘Stage 1’), not the kind that perpetuates it.

    On your point (c), in my comment above, i was not suggesting a trust fund for all Filipinos, only for high-level government oficials whose salaries have been adjusted (as per my list of suggestions above).

31. A very enlightening series of posting Karah, you are really good.

    As for salary increase, I also dont agree that it will solve much the problem for reason that you already mentioned. Then if you will take a look at the director or other officials of govt own corporations. They are already being paid so high yet they still resort to corruption.

    I read it somewhere that corrpution is even more rampant in a high earning bracket of people. Its really more about greed.

    I would go for a very strict implementations of laws against corruption. That is why im am very much against granting pardon for Erap at least for now.

    As for Manolo’s reference to Magsaysay era. The problem here is that the mindset of Filipinos , especially the the politicians are very different then than now.

32. Ramrod, the links i’m trying to post are being rejected by the moderation software. I’ll post it in my blog tomorrow night instead.

33. Upon taking office, politicians and their families should turn over all their assets and liabilities to a trust fund to be independently managed.

    It is called BLIND TRUST. This is banned in UK.

    So far, it is only Senator Diane Feinstein who put all her assets in a blind trust to avoid accusation of conflict of interest.Her husband is an investment banker.

34. I read it somewhere that corrpution is even more rampant in a high earning bracket of people. Its really more about greed.

    The Enron executives were already confortably rich with their salaries,bonuses and other perks and yet, the exec’s wife still charged her shopping expenses to the corporate accounts.

    It is not only greed. It is also power and accessibility to the resources.

35. Si tita cory talaga, selective. When Kris was with Philip she couldn’t forgive her own daughter. But wit Abalos, ok lang….

    Madasalin si tita cory but her minimum wager workers at the hacienda are not part of her prayers….

36. Meanwhile, amidst all these corruption scandals, Social Weather Station (SWS) hunger has risen to a record high of 21.5% or about 3.8 million Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger in the past three months.

37. Si tita cory talaga, selective. When Kris was with Philip she couldn’t forgive her own daughter. But with Abalos, ok lang….

    Madasalin si tita cory but her minimum wager workers at the hacienda are not part of her prayers…. – nash

    Could it be that the reading from the other Sunday of prophet Amos’ oracle about the conjunction of the religious hypocrisy of the rich and economic exploitation is apropos here?

38. “Madasalin si tita cory but her minimum wager workers at the hacienda are not part of her prayers…. – nash”

    I thought we have a Land Reform Law?

39. The 21.5% incidence of hunger is just a symptom of
    widespread poverty. The resources and priority given to
    a $325M broadband project can rightfully be questioned in the face of 1 out of every 5 families experiencing involuntary hunger. That the hunger incidence is worsening gives us an idea that we are not making any progress at the root of the problems that hits the ordinary folks in the guts.

40. cvj, one of the reasons why corruptions and influence peddling is so uncommon here, is that politicians as soon as taking office are no longer connected to their personal business. All their business interests are put into the Blind Trust and they can’t be seen or perceived to be in anyway got to do anything with them until out of politics. One good example, a South Asian Minister of Transportation in our Province, was seen visiting the corporate office of his family business and when confronted in the Parliament his excuse is that he was talking to his wife about their daughter’s Education, not good enough, he had to resign his position and now delegated to the back bench. Simply meant when you become a political leader, you stop being a businessperson and the rule is observed to the later. And the Media and the opposition politicians never stop watching. It sells a lot of paper for the media and do some good to the public too…

41. Vic, thanks. It’s good to know a working model of a blind trust is being implemented somewhere.

    Ca T, thanks for supplying the terminology, i did not know what it was called. Why was it banned in the UK?

42. karah:

    read lots of your stuff and i must say it’s quite good. i repeat to you what manuel told emilie. you should blog. 🙂

    as per some of the measures you mentioned in your comments, i’ve only one response. it’ll probably not happen. having relatives and friends on both ends of the spectrum, and having lived with them, i can only offer this insight:

    the rich need that gap with the poor. because if it wasn’t the rest of us might notice that they’re just people like us. and then they (aquellos) would demand the same access to things the rich think they are exclusively entitled to. so a division is created, with money being the barrier to access.

43. argh incorrect pronoun usage… i meant:

    the rest of us might notice that they (the rich) are just people, just like all of us. and then we (the rest of the population) would begin to demand the things and privileges the rich believe they are exclusively entitled to. so divisions are created, with an economic basis. because with very few exceptions rich people really just have more money. they still have the same myopic worldview as every other filipino. they, too, can’t see beyond their family, their province, and their interests. they have their pettiness, their prejudices, their

    but with the OFW boom, more and more people are beginning to afford the very same things the rich thought only they could have. the economic boundaries are slowly blurring, and the ranks of the “haves” are increasing.

    the nouveau riche snap up the external manifestations of wealth: trendy gadgets, cars, and real estate… down the line, they may even venture into getting a golf club share or some other exclusive membership. then they look back at the rest of us, and cringe at the thought that eventually we could be just like them, and that they were never really special to begin with.

44. The OFWs,BPOs, and even SMEs, I believe will increase the size of the middle class narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor. Following these will be the next generation, properly educated, and enlightened, will be more attuned to running the business of the country either as captains of industry or as public servants. They will neither be spoiled by too much “old money” nor hardened to the point of cynicism by “economic difficulty.” I believe if the current generation, meaning us, will not be able to solve all the ills of our society we might as well groom our children for their tasks in the future.

45. “I thought we have a Land Reform Law?”

    Ramrod, as w/most of our other laws, it is just that. On paper. as Manolo said, sometimes we have too many laws trying to prevent corruption that what eventually happens is RED TAPE, which invites more corruption jz to fast track your papers.

    TDC, re Miriam tagging along to China: she did say (after her outburst) that her mother (ata) was chinese and that she was half (idiot).

    re security of tenure protecting independence of govt bodies, you only have to look at COMELEC (and Abalos) to see how bad security of tenure proved to be.

    salary increases are useless as well. Greed cannot be satisfied with MORE. ERAP was already rich before he became president. and yet what happened?

    what we need is a national lobotomy. personally I’m in favor of successive generations of brainwashing thru media. overturn all that century of inbred corruption.

46. Gloria Pidal sat on a wall.
    Gloria Pidal had a great fall.
    All the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men
    Couldn’t put Gloria Pidal together again.”

    One by one, they are falling by the wayside (either by divine intervention or by scandals…)in 2007.

    1)Claudio(Resigned due to delicate operation)
    2)Lolo Gonzales(Kidney transplant)
    3)Abalos(ABCZTEFG)
    4)Miriam(foot in mouth disease)
    5)Neri(cowardice)

    There are still 3 months to go in 2007.Abangan!

47. “Madasalin si tita cory but her minimum wager workers at the hacienda are not part of her prayers….”

    Cory has a bored housewife mentality… profoundly hypocritical.

48. salary increases are useless as well. Greed cannot be satisfied with MORE. ERAP was already rich before he became president. and yet what happened? – DevilsAdvc8

    The men and women in government are made of the same stuff as you and me, they just have different sets of incentives which cause them to behave differently. If we want to change behavior, we have to modify those incentives. This may include the usual mix of moral exhortations, education and law enforcement. However, in their case, we also have to fix the economic incentives.

    In the private sector, corruption and greed is less (although by no means absent) because compensation is higher. We cannot expect ordinary men and women to live day in and day out on nothing but moral exhortations and the threat of being caught. That’s why Communism failed. Since we cannot rely on heroes on a day to day basis, the system must be modified so that it allows competence and integrity to be the norm, not the exception.

    I accept that there would be those whether in the business or the private sector whose greed will not be content, but readjusting the incentive structure (from outside income to regular salaries) in government would at least align the incidence and level of greed to that found in the private sector, which to me would be an improvement.

49. karah, many thanks, that is, indeed, very similar to, if not the actual process, we undertook to understand past government salaries in today’s terms. the point is you would not even have had to be a fanatic about honesty on the level of magsaysay; the past figures explain how an entire middle class of civil servants arose in the 20s to the 60s, and how they could live lives with dignity and security.

    since you’re far better at numbers than i am, you can do a further experiment, and look at the salaries listed here and their respective periods,

    https://www.quezon.ph/?page_id=1035

    and see what their equivalents would be, in today’s money.

50. rego, marami talagang sayang na project. at maraming bagay na ok naman na nagkakalecheleche dahil may mga gustong makisawsaw.

    take the whole brouhaha over zte. china investments, in particular. at yung anggulo na nakikialam ang mga kano.

    maraming oda na hindi nagagamit ng pamahalaan dahil a) walang counterpart funds (meaning, economic mismanagement at home) or b) di nakukuha dahil pahigpit ng pahigpit ang mga patakaran ng mga western donors, etc. attractive ang chinese assistance kasi wala silang transparency ek ek requirements.

    but objectively, any philippine government should welcome foreign investments and any foreign investor would like to invest, basta malinaw ang mga patakaran at mamiminimize ang monkey business.

    for example, kung ininsist natin na sige, investo kayong mga tsino, basta ganito lang ito ha, may bidding, transparent ang deals, etc., walang magagawa ang mga kano except to compete. nagalit ang mga kano dahil sabi nila na unfair daw yung ginawang estilo ng pagwin ng deal. ang ibig sabihin nito, napahiya tayo sa mga tsino at sa mga kano, dahil meron ngang nakisawsaw, pero ang galit ng tsino ay nagsimula sa pagbubuking ng deal, at ang mga kano, sa pangungurakot sa deal.

    moral of the story: there was lots of money for private firms, lots of benefits for the government, potential benefits for the people, if government did less monkeying around and just did deals the right way.

    sa kritisimo mo naman sa oposisyon, ang katakataka dito ay, sumingaw ang baho hindi dahil sa oposisyon, kundi dahil sa pakikipagaway-away ng mga kampo sa loob ng administrasyon.

    ganun naman talaga nasisiraan ang mga administrasyon: dahil sa kaguluhan na dulot ng mga kampo nila. ang oposisyon naman, ay siyang guwarantiya na pag may lumitaw na anomalysa, iimebstigahin ito (sa mabuti o masamang paraan, nasa mga miyembro ng oposisyon na iyan, at sa mamamayan na may interes o pasensyang bantayan ang proseso). pero mas mainam ang magulong sistema na ito kesa sa mag bulag-bulagan na lang ang lahat.

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