Something bothers me about the opposition in some quarters, to the idea of champion pugilist Manny Pacquiao throwing his hat in the electoral ring. Which is a greater indictment of democracy -that Pacquiao has the nerve to consider himself fit for public office, or that some of his fellow citizens consider it unthinkable that a boxer who made it good, dares to aspire to a government job that will be decided by the outcome of a popular election?

The truth is, both may be approaching the same question but from opposite ends of the spectrum. If democracy is the rule of the majority, and the majority of the population happen to be of a certain economic standing or level of education or culture, then naturally their financial and cultural circumstances will affect those they consider worthy and desirable to represent them. The only limits on their ability to do so, are explicit requirements for office that would automatically, and drastically, limit the representative options available to the electorate.

But those explicit requirements have never been there; and, indeed, were never necessary back in the day when there was a greater similarity between leaders and followers because the laws limited those qualified to be electors. However, these limitations have been lifted over time; which makes the assumptions on which the slender, mandatory, qualifications for office now in our laws utterly obsolete.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

The past few days have certainly been full of surprises. Early yesterday afternoon, word started to circulate that the Supreme Court had issued a ruling immediately permitting 32 new party-list representatives to take their seats in the House. To my mind, the clearest summary of the Supreme Court’s decision can be found in The Business Mirror:

The decision, in effect, paved the way for the representation of 19 more party-list groups by 32 additional House representatives from the present 17 party-list groups with 23 representatives…

On the other hand, the SC affirmed its previous ruling in Veterans Federation Party v. Comelec disallowing major political parties from participating in party-list elections.

Under RA 7941 and the deliberations of the constitutional commission, major political parties may coalesce with certain sectors to be able to join in party-list elections.

“However, by a vote of 8-7, the Court decided to continue the ruling in Veterans disallowing major political parties from participating in the party-list elections, directly or indirectly. Those who voted to continue disallowing major political parties from the party-list elections joined Chief Justice Reynato Puno in his separate opinion. On the formula to allocate party-list seats, the Court is unanimous in concurring with this ponencia,” the Court said.

In its ruling, the SC maintained that the party-list election has four unbreakable parameters as clearly stated in the Veterans decision.

These include the 20-percent allocation in the membership of the House of Representatives; the 2-percent threshold; three-seat limit, and proportional representation.

However, the Court said the formula in Veterans has flaws in its mathematical interpretation of the term “proportional representation,” which compelled it to revisit the formula for the allocation of additional seats to party-list organizations.

In determining the allocation of seats for party-list representatives under Section 11 of RA 7941, the Court said following procedure shall be observed:

• The parties, organizations, and coalitions shall be ranked from the highest to the lowest based on the number of votes they garnered during the elections.

• The parties, organizations and coalitions receiving at least 2 percent of the total votes cast for the party-list system shall be entitled to one guaranteed seat each.

• Those garnering sufficient number of votes shall be entitled to additional seats in proportion to their total number of votes until all the additional seats are allocated.

• Each party, organization or coalition shall be entitled to not more than three seats.

The Court noted that in computing the additional seats, the guaranteed seats shall no longer be included because they have already been allocated, at one seat each, to every 2-percenter.

Here is the Majority Decision in  G.R. No. 179271 , and here is Chief Justice Reynato Puno’s G.R. No. 179271 Concurring and Dissenting Opinion.

Among the newly-authorized party-list representatives is Mong Palatino, who just very well might be the first Filipino blogger to make it the House, and a national position.

In fact, he may have overtaken Jeff Ooi, the Malaysian blogger turned Member of Parliament, who sits in the assembly for the State of Penang (incidentally, you may want to read Ooi’s tale of woe concerning his economic difficulties as an MP, with a Philippine Peso equivalent of 79,762 monthly salary and 93,000 in allowances! and how the Malaysian tax authorities scrutinize officials and also, grant tax writeoffs for the purchase of books and computers by any citizen!), as the highest-ranking blogger-turned legislator. Palatino’s fellow National Democrats may also be celebrating his representing the fourth generation of their movement to assume national prominence and position.

What was interesting about the Supreme Court’s decision (besides junking the Panganiban formula), was that it was widely interpreted as representing a complication for the administration’s ongoing amendments efforts.

An interesting analysis of the alliances (pro and con) in the House, as well as an exploration of whether amendments can still be accomplished before the 2010 elections, is provided in Chacha is Dead? by Joel Rocamora:

Retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban says he has information that they only have 178 votes for the Villafuerte resolution. He doubts that they can get the remaining 18 signatures. Of the 238 incumbent congressmen, 89 belong to the Lakas, 52 to Kampi, 30 to the Nationalist People’s Coalition, 20 to the Liberal Party, 10 to the Nacionalista Party and the rest are distributed among the LDP, PMP, PDSP, PDP-Laban and Uno, and party list members.

Even if we assume that all 52 Kampi members will vote for the Villafuerte resolution, the official position of the leadership of Lakas, NPC, the LP, and the NP is against a “House only ConAss”. The NPC, LP and NP are deep into preparations for the 2010 elections for which they’ve already spent several hundred million pesos. We cannot assume that the members of these parties can all be bought by Malacanang. Any combination of congress persons from these parties plus some of the more progressive party list representatives totaling 42 will frustrate Villafuerte.

The April 21 decision of the Supreme Court adding thirty five new party list representatives does not make it any easier. Most of the new party list reps are local trapo and rabid anti-Left people like Jun Alcover of Anad and Jovito Palparan of Bantay Party. Even if GMA people manage to get three fourths of the new party list reps to sign on, however, they still can’t make up for the missing signatories that six months of solicitation have failed to produce. They can’t make up for the obvious hesitation of the largest fraction in the House and the party of the Speaker.

The Speaker, interesting enough, pleaded lack of physical space and budget, and raised a constitutional question, when informed of the Supreme Court’s decision. He certainly didn’t immediately issue a summons for the affected party-list representatives to materialize in his office so that they could be sworn in forthwith.

Then, today, news began to circulate in the late afternoon that an interesting resolution has been filed in the House. Here it is:

House Resolution No. 1109

Yesterday, Dean Jorge Bocobo had some choice things to say about the line of reasoning of the Villafuerte Resolution, but for my purposes let me just reproduce his summary of Villafuerte’s line of reasoning and ostensible motive for creating a “justiciable issue”:

Speaking to Pia Hontiveros (Strictly Politics, ANC) Rep. Luis Villafuerte, President of the Kampi Party of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, said he wants to trigger “a justiciable controversy” to get the Supreme Court to rule definitively on the meaning of Article 17 Sec. (1). For this purpose he has drafted a resolution on which he says he only needs 198 signatures to trigger that justiciable controversy. But Rep. Villafuerte informs the audience that his resolution does not contain any specific amendment or revision of the Constitution as such, but only “establishes the mode” by which Congress is to exercise its “constituent power” to propose such changes for ratification at plebiscite.

The leitmotif of the Villafuerte mode of exercising constituent power is the concept of a “Constituent Assembly (Con-Ass).” Notice that in the 1935 provision, Congress “in joint session assembled” proposes amendments with House and Senate Members voting separately and obeying the three fourths majority rule. The Villafuerte Resolution however contemplates an entirely different entity altogether than that found in the 1935 Constitution. He envisions a Constituent Assembly whose Members are all the Members of Congress with no distinction as to whether they are Senators or House Members.

The Resolution above, filed this morning, adds a “pledge” by its signatories, that should the Supreme Court rule favorably, they will not extend their own, or the President’s, terms, or create any sort of mischief, including canceling the 2010 elections. Scout’s honor, your honors.

Anyway, Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel was able to get the resolution stricken from today’s order of business in the House. But the gauntlet has been thrown down by the leadership. The Senate, perhaps, can refrain from legitimizing the ploy by refusing to be drawn in by running to the Supreme Court; however, this does not prevent someone else (paging Atty. Oliver Lozano!) from going to the Supreme Court, creating the “justiciable issue” the resolution proclaims as its reason for being.
Besides that, the filing of the resolution sets aside the question of the new party-list representatives and therefore, leaves intact the original administration coalition computation of the votes required to propose amendments -regardless of whether or not the Senate agrees or disagrees.

Note to readers: in moving servers, some comments seem to have disappeared. My apologies. If you find your comment missing, kindly re-post it.

After days of titillating leaks (a Striptease, Lito Banayo called it), the Mancao Affidavit (version 3.0) was finally leaked in full. The story since then has taken the usual twists and turns, most recently with the surreal Mancao to Lacson: ‘Sleep soundly, sir’ .

Last Sunday, the Inquirer editorial, pondering Lacson and Estrada being on the defensive (for now), asked whether the best they could do was mount The ‘Becket defense’.

The other day, I was struck by this passage from Chapter 1 of Eugenics and Other Evils by G.K. Chesterton:

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often necessary to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.

In sports terms: the best Defense is a good Offense. And this is something Bong Austero acknowledges but quickly dismisses in his column, Truisms:

The problem is that the senator seems to be reinforcing negative public perception. This is because, unfortunately, the gentleman has been protesting too much even when his name still has to be officially dragged into the controversy. Consequently, everyone I talked to is asking the same thing: Why is he making such a ruckus when he still has to be accused, formally, of the crime?

And oh, since we’re talking about truisms, there’s also that one about how offense is the best defense. It’s entirely possible that the senator, who lest we forget, used to be a military man and has expertise in intelligence work, knows something we don’t and is therefore taking matters into his own hands. Thus the senator has been quite vociferous in asserting that the whole thing is politically motivated and is a ploy to destroy his chances in 2010.

Unfortunately, we’re talking about double murder in this particular case. At the end of the day, the matter of political foul play should become irrelevant.

It is possible that Lacson’s enemies are milking the controversy to bits to advance some political agenda. It is possible that the senator is correct, this is another hatchet job from the usual suspects in Malacañang.

It is illegitimate political behavior, of course, but like I said, it is irrelevant in this particular case because the only question that needs to be answered is whether he is guilty or not of the crime he is allegedly being implicated in. So the senator’s whining about how the whole scheme is a ploy of the dirty tricks department of the Palace is really irrelevant.

Except if the Senator knows that the “only question that needs to be answered” will not be addressed! The affidavit was prepared, some of its contents leaked, then the entire affidavit leaked, and then affiant launched a protracted effort to keep himself from being deported. All this suggests doing maximum damage without risking a confrontation in open court, or the government having its hands tied by the sub judice rule.

The case for the prosecution, so to speak, was laid out by Antonio Carpo in a 2001 column for the Inquirer, Dacer’s killers: Who and why?, republished on the paper’s front page:

Returning to Lacson’s publicist, Lito Banayo, he points out,

While we focus on who ordered the killing of FVR’s publicist and Joe Almonte’s best friend Bubby Dacer, we forget all about Legacy and Jocjoc, Mercy’s merciful cover-ups, Abalos’ borjer joints, Jun Lozada’s calvary for truth, journalists and activists getting killed, jobs by the thousands getting lost each day, because Circus, Circus re-runs the Dacer-Corbito case…

And meanwhile, the money bags are being filled up in Malacanang for charter change.

As I pointed out in my entry on the recent surveys, the surveys indicate that the President’s constituency would welcome -or at least shrug off- the cancellation or postponement of the 2010 elections, and that even if half or more of the country might oppose it, they remain divided among themselves with no leader capable of coalescing majority support.

Hence my column, Getting even, yesterday, which made reference to Tony Abaya’s recent column, Sinking fast (referring to the sinking popularity of the President even in bailiwick areas) where he writes,

I believe that Plan A is still operative, that the move to amend the Constitution to shift to the parliamentary system is still on. It is the simplest and quickest way for President Arroyo to constitutionally remain in power beyond 2010, whatever the surveys may say about how unpopular she is.

The Lakas-Kampi-NPC coalition has a stranglehold on the Lower House. They can and will no doubt revive moves to convene both Houses into a constituent assembly (ConAss) and attempt to vote as one body for charter change. Only the oppositionist Senate stands in the way and it will no doubt insist that the two bodies vote separately, in which case the issue will be deadlocked.

This matter will undoubtedly be raised to the Supreme Court, probably by mid-2009 or later. As long as Chief Justice Reynato Puno remains in his position, the Court can be relied on to block any such moves from the Lower House. But if Chief Justice Puno is removed, for whatever reason, then the way is clear for ChaCha and we will have GMA Forever, legally and constitutionally, no matter what the surveys say about how unpopular she is.

A variation of Plan A – let’s call it Plan A-1 – would be to postpone, not cancel, the May 2010 elections, by as few as two or three months, on the grounds of social unrest because of the continuing financial meltdown. By coincidence, Chief Justice Puno retires also in May 2010.

Postponing – not canceling – the elections by even as few as two or three months would open a window of opportunity for the Lakas-Kampi-NPC coalition to push for ChaCha through a ConAss since CJ Puno would be retiring by May 2010, making possible the appointment of a new Chief Justice friendlier to President Arroyo’s ambition to remain in power beyond 2010.

Abaya think its no coincidence the President’s been visiting the Second District of Pampanga a lot recently:

By the strangest coincidence, the March 19 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (page 13) asks: “Will President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo run for Congress (in parliamentary elections) in 2010? In the last 22 days, President Arroyo visited Pampanga five times and four of those visits were all in her home province’s second district.”

The Inquirer listed down these visits, in each of which she was accompanied by medical and dental missions. Unmistakable sorties to hustle for votes. Feb. 24 in Floridablanca; March 4 in Guagua; March 9 in San Fernando; March 10, Lubao; March 18 in Lubao again, to celebrate the birthday of her bosom pal, Lilia Pineda, wife of alleged jueteng lord Bong Pineda. No doubt the Lord, the real Lord, guided her to these places…

Ana Marie Pamintuan’s column, Scenarios, puts down another possibility altogether, Plan B:

If the current buzz has any basis, some characters in the administration are again toying with the idea [of emergency rule]. I don’t know what makes them think Barack Obama’s administration would be more receptive to martial law than the Bush administration, unless some scenario — a major eruption of violence in Mindanao, for example — can be used as justification…

It’s a wild scenario, as far as Gen. Alexander Yano is concerned… no is also not worried about the possible appointment of Lt. Gen. Delfin Bangit as his replacement when he retires in June.

…Though his appointment will mean that senior officers will be bypassed, among them Army chief Lt. Gen. Victor Ibrado and chief of the directorial staff Lt. Gen. Rodrigo Maclang…

…Teodoro’s support is key to the imposition of martial law, and he doesn’t look like the type who will go along with it, especially if the reason is contrived as it was in 1972.

But what if Teodoro is replaced by someone more pliable, like a particular retired military officer who has reportedly been eyeing the post for some time?…

…Conspiracy buffs are warning that if Teodoro quits around May or June and the right men are installed in the top defense and military posts, then the groundwork is being laid for martial law.

Only time will tell how wild this scenario is.

Well, what we do know is that the government is preparing to roll out a Moral Renewal Extravaganza come May 14. Can you hear it now?

Bagong Pagsilang (Hymn of the New Society) - Bagong Lipunan Choral Ensemble, Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, Felipe Padilla de Leon

But besides that -because, if there’s one thing we know for sure by now, it’s that the President never puts all her eggs in one basket- providing for the future continues apace.

And so there’s this story: GMA’s son to get new House district. Simply put,

The House is proposing to split Arroyo’s constituency into two districts.

This is obviously in anticipation of the widely expected congressional candidacy of Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. in next year’s elections.

Andaya was representative of Camarines Sur’s first district for nearly three terms or nine years before joining the President’s Cabinet. His late father, Rolando Andaya, represented the district for three terms.

If the budget chief decides to reclaim his House seat, Rep. Arroyo could run in the proposed new district.

Second-district Rep. Luis Villafuerte, who is president of Mrs. Arroyo’s Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi) party, authored the bill dividing the Andayas’ bailiwick into two districts.

The additional district would include two of Villafuerte’s towns.

Anyway, there will be more on this and other proposals for new House districts on tonight’s Explainer.

Meanwhile, some articles that I’ve been meaning to link to, concerning the current economic crisis. The attempt to understand what caused the current global economic downturn continues apace. Alice Poon, writing in the Asia Sentinel, points to Alex Salmon’s Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street, and says that while the article is rather difficult to understand, it makes the best attempt so far, to explain things in layman’s terms.

Peter Gowan, writing in The New Left Review, argues that what actually happened was that “A New Wall Street System” emerged over the past quarter century; and that this is what collapsed, in a manner no one could quite comprehend because the new system was, well, so very new (hat tip: Caffeinesparks).

As things continue to unravel, looking back to the Great Depression continues to be fashionable; see the Bloomberg special, 1930s Revisited: Depression dynamic takes hold on markets, banks. You hear people referring, more and more, to the late John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1955 work, The Great Crash: 1929 (see excerpts from the book). His son, James Galbraith, has taken a critical attitude towards the new American administration. See James Galbraith: Obama Isn’t Doing Enough to Solve the Financial Crisis .

The Left, after an initial bout of Schadenfreude, has taken to asking whether it can step in the political and moral vacuum created by the implosion of Capitalism. The venerable The Nation conducted a symposium, “Reimagining Socialism”. Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr. in Rising to the Occasion  think that Capitalism might possibly not survive this latest crisis, but that Socialism isn’t equipped, at present, with a plan for taking up the slack. Robert Pollin in Be Utopian: Demand the Realistic, says Socialism will take time to come up with relevant solutions;

Perhaps most controversially, Alice Solnit argues in The Revolution Has Already Occurred , that the Left must embrace the small-is-beautiful mode, for it is in co-ops and even bicycle lanes that the Revolution has taken place; and instead of obsessing over the State, the Left be more Anarchist in its approach.

Tariq Ali in Capitalism’s Deadly Logic , and Immanuel Wallerstein in Follow Brazil’s Example , both think the answers are present in Latin America and the revival of the Left there.

Non-Left blogger big mango argues, instead, for Re-imagining Capitalism.

Domestically, the largest faction of the Left seems more interested in doctrinal purity. An interesting reading is Jose Ma. Sison’s lecture, Anti-revisionist struggle and cultural revolution: Consequence to the CPP , where he rejects criticisms of Stalinism and reaffirms the enduring relevance of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

Which brings me to a U.P. Professor, Rene Ofreneo, and his observations regarding RP’s deepening Job crisis:

Clearly, the job situation is bad before the present global recession. This can only grow worse under the lengthening shadows of a global economy moving south.

This is not difficult to comprehend given the relative openness of the Philippine economy and its high dependence on the global economy. In particular, the following job “winners” are highly vulnerable:

* Deployment of OFWs and OFW remittances

* Remittance-based industries, e.g., distribution, real estate, education, etc.

* Electronics exports

* Nontraditional agricultural exports

* CC-BPO services

* Tourism

* ODA-funded infrastructure projects, and

* Mining, biofuels

All the above are likely to decline. The decline of some winners will be dramatic, such as what is happening in the electronics. There are numerous “downsizing” programs being carried out by investors-locators in the 40 or so private industrial parks, four export processing zones (Baguio, Bataan, Cavite and Cebu) and the two special economic zones (Clark and Subic). The decline in others will be less dramatic, mainly in the form of slowdown of growth in demand as what is happening in the CC-BPO industries.

In the case of the OFW sector, the picture appears contradictory—decline in the demand for OFWs doing home care (e.g., Hong Kong and Singapore) and low-end factory work (e.g., Taiwan and South Korea) but continuing high demand for specialized OFW services, e.g., welding and designing services (due partly to the infrastructure-based stimulus packages in countries in recession) and health care (due to the requirements of aging populations in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries).

On the whole, however, the Philippine employment crisis as outlined earlier is now being aggravated by the global crisis, with the above winners experiencing either a sharp decline or a slowdown in demand. On the other hand, the weak sectors of the economy—domestic industry and domestic agriculture—are likely to continue to languish under trade liberalization, smuggling, neglect, high cost of doing business/farming, CARP conflicts and so on.

Will unemployment then go up? Not necessarily. In the 1983-85 Philippine economic depression, most of the displaced formals simply swelled the informals in the urban and rural areas. Somehow, low-wage earners must find ways to survive and cope with the requirements of daily living. In this context, one challenge for labor officials is how to monitor the deteriorating quality of jobs for many Filipinos. Another challenge is how to measure real displacement rates—at home and overseas—given the tendency of employers to rely mainly on short-term hiring arrangements. Both the DOLE and the National Statistics Office are unable to record the number of employees who are not formally “terminated” but whose services are simply not renewed.

This ties in, in a way, with my thoughts on our society’s coping mechanisms when a crisis takes place. And this suggests that whether it’s the Left, expecting its ranks to swell, or government officials expecting -even fomenting- civil unrest to justify emergency rule, or mainstream politicians expecting the economic crisis to sway the voting population one way or another, that all may be disappointed.

Tony Abaya’s column Stability from Failures, got me thinking the other night. A country that has undergone repeated national traumas: the defeat of the 1896 revolution; the defeat of the First Republic and the Filipino-American War; the Japanese Occupation; the depredations of the Hukbalahap; the First Quarter Storm and Martial Law, including the economic collapse of the early 1980s; and so on.

In Dusk and dawn in the Philippines: memoirs of a living witness of World War II, the late Antonio Molina recounted two jokes that made the rounds during the Japanese Occupation.

The first:

“A Filipino asked another, ‘Suppose you see Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Emperor of Japan both approaching you. Whom will you greet first?’

“‘The Emperor.’

“‘Why?’

“‘Because Our Lord Jesus Christ would understand.’”

The second:

“Thus, during the buy-and-sell boom, an activity engaged in by almost all the unemployed and idle professionals, it is said a man went to confession.

“‘Father,” he said, ‘ I accuse myself of having stolen a dynamo.”

“The confesor asked him, ‘Big or small?’

“‘Well, not too small. It was a four-horse power.’

“Quickly the priest told him, ‘Sold! I have a buyer!’

Here’s an extract from one of the drafts of the late Enrique Zobel’s memoirs, in which he recounts the immediate effects of the War (as background, his father, Jacobo, was at the time in Bataan, as an officer under Gen. Vicente Lim’s command):

Exactly as father predicted, a few days later, Manila became an open city and much to the surprise of everybody, the banks were all closed. And I wondered: where would we get our next meal? We had some money left over, but not enough to last us for a week. Even Ayala y Cia – occupying Filipinas Building, at the foot of the Jones Bridge, had no money to pay its employees. All the banks were closed.

The Japanese, as expected, came in, and took over most of Manila. At first, they were peaceable. They did not treat the Filipinos badly because Manila was an Open City.

My mind was constantly on how we were to survive. With what we would eat. Mother was in hysterics. She had never bothered about where the money came from and only knew how to spend it. A thought occurred to me that I would get my father’s horses from the Manila Polo Club and put them in the harness, hitching them to carretelas which Floren and I would drive. At least we would get a daily cash income.

First, I negotiated the sale of father’s stamp collection to a friend of Mascuñana, head of Archives. This friend was a Jewish trader of stamps in Ermita. With that money, I went to Pasay, Calle Zamora, to a carretoña, which was owned by Mang Sendong. (Today, the children of Mang Sendong make jeep bodies; but then, they only made carretelas.)

I negotiated for two carretelas using as down payment the stamp collection and later on, some silver and ornaments that mother had in the house which were sold to pawnshops and different small stores in Ermita.

I went to the Manila Polo club, Floren and I. It had been taken over by the Japanese cavalry and I asked to see the commanding officer who was a lieutenant. I explained to him that I was a Filipino and wanted to get my six horses back and bring them to my house. He stared at me, laughed in my face, and then he asked me why. First he asked me to prove that I was a Filipino. Of course, I had no proof. I said the fellow with me knows me; we were raised together – Florentino de Lara, who today lives in Calatagan, retired.

We had a heated discussion. I mean heated, as I started to shout my lungs off. Although I was 14, I was taller than he was. I don’t know how but between his anger and some persuasive talk, I was brought to Fort Santiago. I did not know what the hell Fort Santiago was. But when I realized this was where they kept all the prisoners, I started getting worried.

I was introduced to a major who interviewed me. I explained that the only way we could make a living, my mother and I, were those horses. (I was lucky it did not occur to them to ask: What about your father? I would really have been in hot water then.)

He asked me to tell him the horses’ names and describe them. That was easy. I described my father’s grey pony, Sultana, whom when you tickled her nose, would raise her lip. She had a scar on her left front leg. I went down the roster of horses: Sultana, Panthera, Rumba, Mani, Pal-o-Mine and Bobby Shot.

While we were talking, I noticed a little chap staring at us. After a while, he got involved in the conversation. Of all people, he was the head of the Kempeitai. He was Gen. Ota. Kempeitai was the Japanese Gestapo. And he asked me why, who was I; was I American? I said no, I was Filipino. He said: You can’t be. So I explained that my mother was Spanish. So he said: Oh Spanish! I know some Spanish. And he started dilly-dallying – “buenos dias,” etc. And then he said: What are you doing for lunch? Nothing. So he invited me for lunch, at his house.

He was occupying the house of Juaquinito Elizalde (he was in exile, saerving as the U.S. Resident Commissioner when the War broke out) on the Boulevard, beside President Quezon’s Roberts Street residence in Pasay, which was also occupied by a Japanese general. (Juaquinito Elizalde’s house became the U. S. Ambassador’s residence after the war; then it was demolished and now Sunset View towers stands on that lot).

Of course, in those days, a meal was rice and fish or rice and chicken, if you could get chicken. Otherwise, it was rice. Well, he had fried eggs, he had Japanese steaks, etc. And then he asked me if I could make it every Thursday, and I could have lunch in exchange, I could talk to him in Spanish. He just wanted Spanish conversation for one or two hours. Obviously, I amused him. So we made a pact. In fact, after about three or four times, I brought my mother along who also ate there. Hence, we spoke Spanish. He was a very nice, quiet person, considering the title and position he occupied; at least with me.

What is funny was, towards the end of say, three months, one day, during the lunch, he said: Enrique, you are alone, do you want to pick up your father at Capas? I turned white. And he said: Why haven’t you brought up the subject of your father? I answered back: You never asked me. So after lunch, he offered the use of his car to pick up my father in Capas. So you can imagine when I went to Capas, a young boy of 14, getting off in his car, that every goddamn sentry saluted Gen. Ota’s car. I went to pick up my father, carried him bodily into the car, and brought him back to Manila.

A fellow prisoner, Ernesto Rufino, asked me: Enrique, how the hell can you come in that Japanese car? He was there in line when I picked up my father. He was simply amazed. Where did I get this thing? I did not answer back. I just smiled, you know, and said: Someday, I’ll tell you.

I brought father back, and he had improved from dysentery; he was 86 lbs. He could survive only on soup because anything else would just come out.

Anyway, that first day at the Manila Polo Club, they gave me the horses at the end of the long argument. They said: At such a date, go pick up your horses. They did not give us the saddles. They gave Floren and I the horses and the bridles. So bareback, we took the six horses back; one boy on each horse, and one horse on either side, to Malate, where the stables were, empty by then.

The problem arose of how to feed the horses. Every afternoon when the sun came down, we would bring them to the Boulevard and spend three to four hours there and have them eat the grass before training them with the caretela.

Part I of the training session was getting two bamboo poles and having the horse trotting around with a long rope on his rein and us driving him from behind, getting him used to the bamboo poles on each side.

Well, everyone did very well except for Pal-o-Mine. He started kicking, and got loose. Floren and I were training them in bathing suits and shorts. I ran after the horse in a bathing suit and finally caught him near the bomberos in Azcarraga where the children play “sipa.” So I found myself holding a tired horse, crowd around me, in a bathing suit, and how can you explain the situation? Anyway, I rode the horse back to Malate.

We got those horses taught. My first customer was my grandfather, Don Enrique. We delivered him to his office every morning and then brought him back in the afternoon… Then in the evening, in the last “pasada,” we would end up every night in Pasay, near the Polo Club, Pasay Market to buy “zacate,” which had been cut in Makati.

So we would fill up both caretelas, paid in cash naturally. After delivering the load to Ayala, it was back to Pasay, then to Escolta, back to Pasay, I made about four rounds a day. With Floren that’s eight rounds, total. That was a lot of money then. But with that, I fed my mother and we all survived. (Lunch was rice with whatever Belen, our cook, could put in. Floren and I both ate the same food.)

We traded Mani for a mestizo horse. Floren had a funny experience with that horse. One evening he got a family of Sikhs up the Jones Bridge and the weight was so much that it pulled the mestizo pony up in the air and the caretela fell on its rear, until the Sikhs shifted weight to the front, and horse and caretela came back to earth again.

Consider the effects of the tremendous inflation that took place during the War (see Charle’s Mock’s September 2, 1943 diary entry). Now this requires further study, but what we do have by way of accounts such as the many diaries recently published of people who lived through World War II, is that they were immediately faced with the problems of inflation, a breakdown in law and order, and a situation where old skills weren’t necessarily relevant to the current situation.

The whole point of these stories from the Wartime generation (and middle and upper class voices at that) is that it might be useful to explore the coping mechanism of society viewed as an organic whole and less by means of its component parts. To do that requires exploring common behavior.

Some notes, based on a discussion about a week ago with friends online.

• For some time now, you often hear observers bewailing the behavior they notice among OFW’s, that their purchases go towards consumer items like appliances and jewelry, then vehicles and land. Previously, they were criticized as follows: that they did not save, were obsessed with appliances and other items, with jewelry, and so on. But all the consumer items are actually, in a sense, portable wealth: appliances can be pawned, houses may not have been completed but land bought or occupied… so the coping will take place.

• This actually points to how entrenched across classes crisis coping mechanisms are. Coping mechanisms constantly revalidated over time, and most recently by the collapse of banks, the predatory political class’ scraping the public barrels, etc.

• You could even argue these lessons go back to the formative years of our nation-state: the Philippine Revolution and the War (both within living memory during the War itself) taught people not to trust banks, and governments, with the old middle and upper classes survived the way many intend and are doing it now: pawning portable wealth, and retreating to the land when possible, trusting, not in currency or institutions but the family.

• This crisis is like the 1980s economic crises, serving the same purpose in transmitting from one generation to the next, the coping mechanisms that saw the older generations survive their eras’ crises. In the 1980s, those who lived through the war and the years of terror and uncertaintly during the depredations of the military and the Huks, instinctively knew what would carry them through. Same lessons as during the War. Do not trust banks, government institutions.

• The amassing of appliances is no different from the purchase of pianos and phonographs prior to the war and the pawning for emergency cash… it will tide the new middle class through just as it tided the old middle class through the war.

• We don’t realize how extended the formal economy is, and how it meshes with the informal one: for example, many fancy shops in Makati do most of their real business in Tupperware Party style gatherings, in part because the wealthy do not want to be seen purchasing in public, but also because it takes place in a style reminiscent of the underground economy. Another example is how the “Multiply.com economy” is already fairly large, tapping into behavior similar to the buy-and-sell economy that began in WW2 but which has never ever really gone away.

• The salaried class is not like salaried classes in other countries again because of the buy-and-sell sub-economy. Note the prevalence of rackets, even among salaried individuals or their spouses, or their extended families, in good times and bad.

• The so-called hoi polloi, the urban and rural poor, are an integral part of all these economies (formal and informal), whether as the staff, or in many respects, the consumers and providers, too; so the informal economy goes all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom, buy and sell, barter and exchange is as much a habit of the wealthiest classes as they are of the poorest, as is the hoarding and land-obsessed (for security) mentality.

• A good example of enduring wartime habits is that from the wealthiest to solidly old middle class villages, converting empty lots to food growing has been a feature since the 1950s, with a portion for the family and the rest for the employees.

• In the first place the system of extended families always includes a cross-section of society as even the wealthiest will have poor relations, they are bound together in terms of behavior that overlooks wealth in some aspects and accentuates dependence in others.

• This brings up feudalism both as safety net and as a code of behavior that won’t go away, because crises reinforces it; if feudalism is as much about obligations as it is about privileges, something again overlooked by academics in the case of the family system although it’s broken down in all other non-family respects (e.g. among tenants and landlords; but as Kerkvliet pointed out, the tension vs. landlords since the 1930s has been as much due to peasants’ desire for landlords to return to their old feudalism and less to a truly widespread demand to overturn feudalism, as it about the wealthy maintaining only a sense of impunity while abandoning traditional expectations of them by the poor).

I think the insight to pursue is in the same manner that anthropolgists are finding more and more of the prehispanic culture having survived, you will find that we have been conditioned by the great traumas of our national existence to deliberately pursue what you find people pointing out to be our national consuelo de bobo: we missed out on the boom, but we muddle through the regional busts. We have been conditioned by our great national traumas to keep our goals limited, and our options unrestricted to those that the formal economy expects.

This also suggests that instead of unrest, what we might see happening, as the economic crisis wears on, is, instead, an increase in underground economic activity, combined with both increased pressures on the government for patronage, and with that, increased clout on the part of the government, since people will be grateful or at least, calmed down, by favors granted.

This ties in with an observation by a former Metrocom officer, who I once asked about conditions during the rice shortages of the early 70s. Were there riots? No, he said, people as a whole do not go berserk; small groups might, and individuals do; but what was remarkable then, he said, was how people accepted harsh conditions.

(Free Press editorial cartoon circa 1965)

While we had the two party system from 1935 to 1972, from our first national, presidential election, the tendency has been to have a three-way contest for the presidency. In particular, 1935, 1957, 1961 were real three-cornered fights; in our era, 1998 and 2004 were three-cornered fights, though it can also be argued that 2004 also saw the country inching back to the more familiar territory of the presidential contest being viewed as a two-way fight. But 2010, if it happens, shows signs of being a repeat of the 1992 contest.

I’ve written elsewhere that with the election of Garcia to the presidency in 1957, something else emerged: the problem of a plurality, and not majority, presidency, although people didn’t get worried over this because each of his successors managed to garner majorities. But I contend that, as Leon Ma. Guerrero argued (in his case, arguing in defense of martial law), “Today began yesterday,” and that the 1950’s brought forward the trends of celebrity candidates and minority presidents we continue to discuss today.

Last February, colleague John Nery wrote a remarkable column titled The 2010 race is set. In it, he set out to discuss what the surveys on presidential contenders reveals about voter behavior -and preferences:

[T]he reality is: We already know who our next president will be. Or more precisely, who among a select five or six Filipinos will win the 2010 elections.

His basis for saying this is based on

…two fundamental assumptions about our voting patterns for national elective office. First, it takes us a considerable amount of time to warm to prospective presidents (in other words, we are not ready for “overnight” candidacies for the presidency). And second, the way we choose our senators is distinctly different from the way we choose our presidents.

Read the whole thing, which also refers to past surveys and elections (1992, 1998, and 2004), and his concluding that,

I obviously believe in electoral miracles. But experience tells me this sort of thing happens only in Senate elections, when a voter has 12 votes to deploy, and some decidedly surprising candidates to choose from. For the presidency, however, we limit our choices early. We don’t like surprises.

Nery believes the surveys indicate the public’s views that there are only six real contenders for 2010: de Castro, Legarda, Villar, Escudero, Lacson and Roxas. He pointed out that regardless of their actual merits or demerits, prospective presidential candidates like Richard Gordon, Jejomar Binay, or Bayani Fernando might as well accept it was too late in the game for them to be taken seriously.

Lito Banayo, also in February, pretty much reached the same conclusion. Banayo added that the same might hold true for Gilbert Teodoro for the presidency or even reform candidates like Grace Padaca or Jesse Robredo or Ed Panlilio for the Senate. Banayo also pointed out that Feliciano Belmonte had publicly disavowed any interest in running for the presidency, knowing he’d have better chances seeking another position.

In recent weeks, trial balloons aplenty have been launched, to gauge the viability of various candidates. The rumor mill has been particularly active, too. So everyone from the Chief Justice, to businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan has been publicly floated or privately whispered about as being interested in the presidency. Most recently, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro expressed interest in the presidency, prompting a skeptical column by Amando Doronila: though I wonder why Doronila didn’t point out what is, perhaps, the biggest obstacle to a Teodoro candidacy: talk that he has broken, politically, with his uncle, Eduardo Cojuangco, Jr. because of Teodoro’s wife wanting his vacated congressional seat, something Cojuangco didn’t agree with.

The comes the reality check, the most recent one being Pulse Asia’s February 2009 Nationwide Survey on the May 2010 Elections.

Now of course ahead of any talk of elections in 2010 is the question of whether it would be an actual presidential or a parliamentary, election.

I asked a congressman whether Charter Change was well and truly dead, and the congressman replied that yes, it was, because the Speaker had informed his colleagues that whatever constitutional amendments might be approved would, to soothe the public, not be applicable to them -at which point the enthusiasm of the congressmen for amending the Charter waned perceptibly.

Whether this is true or not, the Pulse Asia survey suggests that the public is convinced that we will have presidential elections in 2010, and that the percentage of those who believe elections will take place has risen slightly since last year. Though what Pulse Asia itself points out as the notable improvement in figures, is that the percentage of people undecided on the matter has dropped. The optimists far outnumber the pessimists and the fence-sitting portion of the public has shrunk.

Personally, looking at the above, this is what I find interesting. I consider the roughly 25% or a quarter of the public who disagree there would be trouble if the 2010 elections aren’t held the hard-core constituency of the President, and the roughly equal percentage the ambivalent sectors who essentially go along, when push comes to shove, with the hard-core supporters of the President.
Now why do I find this interesting? The survey shows far from an overwhelming majority being worried about the consequences of not having elections. It may be a stretch to consider that this means they would welcome not having elections. But if I were looking at these numbers from the Palace’s point of view, an argument could be made for pushing Charter Change a little bit further; because compared to the figures for the possible presidential candidates, there remain more who shrug off the implications of not having elections, and those who are unsure, than those who actually have a stake in pushing forward any individual candidate. There would be no one to galvanize opposition to the cancellation of elections.

Which brings us to what the media considers the juiciest part of this most recent survey: personal preferences, in elections had been held last February:

While from the very start, Nery considered a renewed Estrada bid for the presidency as legally preposterous, what may be more relevant is that Estrada is far from a runaway winner in the surveys, as his drumbeaters were predicting; Nery also points out that compared to his past survey ratings, Estrada’s sheen has dulled, politically.

In fact, if you look at the comparative preferences of people, only four of the main contenders have improved their standings over the past year: Escudero and Roxas by the most, followed by de Castro. Villar went down, as did Estrada, Legarda, and Lacson:

Doronila points out that the latest survey actually presents a dead heat between the four leading contenders, de Castro, Escudero, Estrada and Villar (Nery of course immediately discounts Estrada as constitutionally-banned from seeking the presidency). Of these four, only two have access to the cash necessary to run a strong campaign: Escudero and Villar. Which is why there is talk that the Vice-President might be amenable to running for the vice-presidency, again, repeating the strategy pursued by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2004 when she convinced de Castro to be her running mate.

Regarding the vice-presidency, what may surprise readers the most is that the survey gives an indication of those who are mulling over throwing their hat in the vice-presidential derby, or who are considered likely to do so, or who the various political forces are considering drafting:

More people, it seems, would be happy with de Castro running for Vice-President for the second time, and Escudero, if he decided, as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did in 1998, to play it safe, would do twice as well running for the vice-presidency, too. Legarda would do much better, too. So all three have the luxury or choice, they can slide down if necessary.

I think this point is strengthened by the finding that only four potential vice-presidential candidates have shown improvement in their rankings over the past year:

With Escudero doing best, followed by de Castro and Legarda, who only made negligible gains. Binay went from infinitesimal to negligible.

What the survey doesn’t take into account is the talk, quite recent, at that, that Joseph, not Jinggoy, Estrada might cut through the constitutional Gordian knot and run for the vice-presidency!

Concerning the Senate, the survey looked at the number of slots people fill up in their ballots (just as an aside, it’s well to remember that prior to martial law, voters only voted for 8 senators at a time; if voters’ behavior hasn’t changed all that much, this suggests that fill-up rates back then must have been 100% most of the time). It’s interesting to note that the National Capital Region has the lowest fill-out rate (9) and that demographically, it’s class ABC that fills out the least number of names (also 9):

Now personally I think the 12 at a time system at present is crazy; the old 8 at a time was more reasonable, and also meant a periodic changing of 1/3 of the Senate, more accurately fulfilling its function, as compared to the House, of being a continuing body.

But anyway, here are the front-runners, for the Senate, and again, voters will be interested in getting a sneak peek at those who are angling to run, or who will run:

Now it’s up to you at which point you’ll consider a candidate to be facing such an uphill climb that a candidacy isn’t worth it, but I’d draw it at 12-16, which means Dick Gordon is the last candidate with a ghost of a chance. Note the appearance in the list of media personalities Korina Sanchez, Mike Enriquez, Arnold Clavio and Anthony Taberna; of Speakers de Venecia and Nograles, businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan, former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban, and Wowowee host Revillame. Also, just as Lito Banayo pointed out in February, only those with a very high Awareness Rating can be considered viable senatorial contenders (consider the contrast between the probable awareness among newspaper readers or those who regularly read political blogs, and the public awareness of figures often mentioned in the papers and blogs, such as Ed Panlilio (only 34% Awareness) or Jessie Robredo (only 14%).

I am surprised at the rankings of former senators like Butz Aquino or up-and-coming candidates like Adel Tamano.

An interesting table is the next one, showing how individual candidates have moved up or down, percentage-wise, since late last year. Now how much of the changes, do you think, can be directly connected with whatever the headlines have been in the interval between October ‘08 and February ‘09?

Look at the biggest gainer -Edu Manzano! And how, generally, the President’s cabinet members are doing badly. Only Ralph Recto and Sotto are doing well: Durano, Yap, Duque, Syjuco, Teves, Romulo, Teodoro are all in the cellar (with Dinky Soliman). This suggests not even the administration machine can help them.

Nonetheless, the administration and everyone else has to attend to fine-tuning their political machinery in preparation for 2010. Here the old dictum that all politics is local comes to the fore. Even as national candidates mull over their chances, each has to consider who their local allies will be, while local allies jockey to ensure the succession or block rivals from presenting a strong alternative to their rule.

My column today, Vendettas, recounts the scuttlebutt I heard in Davao City when I was there over the weekend. Both Mayor Duterte and Speaker Nograles are third termers; both are trying to ensure their posts pass on to their successors, in Duterte’s case, his daughter for the mayoralty, and in the case of Nograles, to his son for the House of Representative. The possibility that old scores have been merged with the concerns of other groups -say, Duterte’s tolerance for the NPA and the obsession within certain circles of the AFP to liquidate the unarmed Left- points to the role warlordism in all its forms, will play in the coming months to enable permanent solutions to often intractable political problems.

There is no shortage of well-meaning activity in this country; but there are times when it seems like all the effort is an essentially futile task, and that our country’s like Sisyphus, condemned to roll a stone up a hill, only to see it roll down again, every time.

Last February 19 I went to the Aurora A. Quezon Elementary School in Malate, to represent the family in the school’s commemoration of my grandmother’s birth anniversary.

Before the program started, I had a chance to talk to some of the teachers and the principal about the situation of the school, which has long had a very good reputation for the excellence of its teaching, teachers, and the scores and marks the students obtain in contests and national tests.

One thing she told me about bothered me. The PAGCOR has a feeding program in the school, which helps 50 malnourished kids. Assistance is to the tune of 30,000 Pesos a month, at 30 Pesos a meal. Now what bothered me was the arbitrary nature of the program (stuck at 50 kids, irrespective of the actual incidence of malnutrition in any school; my impression, though the principal didn’t say it, is that there’s simply a quota of 50 kids per school, so that PAGCOR can provide assistance to many schools). The program has a limited duration, 120 days. The principal said, when I asked her what this sort of limited assistance accomplished, that the program, ideally, rescues kids and restores them to health; that afterwards, hopefully, parents can be convinced to devote more of their resources to feeding their kids.

The principal added that there are other projects taking place at the same time, with various sources of funding, both local and national (noodles, nutritious bread and milk, etc.) but they all have limited durations and teachers just have to hope it helps some but not all. The programs require ingenuity, too; the school has taken to planting vegetables to keep the costs of subsidized meals low, for example.

One interesting problem schools face is that because of the UN policy that kids cannot be refused an education, schools can’t impose limits (academic, or enrollment, or locality, etc.) on those applying, which means some schools are swamped with kids even from far flung areas when there are other public schools nearer the kids.

But the growth in population is taking it’s toll. 7 years ago, when the principal started, they had an enrollment of 3,500; this year, they have 5,700. And while proud of their completion rate of 87%, the 3% who drop out is still quite high.

Like most public school teachers I talk to they also have major problems because many kids lack one or both parents and any discipline efforts can result in Bantay Bata lawsuits. Another problem is kids being withdraw from school to help the family by working, in some cases, by begging.

A heartening thing, and this is something apparently growing in strength in some public schools (two or three years ago, the principal and teachers of Manuel L. Quezon elementary school in Manila told me similar stories), is that cooperation between parents and teachers is close, and parents go out of their way to help the school with its needs. This is particularly noteworthy because regulations exist, in Manila, forbidding teachers and principals from actively seeking monetary or other assistance from parents or students. It seems the parents have taken to actively finding out what the school needs, and how they can help, whether by donating a single can of paint (a great sacrifice for most families), or providing coffee and snacks to other volunteers who help with maintenance, etc.

The head of the PTA (a phenomenon entrenched since martial law) is a Police Major, who himself went to the school, has one daughter in Grade 6, and two children in college, all of them in state schools. His two eldest plan to be a doctor and an engineer, respectively, treading the path from lower to upper middle class. But is stories were of the rise of petty crimes and of syndicated crime.

The result of this visit was three columns: Permanently poor, The end of social mobility, and Insecurity and the Invisible Class.

In them, I made reference to the following.

The 1971 roundtable on the Philippines, and the quotations of Sixto Roxas and Onofre Corpuz are from President Marcos and the Philippine political culture by Lew Gleeck (to my mind, this is the most insightful book on the late dictator).

Information, too, from “The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World” (Niall Ferguson) You can read a synopsis here, or better yet, find a way to grab hold of the documentary series on which he based his book.

For population figures, there’s Jan Lahmeyer’s  historical demographical data of the whole country.

There’s the Asia Economic Forum’s online report (for the 1st AEF) on The Human Development Index (HDI). The Philippines falls under the category of “Medium Human Development.” Countries in the region were classified according to three clusters, with the Philippines in Cluster 2: Malaysia (61), Thailand (73), the Philippines (84) and China (85), and with the following observations:

Using comparable data-sets where available, there has been a general upward trend in HDI values over the past almost 30 years. Major points of interest are that:

the ‘Asian tigers’ (Hong Kong, Singapore and the Republic of Korea) clearly became part of Cluster 1 over the period prior to 1995;

the Philippines has progressively dropped since 1975 to a relatively low position in Cluster 2; and

Mongolia has transitted from Cluster 2 to Cluster 3 over the period 1985-1995; whilst

China has done the opposite since 1995.

However, while our overall rankings are pretty low, and our rankings suggest an overall deterioration over time, in individual, current, rankings we’re actually rather decent.

This may help explain why a holistic look at the country is depressing but if individual constituencies are asked, who might be inclined to focus on particular aspects, they might answer that things are pretty good and even improving.

And then there’s the UNDP’s 2007/2008 Human Development Report on the Philippines. (Additional data on various indices can be found here). You can also compare this recent report with the 1994 Philippine Human Development Report). In particular, these charts and graphs.

The Human Development Index, as a more accurate measure of the development of a nation’s population than the more traditional per capita GDP.

This suggests that the overall trajectory of the Philippines is one of steady improvement, though not as steeply improving as regions as a whole. But as I pointed out in my column, the Philippines has dropped in its rankings.

I also referred to this report:

And while Dean Jorge Bocobo often points out that self-rated poverty is essentially meaningless, I think it goes a long way in explaining the gulf between official statistics and the skepticism to outright hostility with which public opinion often meets official pronouncements of slight to significant gains.

This is all by way of exploring the question of social mobility. This recent story from a British newspaper makes for interesting reading: Social mobility: Labour tries to revive flagging crusade to help poor childrenMinisters are promoting a series of policies in an effort to bring their key project back on track.

Two other stories that make for relevant reading: Marooned on the Fal: sailors stranded on the ships that are going nowhereShipping crews from all over the world caught in Cornwall as global trade slows and Downturn hits Philippine remittances.

This document, too, was provided in a link in the previous entry, and makes for interesting reading in comparison with another document, which I’m reproducing below it:

2009 Year of Outsourcing Dangerously

or

Asian Perceptions 2008 Final

What, Apolinario Mabini asked, is a revolution?

By political revolution I understand a people’s movement aimed at producing a violent change in the organization. and operation of the three public powers: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. If the movement is slow, gradual or progressive, it is called evolution. I say people’s movement because I consider it essential that the proposed change answer a need felt by the citizens in general. Any agitation promoted by a particular class for the benefit of its special interests does not’ deserve the name (of political revolution or evolution).

But let me suggest that it is equally valid to define a revolution as simply the replacement of one government, with another, against the will and in defiance of the institutional processes, of the government that falls. This means that whether that forced change is peaceful or violent, the process is the same: a the government that falls and by so doing, has its institutions repudiated.

Mabini said that by instinct and temperament, most people prefer change through evolution rather than by revolution, but that if development is blocked by the government, then a revolutionary situation arises:

But evolution is not possible where the social organization is not adjusted to it, just as a plant grows and flourishes only in suitable soil. When the government takes measures for the stagnation of the people, whether for its own profit or that of a particular class, or for any other purpose, revolution is inevitable. A people that have not yet reached the fullness of life must grow and develop because otherwise their existence would be paralyzed, and paralyzation is equivalent to death. Since it is unnatural for a being to submit to its own destruction, the people must exert all their efforts to destroy the government which prevents their development. If the government is composed of the very sons of the people, it must necessarily fall.

There continues to be a debate concerning public approbation of martial law. It is said Marcos himself was surprised by the docility of the public and the manner in which he successfully rounded up the opposition, padlocked the legislature, and cowed the courts. Metro Manila -his own political creation, a throwback to the Greater Manila established as a temporary wartime measure- erupted in protest by 1978, the famous noise barrage on the eve of the elections for the Interim Batasang Pambansa; yet 1981 would mark his apotheosis as dictator and his proclamation of a New Republic, officially burying the old Third Republic; by 1984, however, close to a third of the Batasang Pambansa was oppositionist, with bailiwicks in Batangas, Cebu, and places like Cagayan de Oro City. He was unpopular in large swathes of the sugar-producing regions, and the coconut-producing ones, where his efforts to establish monopolies under Benedicto for sugar and Cojuangco for coconut had spectacularly ruined those once-lucrative industries.

Still, opposition, perhaps, percolated upwards and not downwards until Marcos’ economic mismanagement eventually led to a pincer movement, with the majority and the elite both edging towards the same conclusion: the dictator had to go.

Marcos’ mistake was to galvanize opposition among those with a means to oppose him, by eventually seizing and engaging in extortion, the property of those who left well enough alone and had never engaged in politicking in the manner of his wealthy opponents.

To be sure, he’d already alienated the majority of people much earlier than that, as demonstrated by the noise barrage in 1978; but in 1983 he finally lost the middle class and in 1984, when he famously threatened the Makati Business Club, he finally lost the upper class as well. He lost major urban centers, too: Baguio, Cebu, Davao became even more firmly esconced as anti-Marcos bailiwicks of the opposition.

Over the past few years, I heard veterans of the Marcos era express the firm conviction that sooner or later (and sooner rather than later) it would duplicate Marcos’s mistake and start muscling in on the corporations of its enemies, then muscle in on the corporations of its critics, and finally, start gobbling up the corporations of the uninvolved; at which point, the tide would turn against the government. This is, incidentally, a mistake Estrada made, surrounding by many of the same crowd that had porsued similar tactics during the Marcos era.

This is significant because of how tightly intertwined our society is; the upper class relies on the middle class for its mananers and they manage the masses who are employed; and all are tied, up and down, by ties of church, club, and school, the whole compadrazgo culture strengthened by the rituals of births, graduations, weddings, and funerals. Declaring war on a so-called oligarch is a declaration of war on a cascade of families belonging to the middle class and the masses. Which is why the goings-on among the higher political and business echelons of this country are avidly followed by everyone else -each one having a stake, major or minor, in the outcome.

This administration hasn’t engaged in Marcosian engulf and devour tactics with one exception, the Lopezes; with all others, it has bared its fangs in public while showing every inclination to reach a mutually-profitable accommodation in private. But what sets it apart from the dictatorship is that instead of engulfing and then devouring, it seems to have hit off on a novel scheme: to leave everyone pretty much alone, and instead, carve out new financial territories for itself and its friends. In this case it left only one traditionally entrenched opponent, the Lopezes, while leaving everyone else, hostile or not, alone. Transco, for example; and even its assault on Meralco has been better camouflaged by restricting most of the action to the boardroom, the use of government shares as a battering ram and when that was thwarted, the sale of those shares to San Miguel Corporation which then floated, for public consumption, the rather tantalizing possibility that San Miguel can lower electricity costs by engaging in data transmission through electrical lines: establishing a new monopoly on virgin commercial territory and incidentally, driving a wedge in the otherwise united front presented by the existing telecoms companies.

History is never repeated; circumstances neither emerge nor combine in the same way at different times; for this reason, one argument perpetually put forward as some sort of mitigating factor in judging the present administration’s political maneuvers has always left me skeptical: the President is no Marcos, the times aren’t at all like Marcos’s time, you do not see, for example, the outward manifestations of the New Society and its methods for thought and crowd control.

But of course. Every generation learns from the one that came before. And even the same players learn from the past.

According to some accounts, the Palace is hedging its bets and going slow on Charter Change, because of the public perception that it is in bad odor in Washington; one interpretation goes as far as suggesting the Palace is spooked by the possibility of Washington tacitly blessing a coup should any effort to prolong the President’s stay in office proceed. Others suggest that the Palace all along prefers to be in “legacy mode,” all the better to improve its chances in 2010, while maneuvering for a succession it can control.

The same accounts suggest that a modus vivendi between the President and Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. was ratified in Qatar, and that the President’s visit to San Miguel Corporation’s headquarters was the public manifestation of this agreement. At the very least, it kills two birds with one stone (knocking the Lopezes off their perch in Meralco, and placing the capstone in the carefully-built electric, power, and energy fiefdoms the administration’s made possible), while keeping all others, including Charter Change, at the very least on the back burner and in play.

Some links to past readings by way of a backgrounder on the Marcos years and the anniversary of the Edsa Revolution: Marcos in retrospect, part 1 and part 2; the enduring strength of the idea that one can create a New Society; and some observations on the Philippine political culture.

To come full circle, though, as the Inquirer editorial Veto power suggests, the ultimate lesson might be, that if a revolution, and its acceptable manifestation in our country, People Power, is to succeed, it requires, at the very least, the repudiation both of the government People Power topples, and of its institutions including its constitutional rationale.

Over the last couple of weeks I attended two public speaking competitions, as a judge and as a member of the audience. The first was the Voice of Our Youth (VOY) National Impromptu Speaking Competition, and the other was the Volvo Voice of Leadership competition.

The VOY contest is a well-established one, involving as it does, elimination rounds in the provinces conducted under the auspices of various Rotary Club districts. The students generally spoke very well, but what struck me were some observations made by fellow judge Butch Dalisay on the sidelines of the competition.

I asked him how the students compared to, say, his generation and the oratorical contests they participated in. He immediately brought up the Voice of Democracy competitions of his youth, and observed that the schoolchildren of today speak better. But he was troubled by what he felt to be a lack of curiosity about the world on the part of the kids, and said he couldn’t shake off the impression that the otherwise impressive rhetorical ability of the kids masked a lack of depth when it came to issues, and the real world.

For example, even as the kids generally bewailed the depressing lack of genuine service among today’s leaders, and condemned corruption, and violence and the degradation of the environment, Dalisay said he was constantly waiting for the kids to exhort their audience to take up a good book, or read the papers, or watch the news, so as to be better informed of the many issues swirling around them.

The Volvo contest, on the other hand, is the first one ever, and included a camp activity. For my part let me suggest that the parameters of the contest betrayed excessive caution on the part of the sponsors. But then again, being a privately-sponsored contest one really can’t quibble with the overarching limitation of the contest’s definition of leadership:

It advocates the development of youth leaders who shall embody the character of true leadership – that with both integrity of heart and excellent skills that is rooted in God-centeredness and exemplified by accountable and responsible stewardship – and who shall articulate the voice of leadership that would move and inspire, innovate and instigate leadership transformation among the youth.

That overarching parameter, I suppose, doesn’t bother schools like the Ateneo de Manila in the least, though for people like me, who are trying to focus the public’s attention on the need for a more secular approach to national problems, chalk up another win for those who advocate religious supremacy in all things.

Contests like these help provide a glimpse into the minds of young people, how they process information, and to what extent they’re armed with the tools necessary to become not just reliable employees, but active citizens. For some time now, I’ve believed that an active civic sense is what needs to be fostered, because we’re paying the price for the manner in which nurturing that civic sense was effectively abandoned by educators.

A couple of years ago, at a forum in Jose Rizal University, former Senate President Salonga, asked by a student what would get the country out of the logjam it’s in, thundered, “what this country needs is not Charter Change but character change!” and received a tremendous ovation in response.

Every seems agreed on that point, but then seems stumped on how to accomplish that change. Organized religion seems to be moving more effectively towards a “God-centered” solution to all things. The best proof of this is the stir which the present Chief Justice himself caused, but that’s for another entry.

Anyway, here are the three winners of the Volvo competition, which have helpfully been uploaded to YouTube.

The winner of the competition, John Xavier Valdes of the Ateneo de Manila:

The first runner-up, Regina Isabelle Rananda of Miriam College:

And the second runner-up, Christian Earl Castañeda of LaSalle Greenhills:

They are remarkable performances, each and every one (and so were the rest, on the whole). Hopefully, in the future, the VOY competition will also consider posting the performances of their winners on line. The winners of the Allied Bank-sponsored, Rotary-led competition, go on to represent the country in public speaking contests overseas.

(picture looted from the Interwebs)

Snapshot, Monday:

Snapshot, today:

Agence France-Presse reports San Miguel: Not taking over Meralco which seems to be believed by no one. Whatever the news that emerges going into what’s expected to be a showdown for control of Meralco during it’s May stockholders meeting, the rise in Meralco share prices has become newsworthy in itself.

The Philippine Stock Exchange couldn’t ignore the movement of Meralco’s share price; but in the end, not much seems possible to do . While personally, the Meralco and San Miguel moves are of direct relevance to me (since I have a show on ANC and I own some San Miguel shares), what’s more relevant to this blog is the way big business and government seem joined at the hip in this particular case. Some of government’s losses have been made up by San Miguel acquiring government shares (helping buttress the bottom line of the government at a time when Moody’s gives RP no credit upgrade; the government is going to be hard-pressed to have cash on hand for patronage and running the government: see Government spending P7B to hire ‘temps’ and State workers set rally vs layoffs ); on the other hand, government’s hostility to Meralco is also well served by San Miguel’s possible hostile takeover of Meralco.

If, for example, the interests of Eduardo Cojuangco are served by a cozy relationship with the present administration, could it then possibly be a sign of a confluence of interests that extends to the 2010 elections?

The administration, unlike its enemies, has the resources (money and manpower) to keep game plans running on parallel tracks, to see which will prosper. Among its many options remain Charter Change, emergency rule, and holding presidential elections as scheduled in 2010. But the last option, if it’s to be viable, requires sinking in resources now, and reaching an agreement with potential candidates sooner rather than later. These potential candidates -and their backers- themselves have different options running on parallel tracks (the Cojuangco interests, for example, would be interested in the prospects for Charter Change, and in elections in 2010, and perhaps, apprehensive of emergency rule, and must consider which option to invest in most effectively). The more these tracks converge, the more it would seem logical to pursue an existing, and lucrative, relationship as far as it will go.

Much as I thought 2004 marked the passing into history of the Marcos era and its henchmen, I may have underestimated both their staying power and their ability to groom a successor generation (Enrile is at his apogee, and not nadir, as a public official; Cojuangco seems headed for new heights of economic and political influence; Ronnie Puno seems entrenched as ever; and Francis Escudero seems the Second Coming of Ferdinand Marcos himself).

So when the Philippine Stock Exchange also allegedly (the allegation bering made in Lopez-controlled media) acted selectively in backing down from imposing a fine on San Miguel for violating disclosure rules , it seems a return to the days of impunity of the early 1980s (but if so, they’re in good company, see HK tycoons up in arms over trading rule and HK backs down on trading blackouts; relevant readings are Roubini: Anglo-Saxon model has failed and High Noon: Geithner v. The American Oligarchs). Which only goes to show the clout of the country’s only home-grown multinational.

I’ve had a hunch for some time now that the real news -the real political news- is taking place in the business pages, where reporters and pundits both are least well-equipped to report and comment on things.

The other day, in Has the payoff begun? the Inquirer editorial cautioned against moving too quickly and too slowly on the case of the collapsed rural banks owned by Celso de los Angeles. The editorial points to the messy interlinked interests of the parties involved, in particular, the Speaker and the House of Representatives and the PDIC and even the Monetary Board (which has to authorize loans to bail out the PDIC as it bails out depositors in de los Angeles’ rural banks).

But an entry in Stuart-Santiago (reacting to a Dan Mariano column) points to another possibility altogether: that de los Angeles is undergoing a hatchetjob at the hands of the big national banks, and was the victim of a campaign to spook his depositors. The possibility of intraindustry rivalries is something worth considering.

On another note, compare the two views on the LPG shortage in the columns of Rene Azurin and Dean de la Paz. Actually, both believe that the shortage was more along the lines of a hiccup in the market.

Azurin says what happened was this:

I tried to ferret out an explanation. What I’ve come up with is simply a tale of market forces acting as they might be expected to act in a deregulated competitive environment.

To begin, high oil prices throughout most of last year caused the benchmark Saudi contract price for LPG to peak in July 2008 at $940 per metric ton. As can be expected, local LPG demand in that month was at its lowest — about 76,000 MT — as households restricted their use of LPG and switched to other available fuels like charcoal and kerosene.

But, after peaking in July, the Saudi contract price for LPG suddenly dropped steeply and hit its lowest level in November 2008, around $330 per MT. Expectedly again, the suddenly very low LPG prices stimulated demand as households switched back from other fuels. Local demand in November and December was estimated to average around 96,000 MT per month, the highest levels so far experienced.

Despite the sudden spurt in demand, however, there was enough supply to meet the surge because importers had already increased their importations. From an aggregate importation averaging 47,000 MT per month from January to October 2008, the six importers brought in 67,000 MT in November and 66,000 MT in December. They upped this further by importing 81,000 MT in January 2009. When you add beginning inventories of about 35,000 MT and Shell’s local production of about 10,000 MT per month — Petron had an emergency plant shutdown in December — one arrives at the conclusion that Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes was absolutely correct in telling congressmen and the public that aggregate LPG supply was still adequate to meet total demand.

Why then was there a perceived shortage? Apparently, consumers who experienced difficulties in getting LPG were customers supplied by certain independent refilling plants mostly supplied by Liquigaz. Liquigaz supplies about 35% of the local market and is the largest importer of LPG but buys its supplies from the spot market. Presumably, in September and October 2008, Liquigaz (like any astute trader) tried to take advantage of projected falling prices by delaying the placing of its orders until LPG prices had hit expected lows. This — coupled with unexpected disruptions in LPG flow from Russia to Europe that upset the delivery timetable of Liquigaz — caused Liquigaz to be unable to fully supply its refilling plant customers during the critical December-January period.

This is why LPG dealers and retailers dependent on Liquigaz-supplied refilling plants were screaming shortage. In the battle for market share, Shell, Petron, Total, and other importers who had available stock naturally supplied only their own refilling plants and dealers, and refused to supply others. Customers of the LPG brands of Liquigaz refilling plants could therefore buy LPG but only if they were willing to shift to another brand or to another dealer. There is no supply shortage if some dealers and retail outlets have no stock, but others do.

Despite the problems that arose from its decisions, Liquigaz was of course justified in timing the placing of its orders to try and maximize its profits. Similarly, in a deregulated, competitive environment, Shell, Petron, Total, and others were justified in their refusal to supply those who were not their regular dealers in order to try and grab market share from rivals.

In a deregulated, competitive environment, government authorities like the Department of Energy and the Department of Trade and Industry cannot make output or pricing decisions for industry players. In fact, a policy of deregulation “to ensure a truly competitive market” requires that government authorities ensure that the industry participants are actually competing and not colluding with each other. In the current situation, not sharing supply with rivals so as to grab their market share is indicative of competition. Sharing supply with rivals so that market shares remain unchanged might be evidence of collusion.

While de la Paz says this is what happened:

In the run-up to December, global oil prices fell sharply and such crashes in values affect how oil companies manage inventory. Hoarding would have been stupid. In a temporary regime of falling prices, it would be imprudent to store large quantities as they would be forced to sell at lower prices than that from which inventory was accumulated. As a seasonal increase in demand of 50 percent is rather expensive given falling prices, the oil companies kept inventory at its economic quantity levels to sell at reasonable margins.

Because the LPG producers kept lower inventories, the burden to respond to the increased demand fell on importers. Of these, there is only one that can supply the inventory slack.

Importers service refillers from whom most of the lower-income market relies and where prices are more elastic. Without the same kind of distribution network owned by the major oil companies that produce LPG, a distribution problem can occur leading to marketplace shortages readily felt by those sensitive to incremental costs.

True shortages ensue severely aggravated officials threatening to prosecute dealers that sold over an imaginary price parameter that did not reflect true costs and the effect of prudent inventory management.

In such a situation, by importing only as needed and gradually raising prices to reflect economic realities, the shortages were soon alleviated in markets serviced by the top three suppliers. In niches serviced by refillers, shortages could still be felt as these outside the mainstream distribution networks.

In this rather revealing episode, if there is one thing evident, it is that we really need officials who understand the profound vagaries of the business and do not aggravate it by appearing clueless, running after scapegoats and imposing unrealistic demands.

Both seem to suggest that the current Secretary of Energy is not up to scratch.

The Warrior Lawyer comments on the Supreme Court’s decision on who gets custody of that convicted American soldier. The Inquirer editorial, Time to talk, says the Philippine government ought to be negotiating from a position of strength on this one, as it can call the bluff of the new American administration. But it seems the government is inclined to drag it out, doing Uncle Sam a favor even before it’s been asked for one.

The other day, I was asked yet another question about intelligent electorates. Do Filipinos vote for the most popular, even if the most popular are not necessarily the most qualified? Or (to use the terms the interviewers used): Is the Filipino “audience” intelligent? How about the Filipino “electorate”?

I gave a qualified answer, of course, making a distinction between the way we vote for the presidency and the way we vote for the Senate. I use that same distinction in my column of February 10, where I propose that our next president, come May 2010, can only be either of the following: Kabayan, Loren, Manny Villar, Chiz, Ping, and Mar. (Is the fact that Manny Villar does not have a ready one-word handle boon or bane?)

But it is possible, even when we only have a single vote to cast rather than the 12 we can use for the Senate, to send clear signals to the candidates, a point I raised in passing in my column of February 3.

Consider the case of Loren Legarda. The 1998 Senate topnotcher, she did not do well in the voters’ preferences surveys conducted by SWS in the run-up to the 2004 vote.

In the December 2002 survey, for example, Raul Roco and FPJ topped the list, with Kabayan and GMA in striking distance. Loren, however, had a measly dieter’s slice of the pie.

In that same survey, however, Legarda did quite well in the vice-presidential list. She placed second to Kabayan (who had just topped the Senate race a year and a half before, in 2001).

As it turns out (here is an SWS news release for its November 2003 survey, about a year after the first poll), Legarda’s vice-presidential qualities (to coin a phrase) impressed more and more Filipinos. By November 2003, the race between De Castro and Legarda had become a real contest.

My point: In 2004, voters were discriminating enough to make a distinction between Legarda as president and Legarda as vice-president. (In contrast, voters were equally happy to say they would vote for Noli de Castro either as president or as vice-president — at least until FPJ threw his hat into the ring.) I see that distinction-making as a sign that, in fact, and by and large, voters in the aggregate know what they want.

Here, then, is intelligence, of a sort, at work.