This marvelous video comes from a 1946 United Newsreel:
Today marks the 61st death anniversary of Manuel Roxas, who died in Clark Field, Pampanga, in 1948. I’ve been working on a political biography of the man for eight years now (more off than on), and it’s proving to be a difficult but rewarding task, not least because having died so soon, he didn’t live long enough to see many of his initiatives bear fruit. While it is said that history is written by the victors, the opposite is the case in the Philippines, or at least, that is the case when it comes to Roxas; after he passed from the scene, his critics wrote the enduring epitaph to his administration. In my draft second chapter, I proposed that instead of viewing the peaceful campaign for independence (circumscribed as it was, by the reality and consequences of military defeat for the First Republic) was actually the logical progression of the independence movement, a blueprint laid out by Apolinario Mabini at the end of his life.
(Roxas was the second Philippine president to be on the cover of Time Magazine; the portrait clearly shows his hazel-colored eyes)
For most of his political career, he was portrayed as a kind of wunderkind of politics, even when he ran for the presidency and broke up the prewar monolith that was the Nacionalista Party: the existence of a two-party system was not an American legacy, they had failed (or perhaps it might be more accurate to say, were powerless to prevent) the emergence of a one-party state prior to the War; if it hadn’t occurred, more likely than not, one-party rule might have survived until well into the 1960s, much as other Asian countries that went through a similar process of achieving independence peacefully brought forth single-party rule for decades (Malaysia and India are some relevant examples, their independence parties achieving half a century or more of political dominance).
(The famous 1946 Free Press cover of Roxas being in a hurry; Osmeña would have preferred not to break up the NP, at one point considering not even running for presidency to preserve party unity; Roxas, said by some of those close to him to be haunted by the idea he might not live long enough to succeed to the presidency in 1949, couldn’t wait; the party split and the two-party system born)
It is even possible that had Roxas lived long enough to achieve re-election in 1949, as was widely expected to happen, he might have begun working to reunite the Liberals with the Nacionalistas; Magsaysay, certain of re-election in 1957, was also said to be planning to either found a new superparty, or preside over the reunification of the NP and LP (both parties were inclined to make him their common presidential candidate, as he was considered unbeatable). Death scuttled that possibility; but Ferdinand Marcos achieved a temporary restoration of one-party rule from 1978 onwards, and the superadministration parties since 1987 -LDP for Aquino, Lakas for Ramos and Arroyo- points to one-party instincts remaining strong within the political class.
(May, 1946: after taking his oath of office in front of the ruins of the Legislative Building, Roxas ascends the main stairs of the presidential palace in the ceremonial taking of possession of the presidential residence; he’s with his wife and his mother)
There’s an entertaining profile of the man circa 1946 by Sol Gwekoh, titled Roxas the Man. Politically, what’s interesting is how Filipino writers (mostly his critics) have conflated the immediate postwar period with the Cold War, when they represent two distinct stages and reflect widely different American attitudes towards the Philippines, in the context of American priorities. A Philippine president, then, having made certain strategic decisions and embarked on the tactics required to achieve them, would have been confronted with his assumptions suddenly being invalidated; and that is exactly what happened to Roxas. Not enough has been done, to my mind, to explore how he handled this change in the global scheme of things.
The first stage of American reactions to the end of the war coincides with the presidential campaign here at home in 1946 and on to 1947, the year of the Parity Amendment. The onset of the Cold War only began in the closing months of Roxas’ life, and it was in terms of positioning himself and the country, to reflect this changing reality, that he ended up in Clark Field to deliver a speech, after which he suffered a heart attack and died.
As it was, it would have been during Roxas’ second term beginning in 1949, that the Cold War would really be felt, with the invasion of South Korea by the North, and the United Nations effort that saw Philippine troops being sent to South Korea.
Life Magazine’s photo archive was recently made publicly available on Google; here is, perhaps, the most famous photo of the man, taken in the Reception Hall of the Palace (it was demolished and rebuilt, without the pillars, during the Marcos 1978 renovations):
There’s another photo which suggests how Roxas aged in office:
My first chapter draft actually begins with the arrival of Roxas’ body in Manila. Only in my draft eleventh chapter do I describe the last day of Roxas, how he died, and the highly macabre refusal of his wife to accept he’d died.
In the draft twelfth chapter, I look into the twist of fate that meant that Vice-President Elpidio Quirino, widely expected to be discarded as a running mate by Roxas when he ran for re-election in 1949, ended up as President.
In the photo below, Quirino, having arrived from an ocean voyage meant to help him recuperate from heart trouble, ascends the stairs of the Palace, flanked by Senate President Avelino (of subsequent “What are we in power for?” infamy) and Speaker Eugenio Perez (natural father of Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr.).
Below, Quirino is shown signing his oath of office in the Council of State Room in the Executive Building (Carlos P. Garcia would later on also take his oath of office here, when Magsaysay died):
The wake of Roxas was only the second presidential wake and the first one held in the Palace that was open to the public: here’s a series of Life photos of the lying-in-state, which took place in the Ceremonial Hall of the Palace (the room was greatly enlarged during the Marcos renovations of 1978 and the chandelier is now in Bonifacio Hall, more familiarly known as the Guest House):
(Roxas’ son, Gerardo; Aurora Quezon; Roxas’ daughter, Ruby, at the wake)
The necrological service was held in the Philippine Congress, at the time still squatting in a former schoolhouse in Lepanto St., Manila:
And then, the state funeral.
Here is a Life photo of Aguinaldo together with veterans of the Revolution, awaiting the passing of the funeral procession. What follows are more Life photos, this time, in color, of the funeral procession and the internment:
Eventually, the President tried to make the most of a perfunctory, courtesy conference at the State Department, which was remarkable for Hillary Clinton’s focus on domestic politics.
The best picture of where the administration’s at, however, might actually be this one:
In power, but going around in circles.
An administration in perpetual survival mode actually surviving, but reduced to going through the motions of governance without actually resolving anything. Meanwhile, everyone is a little more tired, a little more cynical, a little more out of ideas, and running out of options. The President has taken to trying to sound oracular:
“When we were abroad we were hearing strange, huge numbers that just depress the people, but really are very far from what [the situation] really is,” said Arroyo, who returned Sunday from a weeklong swing through Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United States.
The administration has managed to consolidate its power to the extent that when things go wrong, it has no one to blame for its problems but itself. It has to keep several balls up in the air; this takes energy, and attention; it also makes for frayed nerves. It’s quite a juggling act, but the longer it’s kept up, the more that everyone expects one of the balls to fall.
That is highly ironic reward for political longevity.
Take two examples.
The first is a gut issue: fuel and food.
Recently, Uniffors blogged about hearings on the LPG supply problem:
So who or what is behind the shortage?
Arnel TY, president of LPG Marketers Association, said the problem started last December when the Big Three- Shell, Chevron, and Petron- started buying LPG from Liquigaz instead of relying on their own supplies.
The Big Three said they were caught flatfooted by the sudden increase in demand.
Didn’t they have any projections?
Well, they said it was difficult to make an accurate prediction because the independent refillers and dealers buy on the spot market.
Petron said, “We are continually selling to allied refillers …They are assured of their regular volume because they follow the rules of the industry. But the demand of independent refillers is hard to project.”
In other words, there would be no shortage if everyone signed up with the Big Three. That’s the golden rule. They wish.
And so what Ty said with regards to hoarding - that it was easier for the Big Three to connive to withhold LPG from the market, to control the supply as it were, than it is for thousands of independent refillers and dealers to do so - makes sense.
And Reyes is blaming the independents, accusing them of hoarding.
In her blog, Marichu Lambino points out that the best that Angelo Reyes can do is to keep reiterating his desire for a departmental army, for emergency powers:
What the Energy Secretary probably meant when he asked for police power is what most people think of when they refer to what police officers do when they make arrests, searches, seizures. That’s not police power. It’s called law enforcement. You don’t need more legislative enactment for that, all the references you need are the Rules of Court and criminal statutes.
The Energy Secretary can on conditions of a valid search, conduct raids of all LPG dealers or the oil cartel in order to arrest the artificial shortage, he can strike fear in the hearts of the greedy and the hoarders in order to avert a full-blown crisis. All he has to do is ask his lawyers how to go about it (i will not give the procedure here); he has to do it as a campaign, not piecemeal; he has to have all the legal bases covered; he has to be swift and discreet.
It’s called: Doing your job. But in this government, no one is doing their job, no one is enforcing the laws, it’s a field day for crooks, fixers, the greedy and the incompetent.
The second is the problem of everyone having to tighten their belts while more and more of officialdom gets caught with their snouts in the trough. Yesterday, the Inquirer editorial, Exposed, examined the ambiguous feelings of the public, when it comes to whistleblowers and their revelations -and what ends might truly be served by their exposes. This ambiguity -or unwillingness to take risks- served the purposes of the administration and helped foil the ambitions of its enemies. But having been so thoroughly and consistently whipped, the administration still keeps getting into hot water, and it’s running out of conspiracy theories with which to deflect serious scrutiny.
And what seems to be the growing ability of the public to separate posturing from real action. Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who is of course casting a moist eye on re-election in 2010, has taken to appearing so hot-headed as to be an “unreliable” ally for the President.
But is she? Every time she throws a fit, the story centers on her, and whatever peppery thing she has to say; but it detracts from connecting the dots (to the foot-dragging of the Ombudsman, for example) and relentlessly focusing on what the Senate has shown and which the House tried to whitewash -that allegations of conspiring contractors won’t go away and leads pretty high up, indeed.
Add to this the ongoing mess involving the failure of rural banks, a connected pre-need company, and the sort of cozy collusion that had congressmen trying to exonerate contractors put on the hot seat by the World Bank.
You can see where this is all going: officialdom going around in circles, tripping itself up as everyone gets exposed as being hand-in-glove with other racketeers.
Here at home, I have to agree with Bong Austero’s view that there seems to be too much self-defeating doom and gloom while not enough focus is being made on what opportunities have arisen or what, really, the big picture is, concerning jobs:
The People Management Association of the Philippines conducted a study in the second and third week of January to get a quick pulse of the employment situation in the country. PMAP is the national association of human resource managers—the people in charge of hiring and firing. The sample of the study was limited, with only 177 companies participating, but it was statistically valid. The study pointed out that “although information from member companies in the electronic and export sectors confirm news reports of heavy layoffs, the survey showed that for the companies represented in the survey, layoffs are limited to 10 percent of respondents.” In short, the layoffs and downsizing do not comprise a general trend.
In fact, 60 percent of the respondents of the study revealed that their companies may increase headcount this year. Of this, 43 percent said the increase in manpower would be due to growth in business while 39 percent said it would be due to more aggressive business strategies. Unfortunately, the dark cloud cast by our prophets of doom seemed to have spooked most business organizations. Actual hiring is being done cautiously, with 48 percent of total respondents saying they are only doing replacement hiring for critical positions and a further 10 percent freezing hiring for regular positions.
According to the study, “the most optimistic sector seems to be [business process outsourcing], with 10 of the 13 company respondents saying they may increase headcount in 2009 due to business expansion. However, four companies out of the 13 respondents say they are also only hiring for critical positions at present. A proportionally bigger number of outsourcing companies among the respondents are also giving lower salary increases this year, compared to 2008 (6 out of the 13).
Fifty-two percent of respondents say projected salary increases for this year is 6-10 percent. This proportion of respondents is lower than the 64 percent last year who reported giving actual increases of 6-10 percent. About 30 percent say that they are currently giving lower salary rate increases to respond to more difficult times. Employees in about 25 percent of respondent companies in manufacturing, 30 percent in outsourcing and 17 percent in services are also not being asked to render overtime work. Less than 10 percent of respondent companies (8 percent in manufacturing and 6 percent in services) have resorted to shortened work hours.
To sum up, there a number of companies directly affected by the global recession but this is a minority—more of an exception at this point rather than the trend. Second, majority of business organizations in this country are on an expansion mode due to business growth and aggressive business strategies. However, and this is the sad thing, most companies are being cautious and are deliberately holding off their expansion programs and consequently, their hiring programs, thanks to the prophets of doom in this country.
TESDA is, ideally, a very important government agency; in visionary hands, it could help jump-start competitiveness and be a force for social mobility.
But instead, it’s turning into a patronage vehicle for “titoboboy.com.ph” and whatever campaign he has in mind for 2010.
But then TESDA isn’t alone in merely politicking instead of problem-solving; or put another way, the only problem it’s trying to fix is whether or not Syjuco can win election in 2010.
I do believe that we’re pretty much adrift, because our whole system of keeping track of economic activity in any but the haziest of ways, has broken down. So everyone’s a blind man describing the elephant. The merry-go-round whirs around, but it’s all a blur.
Observers on the outside, though, seem to think it’s all lunacy.
Originally found here, the graph includes the Philippines, in yellow, with its steep climb. A discussion of what this means can be found in The Unlawyer.
The President -and the Palace- is extremely pleased about wangling an invitation to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, thereby dispelling the conventional wisdom that it is in bad odor with the Obama administration, and that the President and her husband are in hot water concerning their financial transactions. To be sure, the ever-active rumor mill says the President enjoys diplomatic immunity and so, wouldn’t undergo any actual indignities going to, or while in, the United States; but that it’s an entirely different story for her husband (and so supposedly explains his sudden deplaning in Tokyo and his absence at the Pacquiao fight).
The Palace is being unusually tight-lipped about who, exactly, invited the President and who or how the invitation was wangled; it remains to be seen if the President actually gets any face time with the new American president or a superficial “photographed in the same room” Kodak moment. Still, the signal’s clear: reports of the President’s sinking status in Washington are greatly exaggerated.
Interestingly enough, a Filipino in Macao apparently texted a sighting at the international airport, of the President’s husband. No announcement has been made in the media of his having gone off overseas for what can only be a bit of R&R, since Macao is the last place one would go for cardiovascular convalescence or treatment (note that the President and her husband have been there quite often). What’s significant about this sighting, if true, is that it’s par for the course as far as the President’s husband and political issues heating up are concerned. The moment an issue starts pointing to him, he hies off overseas, beyond the clutches of media, the courts, or Congress. And the issue’s getting closer and closer to the President’s husband:
Right before him, “(They) first discussed bribes. They had a rough approach.” From that meeting, it was impressed on him that “(bribe) money was important to do business in the Philippines.”
This was how the Japanese contractor described his meeting with First Gentleman Miguel “Mike” Arroyo and a former senator to World Bank
investigators who looked into alleged collusion and rigging in the Bank’s funded road projects.
On another occasion, the Japanese executive met the former senator and “it had been made clear to him that there would be no business in the Philippines without paying money,” the WB report, as prepared by its Integrity Vice Presidency (INT) unit, noted. He was also told “that money would have to be paid as high up as the president, senior government officials and politicians in order to do any further business in the country.”
The Japanese contractor, however, had no direct contact with the President.
The report further added: “To win a contract, it would also be necessary to pay the head of the bureau and politicians several million yen.”
We obtained parts of the World Bank report but we are not disclosing the name of the Japanese contractor and other witnesses. The Japanese contractor has since left the country.
The Japanese contractor was among those interviewed by the INT in connection with its probe on bid rigging. His firm purportedly participated in two bid packages, which were later confirmed to be false. In fact, the company denied placing any bid and that the signatures of the company president were forged.
It was the only direct testimony in the WB inquiry alluding to the First Gentleman’s possible link to bid rigging controversy that has led to the blacklisting of seven firms and one individual for alleged collusion in WB funded road projects worth $33 million. Three other interviewees gave testimonial evidence that indirectly linked Mr. Arroyo to bid manipulation.
The problems of the congressmen’s patrons aside, this is not a good time for the House of Representatives. While I was in the hospital, much as I try not to follow the news, I had the impression the whole World Bank contractor issue, combined with the Legacy Group’s collapse, could have been much worse.
Consider the situation of the Speaker of the House. Uniffors lays it out as follows:
Mikey Arroyo’s errand boy, putative Speaker Prospero Nograles, is in deep shit because of the collapse of rural banks owned by Celso de los Angeles Jr. His ever-changing stories about his relationship with the man whose classmates at the Ateneo called “Boy Kadena” have been the subject of an editorial by the Philippine Daily Inquirer. See “Prospero’s Legacy?”
Also, a former president of the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp revealed that Nograles tried to pressure him to go easy on de los Angeles. Nograles disputes the expose.
But here’s something Nograles admitted and Boy Kadena confirmed at the Senate hearing on the Legacy collapse. Nograles invested millions, around 18 to 20M, in the failed banks.
So the question is this: Was Nograles’ investment in the form of deposit accounts?
You see,according to a PDI news report “The rural banks held a combined P14.03 billion in insured deposits in 132,642 bank accounts that each held amounts at or below the P250,000 limit of Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp.”
So the enticement behind the de los Angeles’ double your money ponzi scheme is that all your deposits are guaranteed because they are insured by the PDIC. Your capital is safe.
However, the maximum amount any one depositor can collect from the PDIC is P250,000. So, even if one has multiple accounts, those accounts will still be considered as one depositor account. In other words, the limit is on the depositor not on the account. So, to get around this limitation, depositors use fictitious names for their other accounts.
However, they still run the risk of getting caught by the PDIC and, if caught, if the PDIC finds out about the dummy accounts, those accounts will be counted as accounts in the name of one depositor and will be subjected to the P250,000 limit.
Now, Nograles had 18 to 20M in the Legacy banks.
Was he a depositor with a single account? Or were his deposits made under different names? If his deposits were made in his name then he will recover only 250K from PDIC. If his deposits were in different names, then Nograles knowingly participated in a scheme to defraud the PDIC, which incidentally, his brother now heads.
Now if Nograles has a brother in the PDIC, which has to bail out banks, like the ones Speaker Nograles invested in, that’s quite a big public relations pickle to be in. Worse, it plays straight into the hands for someone lusting for the Speakership or simply, to take Nograles down.
Personally, besides the long-standing mutual antipathy between Lakas Speaker Nograles and Kampi Grand Pooh-Bah Villafuerte, the Speaker is embattled on a front in which Villafuerte happens to have some experience -investment banking- and let no one forget Villafuerte’s wife sits in the Monetary Board, which has a say in the bailing out of the PDIC which has to bail out depositors; who wouldn’t put it past Villafuerte to have politically career-killing information on the Speaker now, thereby toppling him?
That would make two Lakas Speakers toppled for careless deal-making, and strengthen Kampi’s demand to be the dominant partner in the new Ruling Party.
But instead, it seems the full arsenal of administration crisis management’s been deployed.
Step I: Delay
The Palace and friends had months to digest the contents of the World Bank report and dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s with regards to a legal defense, as well as lobbying; after doing their bit to maneuver legislation that might be beneficial to the Legacy Group and other friends, and failing, the House still had time to maneuver things so that when the issue broke wide open, some sort of damage-control could be undertaken. Notice the length of time the Ombudsman’s been in possession of the WB Report, with no preliminary investigations taking place. But then, if pressure keeps up, they can use preliminary investigations as a way of buying time (remember the handling of ZTE?)
Step II: Dispute
The Senate wants to investigate contractors? The House will investigate, too -faster, and gentler, too (see Contractors in Congress). At the very least everything’s reduced to House-said, Senate-said.
Step III: Decamp
The President goes overseas. Her husband goes overseas. Out of sight, out of mind. No lightning rods.
Step IV: Divert
And so, after being so quiet as to make everyone think they were comatose, or resigned to the status quo, the Committee on Constitution Amendments of the House has announced that the Nograles Resolution has made it out the gate and can be sliced and diced in plenary, which will hog the headlines for a few weeks, making opposition and administration congressmen happy.
Richard Gordon’s given Congress another way to get what it wants (so long as enough of them get reelected… see, it’s all connected, somehow!):
Gordon… said that the Charter should be revised by the elected lawmakers of the Senate and the House of Representatives sitting as delegates of a Constitutional Convention.
He filed Senate Joint Resolution 20, which calls for a Constitutional Convention after the May 2010 elections with the newly-elected members of the 15th Congress as its delegates.
Meanwhile, get the 2010 Beauty Contest going, just to create buzz but no real political momentum. Take your pick:
Message 1: don’t tread on us. Message 2: The Speaker’s a statesman. Message 3: We’re all in this together, nyah, nyah, nyah.
What’s happening is a whitewash on one hand, and juggling political balls in the air to help the whitewash. All these things carry a price, and they’re not of the opposition’s making. The two issues involve collusion between the private sector and officials firmly in the administration’s ranks. The ranks of the administration, meanwhile, have an election coming up and need to grease the wheels of governance through pork barrel spending. As Ricky Carandang recently pointed out in his blog,
The P50 billion in additional spending will be used for infrastructure and social services. Much of that will be funneled through administration friendly lawmakers districts.
The pork comes in two forms: first is the outright earmarks that have increased in the 2009 budget. The second is in te form of “hidden” pork. Outlays included in the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways that must be spent “in consultation with lawmakers.”
Mon Casiple, in his blog, apropos of the long-delayed Lakas-Kampi merger, describes the lay of the land:
The situation on the ground in the 2010 national and local elections is one wherein, in many places, it is Lakas and Kampi political dynasts who are vying for elective positions, including scheming at electoral cheating and, in some cases, at electoral violence. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, in the absence of a strong political party system.
The only attraction a GMA-brokered merger brings to the table is the political weight the presidential endorsement carries, including the financial resources and government network that goes along with it. Many, if not most, of those in the ruling coalition will definitely need it and thus will be expected to echo the merger call.
However, such an attraction will have to be tempered with the sobering fact of a hugely unpopular president. Her endorsement of a candidate–in many places–is the sole factor for a great many voters to drop the candidate. It is a kiss of death in national electoral contests and in many local contests.
The GMA endorsement will matter only in those contest areas where her popularity is not an issue. Ironically, there it will not matter much. The money and the government resources from the presidential deepwell will be the major reason if ever a candidate in these areas accepts the endorsement.
The merger likewise will actually weaken both parties in the coalition when a spurned Lakas or Kampi member who wants to run under the merged coalition bolts out and run as an independent or under other parties. As I said before, party affiliation is based on the interests of the candidate-member, not the party.
GMA’s motive in calling for a merger obviously has everything to do with her political situation and nothing to do with the 2010 prospects of Lakas or Kampi. She needs to fend off as long as possible–at least in appearance–the lameduck character of her post-Cha-cha administration. She also needs the leverage to maintain her influence over her chosen presidentiable and ensure the candidate’s victory. A merged ruling coalition (or the appearance thereof) is crucial.
Whichever way you put it -from the perspective of a President saddled with a mercenary political coalition, or the point of view of the mercenaries in that coalition, and the mercenaries in the opposition for whom election or re-election is as much an end-all and be-all imperative- this requires money. And you wonder why there are rumors of grand heists?
LPG shortage (?)–>justifies raising LPG prices. Rice price increase (again?) without any justified reason in sight. Power Lotto, on top of several megamillion Super Lotto and Mega Lotto prices recently. Buy-in in Meralco, Petron, Liberty Communications. New mining corporations. No land reform but million-hectare corporate farms carved out of public lands and land reform areas. Huge national budget, including funds for mega-infrastructures or (a new favorite) recession-proofing and poverty-alleviation. And, horrors, a jack-up in smuggling cars, rice, drugs, DVDs, and what have you. Also, “taxing” drug lords and jueting lords or arranging tax amnesties for tax evaders or laundering for a fee the infamous hoards of corrupt officials.
But now the whole cozy system’s been subjected to an unwelcome spotlight, arming political opponents (whether just as dirty or not) up and down the line with a juicy issue: squandering resources at a time when belt-tightening is in order. And pursuing a policy of shifting resources around. Today, Jarius Bondoc writes that half of the 50 billion stimulus plan will come from the Social Security System (and only revealed because the SSS Chief, Romulo Neri, Jr., was asked about it by the opposition).
As Abraham Lincoln famously said, “too many piglets, too few teats.”
ADB senior economist Dr. Cyn-Young Park said the widening credit default spreads lead many investors to think that the Philippine government may default on its debt, or not pay these when it becomes due.
“This is the investors’ assessment of the creditworthiness of the Philippine government,” Park said in a seminar organized by the Yuchengco Center and the De la Salle University.
“Generally, the market is more cautious in giving credit… that’s why sourcing funds overseas may be too costly at this [time],” she added.
A company’s credit-default swap spread is the cost per annum for protection against a default by the
company. Park, however, said that with the global economic crisis, the Philippines fares well compared with newly industrialized economies in Asia, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
She said most of these have been heavily affected since they have a “substantial financial market,” mainly being linked with the United States market.
It will be in the hands of the national governments in the region to spur the economy—such as what the Arroyo administration is doing—by providing stimulus packages to perk up market and consumer demand, she said.
Here are some readings on the issue. As far as the (reading, and specifically, On Line) public knows, what is floating around is pretty much an Executive Summary from the World Bank.
But this time, it is now the politicians who set the rules. “Contractors engage in a sort of auction, where the contractor willing to pay the largest bribe can win the politician’s support,” one local contractor told WB probers…
Normally, one has to deal with politicians in both the national and local level—the former who controls the implementing agency and the latter, whose area is hosting the project…
At this point, word of honor is not honored. The one who has the money reigns supreme. Bribe, preferably, should be given at once to seal any agreement.
It is also crucial to be in the favor of the ‘facilitator’ of the bidding manipulation, which bidders say is contractor Eduardo de Luna, owner and proprietor of the now-blacklisted E.C de Luna Construction Corp. for public works projects. Contractors interviewed by WB says de Luna has connections in the public works department who are part of the cartel…
Several witnesses told WB probers that de Luna enjoys the backing of First Gentleman Miguel “Mike” Arroyo. De Luna, they say, acts as Mr. Arroyo’s go-between in foreign assisted projects.
One contractor said E.C de Luna is so powerful that it controls most of the bidding at the Department of Public Works and Highways. The WB source said it was through E.C. de Luna operations that China Geo Engineering Corp., China Road and Bridge Corp, and China Wu Yi Co. Ltd., three of the blacklisted firms by the WB, won the bidding for WB-funded projects. The source had predicted that these three Chinese would win the bids before the tender offers were opened.
Once the ‘winning’ firm has been identified with the blessing of the cartel, the sham bidding begins. Designated ‘losing’ bidders, in collusion with the syndicate, complete the charade.
The previous standard operating procedure (SOP) was for the ‘winning’ bidder’ to provide three percent of the advance payment for the project to the losing bidders. SOP to the politicians is also taken from the advance payment…
But recently, the practice is to split a percentage of the advance payment between the politicians and the intermediary. A lawmaker who acts as sponsor to the bidder gets 15-20 percent of the project value while local officials share between 2-3 percent. The intermediary is responsible for the share of the losing bidders…
The kickback is nothing to scoff at. Total payoff, according to the local contractor, ranges from 15-27 % of the total value of the contract. This does not include up to 20 percent in “unnecessary costs added to the project,” a former government official with intimate knowledge of bidding in the public works told the WB’s Integrity Vice Presidency unit. The “unnecessary costs” are mean to cover the costs incurred for the bribe.
Expectedly, all payments are in cash. “Company books do not reflect any of these payments in any event, because the books are faked to avoid taxes, ” said a local contractor.
The former government official supported this assertion, adding that bribery extends to internal revenue officials to keep the company’s financial books above board.
Tholons Philippines country manager Jo-An Darlene Chua was quoted as saying that with the country’s BPO export value aggregating close to 50 percent of India’s, companies may well find the Philippines as a good alternative.
Tholons said the same for Vietnam “as a solid alternative to India on the IT side.”
Sañez said he can’t see any backlash yet on the US government’s move to generate domestic jobs that may impact the BPO industry.
“It doesn’t matter whether the policy of President-elect [Barack] Obama may rein in offshore activities because outsourcing and offshoring are business decisions.”
But as blogger Marocharim, over at Filipino Voices, recently wrote a timely reminder of the very human face of all these statistics: the layoffs are real, the concern among young Filipinos, acute.
However, if the country is to weather the storm, or position itself to recover as quickly as possible, then it surely helps to see where the bad news has been fostered by existing conditions.
The complete story is that, and this has been extremely misrepresented in various circles thus far, there are issues with the current building where Intel CV is operating and given Intel’s utterly strict standards on safety and building code compliance, this is deemed more as a long-term move for safety reasons (think Hanjin and you know what I mean) rather than an immediate pull-out of busines operations. In order to sustain the business, a set of options have been formulated by Intel Corporation as a whole with the most promising being that a new building should be identified where all operations can be transferred to and resumed. This part of the story is still not resolved and a second announcement is due by end of June to finally roll-out the official plan, a full closure being one of the alternatives, if a building is not identified and the economic climate of the Philippines continue to be inferior versus Vietnam and China and the rest of the world.
According to Yugatech (in Intel to shut down Cavite facility by year-end), has been steadily paring down its workforce since April, 2008 (when SEAV’s entry came out), reducing it from 3,000 workers at the time, to the 800 who made the cut but who will now lose their jobs. It seems reasonable to deduce that the economic reversals of the company at present meant it had to dispense with finding a win-win solution for the problem it’s wrestled with for some time now:
According to a source who received the memo, Intel will no longer continue its plans to transfer its operations to Laguna (the one by NXP Semiconductors, formerly Philips Semiconductors, plant in Cabuyao as reported earlier). Intel has been taking bids and contracting 3rd party providers for the transfer but suddenly scrapped them altogether. The memo did not specifically indicate the reasons for the sudden reversal of decision.
Now there’s a moral to this story, and it is, that if we are to not only entice, but retain, foreign investments, you can’t muck around with “puwede na” slipshodness and that problems, once identified, ought to be resolved within a reasonable period of time, otherwise the window of opportunity might simply close, leaving ordinary employees in the lurch -and further retarding the competitiveness of the country (and other issues were raised concerning the waning enthusiasm of Intel: high taxes, high power rates, etc.).
As to 2007 being a good year, we can’t fully agree. The reported growth of 7.2 percent was not because of a strongly growing economy but because of a numerical oddity. Import growth is subtracted in the equation for the gross domestic product (GDP). In 2007 imports fell by five percent, the double negative meant that this rate of fall was added to GDP — a double-negative becoming a plus. Had imports grown at their previous more normal rate of around five percent, GDP growth would have been about 4.8 percent, much more in line with anecdotal evidence.
One must ask: How could imports have fallen if the economy was growing strongly; intriguingly how could oil imports fall by some 6.6 percent? The only explanation we can think of is that smuggling must have been up.
But then the problem is that data is ever disputable. But Wallace’s letter, which ends with his opinion that the World Bank’s blacklisting of some domestic firms is a step in the right direction, brings me to another point related to my point concerning Intel’s shutting down its Philippine operations, and my blog entry, yesterday, on the government and its possible anxiety over the handling it will get at the hands of the new American administration.
Personally I think Amando Doronila is being alarmist (and if you want my view on the matter, there’s my commentary, New era of intervention ; the best overview, remains, to my mind, in Torn & Frayed’s blog). So f what the country can expect is more assistance for development, but no encouragement for secession, and also, increased scrutiny on human rights, then this means the Palace had better nip all this talk of ex-Gen. Palparan being put in charge of the anti-drug agency of the government! And more to the point, it had better start finding some big fish to fry as far as corruption is concerned.
Following a major investigation spanning several years by the Integrity Vice Presidency, the World Bank found evidence of a “major cartel involving and international firms bidding on contracts,” it said in a release.
That led to four Chinese state-run firms being barred for the first time from doing business with the World Bank for a period of between five and eight years - the China Road and Bridge Corp., China State Construction Corp., China Wu Yi Co. Ltd. and China Geo-Engineering Corp.
A Philippine firm E.C. de Luna Construction Corp. and its owner, Eduardo C. de Luna, were each banned indefinitely. Two other Philippine companies, Cavite Ideal International Construction and Development Corp. and CM Pancho Construction Inc., were each barred for four years.
“This is one of our most important and far-reaching cases, and it highlights the effectiveness of the World Bank’s investigative and sanctions process,” said Leonard McCarthy, vice president of the World Bank Integrity department, in the statement.
The investigation began in 2003 after the World Bank team grew suspicious about collusion in the bidding process for a contract during the first phase of the Philippines National Roads Improvement and Management Program. The road improvement program was partially financed by a $150 million World Bank loan, though none of the sanctioned firms received any money.
In August 2008, the inquiry led the bank to ban a South Korean firm working on the roads project, Dongsung Construction Co. Ltd., for four years.
The government, from what I’ve been able to glean, saw the writing on the wall as far back as October last year. In broad strokes, the story goes like this.
In October, the government got wind of the Millenium Challenge Corporation’s attitudes cooling towards the government.
It seems some officials in the President’s official family decided that some sort of public to-do had to take place. The private sector was approached, in an effort to net, as the saying goes, a big fish or two.
The idea, as proposed by the members of the President’s official family to representatives of the private sector with whom they met, was to mount some sort of investigation and undertake prosecutions to prove that the government was serious about curbing corruption.
The private sector suggested that one way would be to focus on issues that were festering, such as the Diosdado Macapagal Highway issue or even electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential elections. But the officials balked at this.
OK, so why not look into the National Road Improvement Project and the findings of the World Bank, the private sector suggested, by way of a compromise. Apparently the World Bank findings were already being discussed not just in government circles by this point.
But when the private sector asked for a copy of the World Bank report, the officials balked, although it seems the government was in possession of the report in full, and not just an executive summary of its findings. Along the way, the Ombudsman seems to have received a copy of the report, but with the interesting proviso, on the part of the World Bank, that the report not be used by the Ombudsman for prosecution: if a prosecution was to be undertaken, the Ombudsman would have to do her own investigating (interesting, because it suggests the World Bank didn’t want to get dragged into domestic politics, or had little confidence in the report being used for anything more than window-dressing by the Ombudsman).
So the whole thing fell apart because the private sector failed to be convinced of the good faith of the officials that made the approach; I wouldn’t be surprised if ongoing efforts in Congress will simply be written off as the government deciding it would be better to go through the motions of doing something regarding the World Bank report rather than opening up other investigations. To be sure, the World Bank report deserves a congressionaly inquiry.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an American government aid agency, has restricted aid flowing to the Philippines due to concerns about corruption. The MCC is setting aside a prior decision to promote the country from “Threshold” to “Compact” aid status, which would have secured significant funding for development projects. The decision appears largely based on the World Bank Institute’s aggregation of corruption perception surveys, which report a worsening public perception of corruption problems.
After she’d taken great pride in the supportiveness of the Millenium Challenge Corporation, the President obviously knew she’d have a lot of explaining to do once news of this reversal leaked out. But more than perception, it seems, the problem of the government was that the Millenium Corporation seems to have been affected by the World Bank’s findings -and they were factual. Which pulls a rug from the government’s beloved “where is your proof? Prove it in the proper forum!” mantra.
After all, it could undertake precisely what’s going on -its own investigation, within the controllable parameters of congressional inquiries.
Still, the damage has been done. The charts above shows the inexorable slide, downwards, of the Philippines’ ratings concerning corruption. But if the Millenium Challenge Corporation hands you lemons, make lemonade.
If the government’s going to suffer a black eye -and a loss of funding and the accompanying erosion of its prestige- it could, at least, keep its China Card in play, as an antidote, fiscally, and politically, to its having lost the American Card. Which, one could argue, is what it’s doing.
On the principle that even if stories end up unfolding slowly but surely, so long as you keep the public distracted, it can’t detect the slow, inexorable, unfolding of events. So you can blame the closing of Intel’s plants on the global economic downturn (which is true, of course) while sweeping any domestic culpability for it, under the rug. You can thunder and shrill about the World Bank report while downplaying what you used to trumpet -the Millenium Challenge Corporation’s decision to put things, at the very least, on hold.
George W. Bush spent his last day making phone calls to foreign leaders. Our President didn’t make the cut. While I think Amando Doronila is exaggerating the possible antipathy between the incoming Obama White House and the present domestic dispensation, our government might reasonably expect sublime indifference from Washington.
Tonight, our time, the United States inaugurates a new president. The Americans, like the French, are masters at creating spectacles that glitter with the pomp of republican democracy. The event unfolding tonight in Washington, D.C. will be no exception.
Obama seems to grasp the connection. In his weekly YouTube addresses, he has placed three leather-bound books just behind him and to his right. Take a close look. They’re the three-volume edition of The Public Papers of John F. Kennedy. Clearly this is a man who understands iconography.
Truth, however, being all too often inconvenient, was from the beginning, Mr. Wills contends, a commodity the Kennedys treated with wary disrespect. So much more reliable -hence more useful - was ”image,” which could be manipulated as effortlessly as the tiller of one of their sailboats, and in the propagation of which the family could enlist the enthusiastic aid of seemingly limitless echelons of upwardly mobile lawyers, journalists and academicians who craved the status that accompanied annointment (informal, yet unmistakable) as an ”honorary Kennedy” - a term Mr. Wills borrows from Victor Navasky.
The essential lesson of Camelot being that all that glitters isn’t political gold.
But there are comparisons, too -though more common, perhaps, among the historically-minded than the public- to Franklin D. Roosevelt. See Will FDR Inspire Obama? After all, FDR instituted the importance of the “First 100 Days” for a presidency. It’s interesting that Time Magazine decided to put together an issue with a cover superimposing Obama’s face on a photograph of FDR. And will have an article on The New New Deal.
I suppose comparisons with another president -Andrew Jackson- are viewed as politically incorrect, since Jackson was a slaveholder. Yet there is something of a Jacksonian flair for populism in the way the inaugural’s been painted to represent a kind of Big Block of Cheese moment.
Most remarkable, though, and could it be there’s a certain foreboding at the back of people’s minds, an implied apprehension, concerning the new administration? All the comparisons involve presidents who died in office. Two of them, Lincoln and Kennedy, at the hand of an assassin, the other, FDR, who died in harness, exhausted and having made such a mark that a constitutional amendment was passed to prevent a three, much less four-term president from ever happening again?
With those words, Urban II proclaimed the Crusades. Kings at the time “took up the Cross,” to fight in the Holy Land; and then, as now, kings and presidents, princes and governors, have been eager to wrap themselves in the mantle of the Holy Cross. As Machiavelli advised, the appearance of piety is more important than actually being pious.
The cast of characters at an presidential appearance always provides an insight into the motivations both of the President and the people who decide to show their clout by being seen in close proximity to her. The prelate who said the Mass was Lucena Bishop Emilio Marquez, who proposed the division of Quezon Province, which has been delayed because there seems inadequate funding for a provincial plebiscite before the 2010 elections. Together with Rep. Danilo Suarez, he’s been lobbying for a plebiscite to be held.
Of course the President, too, was deep in prayer for other intentions besides remaining in office.
Yesterday, the Inquirer editorial, Desperate for Obama, took a look at the increasingly-commented upon Desperately Seeking Barack mentality of the President. Tonight she leaves for the United States and another chance at securing that elusive photo opportunity with the American president-elect.
The Palace, seeing how any move to perpetuate itself in power gets people upset, tried to pour oil on troubled waters: Palace names choices for president:
Apart from De Castro, Malacañang’s choices also include Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, Senator Richard Gordon, Chairman Bayani Fernando of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, and Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte.
Over At Midfield, veteran newsman Ding Gagelonia puts it bluntly:
This listing is obviously aimed at making the wannabees salivate and look hard at their options anew and alert their ‘operators’ and supporters…
Veep Noli is hands down sure to [r]un, secretary Teodoro will likely demure given that he has the ‘youth advantage (meaning he can wait his turn apart from assessing his own links with ‘Boss’ Danding Cojuangco), while Gordon, currently head of the national red cross has been going around the country sounding out his backers.
The last two gentlemen short-listed by Malacanang are in contrasting situations: Fernando is shamelessly peddling his mug everywhere in a blantant display of presidential ambition while the well liked mayor Belmonte, executive vice president of Lakas party, has been thinking of going back to reclaim his congressional seat in the 4th district of QC (with city pundits seeing this as a route to the speakership.
MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando is certainly whooping it up. A 100-truck motorcade trundled around Quezon City yesterday, to celebrate the Chairman’s doing well in Celebrity Duets. See Welcome to the Pink and Blue Parade in Filipino Voices:
There were over 100 trucks that plied C.P. Garcia Avenue this morning, all bearing praises for BF’s win, “MMDA Labs U,” and all that jazz (so to speak). You kind of figure where these trucks are supposed to be, you kind of figure what these trucks are supposed to do, and if some accident or mishap happens, and they’re all singing praises and joy for Mr. Fernando.
Wonderful. Great. Fantastic. I’ve never been angrier.
New Philippine Revolution says that the Speaker of the House is poised to allow the impeachment complaint against the President to reach the committee level, at least. There could be many reasons for this, defusing public tension, or merely using the process as way to extract patronage concessions from the President. But in one respect, the blogger seems to have underestimated the ability -and willingness- of both the Palace and the House to juggle as many balls in the air as possible:
Well, I don’t know about you, but this is as sneaky as they can get. They would probably sacrifice Bolante and have him roasted at the Senate. They would probably allow the impeachment to pass the committee level. But, they’ll never, ever, give up on this stupid cha-cha gravy train.
But the main issue at hand is what the House of Representatives is poised to do, which is, to report out of committee, a bill proposing amendments to the Constitution.
They may not sacrifice Bolante at all. His malingering finally at an end (see Bolante can leave hospital–doctor), and public skepticism over the Ombudsman’s newfound energy concerning the charges against him having (for now) put that idea on the backburner, and even as the Senate holds a caucus today, to decide what to do with the Bolante investigation, there’s word that Rep. Mitra of Palawan wants to open an investigation in the House, and could do so as early as Wednesday. This would certainly provide a more hospitable environment for questioning Bolante and friends.
But the blogger is right in pointing to the Charter Change campaign going once more into high gear. Not least because the major obstacle to its success in the past -an independent Supreme Court- is increasingly a non-obstacle.
This brings up the deep unease with which the upcoming vacancies in the Supreme Court are being viewed: not least because a pattern is becoming evident in the way the justices are voting, which hews to the Palace line. Next year, Ruben Reyes, Adolfo Azcuna, Dante Tinga, Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, Leonardo Quisumbing, and Minita Chico-Nazario all retire from the court, but the vacancies will come at the heels of expected vacancies over the remainder of this year, too. So the Palace majority will be fortified sooner rather than later. Over At Filipino Voices, Ding Gagelonia recently reported that the Solicitor-General, widely expected to be among the President’s upcoming Supreme Court appointees, has started laying down the predicate for reversing the recent ruling on the BJE-MOA, for example:
Devanadera delivered a sharp twit to the high tribunal for allegedly violating the separation of powers in declaring the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity ancestral domain agreement unconstitutional.
Devanadera’s broadside reads like a preview of a makeover given that there will at least 7 vacancies in the Puno court between now and 2010.
Today’s Inquirer editorial, Gloria and the Supremes, also sounds the alarm over the consequences of packing the court purely with loyalty as the consideration for appointment.
In his column, Joaquin Bernas, SJ, looks at the whole process of Choosing Supreme Court justices. For some time now he’s stated his personal conclusion that the Judicial and Bar Council System has failed, and that a return to the old system of requiring Congressional confirmation of Justices would be better.
Dean Jorge Bocobo over at Filipino Voices thinks the Supreme Court wouldn’t be so crazy as to throw away its reputation in craven obedience to the President. Along the way, he also gives a fine summary of the constitutional and procedural issues in play:
A major Constitutional conundrum has arisen around Section 1(1) above because two entirely different meanings may be given to the clause “upon a vote of three-fourths of all its Members”. It all depends on whether the Congress’ two chambers, House and Senate, are to ”vote jointly” or “vote separately” to propose amendments or revisions for ratification at plebiscite.
There are those who argue that the Constitution here means “voting jointly” at the end of Art. XVII Section 1(1). By the way, this phrase occurs exactly once in the present 1987 Constitution, in the famous “Martial Law Provision” on the Executive..
So WHY have the Palace, the House and the Supreme Court been unable to do such a seemingly simple thing as establishing a “unicameral form of ConAss” similar to the above provision, where the Congress members vote as individuals and so the Lower House by itself would have the required 195 or so votes (238 House Members plus 23 Senators gives 261 total) to satisfy the three fourths super majority rule?
A good reason is that the House Rules themselves acknowledge the voting separately principle!
Which leads him to his view that no Supreme Court would throw away its integrity or reputation on such a patently self-interested move by the Palace and the House. It’s happened before. Yet it’s remarkable how the benefit of the doubt is still so instinctive in many observers. As is the desire among the nonpartisan to find a non-confrontational, institutionally-oriented, means to salvage the situation, as Cocoy in Filipino Voices lays out, in what I think is a fair and accurate summation of the point of view of those who have refused, so far, to cast their lot with either side in the great political divide:
The most common theme in people’s responses to me is their expectation for an election in 2010. That is when they want a change in President. They do not want a change now because there is no one they trust. They do not support impeachment even though they believe the charges are right because it would simply be like throwing a pebble at an incoming 747.
Their responses does not by far say that they like Arroyo.
The people that I asked, can be found grumbling in front of the evening news at the sheer incompetence of those in charge. They find it incredulous as scandal after scandal come out that the ones on top of the food chain have such rampant and blatant disregard and who pervert and bend the law to their will. Ask them about BJE-MOA and people from Mindanao would be vehemently opposed to it. Given that perhaps in any normal day, the unconstitutional nature of BJE-MOA and such abuse might have been grounds enough for impeachment and conviction. We can safely say that these are not normal and is an unsettling time. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that.
The opposition has a credibility issue. An issue, one might add they’ve not been able to shake out of since FPJ and has since become worst. They are perceived as no better than Arroyo and her ilk. That incredible mistrust hurts any measure they wish the people would support whether impeachment or election. It isn’t apathy— it is more neutrality. Neither Arroyo nor Opposition has their side.
The people are fully aware of how things go. Whether it is local politics— where people make money out of everyday and know the scope and breathe of it. Our people know that it is a politics of who you know and ultimately, money talks.
People have come to realize that national life is simply local politics writ large. And this realization simply proves and point that there is no distinction between Arroyo and Opposition. The disastrous result of past EDSAs and the failure of impeachment have more than galvanized the resolve of our people to fully expect an election in 2010.
The political landscape has hardly changed since 2004.
Everybody with a mind can clearly see that our national life is like one old machine, rusting on the seems and filled with patch work. It is not efficient but somehow, it moves along. The state of this machine, whether our assumptions of what a Republic and social justice is as framed to be the foundation of our national life is flawed. But clearly such judgment is for the collective will of the people to decide upon.
Especially as Arroyo pwns the Supreme Court as Justices retire, the fear of charter change as driven by Arroyo is not a fantasy. It is a clear and present danger that one such as her and her ilk who have gamed politics would bend permanently the very soul of our Republic and shape the future is even more so frightening. Clearly, they aim to tighten their control over this Republic. To unravel this Gordian Knot, perhaps it is this fear that we must face head on.
Ask our people in 2010— will you call for a Constitutional Convention?
Such push from the Heroes of past EDSAs would mean for their generation to accept they have failed. That their vision is flawed. That their brand of social justice is a failure. Don’t you think, 20 years is enough?
Mon Casiple also brings up the point that the President’s own, original, Charter Change coalition has itself broken up:
What was interesting was the turn-about of those who were most vigorous in pursuing the president’s charter change agenda in 2005-6 to favor constitutional convention over constituent assembly (also a surprising pro-Constituent Assembly position from unexpected sources), the common conclusion of the futility of pursuing it under GMA’s term (until 2010), and the sober assessment that we do need charter change for the right reasons.
Some of those who came are of course identified with former Speaker Jose de Venecia and may have reflected the latter’s own turn-about on Charter change. However, it is also a sign of the deepening cleavages in the ruling coalition and the increasingly uncertain loyalties to the president that is plaguing its ranks. It is worthwhile now to revisit past political assumptions regarding the political staying power and the numbers in relation to the Arroyo administration. The current GMA charter change initiative increasingly takes on the character of a lonely, desperate campaign.
The GMA charter change initiative is an uphill proposition at this time.
Let’s hope so.
Incidentally, concerning the new American president-elect, see Inner Sanctum and The Warrior Lawyer and My Online Notebook for samples of public reactions to the President’s obsession with a photo-op, and most of all, Torn and Frayed in Manila, who takes a hard look at the incoming American administration’s foreign policy goals:
It is true that Asia as a whole seems likely to receive more attention from Obama than from previous presidents. According to a fascinating New Yorker piece on the candidates’ foreign policy agendas, the blueprint for the new administration’s foreign policy can be found in a Phoenix Initiative report. This document lists only five “strategic priorities” for the United States and of those only two are regional:
1. counterterrorism,
2. nuclear proliferation,
3. climate change and oil dependence,
4. the Middle East, and
5. East Asia.
Although East Asia is often narrowly defined (the Harvard Department of East Asia Languages and Civilizations, for example, concentrates on China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam), the Phoenix Initiative’s definition is much wider, something closer to the now discarded term “the Orient”.
So if the USA is going to increase its focus on “East Asia”, won’t that be good news for its traditional allies in the region?
Unfortunately for, say, the Philippines and Japan, who fit into that category, the Phoenix Initiative concentrates heavily on the anticipated future economic powerhouses of China and India. The comforting remark that “the long-term U.S. strategy must also reassure traditional friends and allies” can’t disguise the fact in a world dominated by real politik the USA will go where the action is.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita was keen to stress yesterday that back in June Obama had written to Arroyo stressing the two countries’ shared interests, including “climate change, food security, poverty reduction, the future of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, human rights in Burma and defense reform.”
That’s fine and no one is going to claim that the US is going to abandon the Philippines, but let’s say you were an aspiring foreign policy professional in Washington, would you be brushing up on your Tagalog or your Mandarin?
Magnificent as Obama’s victory speech (which you can read or watch here and here) was, and much as there was general approbation over John McCain’s concession speech as a “class act,” (and many Filipinos, I noticed, wistfully commented they wish our own politicians could learn how to concede gracefully when they lose) there were other scenes that I touched me more. In particular, and perhaps this is more due to my own personal, deep affection for the place, the scenes of rejoicing in Washington, DC, moved me most.
Take this video, for example:
Or this one:
These scenes were repeated throughout the United States, see the videos from East to West, from New York to Brooklyn to Philadelphia to Wisconsin, San Francisco and Seattle, among many more online. And I don’t think anyone’s heard of, much less seen, such spontaneous and large manifestations of happiness over an election in modern times (you really have to watch the videos
And for one particular group, there was a sudden, tangible reconnection with the past. See In Our Lifetime by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:
We have all heard stories about those few magical transformative moments in African-American history, extraordinary ritual occasions through which the geographically and socially diverse black community—a nation within a nation, really—molds itself into one united body, determined to achieve one great social purpose and to bear witness to the process by which this grand achievement occurs.
The first time was New Year’s Day in 1863, when tens of thousands of black people huddled together all over the North waiting to see if Abraham Lincoln would sign the Emancipation Proclamation. The second was the night of June 22, 1938, the storied rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, when black families and friends crowded around radios to listen and cheer as the Brown Bomber knocked out Schmeling in the first round. The third, of course, was Aug. 28, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed to the world that he had a dream, in the shadow of a brooding Lincoln, peering down on the assembled throng, while those of us who couldn’t be with him in Washington sat around our black-and-white television sets, bound together by King’s melodious voice through our tears and with quickened-flesh.
But we have never seen anything like this. Nothing could have prepared any of us for the eruption (and, yes, that is the word) of spontaneous celebration that manifested itself in black homes, gathering places and the streets of our communities when Sen. Barack Obama was declared President-elect Obama…
How many of our ancestors have given their lives—how many millions of slaves toiled in the fields in endlessly thankless and mindless labor—before this generation could live to see a black person become president? “How long, Lord?” the spiritual goes; “not long!” is the resounding response. What would Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois say if they could know what our people had at long last achieved? What would Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman say? What would Dr. King himself say? Would they say that all those lost hours of brutalizing toil and labor leading to spent, half-fulfilled lives, all those humiliations that our ancestors had to suffer through each and every day, all those slights and rebuffs and recriminations, all those rapes and murders, lynchings and assassinations, all those Jim Crow laws and protest marches, those snarling dogs and bone-breaking water hoses, all of those beatings and all of those killings, all of those black collective dreams deferred—that the unbearable pain of all of those tragedies had, in the end, been assuaged at least somewhat through Barack Obama’s election? This certainly doesn’t wipe that bloody slate clean. His victory is not redemption for all of this suffering; rather, it is the symbolic culmination of the black freedom struggle, the grand achievement of a great, collective dream. Would they say that surviving these horrors, hope against hope, was the price we had to pay to become truly free, to live to see—exactly 389 years after the first African slaves landed on these shores—that “great gettin’ up morning” in 2008 when a black man—Barack Hussein Obama—was elected the first African-American president of the United States?
Anne Applebaum says the spontaneous celebrations were a kind of national self-affirmation for the entire citizenry:
Because all Americans, white and black, liberal and conservative, are brought up to believe that their country is different, special, the “greatest nation on earth,” a “city on a hill.” We are all taught that our system is just, our laws are fair, our Constitution is something to be proud of. Lately, though, this self-image has taken a battering. We are fighting two wars, neither with remarkable success. We have just experienced a cataclysmic financial crisis. We are about to enter a recession. We are unloved around the world, and we know it. Electing our first black president won’t by itself solve any of these problems, but—to use the pop-psychological language for which Americans are justly famous—it sure makes us feel good about ourselves. That hysteria you saw on television in Chicago was, yes, partly about the return of the Democrats and partly about the passing of George Bush. As the rain-on-the-parade dispensers of sour grapes are already writing, it was absolutely about ideology, too. But it was also about relief: We really are a land of opportunity!
Speaking of the dispensers of sour grapes. Of course the Republican and conservative sourpusses were already a-curdlin’ even before election day: and insisted that something was fishy in the votin’ (see hummers & cigarettes). Surely such bloggers were the grist for sites like Vote Fraud Squad (much as it declares itself “non-partisan”), and post-election, angry Republicans (back to verging on being a lunatic fringe party, if they aren’t careful, as they were poised to be in 1964) are off to a rip-roarin’ start: ‘Impeach Obama’ groups pop up on Facebook. Though it’s noteworthy that some took a cue from John McCain and have rolled up their partisan banners.
Politics is as much about logistics as it is about inspiration, and Words: Who, What, When gives an interesting glimpse of how finely-tuned, not to mention well-oiled, the Obama machine was, locally . John Dickerson in Slate, summarizes the achievements of the campaign and its strategists:
It was not only Barack Obama who made history—so did his strategists. They designed a plan and executed it relentlessly through a brutal primary and general election. Twice they upended the idea that no plan survives engagement with the enemy. Obama won by driving up his vote in traditional Democratic areas, and he shrunk the margins in conservative areas. They also out-hustled the competition. According to exit polls, 27 percent of voters said they were contacted by the Obama camp. Only 19 percent say they were contacted by the McCain camp.
Exit polls also indicated that race was not a factor. Where voters said race was important, they voted for Obama. Those who said race wasn’t important also voted for him—in relatively the same percentages. In Ohio, Obama won among whites making less than $50,000, a group that was once supposed to be a big problem for him. In Pennsylvania cities like Scranton, Reading, and Allentown, where he was supposed to have the same problem, he won by healthy margins. “I always thought that there was a prejudice factor in the state,” said Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat. “I hope we’ve now washed that away.”
In the end, the voters favored change over experience 37 percent to 20 percent. People also seemed to vote against their economic self-interest, something liberal critics said only witless Republican voters did. Fully 70 percent said Obama would raise their taxes, while 60 percent said McCain would. They voted for Obama, anyway.
Seeing the writing on the wall, one Republican senator even tried to campaign as a Democrat (see Campaign Diaries).
The speculation (fueled by what must have been calculated leaks from the Obama camp) on the President-elect’s forthcoming cabinet started prior to election day on Politico.com. On the same site, Mike Allen and then Sam Stein over at The Huffington Post has the latest.
My editors at the Philippine Daily Inquirer asked me to write a commentary addressing the same question. See New era of intervention, which came out in today’s paper. In the short term, the President’s window of political opportunity has narrowed to the changing of the guard in Washington January 20. Mid- to long-term, the Intengan-Gonzales liquidate the enemy plan is going to face even tougher going abroad.
As for the concerns over the incoming administration’s economic policies and how they might affect Filipinos, Jeffrey Sach’s What Obama Needs To Do: It’s time for a new macroeconomics will make for interesting and informative reading.
As for the President, well, things are off to an unpromising start: Obama too busy to take Arroyo’s call. She could’ve just said she’d sent a congratulatory telegram.
The Religious Right might have failed in mobilizing against Obama, but they scored some morale-boosting victories in California, Florida, and Arizona. Here’s an intriguing article: Props to Obama: Did he help push California’s gay-marriage ban over the top? Not least because of how time, it seems, is not on the Religious Right’s side:
But if the anti-gay-marriage side was boosted by a one-time event—the first major-party African-American presidential candidate on the ballot—might supporters of gay marriage win in the future? McCuan says that’s plausible. “In the abstract, there’s a high level of support for equal rights, particularly among the younger generation.” And support is growing fast. In 2000, 61 percent of voters approved of a ban on same-sex marriage; this year, it was down to a bare majority. The “Yes on 8″ campaign was particularly well-funded and savvy, blanketing the airwaves with ads suggesting that gay marriage would be taught in schools. If supporters of same-sex marriage wait a few years, and if they can muster as effective a campaign as the one mounted this year by the other side, they could well change the law.
You can take a look at the website of the proponents of the American ban on gay marriage at Protect Marriage.
This brings me back to my views on the Reproductive Health bill, and how the actual merits and demerits of the bill as a piece of legislation are now irrelevant, because it’s a showdown between conservative Christians and secularists. It is a fight the secularists will lose and will only serve not only to delay the inevitable, but to make it so much harder to achieve liberalizing things on many other fronts. In which case it has to be asked whether it was the right fight, in the right place, and at the right time.
My next entries will focus less on the scheduled resumption of the Bolante investigation in the Senate (see the Inquirer editorials Defending Bolante and Saved by technicalities ), and more on the truly big fight to come: on the same day the Senate reconvenes to tackle Bolante, the House of Representatives will kick off the do-or-die effort to finally amend the Constitution. That’s on November 10.
I’ve been watching The American Future: A History, the latest documentary series by one of my favorite historians, Simon Schama. A book version, it seems, has also been released (see Niall Ferguson’s review). Schama, a long-time resident in an America that, in in its post 911 incarnation, became so frighteningly different from the America that was so attractive to liberal intellectuals like him, and which Republican Neo-Conservatives mightily strove to dominate for the foreseeable future, seems relieved to witness a revolt from the American people themselves: what many foresee as Obama’s impending victory seems to be a return to a more familiar, more attractive, United States.
I must confess that is how I feel: and it betrays a familiarity with, and affection for, a particular conception of
America that conservatives labored mightily to prove the false face of America. And to be sure, for a huge number of Americans, Obama is not the face -literally and figuratively- of their America; just as for a particular kind of Filipino-American, it is McCain, his party, and the values of that party that are their values, their preferred face: what other Filipinos and Filipino-Americans would react to with horror as too much paleface.
But I am not an American. But I am a particular kind of Filipino, not particularly representative of the Filipino (or Filipino-American) experience or possibly even conception, of the United States. We lived there for a time; I studied there, for a time; I saw many things I liked, experienced much I did not; but like so many Filipinos, found something exceedingly familiar and attractive in a culture and from a people one didn’t really have to exert much effort to get to know and appreciate.
Let me state first of all that my bias is a clear and in many ways, an unshakeable one, beginning with being bombarded by my father’s very strong opinion that the American Democratic Party was the only proper party to appreciate in the United States, because it was the party of Philippine independence, a cause that generally prospered during Democratic administrations and that fared less well under Republican ones. For this reason I continue to be astounded by Filipino-Americans who are Republicans but eventually, I suppose it makes sense for those who’ve made the decision to leave home and become citizens of the USA: emigration is at the very least an implicit repudiation of the homeland; more often than not, an explicit one, too; and if one party and its policies can be credited with the independence one feels ambivalent about, then one can understandably embrace the very party that, to too many Filipino minds, was poised to bring the permanent blessings of American civilization to their benighted little brown brothers.
That being said, I suppose I am like most Filipinos in viewing the relationship of the Philippines with the United States as more of a positive than negative one, or at the very least, who sees it from the perspective of a relationship that is very personal and not just abstract: the relatives and friends over there, the American friends over there and here, and so on. And for every George W. Bush who praised Marcos’ devotion to democracy, there’s a Ted Kennedy who was a friend to Filipinos fighting Marcos.
Which brings me to this touching scene:
Seeing Ted Kennedy addressing the Democratic Party Convention earlier this year, my thoughts came back to viewing a Democratic Party Convention back in 1984. I had no choice in the matter; every night, my father would sit me down in front of the TV and sternly exhort me to “watch real democracy at work,” trying to exorcise whatever authoritarian instincts, I suppose, might have been nurtured by a childhood spent under the New Society.
During those convention nights, I watched, and learned to enjoy, speeches; Ted Kennedy gave a masterful performance during one of those nights, but there were two speeches, in particular, that thrilled me because they evoked an understanding, or so I thought, of the reason my elders seemed so ill-tempered all the time whenever the government at home was discussed; instead of fear and suspicion it was refreshing and inspiring to hear people talk, not only of what was, but of what could, and should, be.
There was the Rev. Jesse Jackson:
What thrilled me about Jackson wasn’t just his rhetoric, but what he represented: equality of the races, for all races. Something I was quite conscious about because that was the year I’d experienced feeling the urge to speak up for my country when I discovered the Filipino-American War was referred to as the “Philippine Insurrection” in our American history textbook, which made me bristle; fortunately, the teacher was an entirely liberal man he himself made this Mark Twain short story required reading for the class:
And so, for me, 1984 was, indeed, a very interesting year: it was, to begin with, the year in the title of George Orwell’s novel, the sort of book that would make a precise connection with someone in America to experience a culture different from the police state that was the Philippines; it was the year I was introduced to Mark Twain, and his writing against the annexation of the Philippines; and it was an election year, for someone whose only living memory of elections had been the charade that was Marcos’ validation as President of the New Republic he inaugurated with such pomp in 1981. It was, also, the year after Ninoy Aquino had been shot, when the world had focused on the Philippines and Filipinos had begun to consider that their choice wasn’t limited to the bloody revolution of the Communists or the bloody repression of Marcos’ Constitutional Authoritarianism.
There had to be a middle path and what more centrist model could there be, than comfortable America’s? And the other speech that made me sit up and listen was Mario Cuomo’s:
These golden-tongued orators, for someone discovering the joy of words, and who had begun to feel the stirring of political thoughts -of the interplay between leaders and followers, nations and people, ideas and idealists, and how it had all be chronicled and how those chronicles, in turn, explained what was happening, now- well, to a young impressionable mind such as mine, they were the stuff of which indelible memories are made.
In those still-Imeldific days, with its talk of Metro Manila as “The City of Man,” and where the fences had been raised to shield the eyes of visiting Republicans from our shantytowns, to hear someone say, “this nation is more a tale of two cities than it is the tale of a city on a hill” referring to his country, of course, but said in a way that might very well have been addressed to Marcos, why that was enough to instill in someone as firm an understanding of Social Justice as any exploration of the Great Thinkers in College (indeed, when that time came, I mostly fell asleep in SocSci I and II).
Of course, listening to Cuomo lash out at Reagan for subsidizing foreign steel, and hearing the concerns of some contemporary Filipinos over Obama’s vow to start bringing home US jobs, serves as a reminder that the Democratic Party as the party of Philippine independence was in large part, whether at the time of William Jennings Bryan, or in the 1930s, when independence was finally settled as a matter of when and not if, with the entirely selfish assistance of US sugar interests:
And so it remained, with the Recession Act after the war, stripping Filipino veterans of their benefits; or even in the 1980s, where American enthusiasm for democracy and human rights regularly got trumped by the need to retain their bases; or, in the era that’s evolved after the last umbilical cord, the US bases, has long been cut, in Democrats not being very different from Republicans in attending to their own national interest regardless of appeals for solicitude for Filipino ones. This is simply a reminder of a basic lesson no amount of American tutelage or Filipino navel-gazing can ever really teach: the meaning of sinking or swimming entirely on one’s own efforts. Contrary to what many might say, we have not been a total failure in this regard, as a people; we are, by every measure, middling at the job of independence; yet we have set such a high benchmark for ourselves -and rightly so- that our frustration, individually and collectively, is high, and despair a real problem -the world, as it’s evolved, making it so much easier and lucrative to simply pack up and leave, to work or live, or both, abroad.
To see the maps -and how I wish we could come up with similar things, for our own politics, to graphically explore our political realities- is to see how divided, literally, America is:
But it is also to see a shift; and for those, like me, with a particular kind of affection for a particular kind of America, to derive a certain satisfaction and comfort -the comfort of a return to something familiar, and which seemingly seemed poised to be gone for good- from what is going on.
It’s a return to a more inclusive, a more idealistic, less fear-driven and optimistic, view of the world, for Americans the world they affect so much; and for those who find affinity in those ideals, and in the expression of those ideals, a return to the motive power of words, and of their promise of a society where Social Justice is a living ideal, a commonly-held aspiration, and where might is not what defines right.
But it seems to me questionable whether any government has the right to demand loyalty from its citizens beyond its willingness or ability to render actual protection. -Quezon To MacArthur, January 28, 1942
For once, I agree absolutely with Bong Montesa: never play the game of chicken. If this recent Inquirer editorial pointed out the administration has so botched up the peace process and is zigzagging so clumsily today, as to make the restoration of peace so much more difficult, the subsequent Inquirer editorial,suggests the MILF finds itself in a bind, because of the hostilities that have erupted and for which it took credit. Pointing to August 22 news item MILF Chair Al Haj Murad raise points in meeting IMT and the from Luawaran.com, the editorial suggested that the MILF (or the faction of its leadership that wanted to achieve its political aims through negotiations) was trying to invoke the assistance of its Malaysian sponsors. See -MILF asks Malaysia to convene peace panel - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
Davao City councilor Peter Lavina in his bog, suggests that the Malaysian government officially speaking, is supportive. But the political reality in Malaysia is that the government is in its own version of survival mode. Lip service and a little diplomatic nudging here and there is all very good, but in determining the cost-effectiveness of using a nation’s resources (diplomacy, economics, military, etc.) there is little going for Malaysia if it publicly supports armed rebellion on the part of the MILF.
Militarily, even, the dilemma is there. If you assume, as some do, that the MILF possesses SAM’s in its inventory, it cannot use them now, or even later. For to do so would provide proof of foreign funding or at least facilitation/support; and regionally speaking, Malaysia as the likely culprit would trigger unease in Indonesia and alarm countries like Thailand (both being firm U.S. allies) which is fighting its own Muslim secessionists.
And so it seems the last-ditch appeal, perhaps by the more moderate among the MILF’s leadership, is for the Malaysians to give a sign that they continue to enjoy that country’s confidence and backing, in an effort to convince the other foreign powers to head off full-blown hostilities. Again, here is a confluence of interests: the Americans wouldn’t be too keen on hostilities because as the primary funder of our armed forces it would have to foot the bill and this includes what the Americans know all too well includes lining generals’ pockets (see Who Profits From The War in Mindanao? | Filipino Voices). It wouldn’t even really help the American arms industry. Not much money to be gained with out Korea and Vietnam War-era weaponry.Add to this the possibility that SouthEast Asia, including the Philippines, exists in a kind of policy limbo vis-a-vis Washington: In Asia » Blog Archive » Asian Policy Challenges for the Next President.
But that doesn’t mean that these nations could prevent a shooting war, either.
So when the MILF announced, on August 21, it would hold a press conference on August 23, I had deep misgivings. What would they say? After their former brio, they’d been complaining that AFP uses excessive force in attack pulverizing Muslim communities, which ignores who started the fighting or the absurdity of expecting the AFP not to send in the PAF.
Third, uncertainty concerning traditional allies such as the United States (see US silent on MILF terrorism « Peter Laviña New Blog) and Fourth, the possibility that the armed forces intervened by mounting operations even when the President hadn’t quite made up her mind on that to do. In his blog, thenutbox actually suggests the President announced offensive operations to retroactively rubberstamp the armed forces’ decision to begin them, regardless of the President’s position on the matter:
What my uncle told me was that Mrs. Arroyo actually ordered the attacks against MILF after the generals have already decided to launch the AFP offensive.
Arroyo’s inability to control her temper, his hypothesis went on, is actually borne out of her fright of the generals’ deciding by themselves without consulting her. She made a complete turn-around in his policy towards the MILF to appease the generals who were clearly pissed off with the BJE deal she made with the rebel group. And she wanted to appease the generals as soon as possible, hence her uncontrolled emotions for the delay of the taping.
At first I dismissed this as another conspiracy theory from a Gloria-hater. But veteran journalist Ellen Tordessillias, in a reply to a comment I posted on her blog, confirmed that, indeed, the anti-MILF mopping operations were actually carried out before the Bitch ordered them.
The President hasn’t given supporters of the peace deal any chance to save themselves or the cause of peace. Which, sad to say, has been the repeated experience of those who still suffer from the delusion that they can achieve their idealistic goals by means of a pragmatic alliance with the President.
And refer to GOING IN CIRCLES « THE MOUNT BALATUCAN MONITOR and PUSONG MAMON « THE MOUNT BALATUCAN MONITOR to get a glimpse into how people -particularly Filipinos seized by uncertainty in the affected areas of Mindanao- began to send the message to civilian and military officials alike that in the absence of any reassuring information that the governmet knew what it was doing and would defend citizens seized by panic, that they would then take matters into their own hands.
He also urged community leaders to lead the people under them, to prepare for the worst, and fight if the need arose. He also mentioned the presence of the tanks and the several thousand strong army defending Iligan.
He also mentioned that the people of Iligan should not be afraid because God and Senior San Miguel was on our side. He closed his speech with a, “Viva Senior San Miguel!,” to which the people heartily replied a “Viva”.
Although, I’m Protestant and do not agree with Catholic veneration of saints and even angels, I could not help but realize that the Mayor was speaking the heart language of the Iliganon, something that they could understand. He was speaking the old language of the Spanish times at the time when the citizens of the old fort of Iligan defended the fort and even waged battle against the Moros. Historically, even though Iligan was just a doorstep away from the Moro stronghold of Marawi, it was never conquered by Muslims despite the fact that at that time their pirates raided Christian towns as far away as Luzon.
“War,” Clausewitz famously wrote, “is the continuation of politics by other means.” Samuel Johnson also famously warned that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” and yet it is also a time when a formerly divided people can find unity and leaders can tap into a kind of mystical reservoir of national solidarity and idealism:
As Juned Sonido, perhaps one of the most even-tempered bloggers around reflected, in a time of conflict there is the need to be aware of the dangers of jingoism and the imperative that should weigh heavily on all those in authority: to provide protection from those who hold allegiance to the state. What distinguishes the two? A clear and present danger, a compelling need:
At present waltzing around the negotiation table is as useful as cupping a corpse. It is hard to negotiate when one side has not given up the armed option or has no control over its army while the other side seems to be following the likes Neville Chamberlain at Munich - practicing vermi-negotiation or the art and science of negotiations by the worms at Munich.
Meanwhile, the war continues and people are hurt. A few hours ago a bomb was exploded in Zamboanga. Will this again reach the other corners of the country. Another bomb in the MRT or LRT?
Is this jingoism? No. This is a matter of national self defense.
It is the duty of the State to protect the citizens who opt to stay in this country. Otherwise these same citizens will go to other means to protect themselves.
You have to wonder whether such viligantism can view anything other than bloodcurdling hostility as acceptable.
The reality however is that even though it’s always denied it, the Palace is sensitive to public opinion particularly when that opinion starts triggering May, 2001 flashbacks in the President’s inner circle.
Where that opinion is -and how it’s increasingly hostile to any policy other than crushing the MILF- can be gleaned from surveying the blogosphere:
12:52 PM Our principal called for an emergency meeting, the second meeting we had today that zeroed in on matters of safety and security. The schools has received calls that messages were circulating about schools in General Santos City whose students and teachers were hostaged. We were not very sure of the report but for the reason that we have to secure the safety of our students, we have decided to send them home.
However, we could not simply let them take the public transport, which will drop them in downtown GenSan. So, we arranged for vehicles that will take them to their respective homes. Those who have their own vehicles were fetched by their parents.
What happened in the elementary school is a different story. Panicking parents rushed to the school fetching their kids. Some drivers told us about the chaos in the elementary school.
Some member of the authorities went to our school to reassure us that none of the reported events were true and that we are relatively safer here. That’s a bit of a relief. But who knows what will happen next? Better safe than sorry.
Intuitive: We Need Your Prayers echoes the unreported reality for most Filipinos, worried about loved ones and even their property and livelihoods. Meanwhile, everyone waits to see which side will escalate matters and bring the front lines to other metropolitan centers of the Philippines.
On The Explainer last Tuesday (which you can watch online on YouTube) I presented a series of maps based, in turn, on maps you’ve already seen on previous entries, to argue along the lines of there being a basis for the territorial claims of the Moros. At the same time, looking at the past basis for today’s territorial claims also runs smack into the reality on the ground.
Starting with the present ARMM:
Then showing the areas proposed for inclusion by plebiscite next year:
In a commentary in Slate, Fred Kaplan argues 
But there are comparisons, too -though more common, perhaps, among the historically-minded than the public- to Franklin D. Roosevelt. See 
