POLITICAL SCIENCE REMINDERS 2

This article about transparency in government, as stipulated in Article II, Section 28 of the Constitution, was written long before the National Broadband Network - ZTE deal. How much more and how much longer?





“I shall make good and I shall do good for the good of all and not just for the cameras. The canvassing for public attention is over. I expect you to get up everyday to hold me accountable, in the full glare of transparent leadership. I shall wield the power of the Presidency to uphold truth and justice."

These were the exact words of the President at her inauguration in 2004.

Now, for the sake of exercising her expectation of me holding her accountable, I like to ask her to comment on the following in the spirit of transparent leadership.

1. What did really happen before, during, and after the elections?

Gloria appointed Virgilio Garcillano despite loud objections, owing to Garcillano’s reputation as a poll fraud operator. Given the background, Gloria could not have been merely his incidental “client.” Garcillano in effect acted as referee deliberately “planted” by Gloria to rig the vote in her favor. (Señeres, The Daily Tribune, December 1, 2005, p.5)


2. Did you really actually believe you won the elections fairly and honestly?

For the sixth quarter in a row, GMA’s net satisfaction ratings are down, now pegged at negative 30%. This supports the conclusion that GMA is the worst President to serve the country. A rating of negative 30% translates to a reality of political instability. The sad reality is that GMA’s ability to govern is not only impaired. It cannot be restored. Four C’s account for GMA recorded low satisfaction ratings – credibility, corruption, crime and cheating. (Maceda, The Daily Tribune, December 13, 2005, p. 5)


3. Where did Virgilio Garcillano go at the height of the tape controversy?

Virgilio Garcillano said he went underground for security reasons. He said he never left the country in the five months he was unseen and unheard from, (even if) a Department of Justice Task Force belies that claim by confirming that he left for Singapore on a Subic Air Lear jet last July 14. Now, Secretary Gonzales said that
Garcillano left disguised as a member of the flight crew and immediately announced the filing of perjury charges against the pilot. (Maceda, The Daily Tribune, December 1, 2005, p. 5)


4. Wasn’t Executive Order 464 self-serving?

Malacañang must really be desperate to engage in blackmail on the senators, to get them to stop any and all probes, by threatening to make public their expenditures of their “pork barrel.” This is of course the latest threat the Palace has employed, after Gloria’s gag order failed in stopping the Senate from questioning Cabinet officials and sub-officials under the executive department. So they refused to attend hearing, citing Executive Order No. 464. (Cacho-Olivares, The Daily Tribune, November 24, 2005, p. 4)


5. What really happened with the Department of Agriculture funds?

The controversy reportedly involves the diversion of some P2.8 billion of the Department of Agriculture’s funds intended to be used as monetary assistance to farmers across the country, for their procurement of fertilizers, to the campaign kitty of President Arroyo in the presidential elections last year. The funds were
allegedly distributed to a number of local government officials such as governors, mayors and congressmen, who were tapped by the administration to “ensure” Mrs. Arroyo won in their districts. (PNA, The Daily Tribune, December 20, 2005, p. 3)

6. Will Undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante do another Garcillano?

The former Agriculture official was allowed to make his exit to Hong Kong even as an immigration officer sounded off his flight. “There must be some powerful forces behind this man that makes him an extremely daring person to defy the subpoenas of the Senate.” (Rosales, The Daily Tribune, December 15, 2005, p. 6)


Questions, questions, questions.

It also brings to mind that lobbying contract entered into by the President through National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales with the US based Venable-LLC in the matter of getting US support for charter changes in the Philippine constitution, reshaping our form of government into a parliamentary federal system. (This particular subject is not covered by the newspaper readings from November 22 – December 22, 2005, but is equally important especially on account of this particular section.) No one knew about it, two months after it had been signed, except the President and Gonzales himself, and when the can of worms was opened to the public, it lead to Gonzales being medically treated.

What about the accountabilities of other government agencies in the disbursement of public money? For instance, the Philippine Commission on Good Government’s failure to detail the country’s advantages on the P112 million that PCGG paid for a law firm in the United States to go after the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos family. (PNA, The Daily Tribune, December 13, 2005, p. 2).

Or, who should be made accountable for the P25 million worth of vaccines allowed to expire and go wasted in various health centers all over the country? (Surbano, The Daily Tribune, November 22, 2005, p. 2)

While I understand that certain reasonable conditions are set in order to protect confidentiality in the matters of state security, and even private citizen’s privacy, I believe I have the right to know of matters that are of interest to me as a citizen.

Will the government shed light on these matters, or keep itself mum until it has organized a well-written script that will exonerate it of its guilt, allow it to wash its hands a la-Pilate, and picture a rosy landscape clothed in nothing but stink?

It is interesting to note that Sec. 27 and Sec. 28 comes one after the other: if the state exercises honesty and integrity, it follows that it will have a policy of full disclosure in all its transactions. But a government like ours? Come on.

PS.
The truth of the matter is that, because of disenchantment with press reports about our country’s state of affairs, I have altogether stopped reading the newspapers prior to enrollment. The only reason why I resumed (with great difficulty) is because of this requirement for PL1A.

I remember that when the “Hello, Garci?” tape controversy was beginning to send shivers down the spine of the government, Chavit Singson came up with another CD professing a so-called hatched plan by former President Estrada to assassinate the President, obviously to make the public defocus from the Garci issue. It was then when I decided I have had enough of this (mis)information.

The foolish government cannot make a fool of everyone. One can only swallow so much garbage.

POLITICAL SCIENCE REMINDERS 1

In January 2006, I submitted the following article to our Philippine Constitution and Government professor as a requirement in our Political Science class. My position stands as is.






― But they were corrupt, Father!

― They were human, my child. And if we were to reject all worldly authority for that reason, we would have to reject everything: marriage and government and society; the family, the state, and the church. We would have to abolish the world.

- Excerpt from
The Woman Who Had Two Navels
by the late 1976 National Artist, Nick Joaquin

While reading Nick Joaquin’s THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS which was a Philippine Literature class reading project during one Christmas holiday, I chanced upon the above excerpt and I couldn’t help but smile as I correlated these beautiful literary words to my position on Article II, Section 27 which states that “The State shall maintain honesty and integrity in the public service and take positive and effective measures against graft and corruption.”

In literature, which is given definition as mirroring life, corruption could romantically pose as a forgivable, tolerable, even excusable human frailty – where it concerns the heart. Not so when it concerns the law.

Graft and corruption, as one and interchangeable phenomenon, is so widespread in this country that people merely talk about it with resigned acceptance as a way of life – common especially among those who have been sworn to uphold honesty and integrity in public service.

Webster gives the following definition: graft, “the acquisition of gain (as money) in dishonest or questionable ways or by illegal or unfair gain”; corruption, the “impairment of integrity, virtue or moral principles, or an inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery).”

In the Philippines, there are several areas where graft and corruption are known to be rampant. They breathe to life in the form of non-payment of appropriate taxes, misappropriation of funds for non-existent projects and payrolls, awarding and approval of government contracts, nepotism, extortion, bribery, and of course, changing election results.

Graft and corruption come in small and big packages. From the “lagay” system where ordinary citizens are forced to resort to illegal means of offering considerable amount of money to government officials lacking in zeal and professionalism in exchange for facilitating the immediate processing of required personal documents such as permits, clearances, licenses, up to the maze-like conspiracy to cheat the nation of its vote, graft and corruption has become an everyday fare. Take for example the current news accounts:

Taxi and jeepney drivers denouncing unscrupulous members of the Manila Police District conducting daily checkpoints in Sta. Cruz, Manila who they claim ask them to shell out from P20 to P50 extortion money (Bilowan, The Daily Tribune, November
24, 2005, p. 12);

Smuggled shipments of highly-dutiable goods being diverted to the Food Terminal Inc. where they are released under questionable circumstances and with the reported blessing of a very “influential person” known to everybody at the Customs bureau (Ching, The Daily Tribune, December 1, 2005, p. 12);

The instinctive wrongness in the budget proposal of the Department of Health for purchasing mosquito nets worth P280 million in its efforts to fight mosquito-borne diseases while only setting aside more than P3 million for the anti-malaria vaccines (Policar, The Daily Tribune, December 1, 2005, p. 3);

Suppliers of medicines and hospital equipment who had lost in biddings still able to get juicy deals from government-owned and controlled hospitals even as they maintain the high prices of products. (Baldo, The Daily Tribune, November 24, 2005, p. 3);

Unexplained wealth, filing false statements of assets and liabilities made by well-known public officials like Major General Carlos Garcia, who was handed down a guilty verdict by the court martial who handled his case, which leave a persistent question: Could he have amassed P300 million in hidden wealth without the participation and protection of his superiors, i.e. chiefs of staff or secretaries of National Defense who had the duty to review and approve all the requisite papers submitted by Garcia to effect the actual release of hundreds of million of military funds? (Maceda, The Daily Tribune, December 6, 2005, p. 5);

Extortion case filed by former Manila representative Mark Jimenez against former Justice Secretary Hernando Perez in connection with the controversial contract of the government with the Argentine power plant company IMPSA, whose contract was reportedly marked with bribery ($2million allegedly went to Perez as his share) in exchange for a sovereign guarantee – and which also implicated the First Gentleman’s private foundation (Policar, The Daily Tribune, December 20, 2005, p. 6);

The anomalous P1.3 billion automated election vote-counting machines contract which should have been used in the 2004 elections and which prompted in Senator Joker Arroyo calling for the resignation of the remaining five Comelec commissioners in view of findings that the commission entered into a “fixed” contract with winner bidder Mega Pacific eSolutions, where Commissioner Abalos retorted, “We are not perfect at the Comelec; we may have mistakes but we are not a corrupt agency.” (Surbano, The Daily Tribune, December 15, 2005, p. 3); and

The P728 million and P1.1 billion part of the estimated P3 billion fertilizer funds allegedly ordered released last year by the Palace through the Department of Agriculture to help in bankrolling the campaign expenses of President Arroyo and her administration candidates. (Rosales, The Daily Tribune, November 29, 2005, p. 2).

It is no wonder that about half of Filipinos (52 percent) continue to believe that Mrs. Arroyo cheated to win the 2004 polls and anywhere from 47 percent of those in the Visayas to 63 percent of Metro Manila are of the opinion that the scenario most beneficial for Filipinos is for Mrs. Arroyo to resign. (Olaes, The Daily Tribune, November 22, 2005, p.6)

The problem of corruption in the Philippines, among the worst in Asia, has not been licked because the Arroyo government is seen as doing nothing about it, according to the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy. (AFP, The Daily Tribune, December 6, 2005, p. 1)

It is no coincident that the clauses “maintain honesty and integrity in the public service” and “take positive and effective measures against graft and corruption” should go hand in hand in one section of the Constitution. The former is the root through which the latter branches out as fruit. A government official who is not honest and lacks integrity cannot take positive, let alone effective measures against corruption.

Here’s the irony:
Executive Order No. 314 dated April 30, 2004 as amended by Executive Order No. 317 on June 8, 2004 (barely a month after last year’s election) creates the Presidential Commission on Values Formation headed by the President as Chairperson. This commission shall serve as the lead agency by which the government may work hand-in-hand with civil society and the private sector in the establishment of a strong foundation for moral value formation in the government bureaucracy.

The President who chairs this commission – isn’t she the same President who had a “lapse of judgment” and has been peddling her half-truths by avoiding a confrontation with the truth on the Garcillano tape controversy which has been eating up and using a lot of government resources?

Isn’t she the same President who continues to employ the services of a press secretary whose credibility and integrity have been thoroughly soiled by spilling the tape controversy at a time when nothing warranted for such information to be leaked out and then, surprised by the avalanche of negative repercussions, retracted and changed statements with such temerity and “kapal ng mukha”? A more noble government would have asked a Cabinet member to resign if he or she causes embarrassment.

Isn’t she the same President whose Palace issued brazen statements at the height of Garcillano’s “disappearance” that if the Senate so wants him, it should look for him, stamping its guilt for not doing enough to bring Garcillano to justice and rousing even more suspicions of actually being responsible in hiding him?

Isn’t she the same President who has made one faux pas after another in front of television cameras, no less, when sometime ago, she berated a hapless “whistleblower”, Acsa Ramirez, as an accomplice to a bank scam only to apologize a time later? The same one who announced the capture of an Abu Sayyaf Group leader which turned out to be only a lookalike?

Isn’t she the same President who is conspicuously in the midst of what seems to be conspiracies being hewed – at all costs – to allow her to retain power? Consider the series of events leading to her official announcement as last election’s winner: The Supreme Court’s decision to set aside the computerized counting in favor of manual counting. The admission of former Budget Secretary Boncodin on the diversion of public Agriculture funds that went into the campaign treasure of the madam. The controversial distribution of pay-offs to regional election officials. And then of course, that one monumental leading-by-one-million phone call.

Moral value formation? You wish.

My point is: If the Chief Executive of the land does not lose sleep over her personal integrity, more specifically the lack of it, and continues to believe the lies she spews in public, we cannot expect the lesser mortals of Philippine politics to maintain their own.

If the Chief Executive of the land scoffs at the idea of graft and corruption being commonplace anyway, we cannot expect the lesser mortals of Philippine politics to advocate effective measures against eradication of graft and corruption.

If the Chief Executive of the land has lost her moral ascendancy to lead, yet continue to cling to being intoxicated by power, we cannot expect the lesser mortals of Philippine politics to be our “knights in shining armor.”

And like many beautiful words in many beautiful literary pieces, the sanctity of the words framed in this particular section of the Constitution will simply be appreciated as a beautiful idealism in what was once a beautiful country turned ugly.

DEATH IS NOT FINAL

Death is not final.

I keep saying these words over and over in my head. I feel that to be so. I know that to be so. Death only curtails the physical presence, nothing more.

I am saying that now because, four months after his death, I really haven’t come to terms with Toto being gone. With Toto dying and will never be able to come knocking on our door, or holler when there is something obnoxiously funny to laugh about, or squeak in lip-synching through his favorite rock band sound. None of those. Anymore.

I try to shoo that away from my mind.

I am not writing this as an invitation for his spirit to hover around us as some superstition would have it. But I am writing this very much more to assure myself that he has not been erased from my life.

I haven’t mourn his loss. Not yet. Because to me, he is still very much here in my heart. And how I want to tell him that I love him so much, in spite of our differences. That I wish I was given the chance to be nice to him till the end. That I wish I wasn’t always the disapproving brother. That I wish I wasn’t the standard to measure up to because I, too, have my own imperfections.

Toto and I will never complement each other. We are extreme opposites. But we are brothers. He is my brother. And as yet, I cannot address him in the past tense.

I am crying now because I miss him. How strangely weird to say that when the only thing I remember when I used to see him was how I detested his life and what he has done with it.

I am crying now because one time I told my father that he better be prepared for when the time comes Toto will be soaked in his own blood as a result of his waywardness. I should have known better that it is I who won’t be prepared for such tragedy.

I am crying now because we are celebrating his birthday. Celebrating it when the celebrant has long been covered six feet under.

I am crying now for the ironies that will just be blunt reminders of things lost that never will be found again.