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DE QUIROS 10
Postscript to shaming
By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 02:41 AM March 27, 2014

Miriam Santiago had an interesting piece of advice to graduates. They didnt

have to wait until they could vote, she said, to be able to remove the
scammers from public office. Shame them now. Take your campaign to
Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. Post your grievances on these politicians walls.
Tweet them your disappointments. Eventually, these politicians will shed their
thick hides because of the shame, and reveal themselves to be spineless
pathetic creatures.

Even the youth, she said, paid their taxes. They did that every time they ate in
their favorite fast food, took public transport, and watched a movie. They had
every right to be angry with the crooks in office and shame them.

What can I say? Im all for it, but nice work if you can get it, as the song says.
Or nice work if you can do it, to paraphrase it.

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At the very least, its not the easiest thing in the world to shame the
shameless. During Rizals time satire was a powerful tool because the objects
of it were not entirely sin verguenza or without shame. The friars and civilian
officials so bristled at Rizals satirical barbs they had him shot at the Luneta.
There used to be time, in the 1950s and 1960s, when public officials could still
be shamed by being called buaya, which, as everyone observed then, did a
horrendous injustice to crocodiles. All that disappeared with martial law.

Miriam herself has gotten her share of brickbats along the way. Not least for
being, along with Juan Ponce Enrile, her current archenemy, the staunchest
defender of Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the first having been
convicted of plunder, the second awaiting trial for plunder. All shes done is
complain about cyberspace bullying, an irony if ever there was one. But shes
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still there, unembarrassed, unfazed, uncontrite, telling the youth to employ

that tactic on others.

More than this, however, for you to want to shame the scammers, you must
first feel scammed. For you to want to get back at those who wronged you,
you must first feel wronged. Thats the premise of shaming, and that premise
is unfortunately not there for us.

We do pay taxes whether were rich or poor, whether were young or old,
whether we file taxes or not. We do that every time we buy something
courtesy of the VAT. But the question is: Do we really see that? Do we really
see that the taxes we pay are still our money? Do we really expect the taxes
we pay to speedily, automatically, inexorably go back to us in roads and
hospitals and schoolhouses?

If we glimpse that at all, it is only a glimmer of it. Certainly, we have not

internalized it. Certainly, not the poor among us who think they are not paying
taxes anyway, who think taxes are spoils subject to division among public
officials by rules they do not understand, or particularly care to. How can you
want to shame anyone with attitude?

You see the contrast when you go abroad. The first time I went to the United
States, in the early 1980s, a group of us passed a street in New York that
yielded a crack in the concrete about a foot long. I joked that even streets in
America were not in perfect condition, they developed cracks, too. When we
came back to the same street after a few hours, the crack had disappeared
and a road grader was pulling away. I was impressed and expressed my
amazement to my companions. They were amazed by my amazement and
looked at me as though I had just come from the mountains, which I had.

My companions were not Americans or Pinoys born in America. They were

Pinoys who had lived there for some time, some of them for just a few years.
But they, too, now found the idea of a road needing minor repair being
repaired in a few hours the most natural thing in the world. What would have
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amazed them, and which would probably have made them weep and gnash
their teeth, was that crack in the cement being still there when we came back.

That is what it means to internalize the idea that taxes are the peoples
money, the citizens money, the communitys money, and that the taxpayers
may naturally expect that money to come back to them speedily,
automatically, inexorably. Americans may complain about high taxes, which
are growing even higher. They may complain about the tyranny of the
taxman, who is even more tyrannical than death. But they may not complain
about the goods and services they get back from their taxes in return.

Which, not quite incidentally, is what makes Kim Henares confrontational

efforts to make us pay through our teeth, complete with an ad that shamed
doctors, evaders and nonevaders alike, a turnoff. There is no problem with
carrying out an assiduous campaign to make people pay their taxes, but there
is every problem when that campaign does not go with reasonable
demonstrations that those taxes are getting back to the taxpayers. The
antipork people who threatened to mount a tax boycott last year in light of the
Napoles scam were not being unreasonable. The two go together, paying
taxes and getting them back in goods and services. The one means nothing
without the other.

We get to internalize that taxes are our money, we get to expect that cracks
on our streets will be repaired as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, we
wont need to shame the scammers at all. The opprobrium, disgust, anger at
those who scam will be there spontaneously, going as they do against the
grain of natural expectation, forcing them to bow their heads and slink away.
Look at how things are in the Western countries where public officials resign
automatically from shame when they are tainted with crookedness. Look at
the other Asian countries where public officials disembowel themselves from
the same thing.

That we need to go out of our way to shame the shameless, thats the real
shame.
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Pro-Filipino
By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 02:16 AM March 26, 2014

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin was asking for it. He said last week: Our
problem is we keep on complaining about the Enhanced Defense Cooperation
with the US. Why dont we complain when the Chinese use water cannons on
us? Why? Nasaan ang pagka-Pilipino natin? (Where is our Filipino spirit)? We
demonstrate against those who are helping us but we dont demonstrate
against those who are bullying us?

To which Bayan Muna, the group Gazmin had referred to by we, replied by
daring him to join its members in their demonstrations against Chinas
incursions into the Spratlys. Said Rep. Neri Colmenares: Bayan Muna has
publicly criticized China through rallies and public statements, and even led
the recent Congress investigation into Chinas incursions into our territories.
General Gazmin has not attended a single anti-China rally.

Kabataan Rep. Terry Ridon added that his group had been protesting Chinas
strong-arm tactics over Ayungin and Panatag Shoals for some time now.
Secretary Gazmin should not play the China card to justify the surrender of
sovereignty in the new access agreement with the United States.

I leave them to debate the attitude/response of Bayan Muna and its kindred
groups toward China. But that aside, I agree with Bayan Munas disputation of
the way the government has dealt with the China problem. Ive expressed the
same sentiments of late.

First off, putting it in terms Why do we rally against those who are helping us
and not against those who are bullying us? is deceptive, if not deceitful.
While there is no question about the Chinese bullying, there is every question
about the American help.
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In fact, the American help is not help in the sense that we normally
understand help. It is not voluntary, it is obligatory. It is not a matter of choice,
it is a matter of necessity. It is not a matter of entreaty, it is a matter of treaty.
The Americans are duty-bound to help us, whether we allow them to put up
military bases here or not. Indeed, whether we allow them to use our military
bases or not. Which raises the stupefying question of why we need to give
them access to our bases to get that help. Which raises the brain-addling
question of why we need to give them a new haven to get that defense.

We already have the Mutual Defense Treaty, which compels them to come to
our aid when we are being attacked. We are being attacked. Why is that help
not there? Why is that help not being demanded by us even now? Why is that
help not forthcoming unless we enter into another agreement to enforce an
agreement that doesnt seem enforceable without new agreements?

Second off, this is trading a birthright for a bowl of porridge, as Esau did his to
Jacob. Or for those who do not like metaphors, that is trading off something of
enormous value for something utterly trivial out of immediate need. Or more
to the point, trading off the past and the future because of some transient
need in the present.

What happens once the crisis with China blows over? Then were stuck with
the Americans and their installations in our bases. In theory, it will be the
easiest thing to just send them packing. The Filipino commander calls the
shots, the Philippine government is in command. In practice, it is next to
impossible. The fact that weve had American military presence in this country
forever, except for a few years after we kicked out the US bases, and then not
entirely so, must testify to how next to impossible it is. Whether out of their
refusal to leave or out of our refusal to let them go doesnt really matter.

Gazmins call for us to appreciate the Americans, while excoriating the

Chinese, bids us forget our entire history. That history says it was the
Americans and not the Chinese that invaded us, occupied us. That history
says it was the Americans who occupied a portion of our territory in military
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bases, and it was all we could do to push them out. That history says that
despite the proffered hand of friendship, mythologized by the image of
Filipinos and Americans fighting side by side in Bataan, walang iwanan, the
Americans did in fact leave us to our devices, and the Filipino veterans who
fought a heroic war of resistance cant even get their due from the
government they served. Hell, at least a bowl of porridge can be eaten.

That history says the Americans have oppressed us while weve oppressed the
Chineseby discriminating against them, by putting them in pogroms, by
stereotyping them as shysters and profiteers.

And finally, why in Gods good name should it be a choice between America
and China, between being pro-American or pro-Chinese? What idiocy is that?
Why should our foreign relations revolve around other countries, particularly a
superpower that can swallow us up and spit us out piece by piece? Why
should the equation be that if youre not rabidly pro-American, youre
resolutely anti-Filipino?

Rabidly is the word. Vietnam and Japan are pissed off by China, too, but they
are not ceding parts of their territory, even if that means only the inside of
their camps, to American troops and equipment to stop China. Vietnam and
Japan are rallying world opinion to their side, too, but they are not strutting
around with sabers bared declaring noisily, Dont mess with us, nakasandal
kami sa pader. Vietnam and Japan are trying to get the dispute settled
multilaterally, too, with the help of friends and the blessings of the United
Nations, but they are not willing to bind themselves to America in order to be
free.

Pro-America or pro-China? Why cant we just be pro-Filipino? To paraphrase

Gazmin himself: We keep complaining about the Chinese trying to own a piece
of our country, why dont we complain about the Americans owning the whole
of it?

Nasaan ang pagka-Pilipino natin?

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Two things
By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:27 AM March 25, 2014

The first is Miriam Santiagos call on Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales to

start filing charges in the Sandiganbayan against the lawmakers implicated in
the Janet Napoles scam. Its been six months now. I think the public is
getting jaded by these public revelations in the Senate probe (without) seeing
any action. We cannot allow public interest to die. Plunder is just too important
to the national economy.

I agree wholeheartedly. Of course Miriam has her own reasons for wanting the
government to discover some urgency in advancing the case against the
senators. Theres nothing shed like better than to see Juan Ponce Enrile
meted out a jail term within his or her lifetime, whichever comes last. But that
doesnt detract from the merit of her proposal.

Ive been saying the same thing for some time now. Wheres the point in
holding all these Senate hearings if they dont lead to anything anyway? The
point of fighting corruption isnt just to expose the corrupt, it is to punish
them. The point of upholding justice isnt just to embarrass the corrupt, it is to
jail them.

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Its gotten a little more complicated these past weeks in light of new
witnesses coming out of the woodwork, adding new offices and lawmakers to
the list of those who participated in Napoles scam. Including Edgardo Angara
in Dennis Cunanans account, including broadcast journalists Erwin Tulfo and
Carmelo Magdurulang in Rhodora Mendozas and Vic Cacals account. While
all this is praiseworthyMendoza and Cacal in particular have shown balls in
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naming media, particularly broadcast, practitioners, hitherto feared and

avoided like the plague because of their retaliatory powerthis has its
downside as well.

Chief of them is that the ever increasing number of the accused is also
diffusing focus and scattering attention every which way. Its almost enough to
convince you its a ploy by the handlers of Jinggoy Estrada, Bong Revilla, and
Juan Ponce Enrile to draw attention away from them. Jinggoy did manage to
draw the spotlight away from him last year by pointing at government. This
time around, the new revelations could do the same thing, however
completely unwittingly.

The throwing of a couple of journalists into the fray could always lead to
something bigger. As it is, the naming of Tulfo and Magdurulang alone, quite
apart from the third unnamed recipient of P2 million, is already explosive and
could rivet public attention to it in days to come.

All this threatens to keep unfinished business unfinished. Indeed, all this
threatens to dull the senses by information overload. Miriam is right there, the
public could get jaded. Even I sometimes get a feeling of saturation every
time I look at the lead stories of news and see that theyre still about pork,
and the three accused senators are still free.

The point is to have a sense of priority. The point is to have a sense of

purpose. The point is to go back where we started. The point is to finish what
we started before we embark on something else.

The second thing is my wonderment at the paradox of Filipino behavior. The

revelations about the involvement of all sorts of people in the pork scam over
the last half year must make us wonder if corruption is the exception rather
than the rule here. Certainly, it must make us wonder so about the
congressmen who figure preponderantly in the Commission on Audits report
about those who abused or pocketed their Priority Development Assistance
Fund. The only group I really feel bad about is the NGOs which, through no
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great fault of their ownthey are more victims than perpetratorshave been
made synonymous to fake.

All this gives the impression that you give us Filipinosincluding, or especially,
our presumably respectable authority figures like generals, judges, and
bishopsthe slightest chance to profit from an immoral, or illegal, transaction,
and we will take it. Im reminded of that dialogue in Catch-22 where
Yossarians commanding officer lectures him about the evils of not doing the
right thing. Suppose, he says tolerantly, everyone thought the same way
you do? Yossarian replies: Then Id be a damn fool to think different.

That seems to be our philosophy too: Suppose everybody tries to rip off
everybody else? Then Id be a damn fool not to.

Yet from the other end, a tragedy strikes and suddenly we become the most
altruistic people in the world. We become the most selfless, the most
generous, the most self-sacrificing people in the world. We become the most
high-minded, the most heroic, the most selfless people in the world. Look at
the way we responded to Ondoy, Pablo and the Bohol earthquake. Look at
the way we responded to Yolanda, when even the youth and the children
volunteered to give of themselves, quite apart from give of what they owned,
to help the starving, the grieving, the helpless and hopeless.

To be capable of nobility in times of tragedy, and greed in times of normality,

that is quite a contrast. To be capable of selflessness in bad times and
selfishness in good times, that is quite a phenomenon. To be capable of people
power when times are dire and lust for poweror wealthwhen times are
fine, that is quite a paradox.

I myself think the key to it lies in that last line in the National Anthem which
says, Ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo. Weve never lacked the ability to
make the grand gesture, weve always lacked the ability to just do the right
thing. Weve never lacked the ability to show charity, weve always lacked the
ability to show justice. Weve never lacked the ability to transcend ourselves,
weve always lacked the ability to sustain it.
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Weve never lacked the ability to die for the country. Weve always lacked the
ability to live for it.

Physician, heal thyself

By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:09 AM March 24, 2014

This time around, its the journalists.

Two broadcast journalists in particular have been named by Nabcor (National

Agribusiness Corp.) whistle-blowers, Rhodora Mendoza and Vicente Cacal, as
having gotten payoffs from the pork funds a tribe of lawmakers poured into
Janet Napoles nongovernment organizations (NGOs). They are Erwin Tulfo, a
TV5 host, and Carmelo del Prado Magdurulang, a GMA7 radio commentator.
Tulfo, according to the whistle-blowers, got a check for P245,535 on March 10,
2009, while Magdurulang got three checks totaling the same amount in 2009.
All the checks were cashed in the Ortigas branch of UCPB.

Mendoza and Cacal actually named a third journalist as a beneficiary of the

Nabcor scam, and a much bigger onehe got P2 million from it. But they did
not have the documents to prove it, they knew it only from talk at the office
about who was supposed to get it. This payoff took the form of cash, which
they themselves did not deliver, and indeed which was delivered only to a
bagman. Which is the only reason this journalist has remained unnamed in
reports.

Tulfo and Magdurulang have denied it, and their defenders have directed their
ire at the Inquirer, not least for equating advertising expenses, which was
how Nabcor justified the expenditure, with payoff. But at the very least, how
else call advertising money given to a journalist by a company, public or
private? Youre a journalist, youre not supposed to advertise anything. Youre
only supposed to tell the truth as best you can.
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At the very most, a check is not easy to get away from. Tulfo says, Somebody
could be using my name, I want to investigate who cashed the check. Hes
perfectly free to do so, but that need not preclude the authorities from
investigating it themselves. Surely it cant be too hard to ascertain the truth of
it with banking laws having been liberalized to prevent laundering.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima specifically proposes to do it. Where the justice
department finds cause, she says, it will charge the journalists who profited
from the pork scams along with the public officials. If youre a member of the
media, youre a private individual, youre not a public official. But if it concerns
public funds and you are in the company of public officials, you are part of it.
You can be charged with such offenses as direct bribery and malversation of
public funds.

I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, Im hoping the third journalist will get named
as well and other whistle-blowers will step forward to provide evidence against
him. Its not entirely true that transactions of this sort where they are carried
out with sophistication or where there is no clear-cut documentation are
untraceable. There are people who approve them, there are people who
deliver the payoffs, there are peoplethe direct recipient or the intermediary
who receive them. Where there are people, there are witnesses.
Subpoenaing them, where they do not step out voluntarilyand we presume
Mendoza and Cacal know themshould help do the trick.

The accused and their defenders say the reporting of Mendozas and Cacals
accusation is irresponsible and puts journalism in a bad light. Thats silly, and
merely attempts to conscript other journalists, honest and corrupt alike, into
circling wagons around their beleaguered colleagues to defend their favorite
profession. Journalism is not under attack, individual journalists are. In fact
what puts journalism in a bad light is not journalistsor at least people in
media, it burns the mouth to call them journalistsbeing accused of
corruption, it is the lack of it.
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I myself wouldnt mind a whole tribe of media practitioners being dragged to

court for this. If youre a fairly honest reporter or editor or commentator,
someone who tries to make both ends meet on the modest, if not meager, pay
that journalism affords, youd get very pissed off having to breathe same air
as those who sell their profession to the highest bidder and parade their ill-
gotten wealth before the world in cars, properties, and lavish eating places to
impress the impressionable with their apparent success and bigness and
importance. You conduct a lifestyle check on people with suspicious incomes
and a lot of media practitioners will fall like leaves in autumn.

Arguably, the sums involved here, except in the case of the unnamed media
person who got P2 million, are relatively smallpaltry even, relative to the
millions the bigger media players routinely get for their advertising services.
The news that two broadcast journalists, one of them fairly well-known,
tripped on P245,535 has not shocked the media community, it has vastly
amused it. That they should trip moreover by way of checks has sent it into
howls of laughter: How lo-tech can you get?

But if thats what it will take to draw the media into a Lenten introspection
about the extent to which they have turned their temple into a merchants
bazaar, the house of prayer into a den of thieves, then Im all for it. Or since
medias capacity for introspection in that respect is limitedits never been a
question of ascertaining the corruption in its ranks, its always been a question
of wanting to do something about itif this is what it takes to put the fear of
God or Leila de Lima in the hearts of the wayward, then Im all for it.

If journalistsby definition, the more reputable ones, the more honest ones
are to allow themselves to be conscripted into anything, it might as well be
into approval or praise of those who flail at the merchants, of those who mean
to cleanse their house. People who take on righteous tones in crucifying erring
cops and public officials had best be prepared to live reasonably righteous
lives.

I myself dont mind people telling us: Physician, heal thyself.

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Inconvenient truths
By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:31 AM March 20, 2014

Justice Secretary Leila de Limas revelation that her office has widened its
investigation of lawmakers who misused their pork from 2007 onward, based
on work by the Commission on Audit, drives home some inconvenient truths.

The first is that the exercise is, if not exactly like looking for 10 just men in
Sodom and Gomorrah, gives a sensation not unlike it. There are now, says
De Lima, who cochairs the Inter-Agency Anti-Graft Coordinating Council with
Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, teams of the field investigation
officers working on a number of lawmakers who are part of the 180-plus over
and above those who had already been charged.

Some 180 people are close to two-thirds the number of our congressmen.
Even assuming that not all of them are congressmen, and not all of them are
guilty, 180-plus is still an eye-popping number. Little wonder a group of
baboons has also been called a congress.

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Does this justify the complaint of Jinggoy Estrada, Bong Revilla and Juan Ponce
Enrile that they are being singled out for persecution?

Not at all. At the very least, the Janet Napoles case is a high-profile one and
rightly so: The rip-off was mind-boggling, the pork almost entirely lost to
Napoles and the participants in her racket. And the evidence against the three
is more glaring, more direct, more damning. There are documents and
witnesses aplenty to lock them up and throw the key into the sea.

At the very most, the dodge that others are just as guilty, if not guiltier, is just
that: a dodge, or palusot. Its really the silliest thing in the world, though that
seems to be a favorite hereabouts. Whenever an official is accused of
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wrongdoing, his automatic response is to say that others are doing it, too, and
worse. Well, the fact that others are guilty doesnt make one innocent, it only
makes the others prosecutable. The fact that others are guiltier doesnt make
one more innocent, it only makes the others more prosecutable.

Others have done the same thing and worse? Well get to them, too. There are
the three Furies, De Lima, Morales, and Grace Tan, to hound them to the ends
of the earth.

The second is to show how baneful the pork was. All this should settle once
and for all the debate about pork. In theory, it was the most wonderful thing in
the world. It allowed those reasonably close to their constituents to determine
their needs and direct huge amounts of resources, paid for by the taxpayers at
large, to them. Additionally, it expedited or fast-tracked services. In practice,
all pork did for the most part was to expedite or fast-track corruption.

What made pork such a humongous bane was that it gave lawmakers a sense
of entitlement to the money. In theory, the money wasnt theirs, it was
something temporarily entrusted to them to be used for the taxpayers
themselves. In practice, it was theirs, to be used as they pleased, including
dropped into the bottomless pit of their pockets. In theory, they were
supposed only to give the general outlines of how their pork was to be used.
In practice, they named the beneficiaries, the amounts to go to them, and
often enough the people to implement themor, as in the case of Napoles, to
not implement them at all. In theory, they had only recommendatory powers
over pork. In practice, they had complete control over it.

Like traffic lights in this country, the limitations on the uses of pork ended up
being only a suggestion. The public was right to get incensed and rise to
protest it late last year, even if a great deal of it was instinctive, even if a
great deal of it was intuited. The extent of the rot, which the Department of
Justice, COA and Office of the Ombudsman are trying to do something about
today, testifies to it. In this country, invitations to corruptionand no
invitation to it was more engraved than porkare readily accepted.
 15

The challenge remains to make sure pork does not metamorphose into, and
materialize in, other forms.

The third is the gigantic amounts involved in the pillage. In the case of
National Agribusiness Corp. alone, four senatorsthe three implicated in the
Napoles scam plus Edgardo Angaraand 79 congressmen are accused of
using a total of P1.7 billion of their pork in questionable projects. The sum is so
staggering it has taken the aspect of something abstract, unreal, ungraspable.

The only way, really, to have an idea of the magnitude and reprehensibility of
this theft is to contrast it with the efforts of the Tacloban folk to rise from the
rubble left by Yolanda. Not by depending on relief or the kindness of
strangers but by dint of their own labor, by dint of their refusal to give up.
Such as the Logatoc sisters, Gina and Gertrudes, who have organized 30
women in Guiuan to negotiate better terms with small lenders and to pool
their resources. Such as Tess Policarpio who, though wiped out by Yolanda, is
attempting to revive her handicraft shop after being importuned to do so by
her weavers, and is seeing the first signs of recovery. Like the Logatoc sisters,
she only wishes that the government could help her get lower-interest, if not
interest-free, loans.

You look at the contrast between these two pictures and your blood boils. The
one is inspiring beyond belief, the other is damnable beyond words. You have
on one hand a mass of people impoverished by fate and devastated by
providence, or the lack of it, heroically struggling to get back on their feet with
a little help from their friends and government. You have on the other a tiny
few living off the fat of the land, mindlessly lighting up their cigars with
thousand-peso bills. Thats how you grasp the monstrosity of billions going up
in smoke.

Thats not just an inconvenient truth, thats an infuriating one.

Overkill
 16

By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 02:16 AM March 19, 2014

While a gaggle of bystanders watches, a team of cops clad in fatigues,

bulletproof vests, helmets and gas masks and toting assault rifles storms the
place. They start grabbing people and wrestling those who resist to the
ground. One cop is pinning someone on his back with his knee while pulling
out handcuffs. The other cops who have ringed the place are eyeing the
perimeter watchfully, alert for any signs of trouble. Several cops on
motorcycles hover in the wings.

This is not Malaysia, about which we have been complaining for its nasty habit
of tearing into crowds in search of Filipino illegals, and throwing them in jail,
presuming them guilty until they can prove themselves innocent, or in
possession of the proper papers.

This is the heart of Chinatown, in 168. I saw the pictures, taken by someone in
the crowd. The storm troopers are cops armed with mission orders from the
Bureau of Immigration to arrest illegals. The mission orders do not specify who
to arrest, let alone their addresses, and are not backed by warrants from the
courts. As in Malaysia, this is to whom it may concern.

Since December last year, the cops have been carrying out these raids in 168,
999, Lucky Chinatown, and 1188, terrifying shoppers and residents alike. The
incident I mentioned took place early this month. Thus far, the raids have
yielded, quite apart from a few illegals, several completely legal longtime
residents and at least one five-year-old. The raids have extended to bodegas
whose owners have been asked to show cause why these should not be closed
down. Or as the Chinese there say, to show cost for it: Bodega owners have
complainedprivately, of courseof having had to cough up from P100,000
to P300,000 to be left alone.

Again, let us be clear. Do we want illegals, Chinese or otherwise, to be

expelled from our shores? Yes. Do we want contraband to be seized and their
sellers or hoarders arrested and jailed? Yes. Do we want government to crack
down on criminals and criminality and do so with force and resolve? Yes.
 17

Do we want to do all these in this way?

No.

At the very least, whats iniquitous about it is that its a glaring violation of
human rights. This is a case of doing things the Rodrigo Duterte way, which
proves yet again the immense harm he is doing by the example he sets. At
least Duterte knows who he wants to kill, this one is indiscriminate in who it
wants to arrest.

Last we looked, the principle was still that a man is innocent until proven
guilty. Last we looked, the principle was still that the authorities supplied just
cause why a person should be arrested, or his bodega padlocked, and not the
arrestee or owner why he or his property should not be so. Last we looked, the
principle was still, as reaffirmed by the Department of Justice in 1999, that
the issuance of warrants of arrest by the Commissioner of Immigration for
the sole purpose of investigation and before the issuance of a final order of
deportation violates the right of a person to due process.

Carrying this out, moreover, with cops in full battle gear in a fairly peaceful
community makes it all the more iniquitous. Dutertes proposition is that the
best way to solve rice smuggling is by killing rice smugglers. The proposition
here is that the best way to solve the problem of illegal aliens is to grab the
nearest persons in the Chinese malls and jail them until they can prove
themselves legal.

At the very most, this isnt just iniquitous, this is dangerous.

You cant find a worse time to do it than right now. Were in the middle of a
row with China, one where the rhetoric has become strident and the moves
increasingly martial. An action like this taken against a predominantly Chinese
population will not be seen as a purely internal affair. It will be colored by that
dispute.
 18

It could, and probably would, be seen as action that did not originate solely
from the BI, with the cooperation of the Department of the Interior and Local
Governments which provided the cops, but from the national government
which gave it its full blessings. It could, and probably would, be interpreted as
some kind of retaliation for Chinas efforts to intimidate Filipino fishermen in
the Spratlys, particularly driving them away by water cannon some weeks
ago.

Weve already seen how a wave of anti-Filipino sentiment is sweeping through

China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Taiwan at one point made noises about keeping
out visiting Filipinos and Hong Kong continues to demand an official apology
from P-Noy for the Luneta massacre. Indeed, Hong Kong residents booed the
visiting Azkals last year, which threatens to bring the dispute between
governments to the level of the people themselves.

What now if China and Hong Kong and Taiwan were to ban overseas Filipino
workers from their shores? Or if not ban OFWs, since they would be shooting
themselves in the foot if they did (they need OFWs for work they do not
particularly like to do and Filipinos are the best caregivers), making getting
into their shores the hardest thing in the world? What now if those three
countries, like Malaysia, were to conduct periodic raids on communities known
to host concentrations of Filipinos, the raiders carting them off indiscriminately
and dumping them in jail until they can show documents or pay their way out,
whichever comes first?

What now if the Chinese themselves, never mind their officials, were to
presume Filipinos if not naturally given to smuggling at least to serving as
drug mules, if not naturally given to gambling in casinos at least playing
without work permits in clubs, if not naturally given to anarchy and subversion
at least to being incapable of following laws and rules?

Overkill does not kill only its victims, it also kills its authors.
 19

Pure madness
By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:08 AM March 18, 2014

The new arrangement is called Agreement on Enhanced Defense

Cooperation, and Defense Undersecretary Pio Lorenzo Batino assures it is
80-percent done. As though that news would elate us.

Not to worry, adds Ambassador Eduardo Malaya, the agreement does not
allow the United States to put up bases in this country, it allows it only to use
our bases.

And Filipino authorities will have complete access to the US installations set up
inside those bases. That should dispel fears about infringement on
sovereignty. As a concept, access is assured, being within Philippine military
bases. The right of the base commander to have access to specific areas
shared with them has already been agreed (on) in principle by both panels.

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What can one say? What the -?!

The least of whats wrong with it is this: The problem with our agreements
with the United States has never been the agreement, it has always been the
implementation. Can anyone seriously imagine a scenario where the Filipino
base commander tells his American counterpart wherever a dispute arises,
Open the gates, I need to see whats on your grounds. More than likely, the
Filipino commander will not be authoritative, he will be deferential. He will not
put his foot down, he will be accommodating. He will not be in charge, the
American official will. This is one case where the tail will wag the dog.

History shows so. It is American policy to neither confirm nor deny the
presence of nuclear weapons in their installations. The American base within
a base can have all the weapons of mass destruction it wants and we will be
no nearer to glimpsing it than we would be Fort Knox. That is assuming in the
first place that we want to know. Remember that this agreement is being
 20

hammered under conditions where the Philippine government desperately

wants American armed presence in the region on the batty assumption that
we need it for our protection and wouldnt mind giving the United States as
many bases as they want if only that were constitutionally possible. That is to
say, under conditions where we are the beggars. Beggars cant be choosers.

All this does is to give the United States the best of both worlds: having de
facto military bases back without having to pay rent.

The most of whats wrong with this is a couple of things:

One is that we already have the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), why in hell do
we need to give the United States de facto bases here all over again? The
MDT not quite incidentally should already show us how utterly inutile our
military arrangements with the United States are. The MDT specifies very
clearly that in the event of an attack on any portion of the US or Philippine
territory, including those lying in the Pacific Ocean, the one is obliged to come
to the defense of the other. The Pacific, all American officials have reaffirmed,
extends in coverage to the South China Sea.

Arguably, the islands where Chinas provocations are taking place are
disputed territory. The United States itself, while condemning Chinas
belligerence, says it is not taking sides or a position on who owns the islands,
notwithstanding that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is
clear that countries have sovereign rights to waters up to 200 nautical miles
off their shores.

But at the very least, surely the act of driving Filipinos away from the disputed
islands by water cannons and various threats, not least Chinese gunships
patrolling the area, constitutes an attack on territory the Philippines has a very
strong claim to. Or that China has only a self-serving unilateral assertion of
ownership to. Where is the American automatic military response to it as the
MDT bids? Where is the American warship or two to confront the Chinese
gunships there and protect the Filipino fishermen? What defenseat least of
the Philippines, if not of Americadoes the MDT really give?
 21

Two is that this spits on the blood, sweat and tears we expended just to rid
ourselves of US military presence in this country. Can we have forgotten
already how hard it took to kick out the US bases, Cory herself trying to
people-power her way into keeping them? The Visiting Forces Agreement was
bad enough and was already a stab in the back of itErap, who passed it as
president, ironically having been one of the Magnificent 12 that stopped the
bases. He would joke later on, Kala ko kasi visiting lang, malay ko bang
permanent, but some jokes hurt agonizingly when you laugh.

This one is worse. Much, much worse. And for what? Because of our problem
with China in the Spratly Islands? That is believing that the best cure for a
headache is to shoot yourself in the head.

As the VFA showed, the monumental atrocity here is that the agreement wont
just end with one government. The VFA did not end with Erap, the Enhanced
Defense Agreement wont end with P-Noy. It will commit the next
governments to honoring that agreement till kingdom come. It will commit the
nation to harboring US military enclaves in our bases till kingdom come. Till
kingdom come is no exaggeration as weve seen from the fact that except for
the brief period when the only general to become president of this country
was in charge, who was Fidel Ramos, weve had US military presence in one
form or another.

Long after P-Noy is gone, we will still be reeling under that presence. What a
legacy to bequeath.

By all means let us protest Chinas claim to the whole of the South China Sea
and bring the world to vituperate against it. By all means let us bring America
itself, with whom we share a fitful history, to lead the condemnation of it,
however its own role in invading Iraq without UN sanction pulls the moral rug
from under it. By all means let us call the Chinese leaders Hitler. But bring US
servicemen and equipment to roost here all over again?

Thats just madness. Pure madness.

 22

Farce
By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:10 AM March 17, 2014

Same tack, different results.

What was different about Jinggoy Estradas tack this time was his throwing a
line of defense into it. At one point during his privilege speech, he unveiled
with dramatic flourish a CCTV footage showing Ruby Tuasonta-dan!not
carrying a duffel bag in the Senate. Which was all very well, except that, as
Leila de Lima pointed out afterward, Tuason had testified that she had gone to
the Jinggoys office at the Senate only once with a duffel bag. Her handbag
was enough to carry a million pesos in it.

Tuason had no duffel bag in the video? Big deal. All that means is that this
wasnt the one day she was referring to. How hard can it be to pull out any
tape from the archives to show this? But while at this, you wonder: If a
handbag can accommodate a million bucks, how much can a duffel bag do?

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Otherwise, it was the same attack mode.

First, Jinggoy attacked the witnesses. Naturally he directed his fire especially
at Dennis Cunanan who had made himself vulnerable by not admitting to any
wrongdoing. He was the only one of the three witnesses who did so, Tuason
and Benhur Luy, the other two, predicating their testimonies on the fact that
they were party to the crime: Luy as Janet Napoles operator/recruiter/dealer,
and Tuason as delivery person. It was Luy who said Cunanan had gotten close
to a million pesos from Napoles in one visit. Jinggoy said he got more.

Maybe so, but what of it? Of course Cunanan needs censuring for not making
a clean breast of things, a thing that could void his immunity as states
witness, which Grace Poe threatened him with. But Jinggoy misses the point:
The credibility of a states witness does not lie in that he or she is as pure as
the driven snow, it lies in that he or she is guilty as hell. Cunanan and the
others are admittedly racketeers too. That doesnt disprove their charges
 23

against Jinggoy, Juan Ponce Enrile, and Bong Revilla; it proves those charges.
They were in on it, they know whereof they speak.

All Jinggoy does by this ploy, along with much name-calling, is to remind us
that his father too was in the same spot before. Erap too tried to dismiss
Chavit Singsons testimony by dismissing him as an unsavory character.
Which succeeded only in showing the public the kind of company the elder
Estrada kept. Like father, like son. Erap got jailed for his sins, Jinggoy could get
nailed for his.

Second, Jinggoy attacked the justice department. Here, the sleight of hand, or
mind, consists of turning a good thing into a bad thing. If the three witnesses
testimonies are consistent, that is not because they are telling the truth, that
is because they have been coached. That is because they have entered into a
conspiracy with the justice department to single out Jinggoy, Johnny and
Bong in exchange for immunity from suit.

The believability of this proposition however is subverted by the fact that

neither Jinggoy nor Bong nor Johnny has appeared before the Senate to face
their accusers. If Luy and Tuason and Cunanan have been forced or
threatened into testifying, then surely it would be the easiest thing to show
them up. Fearful people tend to be tremendously anxious and nervous and
trip on their answers. If Luy and Tuason and Cunanan had been coached, then
even easier to show them up. People who have words put in their mouths tend
to spit them out when the backs of their necks are rapped.

So how come Jinggoy et al. never refuted them, embarrassed them, made
them eat their words in the Senate? By preferring to give their side only under
the safety or cover or refuge of a privilege speech, Jinggoy, Bong and Johnny
have only succeeded in conveying to the public that they have something to
hide. Indeed, that they have been coached and rehearsed and practiced. Or
had words put in their mouths by lawyers and spinners who wrote and/or
reviewed their privilege speeches. Actions speak louder than words. They are
positively thunderous in this case.

While non-appearance has the merit of sparing them the risk of making legal
mistakes, and quite prosecutable ones, it has the demerit of not sparing them
the pitfall of being seen as cowards, the last thing Jinggoy and Bong and
Johnny can afford. Their absence in fact is the elephant in the room. Its effects
are easy to see. A few years ago, Manny Villar also refused to appear in the
Senate to answer questions about the detours he made in C5. Which drove
Jamby Madrigal, his scourge at the time, to shout duwag! in front of
reporters. The spectacle of a woman calling a man duwag created a minor
sensation. I myself thought that was one of the things that caused Villars
downfall.
 24

Third, Jinggoy attacked government. That of course is a familiar refrain, which

has become almost obligatory in his ululations: Government is doing this to
cover up for its own shenanigans. Government is doing this to crush the
leaders of the opposition. This is not prosecution, this is persecution.

The ploy did work once. Jinggoy did manage to dodge the bullet last year by
raising the issue of government attempting to bribe the senators into voting
against Renato Corona. But this has become a movie that can be titled Once
Is Enough. The fate of Bong Revillas attempt to do a Part II clearly shows so.
He revived the charge of the attempted bribe of senators and succeeded only
in looking like a second-rate, trying-hard copycat. The added details did not
help to give it any traction. Apart from the joke or two his reference to Mar
Roxas as Boy Pickup sparked, his speech was forgotten faster than his
movies.

It was Karl Marx who said in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, History
repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

This is farce.

Lets use it well

By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:14 AM March 13, 2014

The Freedom of Information (FOI) bill that the Senate passed last Monday will
not include Malacaang divulging the proceedings of its confidential meetings.
At least until such time as those meetings end up in policy declarations, in
which case the public may demand a summary of their salient points.

Frankly, I dont know why that provision came into consideration at all. The
nature of confidential meetings is precisely that they are confidential. And the
reason they are confidential is not necessarily because they deal with national
secrets but because they deal with personal ones. Those meetings are home,
too, to banter and gossip, the language being irreverent and full of politically
incorrect jokes. You want to parade that like dirty linen before the public?

There are limits to the virtue of transparency or honesty, those limits having
been shown in all their absurdity by hilarious movies like The Invention of
Lying and Liar, Liar. You cant very well have, as in The Invention of Lying,
someone opening the door and telling you, Oh, sorry, I couldnt answer the
 25

doorbell at once, I was upstairs jerking off. Civilization cannot survive such
levels of honesty, which is why it invented, if not lying, at least discretion.

Not putting confidential meetings on the record is not not being transparent,
its being, well, civilized.

But Im glad the FOI has finally been passed, even if only by the Senate, even
if the House, which needs to fling its doors open the most, has yet to do it.
Grace Poe, who has been tireless in pushing it, deserves a great deal of the
credit. The way she shepherded the bill to its approval in the Senate is an
example of how to get things done. Poe is one of the calmer, more level-
headed, senators. She isnt loud, she isnt strident, she isnt kulang sa pansin
and weighing in on everything in front of the cameras. She is quiet, focused,
and sees things through. She has seen this through.

You wonder why Speaker Sonny Belmonte hasnt done the same. He vows that
the FOI will pass before his term ends in 2016, but that is much too late. Its
well past due, it should have become law as soon as P-Noy stepped on the
plate. Why the foot-dragging? The choice is simple, as Poe points out: Madali
lang naman ang pagpipiliandilim o liwanag. Kailangang masinagan ng araw
ang lahat ng transakyon ng pamahalaan. (The choice is easydark or light.
The light of day has to illuminate all transactions of government.)

Of course, the FOI is just like any of the items in the Bill of Rights. Its just a
potential, an enabler. Its power lies in our ability to use it. Having the right to
assemble means nothing if people do not particularly feel inclined to assemble
out of fear or indifference. Having the right to demand all sorts of records or
documents from government means nothing if people will not demand them
anyway out of the tedious lawyerly procedures it entails, or worse, out of not
knowing what to ask for in the first place. But better to have a potential than
none at all, as well we know from the Bill of Rights being scrapped during
martial law.

More this, the FOI isnt merely an enabler, its a catalyst. Its an instrument
that encourages people to take an activeand intelligentpart in the way
they are governed. Poe again puts it this way: The FOI will not only prevent
graft and corruption but, more importantly, our citizens will learn to get
involved and participate and thus will become true stakeholders in
government. This is the true essence of democracy.

Thats the subtler point about the value of the FOI, but the far more important
one. One is tempted to say that is probably just a hope, a lofty one but not an
easily realizable one. But it is a hope thats not unfounded or greatly removed
from reality. Lest we forget, the clamor for the passage of the FOI rose to
thunderous levels late last year at the height of the frenzied popular protest
against pork. The one that was marked in particular by the Million People
 26

March on Heroes Day last August, a march that had the remarkable quality of
being next to leaderless. It was as dazzling a show of people power as you
could getbut one that arose, not from a need to oust government, but to
stop corruption.

The struggle for the FOI at least, if not the FOI itself, is allied, or strongly
linked, to the struggle for the peoples voices to be heard in national
discourse, in the shaping of national policy. The FOI did not create that
spontaneous protest; the social media, more than any other, did. But the FOI
stands to impact back on it. At the very least, it wont just give impetus to the
public weighing down on things, it can give some direction to it.

The public weighing down on things also has a downside, as we saw last year.
It doesnt always result in the people trying to shape the terms of their
governance, it can also result in people merely ranting and vituperating and
parading their ignorance before the world. It doesnt always result in
reasoned, or at least reasonably thought-out, observations about the way we
live, it can also result in vicious rumors, innuendoes, and downright lies about
just about everyone.

The FOI helps in part to stem this tide, or better still, steer it to a more positive
direction. Youve got the freedom to obtain information, whats your excuse for
displaying ignorance? Youve got the freedom to ascertain information, whats
your excuse for passing off speculation as fact, wish fulfillment as fulfillment?
Youve got the freedom to test information every which way, whats your
excuse for passing off stupidity as wisdom?

The true essence of democracy is not just that we have freedom, its that we
use it well. We now have freedom of information.

The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth

By: Conrado de Quiros - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 03:12 AM March 12, 2014

The first thing they ask you while your right hand rests on the Bible is: Do you
swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? That is the
test of a witness testimony. One or two do not suffice. All three must be there.

So far Benhur Luy and Ruby Tuason have passed the test, or at least Jinggoy
Estrada, Bong Revilla, and Juan Ponce Enrile have not been able to punch any
gaping holes in what theyve said.
 27

Were they telling the truth? The richness and fineness of the detail they
supplied in their accounts suggest so, both of them showing much confidence
in their appearance at the Senate. They answered the questions of the
senators without nervousness, refusing to be baited into speculation, talking
only about things they knew. The three senators themselves made it a point
not to attend the hearings to show that they did not take the witnesses
seriously. But all they showed was that they were afraid to face them.

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Were they telling the whole truth? The best proof of this is that from the start
they admitted their malfeasance. Chavit Singson was a thoroughgoing
scoundrel, too, then (as now), but that was what made him believable when
he spoke out against partner-in-crime Erap. Luy admitted to getting a
substantial fee for his services, and Tuason admitted to getting 5 percent all
the way.

Were they telling nothing but the truth? Well, there will always be suspicions
about their underreporting, or mis-declaration, of the amounts they got. An
operation that produced such oodles of cash that Janet Napoles allegedly
could no longer stash it in the usual places she had to pack it in her (probably
queen-sized) bathtub naturally lends itself to kupit. And barya in this case
could mean tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pesos.

Jinggoys attempts to defend himself from this, never mind try to turn the
tables on the government once again, have only looked like grasping at
straws. His attempts to discredit Tuason in particular are cringe-worthy. Of
course Tuason would need to consult her notes to answer questions. Can he
himself remember who he was with at Zirkoh five years ago? (Well, maybe he
can.) And of course there would be no footage of Tuason entering the Senate;
CCTV tapes are regularly erased.

But comes now Dennis Cunanan.

Is he telling the truth? Like the others, he gives a richly detailed account of
how the three senators, including Enrile, who he says directly interceded on
behalf of a Napoles NGO of his choice (a member of his staff supplied a letter
naming the NGO), pressured him into approving and releasing funds for their
favorite projects. In Jinggoy and Revillas case, he claims dealing with them
directly, Jinggoy for the most part over the phone. Jinggoy has denied it and
says whoever it was on the line wasnt him. He could have been cleverer and
said for all you know it might have been Willie Nepomuceno, but that has
pretty much left him only with that line of defense.

Is Cunanan telling the whole truth?

 28

That is the crux of the problem.

The part in his testimony where he faltered big-time was when Grace Poe
asked him about Luys statement that he (Luy) prepared a bag containing
P960,000 in cash on Napoles orders and he (Luy) saw him (Cunanan) leave
Napoles office with it. That was when he suddenly became hesitant and
evasive, refusing to verify or contradict Luys statement. It held echoes of
Napoles own sustained bout with amnesia in her own appearance at the
Senate, the joke about it being that it was an episode of Maalala Mo Kaya,
which vastly amused P-Noy himself. I cant remember was Napoles
repeated answer to the questions, infuriating some of the senators.

Cunanans answer did not infuriate Poeshe is not naturally given to

infuriation, but she did threaten to lift the immunity of a provisional states
witness from him.

She has a point. What was Cunanan thinking, that something like this could be
hidden or snowed under? Quite apart from the fact that it is next to
unbelievable that he succumbed only to the stick and not to the carrot when
he allowed his office to be used and abused, what makes it so
counterproductive is that the nation would have taken it in stride if he had
admitted to it. It did with Luy and Tuason. Why be coy with something so
easily verifiable?

Jinggoys camp was of course quick to pounce on it, making joyful noises
about it being the death of the case against them. But its just a lot of
whistling in the dark, rumors of the death of the prosecution are grossly
exaggerated. Were the witness Cunanan alone, his detractors might have
done greatly to dent his account. You violate the principle of the whole truth,
you raise suspicions about the mettle of the truth and the nothing but the
truth. But taken in conjunction with the other witnesses, it adds weight to the
case.

It remains for Cunanan to own up to partaking of ill-gotten gains before he can

enjoy the protection of law. Without of course prejudice to being compelled to
return the loot, in the same way that Luy and Tuason have been compelled so,
and who have promised to do so. But despite this, as they stand right now the
accounts of the three witnesses taken together constitute one solid,
humongous, and damning indictment of the accused. They do not contradict
each other, they reinforce each other, except for a kink or two such as this
one. Their core, their heart, their essence, which is how the three senators
took part in Napoles scam, is there for all the world to see, for all the courts to
punish. We may not be sidetracked once again. The culprits are not Luy,
Tuason, and Cunanan, they are Estrada, Revilla and Enrile.

That is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
29